Zadi posted “A Soldier’s Story,” which made me cry. I’m very sensitive to Vietnam stories. Here’s why. I filmed this in March, 2005.
The Hundred Years’ War
The Strange Religious History of the Straughans
shot Mar 6, 2005, 7:29 mins
Some of my recent articles have caused some readers to wonder why I have it in for Catholicism. Actually, I am even-handed in my dislike of religion: I don’t like any of them. But, due to family history, I have un dente avvelenato in particular for Catholicism, and for the American Southern Baptist church. My father’s mother was a devout Catholic, my grandfather a born-again Baptist. Why they married in the first place was never clear to me, but the decades-long war that ensued left the rest of the family with an unpleasant taste in the mouth about both their religions (none of their descendants is now Catholic OR Baptist).
While I was visiting my dad in England in March, we started what will doubtless be a very long project: getting his life, and all his stories, on video. One of my questions was: “Why did Mamaw and Pawpaw get married?” Here are his thoughts on that, and on what happened afterwards.
The Great Turtle Escape
shot Apr 16, 2005, 2:25 mins
music: The Animals
Now that the weather’s finally getting warmer, we figured the turtles could spend time outside, so we bought some low fencing (intended to demarcate flowerbeds or something) and planted it in the garden. The enclosure didn’t need to be very high – turtles don’t jump, after all…
(later)
We seem to have solved the problem. I turned around the fencing so that the horizontal bars are on the outside, and the turtles are faced with tall (to them), smooth vertical bars on the inside. They still try to escape, but not nearly so hard, and they seem to have gotten the hang of just relaxing in the sun (there’s a plastic tub set up as a shelter for them to crawl under when they get too hot). I’m still looking for the right size and shape of ceramic planter to use as a pond for them. In the meantime, I put down one of those things you put under a plant pot to catch overflow (sottovaso – undervase – in Italian; what’s the word for that in English?). It’s just low enough for them to crawl over the rim, and they both immediately plunged in. Apparently they get thirsty quickly in the sun.
I was contemplating getting an iguana as a pet, til I read that they live 20 years and can get to be 6 feet long; I don’t feature me at age 62 trying to walk a six-foot lizard. Maybe we’ll get a python instead…
Commuting – Daily Train Travel in Italy
A few people wrote to commiserate over my long commute from Lecco to Milan and back. Most of the time, I actually don’t mind it. In the mornings I’m able to get some thinking done, and can work on my new office laptop. The evening commute is a good time to decompress between the stresses of the office and those awaiting me at home.
I have an iPod now, Ross’ hand-me-down since she used her Easter money from her nonna to buy herself a bigger and fancier one – 15 GB of music wasn’t enough for her. Given the problems with the old iPod, I was very reluctant for her to buy a new one, but the new one so far is working fine, and even the old one works more reliably using the USB 2 cable that came with the new one.
I saw somewhere online that someone wrote a university paper bemoaning the notion that iPods cause people to use music only as a soundtrack to whatever else they’re doing, thus debasing the music: if you can’t pay full attention to it, you aren’t appreciating it properly.
That may be true for some people, but that’s not how I use the iPod. I don’t usually listen to music while doing intellectual tasks, as I find it too distracting, and I rarely have time to sit around and just listen to the stereo in the taverna (den), so about the only time I could listen to music was in the car (not an ideal environment, our noisy old Fiat). With the iPod, I can sit on the train and watch the scenery go by, and really listen for the first time in years.
Music purists also bemoan the low quality of the MP3 compression format, but it’s good enough that, with the iPod “earbuds” stuck right into my head, I’m hearing nuances that I never noticed in years of listening to these same songs.
The iPod is also useful for drowning out everyone else on the train. Italians talk endlessly, loudly, and not necessarily just to people they know. Sometimes I overhear amusing things, but sometimes it just gets on my nerves. And the loudest voices are often the most grating ones, and the least worth hearing…
Jul 5, 2005
Maybe I spoke too soon when I said that commuting into Milan daily isn’t so bad. It’s summer now, when commuting can be absolute hell.
The trains I take in the morning are usually air-conditioned – not even necessary at that time of day. However, for some unfathomable reason, no matter what train I take in the afternoon/evening, the A/C is intermittent at best, and a closed-up metal train car quickly becomes a sauna. Most of the time trains are moving, so the logical solution would be to open the windows. Ah, but then we have to contend with the dreaded colpo d’aria. Many Italians are convinced that sitting in a draft can be fatal. So when the train is finally rocking along and a nice breeze is blowing in, someone is bound to close the window. Next time this happens, I think I’ll tell them: “You are at far less risk of dying from the colpo d’aria than from me killing you right this minute.”
During one trip last week, I was moving along the train when I saw a woman sitting on one of the fold-down seats in the train’s entryway, with a thoroughly miserable-looking child. These areas are closed off from the train compartments by doors, so when the outer doors are shut, they become airless little boxes. And there she sat, sweating. As I opened the door to go through to the next compartment, someone called to the woman to come and sit with them. All the windows were open and the compartment was delightfully cool. “Oh, no,” she responded. “As long as those windows are open, I’m not coming in there. Michele [the little boy] will be sick tomorrow.” More likely Michele fainted ten minutes later from heat prostration.
- All about Italian Trains
Note to the Entertainment Industry: Piracy is Good for You
Not an original proposition, I know. But is it an excuse, a rationalization – or a fact? I can offer some evidence from my own experience:
I used to download music from the Usenet, my favorite newsgroups being those which offered soundtracks and musicals. Contributors to those groups vie with each other to post the strangest and rarest albums, or to be the first to post the latest film soundtrack. For long-distance fans of the Great White Way, it’s a great way to keep up with what’s happening on Broadway. Probably the phenomenon most hated by those in the biz is the people who smuggle tape recorders into shows and upload full bootleg soundtracks, dialog as well as songs. I tried a couple of these, but found them merely annoying: the quality, not surprisingly, is not good (you hear a lot of audience rustles and coughs) and many shows are incomprehensible without seeing what’s going on. But for some show-starved fans far away who will never be able to see a show live, I guess it’s better than nothing.
Since I don’t live in New York (or London) and don’t follow theater news closely, these newsgroups were a way for me to keep up with new musicals and explore less-familiar old ones. I had not known that the John Waters film “Hairspray” was being made into a musical until the soundtrack appeared in a newsgroup. I downloaded it out of idle curiosity, and fell instantly in love with it, as did Ross. We listened to it in the car while visiting friends that weekend, and their teenage daughter also loved it (the girls’ favorite song was: “Mamma, I’m a Big Girl Now”). Both families bought the CD from Amazon, and we all wished that we could see the show in New York. The closest we could get was a New York Times review which included a video clip of one of the musical numbers.
About a year later, our friends got to see the show when a touring company came to Minneapolis. Ross and I saw it, finally, in New York in January, braving the big blizzard to get to the theater. To see a show at all was a last-minute impulse decision, and there were lots of others we could have seen that afternoon for the same price or less, many of them a shorter walk in the snow from where we were. But we chose “Hairspray” because we already knew we’d love it.
So the accounting on my original act of piracy looks awfully good for the show’s producers: an initial illegal download of the soundtrack turned into $40 spent on CDs right away, and $300 or so in theater tickets later on.
I know that not everyone who downloads music (and likes it) will then buy a legal copy and/or see a show (even if they have the opportunity). But a closer look at the behavior of the downloading population might pleasantly surprise the entertainment industry execs who are currently spending so much effort and money sueing people.
