above: at ~ age 16
^ with 4th husband Jack
with Rossella, 1989
with 5th and final husband Bill
^ February, 2006 – Home from the hospital (again, and for the last time).
Category Archives: bio
La Buona Educazione: Good Manners in Italy
Italy has four or five of those freebie newspapers, you probably have them in your city as well. The one I read regularly is Metro, partly because it’s the best of a bad lot, partly because it’s the only one distributed at the Lecco railway station. It’s not serious news, just enough to keep up on showbiz silliness (Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie will get married on Lake Como next week – wait, no, they didn’t), and the letters page is a glimpse into what’s on the collective Italian mind.
Every now and then they publish a flurry of letters about manners, usually started by a woman complaining that no one, and especially no man, ever offers her a seat on the bus or subway – even when she’s visibly pregnant. Other women chime in with similar experiences, then the men recount how no one ever gave them a seat, even when they were on crutches, or how some women are snappishly offended to be classified as old enough to need such courtesies.
How well I remember traversing the city every day to daycare, standing with a heavy two-year-old Rossella in my arms because, if I put her down, she was likely to get stepped on or bashed in the head with someone’s heavy bag.
Once she asked, in a loud, clear voice: “Why won’t anyone let us sit down?” (This was during the phase when she only spoke Italian, so everyone understood it.)
“Because,” I answered equally loudly, and in Italian, “no one is civil enough to notice that there’s a mother here with a child in her arms who needs to sit down.”
That finally got us a seat.
During my recent visit to Texas, I was startled that men kept leaping ahead to open doors for me. This reminded me of a fellow Woodstocker who had attended the University of Texas at the same time I did. He was Bangladeshi, and had some cultural adjustment difficulties. He said to me mournfully: “I never know what to do at a door. If I don’t open a door for a girl, she gives me a dirty look. If I do, she calls me a chauvinist pig.” (I told him that he should do what was right for him, and if someone called him a pig for his good manners, she was seriously lacking in manners herself.)
The nagging problem on trains is many passengers’ failure to close the compartment doors. On a typical commuter train, each carriage divided into three sections, with two entry platforms, plus doors on each end into the next carriage. The entry platforms are not heated, so in winter it’s important to close the doors between the compartments and the entryways. (They should theoretically close by themselves, but the trains are so old that they often need a push.)
But lots of people go charging through the train, leaving a string of open doors behind them, and other passengers shouting irately after them: “Ehi! Porta!” (“Hey! Door!”) – usually ignored, because someone who is rude in the first place is rarely going to acknowledge the fact and correct his error.
I habitually sit near the door, so am often the one to get up and close it. A few times I have commented to a nearby passenger: “Tutti nati in stalla,” from the American: “Were you born in a barn?” This phrase isn’t used in Italy, so Italians find it very funny; Ross’ boyfriend doubled up laughing the first time he heard it.
You might also like:
Italian Slang and Swearwords
Italian Slang Dictionary: intro A B C D E F G I L M N O P Q R S T U V X Z
Introduction to Italian Slang
If you’re planning to live or travel in Italy, you might find it helpful to know what people are saying – much of which is not in polite phrasebooks! And sometimes it helps to be able to fire a few juicy phrases of your own. Select a letter above to go to the page of Italian swearwords starting with that letter.
- Subject to revision whenever the mood strikes me. If you have something you’d like to add or suggest or comment on, go here (where you can also see what others have suggested).
- Most of this usage is not for polite company. For milder slang and idiom, see this page.
- I live(d) in northern Italy, so the usage described here may be specific to northern Italy, particularly Milan and Lombardy, unless otherwise noted. Your mileage may vary. I left Italy in 2008, so my usage here may not be up to date, though some of these words and phrases are… timeless.
- Here’s a video of some common Italian hand gestures (many of them rude, along with pronunciation of some of the phrases below).
- Giovanna & Angiolino: a pop song (yes, it’s relevant)
A Note on Blasphemy
Some of these words and phrases fall into the category of bestemmie (blasphemy): taking the Lord’s (or Jesus’ or Mary’s) name in vain. Be aware that these may be considered particularly offensive by some people.
Other rude words are simply called parolacce – “bad words.”
You might also like:
Modern Italian Architecture: Long Past Its Glory Days
Italy is justly renowned for many centuries and styles of stunning architecture. Unfortunately, all the good stuff is at least a century old. Before and after our move to Lecco in 2003 (initially into a rented apartment), we spent over a year looking for a home to buy. Much of what we saw was of recent construction (or still being built), and very disappointing – exterior styles ranged from boring to ugly.
At some point we thought, “Okay, never mind the outside, we’re not going to look at it from the outside much anyway, right?” But we were also baffled by some of the choices made about the insides. In our three-room apartment in Milan, built in the 1950s, each room was at least 3×4 meters (except the bathroom and kitchen). Which was a good thing, because each room had to be mult-purpose: one corner of our bedroom was my office, Enrico’s piano resided in Rossella‘s room, and the refrigerator was in the living room because the kitchen was too small to hold it.
Average room size has decreased over the decades. In the new places we looked at around Lecco, a so-called child’s room was barely large enough for a single bed and a small desk. This is certainly not enough living space for a teenager, and doesn’t seem to take into account the fact that Italian offspring routinely live at home til well into their 20s, or even later. Or is this a parents’ ploy to encourage the kids to leave home?
Some new homes inexplicably wasted stunning locations and views. Most of the townhouse-style condos we looked at were four stories tall, with a garage and family room on the bottom floor (partially built into a hillside), and a slope-ceilinged attic intended as a bedroom. The attic, being on top, would have the best views of the lake and mountains, but usually had only skylights – which give no view at all unless you open one up and poke your head out. (The exception was a top floor apartment that had been redone with great taste by a friend’s parents. They had cleverly placed the skylight so that, lying in bed, you would have a perfectly-framed view of the Medale, a sheer-cliffed mountain looming over Lecco.)
One still-being-built townhouse had a second-floor terrace with a lake view, accessed by a large sliding glass door. One would expect such a view to be enjoyed by a master bedroom or upstairs living room. But no: the terrace opened onto a hall that was too narrow to hold even a writing desk, while the bedrooms at each end were gloomy, with tiny windows. The man showing us the place was deeply offended when I suggested that this was a stupid arrangement; I’ll bet one of his relatives designed it.
And that’s part of the problem. There exists in Italy a professional class called geometra, who attended a professional secondary school to learn the rudiments of designing and constructing buildings, and are legally licensed to do so, for buildings of limited size and complexity; they’re cheaper to hire than real architects. Apparently the geometra courses do not mention aesthetics, a lack which shows in the houses they design: boxy and unimaginative at best, downright ugly at worst, so that “casa del geometra” has become an epithet for any dwelling that is unpleasant to look at.
In all our peregrinations we did see a few beautiful houses, probably designed by architects to the owners’ specifications. I loved some of these, but they weren’t for sale. After months of increasingly despairing searches, we saw a place that, though only four years old, was designed (I don’t know by whom) with intelligence and style: big windows and terraces to make the most of the view, including a huge dormer window in the attic room (mansarda), looking out on Lake Como and the surrounding mountains. We walked through the house for ten minutes, looked at each other, and said: “This is it.” And it is.
Scenes from Italian Politics
I was, unusually, in Milan yesterday (a Saturday), working at my office with Sean Carlos (who’s teaching me cool new website tricks, more on that later). We went out for lunch, and were just getting ready to leave the restaurant when three young guys came in, whom we noticed particularly because one had hair in dreadlocks down to his waist, the second had a nearly shaved head, while the third was normal-looking, at least as far as haircut goes. They asked the restaurant owner for plastic bags, apparently to carry their jackets and motorcycle helmets in. His attitude towards them was puzzling; all I could think was that he disliked being asked for bags when they hadn’t even bought anything.
We walked a couple of blocks to my usual coffee bar, where everybody seemed completely freaked out, looking out the windows nervously. The barista explained that there had been some kind of demonstration on Corso Buenos Aires, the big shopping street a few blocks away, and something had gone wrong – gunshots had been heard, and there were police helicopters hovering over the neighborhood.
When we went to take the metro to our respective destinations later that afternoon, there was an announcement that the trains were not stopping at the Porta Venezia and Palestro stations “for public security reasons.”
The evening news was full of it. A (legally-organized) parade was planned by the “Fiamma Tricolore” (Tricolor Flame), a neo-Fascist organization. This was considered by the extreme leftists to be a deliberate provocation, and may well have been, given that the Fiamma guys had to be forcibly dissuaded by the police from marching under banners with swastikas and other Fascist symbols – which are illegal to display in Italy. So the lefties organized an illegal (because no permission was applied for) counter-demonstration, which, although it took place hours before the Fiamme arrived, quickly turned to violent chaos. They torched cars and shops, and set off nailbombs and firebombs. The photos are horrific, considering that this is, for heaven’s sake, Milan!
The good citizens of Milan, in fact, were so angry that some demonstrators had to be rescued by the police to prevent them being lynched by local residents. Almost 50 demonstrators were arrested, and nine police injured, though thankfully none seriously.
I guess that, because no one got killed, it isn’t news – I can only find one reference in the press anywhere in the world outside of Italy, and that was in New Zealand – at least our friends in the Antipodes are paying attention.
It seems to be an Italian cultural trait to leap immediately to conspiracy theories, but in this case they may be right. We’re in the midst of a closely-fought and increasingly acrimonious election, in which it’s hard to tell which side is being more stupid. It is entirely possible that someone on the right hired provocateurs to ensure that the counter-demonstration got out of hand. It’s equally possible that the extreme leftists are stupid enough to do that on their own, without considering that they are losing votes for the left and playing into the hands of the right (with friends like these…).
The comedy of errors rolls on. After much discussion, Berlusconi and Prodi (the leader of the loose and fractious coalition of the left) finally agreed terms for an American-style TV debate, which will take place on Tuesday night (our beloved Montalbano got moved to Monday, otherwise the public would have faced a truly difficult choice).
Now that we are officially in campaign season, the rules on par condicio (equal access to the media) have set in, so Berlusconi’s access is theoretically limited. Today he wasted ten minutes of a 30-minute interview with TV journalist Lucia Annunziata, walking off the set because he didn’t like her questions. When he kept evading a straight answer, and she kept insisting on one, he said: “You are violent, you should be ashamed of yourself.” “You don’t know how to talk with journalists,” she snapped back.
Let’s see, what else… one minister in Berlusconi’s cabinet left office a couple of weeks ago after wearing on TV a t-shirt printed with some of the famously offensive Mohammed cartoons, provoking riots in Libya in which some demonstrators were killed by the police. This ex-minister may face charges under Article 404.
Then a few days ago the minister for health found himself under investigation for Watergate-like spying on political rivals. He proclaims his innocence, but has resigned so as not to further tarnish his party.
We await developments to see what the next damn silly gaffe from either side may be. Hopefully no more violent demonstrations, but at this point I fear that anything is possible.
