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Drinking In Italy

Moka 019

It’s hard to contribute to a blog entitled “La Dolce Vita” (The Sweet Life) at a time when life actually feels quite bitter. The Coronavirus pandemic has levied incalculable hardship, despair, and uncertainty on such a broad scale, altering our individual psyches and the safety of entire nations. For the housing insecure, shelter in place order cannot easily be met; for the food insecure, grocery essentials and group meal resources are scarce; for the immuno-compromised and elderly, every human interaction carries great risk. Health and safety precautions have been meted out, landing us in quarantine. And yet, despite the closure of standard commerce, this is a time of great work. That is, there is challenging, creative, and necessary work to do with and for those who are most vulnerable at this time, whether by encouraging local governments to open vacant hotel rooms, providing food goods to shelters and community centers, or by maintaining physically distanced emotional and social connection with loved ones. It is also a time for self work, and for many, there has indeed been a lot of time. Exercising our mental and emotional wellbeing is a constant effort and is of utmost importance regardless of circumstance – at this time, we happen to be facing more as a more collective unit these challenges that we often grapple with in isolation.

The increased time spent at home has significantly restructured the paces and routines of our daily lives. For many, without the constancy of our jobs, time may feel it has folded upon itself and expanded in size. This is, in fact, a blessing – a resource we can utilize for greater work, both unto others and for ourselves. We have greater opportunity for unmitigated introspection, deep thought, and reflection. I have revisited memories through emotional recall, searching my mental rolodex for the soft, satiny, warm-glowing experiences of my life to buoy the current turbulence. Often, I find myself returning to the spray of wind biking Umbria’s rolling hillscapes, preparing a soffrito at Chef Simone’s restaurant in the quiet hours between late-departing lunch patrons and late-arriving dinner guests, the tip-of-the-tongue, tingly adventurousness of accompanying an Italian host on a seemingly straightforward errand only to find yourself in a fully unexpected and delightful series of cascading circumstances, often including free beverages and new friends made. I am saturated with the feeling of Umbria, my breath is enriched, my heart beats slower and more fully, my taste buds begin to salivate. I experience relief, gratitude, excitement, tranquility. For me, this is the happy place people tell you to think about in times of distress. In quarantine, I have discovered a tool that without fail allows me to remember these times spent in Umbria, re-center, and find some emotional sovereignty: the Moka Pot.

Moka 015I have never entered a home in Umbria without being offered un caffe by its resident. Most homes now have a Keurig or Nespresso machine that makes a concentrated shot out of a pre-packaged pod. Every home has a moka pot, or more typically several of varying size. The moka pot is an iconic Italian totem, an understated and finely elegant machine of great utility and exceptional function. The octagonal-designed stainless steel is ubiquitous there, and even to those here who’ve never seen it before, its shape and structure suggest it as innately Italian and absolutely coffee-related. The moka pot is my twice (sometimes thrice) daily ritual. Everything that goes into making coffee in the moka pot – the deliberate and structured pacing, the emblematic design and Bialetti logoman, the finger-smoothing of the grounds in the brew basket, the rich expression of color and movement as the coffee percolates, the essential smell of thoroughly extracted coffee – returns me to my experiences in Umbria. The roughly 10 minutes I spend in the morning getting water hot enough to steam through ground beans transports me in place and temporality to another country, and the few sumptuous sips I consume can extend my mental stay there throughout the rest of my day – or until I get the craving for another cup! And despite how good it tastes and what could easily be ascribed to a mild caffeine dependence, I insist that my drive to “bang a ‘spressy” in the morning is founded upon the ritual of it. I could get caffeinated from tea, or stoop so low as to reach for the fresh-brewed pot of “American coffee” in the carafe on the counter, right next to my beloved Bialetti. For me, such a simple thing as still having coffee in the morning – coffee the way I like it, the way I make it, to drink at my pace – builds an amount of certainty that helps soften and reframe the perilous situation we face. It is part of my self-work of preservation and comfort in tumultuous times, and it also illuminates the perspective of privilege from which I am able to be relatively safe in a time where great masses of people are not, the work for others that stands as an imperative. I endeavor to unbind my empathy, apply thoughtful circumspection, and generate actionable plans to help meet the needs of communities and individuals struggling through this global health crisis. There are few things like a good cup of coffee and plenty of time on your hands to help get work done.

Comfort through the ritual of a morning espresso Read more

It’s hard to contribute to a blog entitled “La Dolce Vita” (The Sweet Life) at a time when life actually feels quite ...

Fume-acino

I would describe our hotel in Fiumicino, the Hotel Tiber, as “perfectly adequate.” The staff was nice and accommodating, the rooms quite spacious and modern. The air-conditioning and wifi worked well, a particularly important feature (at least with respect to the former) given the hellish heat the country is currently experiencing. I really can’t think of anything in particular to complain about about the Tiber. Except, perhaps that their rooftop pool which had no umbrellas, rendering any poolside lounging either impossible or an exercise in how to get melanoma in one easy step. But come on, complaining about a rooftop pool in Italy? First world problems.

The hotel is well located just across the canal where the village’s fishing fleet ties up. In the morning the boats rig their nets and head out to sea. In the afternoon they return and set up an ad hoc seafood market, where local restaurant owners shop for fresh fish and good deals.

Customers - of the two legged and four legged variety - seeking good deals at Fiumicino's seafood market.
Customers – of the two legged and four legged variety – seeking good deals at Fiumicino’s seafood market.

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With our two day sojourn coming to an end, we decided to pay a visit to the market with an eye to bring some fresh catch with us to Umbria the following day. The timing was perfect as we came stumbling up the quay from our four hour seafood extravaganza lunch at Bastianelli al Molo. Much of the fleet had just returned for the day and each boat was displaying their catch on ice in styrofoam boxes lined up along the pier.

Now seeing the selection, we were determined to make a purchase, but where to store our treasures overnight? I ran across the street to our hotel and asked the front desk if we could store a flat of seafood overnight in the hotel restaurant’s refrigerator, to take with us when we checked out the following day. The reception promised to get an answer and phone me back. So back out to the market I went, optimistic that the answer would be yes.

After speaking with one of the captains and learning that the price of a flat was only €5, I went ahead and consummated the deal. The following night, I imagined, Suzy and I were going to enjoy a heaping platter of fritto di paranza, or mixed fried fishes, which are not normally found in Umbria, Italy’s only landlocked, coast-less region.

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Just moments after the transaction was finalized and the dozens of tiny fish put into a bag with ice, my phone rang.Buona sera, signor. Unfortunately the kitchen cannot accept . . .

Not to worry, we thought. This very nice, modern hotel has a mini fridge with lots of space. So we headed back into the hotel, bag of fish hidden from view of the front desk and headed up to our room. There we discovered that the mini fridge did indeed have plenty of space for our bag of swag. Our plan was proceeding perfectly.

The next morning we arose without incident and headed to the Tiber’s breakfast room, a light filled room on the top floor of the hotel with views of Fiumicino town, the beaches and the sea. We enjoyed a very nice breakfast before heading downstairs to our room where we planned to pack up, pick up our rental car and arrange to spend the day at one of Fiumicino’s beaches before driving up to Umbria.

When the elevator stopped on our floor, even before the door fully opened, we were hit by it. The powerful stench of rotting fish that was clearly emanating from our room, located just across from the elevator. When we opened the door to our room one glance and one sniff confirmed our suspicions. The fresh catch from the afternoon before had turned fetid in a mini fridge designed to keep small cans of Coca Cola tepid, rather than for preserving in fresh condition the fruits of the sea. A sickening slick of goo trailed under the refrigerator door and onto the floor. And a powerful smell filled the entire room when I opened the small glass door of the mini fridge. Apparently overnight the fish gradually went bad, the odor slowly accumulating so that we slept through it and our senses acclimated to it. Fortunately our breakfast break allowed us to escape the room for a half hour, enabling our olfactory machinery to reset, or we may have never been aware of what everyone else who used the third floor elevator must have been thinking. Where is that smell coming from?

Our first order of business – or oder of business – was to remove the source of rankness and to do what we could to eradicate the smell. Thoughts ran through my mind of nicotine addicted guests being charged €250 for smoking in their rooms. What would the Tiber charge us if we didn’t fix this problem pronto?

I quickly found every plastic bag and trash can liner I could assemble and dumped our former treasure into this container, hoping against hope that I would not leak a trail of liquified fish from our room through the lobby and to its final resting place. Fortunately, the bags held and I was able to make a dash through the lobby without arousing too much suspicion. I was on the street. Now where to dispose of Nemo and company?

Typically Italian towns have plenty of public trash cans but the ones close to the hotel  were all jammed full of refuse and I wasn’t about to leave a bag of rotting fish on the ground. There were plenty of privately owned bins but too many witnesses. So after about ten minutes, spying a cluster of cans that looked promising I veered off the main street into a residential neighborhood. I made one pass past the bins, aborting my attempt as a neighbor eyed me suspiciously. But after she went back inside her apartment I made an about face and, pulling the offending package from our plastic tote bag was able to subtly open and deposit it in the can, not even breaking stride as I did so. A whiff of the tote bag turned up no noxious residue, so it was back to the hotel for a final site cleanup. Things were looking up.

When I stepped off the elevator on the third floor I was again greeted by the strong odor of fish, even though we had started to air out the room a half hour earlier. I grabbed a couple of hand towels and started scrubbing and cleaning the slick of sickening fishiness that was still in the bottom of the mini fridge and after about 10 minutes it was all gone, the towels rinsed and soaking in the bath tub. A bit of fishiness lingered in the air, but nothing that late checkout during our visit to the beach wouldn’t take care of.

Later that day we returned to the Tiber after our trip to the beach. When we returned to the room to close up our suitcases and check out, only the tiniest wisp of fishiness remained. We visited the front desk to check out, receiving no lecture about storing fish in the mini fridge or finding an extra room cleaning charge. It appeared that we had survived Salt Watergate unscathed, although I’ll keep monitoring our American Express bill for additional charges in the future.

Talk about a fish story. And so, it’s onward to Umbria!

Ci vediamo!
Bill and Suzy

 

A very fishy story Read more

I would describe our hotel in Fiumicino, the Hotel Tiber, as "perfectly adequate." The staff was nice and accommodating, the rooms quite ...

The Day the Earth Shook

_90899492_hi034935345Mother Nature — a term that is such a complete contradiction.

Nature, the most powerful force in the universe is indifferent to those it impacts.  When nature provides us its bounty – sustenance, panoramic vistas, long, rich, rewarding lives – we marvel at its power and project benign intentions to it, honoring nature as we would our mothers.  When it shows us its awesomeness but spares us the impact – a distant lightning storm or an erupting volcano – we stand in awe of it.  But those powerful forces can also be arbitrary, random and deadly.  And when they are unleashed against us or count us as innocent bystanders, we simply tuck away those experiences in a compartment, refusing to challenge our notions of a benign “mother nature” and see it as a “one off” phenomenon.  Nature neither loves us or hates us.  It simply is.

A week ago, in the early morning hours of August 24, the people of central Italy, including our friends and neighbors in Umbria, the other place we call home, were awakened by the terror of what the Italians call a terremoto.  A magnitude 6.2 earthquake in central Italy leveled buildings, buried under rubble hundreds of inhabitants that had no chance to escape their homes and obliterated whole villages.  In the week since the earth shook, the death toll has climbed above two hundred and those left homeless and hopeless has reached the thousands.

Early reports placed the epicenter of the quake near Norcia, a town known throughout Italy as the capital of cured meats, the place where pork butchery was invented and where early medieval surgeons were trained and sent out into the world.  Like many of the other towns making the news, Norcia is a place with which we are intimately familiar, for it is literally in our back yard.  Those reports also mentioned Perugia and other towns that make up our Italian world, but the real destruction was felt further south, along the border between Umbria and Lazio, an ancient region originally populated by the Sabines.  We are familiar, too with this area, which though rarely visited by tourists is a place we have traversed and explored often.  It is a rugged, sparsely populated area dotted with small, rough, isolated villages.  Many of those villages, happily existing alone and cut off from the modern world have been decimated, their remoteness and isolation making rescue and recovery operations that much more difficult.

The impact on our property and our orbit was minimal.  Guests staying at our farmhouse in the village of Cannara reported no damage or injury, although the movement of the ground, a side to side rather than up and down motion, apparently sloshed a great deal of water from our pool.  Thankfully our friends and acquaintances who hail from the other nearby ancient towns that dot this region – Perugia, Deruta, Montefalco, Bevagna, Spoleto – came through relatively unscathed.

Not so the inhabitants from Amatrice and the neighboring town of Accumoli.  The devastation there was so great it led the mayor to exclaim “half the town no longer exists.”  Images of the destruction are gut wrenching, collapsed buildings covered in a thin monochromatic gray coating of dust, looking like the setting of a post-apocalyptic film.

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The rebuilding and recovery efforts have already started but experience tells us the work will never truly be done.  Worse than the death and destruction of properties and historic landmarks, if there is such a thing as worse in this regard, is the complete devastation of the social fabric that holds people together, that gives their lives purpose and meaning, that defines their lives as theirs. Suzy and I have witnessed firsthand this complete wiping away of the social structure, this destruction of lives and a way of life.  We did so several years ago when we visited a friend in l’Aquila, the site of the last major earthquake in Italy. There we saw a town that was more maintaining itself than rebuilding itself, its buildings standing but empty, like a Hollywood set.  Even though a couple of years had passed since the big quake, life there was different, with a palpably gaping emptiness, a hollowness in the routines of life brought about not by the terror of being shaken awake in the middle of the night or having to deal with the death of neighbors and family, but rather by the loss of place and routine – the lively piazzas and the nightly passagiata through the street.  Restaurants had reopened, not in the the city centro, but in makeshift FEMA-type trailers that ringed the city.  Makeshift attempts to rebuild the past social life that were still makeshift when we visited l’Aquila years later.  Attempts that seemed not to be gaining traction.  The l’Aquila we visited was as raw, fragile, damaged and hopeless as it had been the day after the quake.

A town or a village, we learned then, is much more than just its buildings or just its people. It is the intersection of the two that animates the place and the people and it is that intersection that was shaken and torn and damaged in certain corners of Italy last week.  The buildings can be reconstructed or replaced.  The victims can be mourned and eulogized.  But the survivors must be cared for too, for their lives – not just their immediate surroundings but the entire social network that had previously connected them to something bigger and better and more meaningful than themselves – has been reduced to rubble no less than their homes and places of work have been destroyed.

 

And it is only by feeling its absence that we can truly appreciate the power that this connectedness wields over our lives.  Indeed it is this connectedness – to our families, to our communities, to nature and its rhythms, to simple, elegant beauty, to our past, our traditions and our history – that animates our lives.  It is the duality of us being individuals and at the same time being part of a whole that in the end defines our lives and gives meaning and purpose to it.  Independence and interdependence coexisting and existing in the same space and time.  At this moment it is essential that we restore the quake victims’ independence – rebuilding their homes, caring for their injured, and mourning their lost.  But restoring their interdependence – rebuilding a social structure that developed organically over centuries in a place and because of the nature of that place, is a much more difficult but no less important part of our work as well.

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Planning is underway at Via Umbria for a series of events to raise funds for earthquake relief efforts. Please watch this space for further details.  We hope you will join us in providing support for relief efforts and funds to assist the residents of this devastated area rebuild the lives and way of life that were literally shaken apart in the middle of the night a week ago.  And we hope you will remain afterwards, to help rebuild and support communities that have been no less ruptured than the people.

The after effects of an earthquake in Central Italy Read more

Mother Nature -- a term that is such a complete contradiction. Nature, the most powerful force in the universe is indifferent to those ...