March 31
Big news in Umbertide and I have ringside seats.
Maybe a week ago, one morning I noticed red and white tape (like police tape) sectioning off a triangular section of the river across from my apartment. I thought maybe the city was planning a project... make a beach, make a fish hatchery, make a mess. The tape was up for a week with no sign or indication of any news. I was mulling over questions in my mind "Have they done an environmental impact study for whatever mayhem they intend here?"
Then, one day there were policemen and men in camouflage everywhere. Carabinieri in their smart Armani uniforms wandering about vaguely and chatting on cell phones. Local polizia with white safety belts strapped across their chests. Men in camouflage... that I am used to. They are usually hunting something. But police... and both types... local and federal. As a great fan of murder mysteries, I thought "A crime... there has been a crime! Its police tape not construction tape!" Forget the fish hatchery. And all this directly across from my bedroom window.
The camouflage boys wade thigh deep into the river. There is a lot of arm waving and indicating, men with wet pants, Armani on the cell phone and our local police looking very official with their white patent leather bags with police stuff inside (tickets, pens, chewing gum) patrolling the bridge to control the crowd. Soon, two huge earthmovers arrive. I cannot discern a plan of attack, but one inches down the incline and rumbles under the bridge and out of sight. The other parks on the bank. The rumbling gets louder and the first reappears in the river, churning its way back through the water to the taped off area, like some great steel water buffalo. There are one or two people still wading about in the water. The next part was a child's dream... the machine raises its bucket head reaches over to the bank, picks up a man in its bucket, swings right and deposits him gently on the bridge footings. What we all would not give for that little ride. Kind of cool. Next thing I know the water buffalo is up to its lug bolts in the river and digging a trench. Why? Beats me and shoots the crime scene theory all to hell. Talk about tainting evidence. Fast losing interest, I got ready to go out to work.
When I returned at 4ish, the earthmover had built a berm of mud around the taped part of the river and they were siphoning the water out. A yellow machine spat an arc of coffee colored river water about 7 feet high out towards the middle of the flow. The Armani uniforms were still pacing. Local business muckety mucks in business suits had joined them. All were chatting on cell phones with colleagues, mistresses or each other, I could not say. I sort of hoped it was with each other just to add to the surreality of the situation. It was obvious that this was a big event.
Crowds were forming and re-forming like swarms of bees as they were shooed off the bridge by the white purse police. There must have been 4 politzia on the bridge alone... one an off-duty woman with a traffic mover lollipop (one of those little paddles they use to wave you off or in or around things). As fast as they shuffled people away, the same people stopped again, 15 feet further along and more cars pulled over to crane their necks.
Back in 1945, the allies were trying to slow the retreating German army so they bombed Umbertide's little bridge over the Tiber. Rather, they tried to bomb it. The bombs missed their target and destroyed part of the old city and some surrounding countryside. In fact, my very parking piazza (memorialized as Piazza Aprile 27, for the day of the bombing), not 50 yards from the bridge, is the place where most of the bombs hit.
What has that to do with the hullabaloo? Since the weather has warmed up, the fishermen have been out in force, wading into the river to cast. Last week, one of them found a bomb. One of the 1945 bombs that missed the bridge and never exploded.
So I have ringside seats to an unexploded bomb crisis.
Upon discovering this bit of news, I called Mark Wholey and asked if he wanted to come over and watch. We went up on Jan's terrace to observe the unfolding saga. They drained most of the water from inside the berm leaving the bomb sticking about 2-3 feet above the riverbed, mired in mud and river seepage. The camouflage children returned. I call them this because they appeared to be in their early twenties... kids doing their required military service. They seemed to be trying to hit upon a plan of attack. They rocked the bomb. They poked at it. They even dug around a bit with shovels. I kept wondering if they had explosives training beyond Intro to Incendiary Devices. Visions of the old Mission Impossible ran through my head... all those sensitive bomb scenes with Greg, steely eyed and sweating over his schematics. The slightest ping and we all go sky high. "It's the green wire not the red!!"
Okay. I wasn't really thinking that at all... if I had been I would have left town. They were handling the bomb with such a casual disregard, I figured they new something I didn't. People are stopping their cars on the bridge, trying to get a look at the show. The police are officiously blowing whistles and waving arms and making everyone move. (While every house along the riverbank is full of people hanging out of their windows and terraces awaiting something exciting... like an explosion?) After much prying and poking, they got a sling around the bomb, rigged it to the earthmover, dragged it out of the mud and up the riverbank. Now, where is the bomb squad, you ask? Hell if I know. They took the bomb maybe 100 feet from the river and eased it in a big hole they'd dug with the other earthmover. (Now we know why that was there.) By now the sun is beginning to set. I have doubts they will disarm anything in the dark. At last I don't think they will, with the two Mouseketeers. So, they leave the bomb in a big hole with a 7-8 foot dirt pile around it.
Night falls... a lone policeman remains on guard to shoo away the curious, his car illuminated in a blue glow of fluorescent light hauled in to discourage thrill seekers. In the morning... nothing. No carabinieri, no military police, no bomb squad. More looky-loos try to watch from the bridge. Two polizia to hustle them away. So, I leave the window and go to work. No news is good news? Dusk comes and as I putter about the house, I hear loudspeaker chatter outside. I live underground for all intents and purposes, so I heard nothing intelligible. I asked a friend about it and he gave me a vague, " Its about the bomb." Well, what isn't these days?
Mark Wholey calls later, casually asking if I'm evacuating the house. "Noooooo," I ask in that long drawn out interrogative way. "Why do you ask?" Because the city has been making announcements all day that first thing in the morning all residents of the historic center of town have to evacuate their houses. "Is that all?"
For 2 days I've watched them dink around with this bomb and NOW we are evacuating. That night it's just the one policeman in his lonely vigil. But in the morning, we have a full house again... military, carabinieri and politzia all pacing the riverbank. I looked for the bomb squad but someone in uniform saw me and began waving. Rather than face a military inquiry for why I was still in the house, I grabbed my coat and went to work.
By the time I got home, the bomb was a smoothed over hole and a memory. Through the grapevine, I heard they took it up to Monte Acuto to try to explode it. In the meantime, they re-harnessed the earthmovers, evened out the riverbed and cleared the snag -- all the old trees and branches caught at the foot of the bridge -- out of the river. My view is improved, but I no longer have the habitat of the river rat in easy observation distance. A few old men continue to hang over the bridge rails, gazing at what remains of the biggest thing to hit Umbertide since... the bomb.
My unanswered questions remain. Did they ever call a bomb squad? Did a man somewhere in Rome suddenly stand and yell, "You've found a WHAT? Don't move. We'll be right there." Did the bomb explode or was it harmless? Did anyone from the commune grab the remains for the local museum?
That Man Will Be The Death of Me
Spring is bustin' out all over. The forsythia are getting ready to pop. I had an unpleasant day with Pino in the garden. He was being difficult in general, like a rogue 4 year old in need of a timeout. He has lost his red clippers and is telling everyone I stole them. I assured him that the only clippers I had were green. I lost my red Felco clippers round about December as well. (Coincidence?) But he kept at it... "Ladro. Ladro," he hissed, like some bandanna-ed Italian Gollum. My patience was wearing thin but I tried to keep laughing it off. The last time, however, he reached out and grabbed my throat... hard. I don't think he meant it threateningly. I think he meant it as some bullshit macho nonsense. But my temper frayed and I threatened him with my green-handled pruning shears. Is it any wonder the man has no friends?
But that is not the end of it. We separated and went about our gardening tasks. After an hour or so, Katherine came out and asked me why on earth he was pruning the forsythia before they flowered. Sure enough, he was taking about 1\2 the height off of them... all those long, elegant stems in full bud. I shrugged, "Who knows?"
She went over to ask and he began waving his arms, intoning, "Signora, I will do what you want but you must tell me ahead of time." Katherine responded, "I had no idea you were planning to prune them. I've never heard of pruning spring flowering shrubs before they flower." More gesticulating and an explanation about how you must cut the shrubs before they flower so they have strength to make next year's flowers. Whaaa?
I sidled over to explain about pruning forsythia, the way I learned it... after flowering and always from the bottom to preserve that elegant form. Trying be somewhat sensitive to the situation, I asked if I could explain how I understand it. I even sat on the ground, at his feet, to try and minimize the threat. Pino is an unreconstructed southern Italian male. Advice from a woman is like a red cape to a bull. You would have thought I'd said his mother una puttana siciliana.
Pino lost it... yelling, arm waving and sneering. I just sat there, staring at him and thinking, "Who could work with him?" There was no attempt to be rational, to listen, to discuss the various approaches, to exchange ideas... just a reaction beyond what the situation merited. Katherine got all freaked out and started back pedalling "I'm not telling you you're wrong... I don't know... but it seems to me... whatever you decide." Fine. He who yells loudest wins -- because everyone scurries away and hopes never to run into you again. Gardening by default. I gathered up armfuls of the cut branches to force them. At the very least, we'd see graceful forsythia branches in the house.
Club Oplas
This evening, I met Paola and Patrick at Oplas to hear Claudia Fofi sing. She is a friend of theirs from their bohemian life in the Eugubian hills. Claudia is a true chanteuse -- a sexy, female singer of jazz and pop standards, folded in with a fair helping of originals. With great style, and a sense of humor, her performance was like something I might have stumbled across in a small club in San Francisco.
Oplas felt like the hip place to be, filled with smiling finger snappers, wreathed in cirrus-like wisps of smoke drifting through the lights. (Alright. In SF, there would not have been cirrus-like wisps of smoke. Its a militantly anti-smoking environment... but there would be cirrus-like wisps of psychic smoke that you could FEEL if not see.)
The club is owned by two young men who also own a dance troupe of the same name. One bears a slight resemblance to Baryshnikov. Slight, blonde and sculpted, clad in snug blue jeans and white t-shirts, they would both look very much at home in any number of SF night spots featuring a sultry chanteuse.
Also in attendance was their cook, our locally legendary Thai chef. This young man has helped helped bring more of the wide world to Umbertide. He is adds a dash of multiculturalism to a mostly Eurocentric area Unfortunately, in the rapidfire, heavily accented chatter, his name whizzed right by me. Whatever his name, he is cute and sweet and oh-so-young -- nineteen -- with the open enthusiasm of the Thai. He is interested in everything and everyone -- or he fakes it like a pro. His constant smile and easy laugh made me want to wrap him up and slip him in my pocket. Our chef speaks accented English and very little Italian. Chattering like a squirrel, he told us all about his love-a, an "older" Italian man. Fabio, the lover, speaks Italian but no English or Thai. Chef-boy laughed irrepressibly telling us all about their conversations... or lack there-of. According to him, its really all about attraction to the exotic and raging hormones.
Oplas is my fix of multi cultural comfort... a step back to SF with its endless mélange of ethnicities, biases and beliefs. Strange that its all tumbled together here, into this odd pocket of agricultural Italy. Gay, straight, liberal, fascist, Thai, Italian, American, English, Swiss, Brazilian, Chinese you name it. Like a cool breeze on a muggy day.
Matchmaking
Last evening I arranged a soiree. I'd been thinking for months that Paola and Patrick, my Italian teacher and her husband should meet Carol and Dima, the couple who lived up at Pantano with me last December. On paper, the two couples have a lot in common. Both women are language teachers. Both men are musicians. Both are in "mixed" marriages (Italian/English and Russian/English). They are similar people, sharing liberal beliefs and values, an interest in other cultures. I was attracted to their open curiosity, and far ranging histories -- having lived in a variety of countries, outside the norms of their own cultures. I hoped to match-make them as friends.
As always, it was also a good chance to try out some new food ideas. I'd been scanning the magazines and books for ideas and settled on a very simple meal -- minimum fuss and maximum "oooh factor". Le menu:
Antipasto: A dollop of fresh goat cheese on a fresh basil leaf topped with bits of tomato and toasted pinenuts. The flavors work well together, its red/white and green like the Italian flag and its unusual. A keeper recipe.
Entrée: Salmon al cartoccio -- a salmon steak covered with basil leaves, a lemon slice and sliced zucchini that have been lightly sautéed with garlic. Everything is sealed in a foil packet and baked for 20 minutes. The zucchini comes out crisp and lightly flavored. This is a subtle and refreshing meal.
Dessert: Strawberry Shortcake with a twist. Homemade shortcake with strawberries soaked in Cointreau then covered with a yogurt lemon cream. Very simple. The strawbs were so sweet they did not need sugar, while the Cointreau infused a slight hint of orange. I mixed my Harrod's lemon curd (obsessively transported from the US to Italy) with a very thick Greek yogurt (almost the consistency of sour cream). What I got was creamy, lemony sauce reminiscent of Devonshire cream. Perfect mate to strawberries and shortcake. Yum.
Everyone got along like a house afire. We talked politics and swapped histories. It was a hello for my friends, but a kind of bittersweet good-bye for me. Carol and Dima are returning to Russia to try a treatment for Dima's hepatitis C. Although they plan to return to Italy (as do I) no one really knows what might happen over the next few years. So we may not every see each other again. (In some ways, introducing them to Paola and Patrick seemed to increase the odds that I'd at least be able to find them. Or so I hope.)
Carol and Dima do not have a car (and the trains from Umbertide to Perugia stop running at 8pm... most inconvenient for socializing.) Although I would have liked to coax everyone into staying longer, the thought of the heavy-lidded drive home alone made me give in easily to the protestations of fatigue. But everyone exchanged emails and info, giving me high hopes that they will continue a friendship.
There's Tex-Mex in them thar hills...
I meet now and then with Marcella, an English student of Paola's, for an English and Italian conversational swap. Marcella is a dance teacher and a singer in a local big band. Today, she brought her husband Mauro along as both are eager to practice English. More to the point, they like to meet new people. It's strange to think of it, but I am sort of exotic here -- an American who left a prosperous country to mess about in the countryside... alone. Italians are used to American and English ex-patriots, but they are usually older couples with a house in the country, or living in a more metropolitan area. The questions I hear most often are, "Why Umbria?"and "Where is your family?".
Marcella and Mauro are full of life and curiosity. Today we shared ideas about foreign food and our passions for it. Mauro told me about a restaurant in the hills above Sansepolcro that serves both Italian and Tex-Mex food. A strange combination for here. Mauro says it is pretty good. (I was skeptical, having experienced "authentic" Chinese at both "The Great Wall" and "Shanghai" in Perugia.) But they insist that everything is made with fresh ingredients. Could tis be the Chevy's of Umbria?
It is fabulous to discover Italians near my own age who like foreign cuisines and are curious about the world. They have me thinking about another dinner... Something larger (a real challenge for me) with Paola and Patrick, Marcella and Mauro, and Luciana and Guiseppe. (Luciana owns the accessories store I love.) Maybe I'll do the basil leaf thing with some Thai and Indian dishes. I found an interesting recipe for a layered black and white rice pudding using jasmine rice and black rice. (Not that I have seen either of these in the shops but I can check my current sources.) Maybe it can be ordered specially. If I could only get banana leaves... then I could make sea bass with black bean sauce steamed inside the banana leaves.
March 7
Its been more than two months since I've been able to get on-line. On January first, after the new year's madness, I went on line to write e-mails and load up the latest journal entries. While reading email, I clicked on a message from a friend in Australia (who shall remain nameless) and was bitten by the Lirva worm... a new computer infection that my virus software did not detect. Its taken 2 months and change to sort everything out.
Just getting the problem identified took a week. My local guy was too harried and distracted to focus. After a few days of wheel-spinning, I used his systems to identify the virus. He seemed unable to fix it, so I had to take my machine to Perugia (the big city) to another computer service company. (If anyone is looked for technical assistance in Perugia, I recommend InfoTeach.) Their technician said they needed to rebuild my entire system -- the virus had corrupted everything. Infoteach did not have the right programs to rebuild me, so I was forced to call on the elves in San Francisco for a recovery disk.
I owe the "techie" elf squad for allowing me to impose my problems from 10,000 miles away. But the elves came through swimmingly and in the best of humor. We had about a two-week delay in shipping and, of course, when the package reached Italy it was another week before Fed Ex got around to delivering it. Then another week slipped by between rebuilding the system and getting home to plug in. But, here I am back to normal or somewhere in that wide range of normal.
I am back on-line -- wading through 2 months worth of work, journal entries and messages and thrilled to be part of the hi-tech generation again!
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