See those tables down there under the night sky? This is a scene from a  birthday party given for one of the owners of the caffe shown in the background. To the right is a DJ who played ’til about midnight.  After dinner, everybody danced, including me. I did my Travolta/Pulp Fiction imitation. Nobody noticed. There were: Italians, Romanians, Albanians, Americans, Sri Lankans, Nigerians, French, Germans, Brits, young, old, infirm, hard working, ‘Well to do”, Religious, Agnostics, waiters and cooks. Everybody having a good time of it. Why isn’t it like this the world over? What ‘Special’ is going on here? I mean the birthday man was only 65 years old – it’s not like he was a hundred and ten, or won the Peace Prize or anything. It was just an excuse to have an extra good time. O.M.G. there is another party scheduled for tonight. This one is to celebrate the cooking of several of the local restaurants. Food will be served in the Piazza. There will be music, of course. Sometimes I think we are having too much of a good time…is it something in the local water? Or, is there too much Round-up in the waters back in the States which makes the  people back there not want to dance in the streets?

 

• “Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think. Enjoy yourself, while you’re still in the pink. The years go by, as quickly as you wink. Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself,It’s later than you think.”               -recorded by Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians, 1949
• “If you’re not having fun, you are doing something wrong.” -Groucho Marx
• “When people wrong you, go after
  those people, because it is a
  good feeling and because other
  people will see you doing it..” -DJ.. Oops, this came from an alternate universe., or an AI meddler.

 

Do you see that building across the Piazza? The one with the dark rectangular window openings? That is a picture of the Locanda/the Albergo di Verrazzano…a Locanda is a place where one can stay overnight and where one can eat. This Locanda is perhaps the oldest in the world…been going since 1400, give or take. (Even older than the U.S.) Guests used to arrive on horseback. Today they come every which-away. A story: My wife and I had been living here, across from the Locanda for about 6 months…when she had a conversation with a woman two terraces over from ours. The woman said, “My sister owns the Locanda…and we know you have not eaten there…and we know it is probably because you are vegetarians…but if you go over and make a reservation, she will make you a special meal.” Of course we immediately ran over and made a reservation for the following night. Two days later, our terrace neighbor asked us how we liked the meal. Small town. Everybody here knows everything about everybody here. This is not a place to be if you are on the lam.

Of course if you eat at one restaurant all the other restaurants know you ate there, so you have to go to all the others to make up for your transgression. It can get complicated. I lived in NYC for a long time and nobody ever knew where I went or what I ate. It was good there; but I think I like it more here – even though the people here know more about what I am doing than I do.

• “The nice thing about living in a small town is that when you don’t know what you’re doing, someone else does.” -Immanuel Kant
• “A small town has as many eyes as a fly” -Sonya Hartnett
• “It’s the little things that smoothes people’s roads the most” -Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn

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Nice things can happen. At least here they can. If I repeat myself, then so be it: The little town in which I live  seems to resemble an adult Italian version of Sesame Street. Three Stories of nice things:

1) Frequently my wife and I take a walk in the country side. About a half mile out of our Piazza we pass a small apartment building in which there lives a one eyed dog by the name of India. She barks “Hello” to us as we pass by. We wave back. One day, she barked, we waved, and then about ten minutes later the rains started to come down. Upon our hasted return, a man we did not know, came out of India’s apartment with an umbrella for us to continue our walk. India barked “Hello” again

2) A while ago I had fallen and was in some discomfort when I walked. I was in need of a cane; but there were no canes in the local stores. Suddenly, in our Piazza there was a man who I had noticed before, walking with a limp – and a cane. I asked him in my best/worst Italian where he got that cane. He told meet to wait a minute. He got on his phone. I thought he was looking for some translator program on his device….in 5 minutes his wife drove up   and handed me a cane out her car window. Go figure.

3) The other day as I was walking home from the grocery store, I got a tap on the back of my shoulder. I remember being slightly irritated because the sidewalks are narrow here and I assumed somebody was tapping me so they could hurry by. No. It was a mother and daughter who had noticed a Fifty Euro piece (Circa $55) had fallen out of my back pocket – and they were returning it to me….

2 quotes:

• “Do unto others as you wish others do unto you.” -Confucius”
• “Do unto others, before they do unto you” -Attributed:  -“Project 2025”

 

The little town in which I live is celebrating the “Slow Food”  movement (Cittaslow”) this weekend. The movement began in 1986 as a protest against McDonalds opening a unit near the Spanish Steps in Rome. Today, there are chapters in 150 countries and over 300  Cittaslow organizations in small towns in Italy. “Slow” does not refer to service…it refers to a lifestyle of: Relaxed, Natural, Healthful and Taste. You won’t find ‘Processed Foods’ on the Cittaslow menu. Since its inception the Movement has strayed, (as Movements will) into such aberrations as trying to save the bees and the farmers and things like that. I imagine the Big Ag people in the U.S. would accuse this group of being members of: Antifa, (Question:where is Antifa? Who is its head? etc?), or Commies, or Woke Nut Jobs.) But I see a lot of Americans down there in my Piazza today, enjoying themselves with all the Nut Jobs and Woke food eaters. I know the ones who are American because they are eating the Slow Food as fast as they can. Probably 50.4 % of them are MAGAs and they don’t even know what they are eating.

Some Quores:

• “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.”-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, French Lawyer, -1826
• “Der Mensch ist, was er ißt.” -[“Man is what he eats”] Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach -1863
• “You are what you eat”. -Victor Lindlahr, American nutritionist, 1942
• “Never eat more than you can lift.” -Miss Piggy
• “Spaghetti can be eaten most successfully if you inhale it like a vacuum cleaner.” -Sophia Loren
• “If I’m going to eat fast food, I’m going to McDonald’s. I don’t need to pretend.” -Chrissy Teige
• “Food is an important part of a balanced diet.” -Fran Lebowitz“
•   “You can tell a lot about a fellow’s character by his way of eating jellybeans.” -Ronald Reagan (I wonder how DJT eats his jellybeans…I really don’t want to know.)

 

 

We have a walkway underneath the porticos in our little town’s piazza. Several days a month it gets filled up with pedestrians: Locals, Tourists, X-pats and more. It’s not the Champs Elysee, it’s more like a river of humanity that passes by. (Speaking about rivers: General Xiang, the Asian thinker, once said: “If you sit by the river long enough – you will see all your enemies float by.” But Father John said:”If you choose to go down the river, you might meet a new friend there.”) Either way, it is a great pastime here to watch the people drifting by: French, Germans, Brits, Americans, Canadians, Africans, Israelis, young, old, well dressed, some looking like they fell out of bed, some with tattoos, rings in noses, some are fashionistas, some looking like the villains in recent movies, other like the heroes, many on their phones, many taking pictures,  Every one of all of them seem to have come in peace and with good intentions. I watch them many days a week and I wonder why it can’t be like this all over the world, all the time. It seems as if everybody here has forgotten about what is going on in the world today. Is it so hard to build a little cobble-stoned piazza’d town and a have a gentle good time of it all? I guess it is.

Some quotes:

“Once a year, go somewhere you have never been before.” –Dalai Lama

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” –Mark Twain

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
― Lao Tzu