Category Archives: Italian culture

The Family That Eats Together

June 2, 2004 Deirdre Straughan Leave a comment

The other night I attended a party of Americans, with their Italian significant others and families. One American remarked that the kids present were amazingly polite, well-spoken, and self-possessed, compared with American kids of the same ages. He was right, but I hadn’t particularly noticed, because it’s what I’ve grown to expect.

I have written before about the brattiness of many young Italian kids, but I have also long observed that, by the time they reach puberty, most Italian kids are very civilized in adult company and can hold their own in adult conversations. This seems to be achieved without much discipline when the kids are younger, a noticeable difference from the US, where I have seen parents literally beating young kids into submission, and yet those same kids are not much fun to have dinner with when they’re teenagers.

It seems that Italian families work more by example than overt discipline. Most families have at least one meal together a day, usually a leisurely one. With so much exposure to adult company, the kids naturally absorb good table manners, conversation skills, and healthy eating habits (assuming that those things are present in the family, as they usually are).

Kids also learn at home to drink like responsible adults. It’s very normal to begin sampling wine with meals from an early age, and even to be offered it in restaurants (if the parents are drinking any) from age 13 or so. By law, kids can drink in bars or buy alcohol from age 16; it’s not unusual for high school kids to spend a Saturday evening hanging out in a bar drinking beer, just like college kids do in the States.

In spite of the easy availability, most Italian young people don’t binge drink the way Americans do – partly, I suspect, because it doesn’t carry the thrill of illicit behavior. So you rarely see anyone, young or old, drunk in public – that’s not considered cool in Italy, even among teenagers.

Italian culture

Macho Animals …with Artificial Testicles

June 2, 2004 Deirdre Straughan Leave a comment

My friend Sara runs the Prevent a Litter Coalition, an American charity promoting spaying and neutering of pets, to prevent unwanted litters of puppies and kittens being born and (often) abandoned, abused, or euthanized because shelters cannot find good homes for them.

From Sara I learned about Neuticles, fake testicles for neutered pets – so that your gelded male pet can look as macho as ever, even if he acts like a pussy(cat). I find the whole idea ludicrous, but apparently the prospect of a ball-less pet is a psychological barrier to neutering for many pet owners, especially men.

This is probably a factor in the low incidence of neutering of Italian pets. Some parts of Italy, especially Rome, have famously large populations of feral cats. These are fed by “cat ladies,” some of whom are reputed to lure cats with food, capture them, and whisk them off to be neutered (though I doubt that many of these retired ladies could actually afford the cost). This supposed practice is viewed with horror by Italian men, who feel an all-too-keen vicarious sympathy with the ex-tom cats. (These are the same men who superstitiously touch their own testicles when they see a nun, to ward off bad luck; I suppose a woman who can do without men is a symbolic threat to all manhood.)

A few years ago, one of the biggest celebrities in Italy was Varenne, a champion trotting horse. His exploits on the track endeared him to many Italians who knew little about horses or racing. They were sorry to see him retire to the stud farm at age seven, but contented themselves with imagining their idol happily ensconced in a harem of mares.

Unfortunately, that’s not how it works for champion studs. The fans were dismayed to learn that Varenne would not have any actual contact with mares; like many stud stallions, he mounts a dummy, from which his sperm is collected and divided up, each dose thus being stretched to inseminate up to ten mares (if I remember correctly), at a cost of 60,000 euros each.

There was a popular uproar about Varenne’s dismal fate. After all those years of thrilling the public, surely he deserved a few real thrills himself? Varenne’s owner conceded that the stallion could have a companion mare, with whom he would actually be allowed to have sex from time to time. But the owner soon backpedaled, claiming that it would be dangerous for a stallion accustomed to the dummy to mate with a real mare: either or both of the parties might get hurt. The more likely pain would have been to the owner’s bankroll: each of Varenne’s authentic sexual experiences would have cost 600,000 euros – no horse’s sex life is worth that much, even in Italy.

Italian culture, Italian language

Italian Law and Naming Your Baby

May 28, 2004 Deirdre Straughan 5 Comments

above: “What were they thinking?” department: This monument to those fallen in WWI in the Lake Como town of Gravedona shows someone whose parents named him “Troppotardi” – “too late”.

An article in Il Corriere della Sera points out that Italian law aims to prevent children being given “ridiculous, shameful, or embarrassing” names by their parents.

The official whose job it is to decide these things (the Public Prosecutor of the Commune where the birth is registered) sometimes has to sort out perplexing problems, such as whether to allow an Italian child to be given an American name taken from a soap opera. Good question. The other day I heard a mother in Lecco calling her small daughter Karen. She pronounced it CAHR-en – not ugly, but strange-sounding to both English and Italian speakers.

The article also mentions that it is illegal to give masculine names to females and vice-versa, which has stymied some parents who wanted to name their daughters Andrea. Pronounced an-DRAY-uh in Italian, it’s a masculine name, the equivalent of Andrew. In English it’s pronounced ANN-dree-uh, and is feminine.

An Italian colleague who moved to California discovered just how much trouble this can cause. He made a health insurance claim for a decidedly male complaint. When the check didn’t arrive, he called the insurance company to inquire. “This is obviously a fraudulent claim,” they told him nastily. “How can someone named ANN-drea have a prostate problem?”

bio, Italian culture

Born into It: Why You Can’t Become Italian

March 28, 2004 Deirdre Straughan 1 Comment

Most of the world’s major religions proselytize (for some, it’s a major facet of the faith), and eagerly accept converts. Except Hinduism. Hare Krishnas notwithstanding, you really can’t convert to Hinduism, because it is much more than a set of beliefs and practices. Hinduism is a system that you are born into, a fixed hierarchy of families and castes. You are who you are because of your birth, and nothing can change that. Therefore, logically, anyone born outside the system must forever remain outside.

A non-Hindu can’t become a Hindu.By analogy, I’ve been wondering: can a foreigner become an Italian?

I don’t think so. Not in the same way that an immigrant to America becomes American. I think this has to do with the Italian concept of paese (hometown). You’re born into a paese, you grow up in it, absorbing its cultural and linguistic nuances, its history and traditions. “Italian” isn’t enough to define you; you’ve got to have a paese (and, often, a dialect) as well.

The attachment to paese begins early. Rossella has had trouble finding kids to hang out with after school, because most of her classmates commute to Lecco from smaller towns, where they already have firmly established social circles with whom they spend any leisure time left over from school and family. The frightening part (to me and Ross, anyway) is that, at age 14, they already consider themselves set for life, and will not move outside of their established places and groups unless forced.

They don’t get out, and no outsider (estraneo) gets in. This goes for other Italians as well. Italians who leave their paese to live elsewhere in Italy don’t fit in – they are not part of their new paese of residence, and never will be. One exception is Milan. I recently met an Italian who told me that, when he wanted to return to Italy after years abroad, he deliberately chose Milan as the most welcoming city in Italy, both to foreigners and Italian strangers.

Which is not to say that people in smaller towns are cold, far from it. My experience of the Lecchesi is that they are warm and welcoming and happy to have us here. But we’ll never be Lecchesi.

That’s okay with me. As a third-culture kid, I long ago resigned myself to never fitting in anywhere (except Woodstock). We have friends in Lecco whose company I enjoy, but these days I am expanding my social circles among expatriates. Interestingly, some Italians also seek out opportunities to socialize with expats, because they have themselves lived overseas and, as often happens to travellers from any country, find that they no longer quite fit in when they return “home.”

Apr 27, 2004

This article was widely read and responded to. One interesting thread came up on eGullet (I posted the article there at the invitation of one of the moderators), where some very knowledgeable people discussed the phenomenon in terms of Italian and European history.

Italian culture

Randy Newman in Milan

March 4, 2004 Deirdre Straughan Leave a comment

Monday night we went to hear Randy Newman in Milan, on the last date of his European tour. I didn’t realize it was the last til I looked at his site just now – he certainly didn’t look any worse for the wear of 22 shows in 30 days. This was theÂ SongbookÂ tour, just Randy and his piano; I’d heard about the tour (and bought the CD) thanks to a review in the NYT or somewhere. It was sheer dumb luck that I stepped out of a hotel in Milan a few weeks ago and found myself face to face with Randy Newman on a poster, glued to a fence around the Pirelli tower (re)construction site (this is how I usually learn about concerts I want to go to, usually too late).

The promoters missed a marketing opportunity – I thinkÂ RossellaÂ and I were the only Americans in the theater. Ross was also very much the youngest person there, but that’s less surprising. I watched as the crowd entered, and amused myself speculating on who these people were. My guess is that this concert brought out every old-school lefty to be found in the Milan area: I have not seen so many beards in one room since about 1975. There was even one guy with long sideburns and a gold corduroy jacket – thirty years of fashion had passed him right by, even in Milan! Or maybe that stuff’s back in now, and I, as usual, am the laggard follower of fashion.

We hoped not to be subjected to a constant audience singalong such as we had suffered through at theÂ Alex Britti concert. This was a very different audience, but Ross was plagued by the two guys behind her singing along through most of the show, albeit so quietly that Enrico and I didn’t hear them. Unfortunately, she didn’t mention this til afterwards; she hadn’t wanted to disturb anyone else by shushing them, though she might have said something during intermission.

There was one song that RandyÂ askedÂ us to sing along on: “I’m Dead and I Don’t Know It,” about all the geriatric rockers still on tour (referring to himself as well). I had recently been thinking about this phenomenon: my daughter is the third-generation Who fan in our family. That’s a bit scary, but at least it’s something we can share, though my tolerance for her generation’s music is limited.To sum up, the concert was wonderful. If you don’t know Randy Newman, or only know him via such pop hits as “Short People” or “I Love LA,” or his movie scores, I recommend a closer aquaintance. He writes songs unlike anyone else’s: three-minute stories narrated by characters very distant from himself, sad, funny, touching, and often with an ironic punch that gets you thinking.

Songbook Vol. 1Â Amazon UK

About Randy Newman

Countries Beginning with I

Category Archives: Italian culture

The Family That Eats Together

Macho Animals …with Artificial Testicles

Italian Law and Naming Your Baby

Born into It: Why You Can’t Become Italian

Randy Newman in Milan

Deirdré Straughan on Italy, India, the Internet, the world, and now Australia

You might also like:

You might also like:

You might also like:

You might also like:

You might also like:

Deirdré Straughan on Italy, India, the Internet, the world, and now Australia