Opening up

On May 4 my friend Franca wrote me another English essay. This one began, "Today is a great day!" That Monday, with COVID-19 cases and deaths on the decline, Fidenza and broader sections of Italy moved into "Fase 2." The extremely tight restrictions on movement and commerce that had slowed the spread of the virus were at last beginning to be loosened.

Where before people were only allowed out of their homes to get food and medicine, always by themselves, now they could take walks with other members of their own household, jog or do other non-contact sports, and get together with close relatives, as long as social distancing was maintained and masks were worn.

"COVID emergency phase 2. Gatherings no, masks yes." 

In the first days of the lockdown, "incredulity paralyzed us," Franca wrote (more or less--I've made some minor corrections). "We weren't able to believe that Mr. Corona was so close or, rather, already among us. Then we didn't want to accept the idea that our freedom could be limited.

"The next step, the worst, was when fear and worry began to overwhelm us each time we heard an ambulance siren. (There were so, so many in the beginning.) Each time we watched television there were too many dead, even more people in intensive care units, and the numbers rose every day."

As the two-month lockdown wore on, there was resignation and willingness to obey the government's strictures. "We started to appreciate our new life at home, but we were always waiting for freedom."

Now freedom, or at least a bit of freedom, had arrived, but Franca admitted she had "two conflicting feelings: joy in the little light you can see at the end of the tunnel, and the fear that Corona will come back as before." There is a shadow hanging over everyone, she wrote, "a sadness...I am not really able to understand it...it is like a question that arises spontaneously: are we ready to go back to living in the same way as before? Or have we had time to think about what is really important to our life? Doing less shopping, spending more time with relatives and friends instead of with virtual people or things, really thinking about our planet--how can we stay healthy when the Earth is ill?"

She sent along this video, which some Italian wag had labeled "4MAGGIO2020." Now that May 4 had arrived, she wrote, "I hope we will continue to behave well, respecting the rules the government has given us...not like these chickens!"

On his Facebook page Fidenza's mayor, Andrea Massari, urged his fellow citizens to show solidarity and protect each other. He published the photo at the top of this page with the comment, "One rule is so little. Are two too many?"

He also answered citizens' questions about what the new rules meant. Collecting mushrooms: OK, but only in the daytime and only for your own consumption. Team sports: No. Individual training: OK. Going to a second home within Emilia-Romagna: OK. Going to visit your grandchildren in another region: No.

A few days later he announced a major milestone. Fidenza's hospital, which had been converted to an all-COVID facility and had had some 300 cases a few weeks before, discharged its last COVID patient. It's now once again a full-service community hospital, except for the birthing center, which is scheduled to reopen in June. Massari posted a video showing hospital staff, gowned and masked, dancing in celebration and holding up signs saying, "The future depends on you" and "Behave well."

When I spoke with Pam, she told me how lovely it was to again hear people talking on the big pedestrian street outside her place, where before there was only silence broken by the sound of ambulance sirens. "Last night at 8 o'clock there were kids playing with a ball in the Piazza Grande" next door to her. "They were socially distanced and their parents were keeping an eye on things. It was great to hear kids laughing again."

It sounds like most Fidentini were following the rules, but for younger people just escaping from two months at home, the temptation to ignore them ran high. The mayor posted this photo of three young men disregarding the social distancing regulations.

"No, guys, this isn't OK," he wrote. Unless these three fellows all lived in the same household, they weren't respecting social distancing, even though they should know better.

He added that during the first week of Phase 2 he'd received many stories about citizens who were following the rules. But he'd also received stories "about those who aren't taking the emergency seriously or simply don't care. About themselves or about others. Do I have to repeat myself? I will. If we don't all do our part, we'll return to the starting point, and that starting point was brutal: ambulances continually bringing COVID patients to the hospital."

At least in Fidenza, there doesn't seem to be a lot of talk about an individual's "freedom" to infect others. Instead Massari and citizens on his feed talk about the importance of respecting each other, and showing that respect by protecting each other with masks, gloves, and not getting too close.

Franca acknowledged that this last was going to be difficult, especially for the young, including the many twenty-somethings who still live with their parents and have been cut off from their romantic partners throughout the lockdown. "I don't know how boyfriends and girlfriends that don't see each other for months can stay at a distance," she wrote.

So perhaps it's not surprising that when bars and other social gathering places opened up on May 19, things got a little out of hand. More about that in our next episode.

Not all bad

My friend Franca and I have been exchanging little essays--hers in English, mine in Italian--as one way of trying to increase our fluency. I've shared some of her observations about the situation in Fidenza in earlier posts.

Her essay describing how the virus had shut down the town was titled "Corona...I hate you!" Which considering how tough things have been there is pretty much what I'd expect. I think by now we all have experienced a lot of visceral anger at this not-even-quite-living thing that is robbing us of our lives, in tens of thousands of cases quite literally.

So I was surprised when I opened my email one morning and found she'd sent a new piece of writing titled, "Corona I love you." Of course Franca doesn't really love the virus (unlike some U.S. Republicans, who seem positively gleeful that it will clear out the old, the weak, and the non-white). But she has found a few things to be grateful for, which strikes me as very healthy.

With her permission I want to quote some of what she wrote. (I've made a few small grammatical corrections.)

"Yes, this seems to be a silly affirmation, but [this situation] has so many positive sides. I obviously am speaking about life in Emilia-Romagna, the region where I live, but I think that more or less you can extend my outlook to other places in Italy, or in the world.

"First of all, the sky is blue. You may think that it is an obvious thing, but it isn’t. Here we usually always have a gray-blue sky, because of the nearby great highway that connects the North with the South, and the industries, and the thousands of cars that everybody uses in our overpopulated zone.

I think this was more fog than pollution, but the sky was sort of gray-blue.

"Now the sun, the moon and the stars shine like never before!

"You can sniff the air and it smells good; it's like the air in the mountains, scented with flowers and grass. Before we had one flat smell of …...nothing!

"What about the silence? 

"l am a fan of deserts. When will I have another occasion to stay at home and have the same kind of silence? No cars, no planes, no people in the streets, very few trains...there is only the sound of the birds in the trees or in the sky!

"There is no stress. This is like the life of about 40 years ago; you have things to do, but with a relaxed rhythm. We are not in a hurry for anything....

"Before we had no time, no time for anything. Everyone was in a hurry and always more, and more, and more. Our life was full of work, meetings, courses, shopping, false desires and false necessities. Now everything has gotten more simple. More natural. More quiet.

"And if Mr Corona is giving us a suggestion, perhaps it is: 'Take it easy and enjoy this, your one and only life.'"

Now of course neither Franca nor I think that quiet and blue skies make up for the deaths and all the other losses this pandemic has inflicted on Italy and the rest of the world. There is no ignoring the tragedy of it. But I think most of us are finding little things to be grateful for as well in this sudden stoppage of the everyday--things we should appreciate while they last and that perhaps we will miss when the crisis is over and normal life roars back again.

A little more news

Various friends in Fidenza have been checking in to let us know how they are faring. I'm happy to report that everyone in our immediate circle is still in good health, evidence that social distancing is working. And now it sounds like the town's rate of hospital admissions is starting to go down. There as here, you can't help but wonder if locking things down sooner might have saved even more lives.

My friend Franca told me that on Feb. 23, the day the Italian government cordoned off the handful of northern Italian towns that first saw big outbreaks of COVID-19, her family drove over to a seaside town on the Ligurian coast, about two hours from Fidenza, to celebrate her mother's 90th birthday. The streets and restaurants were full of people; the danger all seemed to be many kilometers away.

During the drive home they listened to news on the radio and heard that cases had now shown up in Piacenza and Parma, towns right near Fidenza. But it took two more weeks before everyone was told to go home and stay there. Even then, a lot of Fidentini seemed unable to believe the danger was really that great--the same denial we've since witnessed, and perhaps been guilty of ourselves, in communities all over the world.

By early in March people in Fidenza had been told to stop meeting in groups, stop hugging and kissing each other, and stay at least a meter apart--a big ask in Italy, where hugs and kisses are standard greetings even among people who barely know each other. At that time Pia, our upstairs neighbor in Fidenza, told me that although she was very carefully following the rules, she could see that a lot of other people weren't.

Franca says that although people were told they should wear masks when they go out, most people didn't until more recently. Perhaps that was because masks were very hard to get. Franca bought some on Feb. 23 when she came back from her family's outing and had to pay 5 euros for each mask. By the next day, she says, they were up to 15 euros.

Franca hasn't been outside without a mask since March 8, and like Pam, Romano, and everyone else we know, she rarely goes out at all. She's only allowed out of her home to get food, but since everyone in the household is desperate to escape the house, there's stiff competition for who gets to do the shopping. "So I've only gone out about three times since then," she told me.

A few days ago our friend Debora the banker told me that the COVID19 dead now include many people she knew. "Every day someone rings to tell me that their father, uncle, husband has died," she wrote. Men, she noted, are apparently much more at risk. A co-worker's father died in the hospital in Parma, all alone, because relatives weren't allowed in for fear of infection. The local crematorium was so overcrowded that his remains were sent to Ravenna, more than two hours away, and for the moment at least his ashes have gone missing.

Meanwhile many people--especially those with marginal jobs and those who work in Italy's bustling underground economy--have been living without a paycheck for weeks. "People are beginning to starve," Debora said.

A volunteer delivering food (photo swiped from the mayor's web site)

When I checked the mayor's web site I was glad to see that the town has been taking action. Fidenza has organized volunteers from the Red Cross and other groups to do food shopping for older citizens. It is starting to distribute free surgical masks to its citizens. It was also reportedly one of the first municipalities to put in place procedures for distributing the national government's first wave of food aid.

The aid is in the form of vouchers that can be used to purchase food in local stores. "We did it with clear rules so we don't waste money and get it to those who really need it," the mayor wrote. The first round of vouchers, intended to cover two weeks' worth of groceries, came to about $300 for a family of four and went to over four hundred families.

In addition, Fidenza is collecting money for additional food aid from those able to donate. We're going to kick in a few euros. After all, it's our town, too.

Some news from Fidenza

This blog is normally active only when we're in Italy, which we left early in January. We were planning to fly back on April 7, but now we are socially isolating in California and there's no telling when we'll be able to return to Italy.  Fidenza, our other home, is in Emilia-Romagna, the region next door to Lombardy and thus not far from Italy's original COVID-19 hot spots. As the contagion spread, Fidenza became part of the Northern Italian lockdown, even before all of Italy was sent into isolation, and before California followed suit.

Italian towns, including ours, are flying flags at half mast in honor of the dead.

I've heard from a lot of worried friends and relations wondering where we are and what's happening in Fidenza, so I thought I'd revive the blog rather than write the same individual email over and over again.

We have been in frequent touch with Pam and Romano, the long-time friends who inspired us to choose Fidenza as our Italian base in the first place. Happily they are both all right, as are their families. A few weeks ago their reports of what was going on in town seemed the stuff of science fiction. Now it's becoming a story that doesn't seem quite so strange, since it's becoming our story, too.

Italy was way ahead of the United States in responding to the coronavirus threat, but in retrospect its response rolled out too slowly. The country declared a national emergency on Jan. 31, but small towns in the north that suddenly began seeing outbreaks weren't quarantined until Feb. 23, when carnival and some large sports events were also ordered canceled. Schools were closed on March 4 and the three hard-hit northern regions--Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna, and Veneto--were locked down on March 8. The next day the lockdown was extended to the whole country, but restaurants and bars weren't closed until two days later and "non-essential" businesses weren't shuttered until March 22.

The hesitant response and the fact that Italy's population is the oldest in Europe are two reasons COVID-19 has hit the country so hard. As of today, Italy has over 100,000 reported cases and over 11,000 deaths.

Many of our American friends are glad that we're here and not there, given the grim headlines. But I'm not sure we're actually better off. The fact that the United States has responded to the crisis even more slowly, and with vastly less seriousness, indicates that collectively we in the U.S. will face death and destruction on an even vaster scale as the pandemic rolls forward. The U.S. is already up to 144,000 cases as of today, and the death toll just passed 2,500.

The most recent tally from Fidenza is that 19 residents have died, but that number is from four days ago, so by now the death toll is undoubtedly in the 20s at least. The local paper is full of obituaries for prominent citizens--a soccer coach, a geneticist, an electrician, a priest.

Fidenza's hospital had just completed an expansion at the end of last year and had about 200 beds, but two weeks ago over a hundred more were added, including more ICU beds. Then a few days later the town announced that the hospital would now only treat the flood of COVID-19 patients; all others would be redirected to the hospital in Parma, a half-hour away. "It is a huge sacrifice," said Fidenza's mayor, Andrea Massari, "but even more a huge responsibility on which the fates of many families and many people depend."

Restrictions on Americans, even in California, are mild compared to what has been imposed on Italians in an effort to slow the spread of the virus. There any movement out of your town or your home province is prohibited unless required for work or some other urgent reason, and police are stopping people on the road to demand proof that they're not moving around illegally. Fidenza police are strictly enforcing the lockdown in town, where people are allowed to go outside only to buy food or go to the pharmacy.

Pam and Romano live on the same street we do, the main drag, a wide pedestrian-only thoroughfare lined with stores, bars, and markets. Usually it's full of the noise that Italians make when they're together, lots of loud talking and loud laughter and excited greetings. Now, Pam says, the street is empty and the only sound is ambulance sirens rushing people to the local hospital.

That struck me as horrifying. But today people in New York City are saying the same thing.

The penalties for violating Fidenza's lockdown rules are stiff. Pam has a certificate allowing her to go for a walk every day, for health reasons, but she can't go more than 100 meters from home, which means her only choice is to circle her block six times to get her steps in. People who are caught going out without authorization or meeting others can be fined 400 to 3,000 euros (about $440 to $3,000), more if the violation involves using a car, and doubled for a second offense.

Those who've tested positive but leave home despite being quarantined face up to five years in prison (although that would seem to pose its own public-health dangers). So far 45 people have been charged with violating the lockdown rules, according to the local paper, which didn't specify which violations and what penalties. Meanwhile businesses that are caught opening illegally will be forced to remain closed for between 5 and 30 days after the lockdown is over. In other words, they will have to remain closed while everyone else opens up again.

The town website announced that tomorrow Mayor Massari will be in the main piazza, presumably alone, at noon, with the flag at half mast, as part of a national moment of silence in memory of those killed by COVID-19, in sympathy with their families, and in honor of the nurses, doctors, and other health-care workers fighting the virus. A moment of silence seems very poignant in the midst of the greater silence of a town, and a country, that has had to be shut down so completely.

What's God's pronoun?

I'm a long-time member of a Twelve-Step group. I'm going to adhere to that world's traditions and not say which one, but the Steps are no secret, and it's well known that they include a lot of talk about a Higher Power, about "God as we understood Him," about "humbly ask[ing] Him to remove our shortcomings" and "praying...for knowledge of His will for us."

Lots of people have had problems with this aspect of the Twelve Steps, including atheists like me, but what I want to discuss here is an issue that has come up in many of the meetings I attend in California, particularly among some of the more earnestly feminist women in the fellowship. They don't object to God being in the steps, but they do bridle at all those Hims. Many insist on revising the steps when they read them aloud to say, for instance, "God as we understood God" and "God's [rather than His] will for us," so that the deity's gender remains unspecified. There has even been talk about trying to get the worldwide fellowship to officially change the Twelve Steps in order to eliminate all gender-specific pronouns.

The same fellowship exists in Italy, too, and there's a weekly meeting in Fidenza that I attend. It's all in Italian, of course, and one of the things that struck me right away is how impossible the gender-neutrality project would be in a country where every noun is either male or female.

Take the Serenity Prayer, which in English starts out, "God, grant me the serenity..." In Italian it's "Signore, dammi la serenita'..." because signore literally means "lord," which is conventionally how God is addressed. Nowadays signore is also the polite form of address for men and not just deities. So every week when we recite the prayer I inwardly chuckle at how indignant my California friends would be at addressing God as "Mister."

When I searched my photos for "god," this old photo of my dad came up. Patriarchy!

It isn't only God who's gender-specific. The prayer goes on to ask for the serenity to accept things I can't change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. In Italian each of these things is assigned a gender identity: serenita' and sagezza are feminine, coraggio is masculine.

So is every other noun in the language, and the logic of which word is assigned which gender is unclear. Milk (latte) is masculine and so are breasts (seni), although udders (mammelle) are feminine. Meat (carne) is feminine and so are machines (macchine). This is one of those things that you learn by memorizing, not by ratiocination.

Moreover, a woman can't be a scrittore, a writer. She's a scrittrice, a writer-ess. She's not a dottore, but a dottoressa. The de-gendering of words such as "actor" or "waiter" that's happened in English would be hard for Italian speakers to wrap their minds around.

I've read that countries with gendered languages adhere more closely to traditional stereotypes about men and women, and I can see why. In Italian a noun's gender affects so much in the typical Italian sentence that, for a novice speaker at least, gender has to be kept in mind all the time. Adjectives have to be in gender agreement with nouns, and so do plurals. Children are either female (bambine) or male (bambini), and if I want to say "We went to Parma" it's Siamo andate if it's Pam and me but Siamo andati if I went with Danny.

That's because when boys and girls or men and women are together, it's always the masculine form that predominates. So even though I have two sisters and one brother, my siblings are i miei fratelli (literally "my brothers"). Even though I have a daughter and a son, my children are i miei figli (literally "my sons").

One additional bit of confusion arises when using Italian's formal form of address. When you're speaking to someone older or more important than yourself, or just someone you don't know very well, instead of using "tu" (the informal second-person pronoun) and its associated verb forms you're supposed to use Lei, which also means "she." Maybe this stems from antique forms of address using feminine-gendered nouns of respect, such as Sua signoria, "your lordship," or Sua eccellenza, "your excellency. I've also read that it derives from Spanish court traditions, from the era when Spain ruled large parts of Italy.

Whatever the reason, someone working in a store, for instance, will say Cosa potrei offirLa? or Grazie a Lei! ("What can I offer her?" and "Thanks to her!") to a male customer, just to be polite. The femininity of this form of gentilezza, as well as its purported foreign roots, led Mussolini to ban official use of the formal Lei while he was in power, in favor of the older, supposedly more Italian use of voi, the plural "you," as the courtesy form.

When I told my Italian Twelve-Step pals that some Americans wanted to eliminate the male pronouns in the Steps, they were plainly baffled. Everything in their version of the Steps, everything in their world, is either male or female. It was hard for them to imagine how that could be changed, or why anyone would want to change it.

But perhaps change is on the horizon. There are regional elections coming up in Italy later this month, and the parties of the right and left see this as an important test of strength. Just before we left town I noticed this poster in downtown Fidenza.

I figured this gal for a right-winger just because of her Fox News makeup and bottle-blonde hair, and sure enough, she's a leader of Berlusconi's Forza Italia and the candidate of a coalition of right-wing parties calling themselves Popolo della Famiglia, "People of the Family." And the only political content on the poster is the battle cry No gender nelle scuole, "No gender in the schools."

That slogan notwithstanding, I don't think neofascists in Italy are on the same gender-neutral page as California feminists. I haven't been following Italian politics as closely as I should, but no doubt these rightists are trying to make political hay with the same "bathroom bill" homophobia that their counterparts in the U.S. have been hammering on. In the U.S. these right-wing campaigns have been all about emphasizing so-called biological gender, but in Italy the push is to not talk about gender at all. Here the bright line dividing the world into male and female must seem--to some, at least--omnipresent, eternal, all-inclusive, beyond argument. Not unlike God Itself.

Goats, cabbages, and other wordplay

Although I'm still painfully far from fluent, my Italian is coming along. I'm able to make conversation that's comprehensible, if not entirely grammatical, and I even successfully make jokes now and then.

However, understanding Italians when they speak at their normal clip is still way beyond me. I've realized that I have the same problems understanding Italian that my very hard-of-hearing husband does with English. If there's background noise, or the person is facing away from me, or if a regional accent is involved, I'm lost. I don't know the language well enough to fill in the blanks, the way I can in English. I need every bit of information I can get to even halfway understand what an Italian speaker is saying.

Eavesdropping is one of my favorite activities, and Italy should be paradise for eavesdropping, since Italians talk everywhere, all the time. Unfortunately, I can get only a random word now and then, never the gist of what other people are talking about.

I am, however, starting to learn the kinds of idioms that make a new language so much fun. Herewith a few of them:

Tocca ferro! "Touch iron," a phrase similar to our "Knock wood," except Italians seem to use it to ward off something bad rather than encourage something good. Like us, they will say it and tap their own head.

In bocca al lupo! A dialect phrase that means "in the wolf's mouth" is the way you wish someone good luck. A cruder version is In culo alla balena!--"in the whale's ass."

Lei ha fetta di salame sugli occhi. "She has slices of salame on her eyes," meaning that she is refusing to see something obvious. Prosciutto sometimes fills in for the salame.

La goccia che ha fatto traboccare il vaso. The Italian version of "the straw that broke the camel's back" literally means "the drop that made the vase overflow."

Terza giovanezza. "Third youth" is a polite euphemism for old age, similar to our "golden years." Although it sounds amusingly similar, it does not mean the same thing as "second childhood."

A cavallo by the sea.

A cavallo del secolo. "Astride the century," the Italian way of saying "at the turn of the century."

La verita' nuda e cruda. "The truth, naked and raw," or as we would say, "The whole truth and nothing but."

Avere la botte piena e la moglie ubriaca. The Italian version of "having your cake and eating it, too" is "having a full barrel and a drunk wife."

Salvare capra e cavoli. There doesn't seem to be an exact English equivalent for this one. "To save the goat and the cabbages" means to achieve two seemingly incompatible goals and derives from an ancient riddle about a farmer who has to ferry a wolf, a goat, and a crate of cabbage across a river. He can only take himself and one other item in the boat at a time and he can't leave the goat with the cabbage unattended, nor the wolf with the goat. Danny solved this instantly; I had to look up the answer online.

Mi formicola il piede. "My foot tingles, my foot fell asleep." This tickles me, so to speak, because the verb for "tingling" comes from formica, ant, and evokes little critters crawling around under your skin.

Mamma mia! I am delighted to report that Italians really do say this, all the time. It's adorable.

Architecture of death

Ever since I was a child, death and its trappings have fascinated me, perhaps because death was--is--so huge and so terrifying and yet so rarely talked about with any candor. Graveyards I found particularly intriguing, since they were not only full of dead people but also crammed with stories that were compelling yet incomplete. How did that long-ago mother feel about burying three young children, and how did they die? What happened to the man who passed away at the age of only 23? What led a family to erect a granite monument to their father but leave him all alone when their own time came?

I therefore would have been fascinated by the cemetery in Fidenza even if it had been just another graveyard. But it is also weirdly, wonderfully different from the American graveyards I'm used to.

Located just on the other side of the railroad tracks, a few blocks from our place, it is very large and has a variety of resting places. Unlike an American graveyard, Fidenza's isn't all graves but is made up of lots and lots of structures. There's a chapel, but most of the real estate is taken up with open-air breezeway sorts of things.

The majority of cimitero residents are tucked into niches in the walls of these buildings, a practice that echoes Fidentinos' evident fondness for living in apartment buildings rather than single-family houses.

There are miles of these niches, called loculi, and most seem well tended. (Although a few have notices taped to them asking any relatives to please contact the cemetery office immediately. I suspect a bill is overdue.)

When I visited the cimitero on a recent Sunday dozens of people were coming in and out, making visits to deceased relatives. The loculi are engraved with religious emblems, inspirational sayings, photographs, and expressions of love, as well as names and dates. Most are adorned with flowers as well, often artificial but frequently fresh. The cemetery provides ladders, watering cans, and brooms to help people keep their kin tidy.

There's a tiny Jewish section tucked away in the back. I had a hard time finding it again. 

All the spots along the sides are marked with just a number. Whether these are unclaimed plots or anonymous dead I don't know. I'll have to figure out who does.

Although almost all the cimitero's graves are decorated, few are very elaborate. This isn't anything like the famously over-the-top Staglieno cemetery in Genoa (which I am determined to go see in the not too distant future). Most of what's in Fidenza's cemetery is the opposite of spectacular, just sadly everyday expressions of grief and love.

This ode to motherhood caught my eye. "The poetry of life is composed of a single word: Mama."

Fidenza has been around for centuries, but most of the folks in its cemetery departed this mortal coil within the last thirty or so years. My friend Franca explained that Italians have a system for not letting the dead take up too much space.

Forty years after someone is interred, she told me, they open up the loculo and pull out the coffin. If it still feels heavy they put it back and give it some more time. If it's light, they open it up and move the bones--which is all that's left--into a much smaller box that can share another relative's loculo or... Well, Franca wasn't sure what happens if there aren't any relatives left to deal with the bones, but the authorities put them somewhere. Presumably there's a record of where they've been laid to more permanent rest.

I'd assumed this box I glimpsed when I was wandering the grounds one afternoon was empty, but now I wonder if it was someone in the process of relocating.

I have to say that I found Franca's explanation more than a little shocking. But when people have been living in the same place for thousands of years a system like this is probably necessary.

Most likely the 40-and-out rule doesn't apply to those loved ones who are housed in separate mausoleums, of which the Fidenza cemetery has dozens and dozens lining its streets.

The array of architectural styles is amazing. Some mausoleums look like offices, some like spacecraft, some like bank vaults or jewel boxes.

Do people pick the designs out of a catalog or are there architects that specialize in customized tombs? I hope I can find out.

 

Only a very few of them resemble what I would expect a mausoleum to look like.

I was particularly struck by how tall all of them are. A few weeks ago we went house-hunting with an Italian friend and saw a place whose ground floor ceilings were eight feet high, something you see often enough in U.S. apartment buildings. The realtor told our friend that legally the downstairs space could only be used as a garage, because the ceilings were too low for human habitation. Or at least for Italian habitation. Well, apparently even in death Italians can't live without at least 10-foot ceilings.

The cemetery also offers more conventional graves, and there are hundreds of those, too.

The wooden crosses seem to be new arrivals.

The headstones come later. But they're propped up with wooden boards...is that a temporary measure during the rainy season or some kind of budget alternative to the more firmly fixed headstones further back?

I'll end with a picture of a little monument near the front gate. The motto means, "To all the dead." I wish I knew the history of this, too.

There are so many questions about the cimitero that I'm dying, er, very eager to get answers to. Good thing I'll be back in a few months.

Anolini

Here they are, in brodo. Delicious. Happy 2020!

Holiday doldrums

One of our favorite restaurants in Fidenza is one I've mentioned before, Trattoria San Giorgio, a very unprepossessing place that serves a home-cooked three-course lunch, including wine, water, fruit, and coffee, for 13 euros. We are heading into our last week here and wanted to get one more San Giorgio meal under our belts, so we went by today for lunch. A sign on the door announced that they're closed for the holidays until next week.

How unprepossessing? When we first saw the restaurant we thought it was a soup kitchen.

Similar news greeted us last night when we walked over to another budget favorite, Ugolini Ristorante e Pizzeria. And two coffee bars we frequent told us that this week they're not serving hot lunches, as they usually do, just sandwiches and focaccia. So we had to make do with brie and eggplant on an Italian version of a bagel and a focaccia strewn with grilled red onions. Delicious, both, but not the full-blown lunch we'd been looking forward to.

It's not just restaurants that have closed up shop at year's end. Aqua classes at the town's covered pool are canceled till sometime next month. We've been going to a qi gong class in a little studio down the street, which in addition to being excellent for my back has been great for learning anatomical Italian. But that class has been off line for two weeks and will remain so until after we leave. Even the local supermarket is on reduced hours this week.

As you can see, it's qi gong for older folks.

As you can also see, I am by far the largest woman in class. Guess which shoes are mine?

Moreover, most of our Fidenza friends are on break, too. Some are going away to visit relatives or to have one of those travel experiences everyone's so keen on nowadays, and others are in town but busy with family. No wonder all the restaurants are closed--this week apparently everyone's eating at Nonna's house.

One of the few restaurants that has remained open is a brand-new Indian-Pakistani place, the only one in town. The food is good, especially the vegetable dishes; their baingan bharta (stewed eggplant) is the best we've ever had. But most of their business is takeout and the restaurant's empty tables, harsh lighting, and lack of heat make for rather grim dining. We hope they can hang on until the weather gets warmer and we come back.

Not wanting to spend our last week here eating Indian, we have been relying on take-out pizza and our own cooking. Today, in search of something appropriate for New Year's Day, we went down to the Latteria--which, incredibly, was open--and bought some anolini. We already have brodo on hand to serve them in, which we picked up a couple days ago at the supermarket. We'd been eyeing these slightly sinister-looking bottles of mixed-meat broth (chicken, beef, pork) ever since we first got to Fidenza, because their generic labels make them look a bit like medical waste.

We had some a couple nights ago with those tortelli d'erbetta we bought from Gelopasta last spring. (It's probably good we have to eat at home, since it's helping us clear out our freezer.) The broth was delicious--light but flavorful, a perfect complement to the pasta. I'm looking forward to ringing in the new year tomorrow with the rest of it and the anolini. Lucky, lucky us.

As I was writing this the piazza outside erupted into explosions and squeals. Not a terrorist incident, just free-lance fireworks to celebrate the midnight hour as 2019 becomes 2020.

Buon anno e auguri a tutti! Happy new year, everyone!