Older Italians connected, but not online

Saturday, April 15

Ah, the wonders of technology. Even though we're not flying around in jet cars like George Jetson or traveling to other planets like James T. Kirk, the promise of easy communications has come true, making it so much easier to live abroad. It seems like just a few years ago that Sandy was an exchange student in Poland and we went months at a time with little contact. Yesterday I filed my taxes online and transferred money from one bank account to the other to cover the payment. We just talked face-to-face with Randy in Georgia (the former Soviet state, not the one next to Alabama) and then Sandy in Washington via Skype. I can get my phone messages from my Gig Harbor house and use my computer to call clients to line up appointments for my summer asphalt sealing work, and I can keep family and friends apprised of our daily doings with our online blog.

Italian young people are are tech savvy as anyone, but it is rare to find any Italian of my own generation or older who is connected. I have tried to talk to some of my relatives here about how nice it is to be able to talk and share pictures easily with family, shop online and look up information, but they have no interest. Their family is all around them, and it is nicer to talk in person, they say. I can't argue with that. I recently saw two women in their sixties taking a walk with a woman in her eighties, probably two daughters walking their mom. The sixty-somethings were on each side of the mom, supporting her while they took a turn around the town, and it is scenes like this that make me glad to be a part of this country. However, I still think that when I am not able to get around so easily, in the times that my own delightful children and friends aren't entertaining me, I will be very happy to be connected to the rest of the world.

Dinner and plans for a rinfresco

Friday, April 14

With a dinner tonight with Loriano, Gabriella and their son Pietro, we have now visited with nearly every relative we know on the Spadoni side of the family. Raffaello is the only one we have missed, but we think we will see him before we go, for we have invited him to a rinfresco, the Italian version of an open house, at Casolare dei Fiori April 27. The idea of a rinfresco is that we can invite Spadoni relatives that we have not met as well as those we have met to come to our agriturismo during the time that Randy, Lela, Micah and Suzye will be visiting. The beauty of an open house is that people can drop in for a short or long time, and we will not be on the spot to speak Italian for two hours with just one family. Guests can meet our family but there will also be other Italians there to talk to. We also plan to invite Seghieris that we have met and a few people from San Salvatore who have been friendly and helpful, such as our butcher, Luigi, and his wife, as well as their son, Matteo, who runs the little local general store.

The featured food will be dolci tipici americani--apple pie, chocolate chip cookies, gingerbread, magic cookie bars, cherry cream cheese pie, brownies and apple salad. Lucy has already e-mailed a shopping list to Suzye to bring ingredients that we can't find here, such as graham crackers, condensed sweetened milk, finely ground brown sugar, brownie mix and shortening. Luca and Roberta have given us permission to use the oven in their kitchen to supplement the little oven in our apartment.

We have a great time catching up with Loriano's family, whom we have not seen in ten years. As always, we encourage them to come visit us in America, but they seem very content with their daily routines here. Pietro, who is 33 and single, says he may come when the time is right. Well, we love it here too, so we can't blame them for wanting to stay home.

The value of a good name

Thursday, April 14

“A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches.” Proverbs 22:1

Having grown up in Gig Harbor with many wonderful uncles, aunts and cousins, I have recognized the value of a good name from a young age. One time I stopped to help a stranger who was stuck in a ditch, and he said, “You must be a Spadoni.” Whether he was relying on my dark hair and brown eyes or the fact that I stopped as an identifier, I don’t know. I asked him how he knew, and he just shrugged, but I grew accustomed to this throughout the years. Most people who have been in Gig Harbor very long know a Spadoni, went to school with a Spadoni or at least have heard the name. Even better, most of them have a high opinion of the Spadoni they know, so in a way, I have made a good impression on people before I even meet them, and I know the family name has given my little asphalt maintenance business a lot of jobs that I might otherwise never have had. Once, while on a waiting list for a flight in Chicago's airport, I was bumped to the top of the list because the airline hostess knew a pair of Spadoni dentists whom she said were "wonderful people." To all my cousins out there, thanks a million for doing a great job upholding the family name.

It is equally important—maybe even more important—here to have a good family name. While we have found Italians to be friendly and helpful in general, it helps to have a name that the locals recognize. In fact, two names, since once people start asking me questions, I am not shy about dropping in my grandmother’s name, Anita Seghieri. In this region of Toscana, if somebody doesn’t know a Spadoni, he will probably know a Seghieri, and both families enjoy a solid reputation; they have done well both here and abroad. Here in San Salvatore, anybody who is anybody knows a Seghieri. The Spadoni name is a little less known here, but three miles away, in Ponte Buggianese or Pescia, the opposite is true.

Of course, we are not the only families here with deep roots. As I look into the family history, I see the same names over and over again. They have married and intermarried numerous times, so that every old family here is tied to every other old family multiple times. Often I will be looking at names on stores and see a name that I recognize as having married into the Seghieri or Spadoni family at some time in the last couple of hundred years. In fact, sometimes more than once. I see the surname Cinelli three times in the Spadoni line. And back home in Washington, the Spadoni-Seghieri families have married a Natucci three times.

Alberto Spadoni, who sells real estate in Pescia, gave me a copy of the Spadoni family coat of arms and a little treatise on the historical significance of the name, though I take it with a grain of salt, because it is possible that we have little connection with these famous Spadonis. So far every Spadoni I have found in our family line, going back to about 1750, is listed as a contadino, a peasant farmer, certainly nothing to be ashamed of, but one might wonder how the descendents of the gonfaloniere of Lucca came to be contadini. In any event, I am happy that I have chosen to make this area the base of my Italian experience.

Here is the family background Alberto gave me, translated to the best of my abilities:

An ancient and noble family that flourished for centuries in various cities of Tuscany, where the family has produced illustrious and noble men of renown. Formerly known as Spada, the family flourished in Lucca; in Gubbio and Bologna; in Pesaro; and in Rome and Terni. The head of this noble family had the surname Brando and was nicknamed Spada (sword); he lived in 1010. Many members of this family were of the Council of Elders in the town of Lucca, and some held the high office of Gonfaloniere.* Mino di Gerardo was one of three ambassadors sent by Emperor Charles IV to Pisa in 1355 to help obtain freedom for the homeland (Lucca); Giannino di Mingo in 1370 was elected one of the twelve citizens of a reform council and of the eighteen elected with very broad authority for the government of the republic, and in 1371 he was one of the first three leaders of the city; Giambattista di Gheraldo was a noted doctor of law who went to Rome and was dean of the lawyers of the Consistorial Council** and was a lawyer for the tax department and for the  Apostolic Chamber in the Pontificate of Clement VIII, Leo XI and Paul V.  Another Giovan Battista, grandson of the former, was made a Cardinal in 1654 by Pope Innocent.

Coat of arms: Red, with three swords of gold fanned out with the tips down. 

* A gonfaloniere was a highly prestigious communal post in medieval and Renaissance Italy, notably in Florence. The name derives from gonfalone, the term used for the banners of such communes.

**An assembly of cardinals presided over by the pope for the solemn promulgation of papal acts, such as the canonization of a saint.

Feeling less like strangers

Wednesday, April 13

Lucy bought more fresh fruit this morning from the Wednesday morning market in San Salvatore. Now she is cutting the oranges in half to make fresh squeezed juice. She laughs when she looks inside, remembering the first time she cut into an orange in Italy, ten years ago. Some of the oranges are light orange, like the oranges we get in Washington, but many are bright red, and Lucy comments that the first time she saw the inside of these blood oranges, she threw them away because she thought they had spoiled. It was all part of the learning process for us stranieri that continues each day.

We try to balance our shopping between the big discount stores and the little specialty stores. We have learned how to pre-order pane delle dolomite, the rye bread that we like the best, and Lucy often buys meat from Luigi, our local maccellaio, who cuts slices of turkey or chicken to our order or grinds beef in front of us for hamburger. We are happy to see that even though Italy is becoming more like America, each little village has its own macellaio, bar and little grocery store, even though the villages are only a mile or two away from each other.

The oranges are rich with juice, because like most fruit here, they are ripe and flavorful. We sometimes wonder what the fruit vendors do with all their left-over produce, because the fresh fruit must be eaten within a couple of days, as it spoils quickly.

Today we also visit the library for the first time, and I check out a short book “Viaggio nel Tempo,” which seems to be written for pre-teens. Hopefully it won't be too advanced for me. Lucy makes an appointment to have her hair trimmed with the local parruchierre, Gabriella. We are starting to feel more comfortable each week. It is a pity we only have a couple of weeks more before we have to return, but we know that this is more like the beginning than the end. We have already informed Luca to keep a room for us next year, as we will be coming back for another three months, and after that, probably again the following year. 

The difficult life of black emigrants

Monday, April 11

Our doorbell rings today, which is unusual, because we don’t know many people here. At the door is a young black man with a duffle bag full of miscellaneous goods to sell. Lucy says she will buy a package of clothes pins and that’s all, but he insists on taking at least half the goods out of his bag to demonstrate before he finally realizes we won’t buy anything else. He shows us a clock, a radio, a flashlight, a corkscrew, underwear, socks, a bathmat, a tablecloth, a pocketknife and a half dozen other items. His duffle bag is like a bottomless pit, and it must weigh a ton.

I invite him to sit down at the table outside our door so we can talk for a bit. We often see Africans in Italy, and we can only imagine how hard it must be to survive. Even for Italians it is hard to find work, and for Africans, most without papers, it is virtually impossible. They survive by selling umbrellas and tissues when it rains and sunglasses and purses when it is warm, as well as anything else they think people might need at the moment.

Lucy brings him water and a chocolate chip cookie, and I ask him to tell us about himself. His name is Tony, although in his home country of Nigeria he is also called Friday. He has been here for about a year. He has three sisters still in Nigeria, and two brothers who are dead. He came here over land and then took his chances on a small, crowded boat. Luckily it did not sink, for Tony can’t swim.

“Life is very difficult,” he says, and this is a phrase he repeats throughout our conversation.  “I had problems in Nigeria and I had to leave. I cannot go back.”

“Where do you live?” I ask.

“Sometimes I sleep at the train station,” he says. “Sometimes I find an empty building.”

He spends most of his time in Prato, where there are many African and Chinese immigrants, and the Italians there are more accustomed to outsiders.

“In Lucca, the Italians don’t like people with black skin,” he says. “They are not friendly. Inside the wall, the police will not let us sell things.”

He tells us that he usually comes to San Salvatore on Mondays. That way the people will get accustomed to him coming and will be more likely to buy something. He goes from door to door with his bag slung over his shoulder. He does not ask for help or money, only that people look at his goods and buy something. I can’t help but think of the museum display we have seen in Lucca, where the impoverished Italians who came to America sold cheap goods on the streets. They, at least, came during a time of growth and opportunity, when day labor jobs were abundant and one could start a new business without difficulty. The Africans we have seen in Italy are hardworking and ambitious, but their economic advancement is glacially slow.

“How much for the clothespins?” I ask. “Five euros,” Tony says. That’s a steep price, and I could bargain him down, but I had already made up my mind to give him that much no matter what he answered. We also give him some fruit, and he trudges down the road to call on our neighbors. Life is indeed very difficult for an African in Italy.

Potluck at our Italian Valdese church

Sunday, April 10

Lucy has made a fruit salad, here called macedonia, and we carefully carry it on bike and train to Lucca, because after the church service is l’agape, a love feast, or in common American terms, a potluck. This is the first real chance we have had to talk to people at church for any extended time. Although everyone has brought food, the meal is still served Italian style, in multiple courses. This has the advantage of extending the meal so the conversation time lasts longer, but it also means that some of the women and men of the church must continually carry out and distribute the various dishes. They do, at least, use plastic plates so that there aren’t 200 dishes to wash at the end.

Lucy and I sit near Eldo, an elderly man who greets us warmly every Sunday, though the first time we met he seemed afraid to talk to us when he found out we were Americans. I think he feared we couldn’t understand Italian, but he is over that now and chatters on steadily, even though in truth we only understand about half of what he says. We find out he is 88 years old and is a retired designer of mechanical equipment, although I can’t swear that I understood that correctly. We also talk to Andrea, a twenty-something who reminds us of my nephew Jacy. Andrea loves classical music and is part of a musical group that performs in a Catholic church near his home city of Barga. He sometimes plays the piano to accompany our congregation in singing, and he and Lucy talk about church music.

We are growing fond of this church, though we would love to see it using more modern Christian songs. It uses hymnals that appear to be full of old English hymns translated into Italian with some changes made so the lyrics rhyme. Andrea agrees with us that the church needs to appeal more to young people, because he is one of only five members near his age. There used to be a Valdesian church in Barga, but it has ceased to exist because the congregation has mostly died, and now Andrea comes to Lucca for fellowship. We fear that could happen to this church as well in another fifteen years, although today the potluck is buzzing with conversation, and the room is packed about as full as it can get. We leave with stomachs full and a couple of new acquaintances.

The photo at the top of the page is of Eldo and Andrea. Directly above shows about half of the congregation. Samuele serves food while standing in the place where I was sitting before I got up to take this photo. 

A vacation within a vacation

Friday and Saturday, April 8-9                     Above: Poggio. Below: the train nearing Poggio.

Even though our entire stay here could be classified as vacation, our purpose is not that of typical tourists. Our overriding purpose is to discover what it is like to be Italian, even though we know that’s an impossible goal in three months. Now we decide to take a mini-vacation to the Garfagnana valley, which is rarely on the itinerary of American tourists. Italians would make this trip by car, but we are on a budget and must take the train that goes from Lucca all the way up the valley and through the Alpi Apuane to Aulla. This cute little train consists of only two or three cars and runs on gas instead of electricity.

We pick out a town about three-quarters of the way to end of the line and decide to get off there and find a place to stay. We find a little bed and breakfast right at the foot of the Rocca, a small fortress and residence, in Camporgiano. The owner of the bed and breakfast also owns the Rocca, which she periodically opens to the public, and today is one of those days. We enjoy a spectacular 360 degree view of the surrounding hillsides and cities as we walk high atop the fortress walls.

By walking and taking the train, we are also able to see two other little cities, Poggio and Piazza al Serchio. We spend most of the time just walking around looking at farms, people in the piazzas and the lush green landscape. We have brought our bicycles but did not count on every city being perched on a hillside, and thus we do most of our exploring on foot. The trip is sunny, peaceful, largely uneventful and definitely refreshing. 

Lucy atop the Rocca. Pictured below is the Rocca, and the vine-covered building to the right is where we stayed overnight. At the bottom is a view of the other side of the valley, taken from atop the Rocca.

Biglietti per le bici? Si signore!

Friday, April 8

It finally happens. We are asked to show tickets for our bikes by the controllare. I had decided two months earlier not to show my bike tickets unless asked, as a test for the system and to satisfy my own curiosity (see Feb. 10 and Feb. 17).  First we show our regular tickets, as usual, but this time he asks for our bike tickets. The controllore seems happy and a bit surprised to find that we are 100 percent law abiding citizens. I think he was ready to give these Americans a lecture on the need to have tickets for our bikes.

“Bravi,” he says, “Avete abbonamenti mensili.” We have monthly tickets, so no lecture or fine is needed.

I have read notices posted on the train that the fine for being without a ticket is 40 euros. Add to that the vergogna, shame, one would feel for making a brutta figura, and it is easy to see why we have never seen anyone trying to ride a train without a ticket, even though tickets are rarely requested on the regional trains.

Despite the inconvenience of having to align our lives with the train schedule, we have been very satisfied with our transportation choices. Lucca and all the areas we frequent are flat and easy to maneuver. Inside the walls of Lucca, streets are crowded with pedestrians, and the rare car can’t move much faster than foot traffic. Bikes, however, can weave through the pedestrians quickly and zip from one side of the city to the other. We park right outside shop doors, snap our security chains shut and in seconds we are ordering our gelato, pane or pasta. If only the trains to San Salvatore ran later in the evening, we might be forever content with just our bikes and the train—and a scooter to get up the hill to Montecarlo.

No luck today on family ties

Thursday, April 7

We solve a few mysteries today, but we don’t find out how we are related to any of the other Seghieri families. First, we meet Elena’s husband, Davide, and their little girl, Flavia. We also meet Sergio and Silvana, Davide’s parents. Then, while munching on chocolate chip cookies that Lucy and I bring and cenci that Elena provides, Davide, Elena and Sergio help me construct as much of their family tree as they can. Davide is the nephew of Libero Seghieri, and some of this information I have from meeting Libero last spring. However, they cannot trace their family line back far enough to find a connection to our side of the tree. In fact, they do not know how they are related to my third cousin Mario Seghieri, even though they lived together in the same house within the lifetimes of Libero and Mario. Many of the other Seghieris we have met are on Libero and Davide’s side, including, we discover, Gilda, our padrona at the Casolare dei Fiori and the mother of Luca and Roberta.

What needs to be done, Elena says, is for someone to make an appointment with the priest in Montecarlo to delve back further in family line the same way that Mario’s side of the family has done. That someone should be someone who lives here full time, we agree, and once that is done, we will see where our families fit together. For now, I will have to await word, which may not come until after we leave.

We do finally find out exactly who lives in the old Seghieri house. Two of the seven apartments are empty—we knew that—and two belong to brothers of Ivo. One apartment—the ugly one, Elena says—is occupied by Sicilians. We don’t know if she is joking or not about the ugly comment. It used to be occupied by Mario and his family, but he sold it and used the profits to help build the beautiful big yellow house he lives in between the old Seghieri house and the Casolare dei Fiori. Another apartment is occupied by Dante, and the last two, which have been completely made over, are where Davide and Elena and Sergio and Silvana live.

We had once been interested in renting or even buying one of the empty apartments on the end opposite Davide, but during our two months here, that idea has fallen into disfavor. There is a smelly outbuilding and chicken coop at that end that don’t appeal to us, and we also realized that three of the other people who live there are single old men. Of those three, we have only met Dante, but if the other two are anything like him, they will be hard to understand. Now, however, we will still keep it on the list of prospects, because we have enjoyed very much this short visit with Davide and his family.

Bargains with no bargaining at open air market in San Salvatore

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Open air markets are everywhere in Italy. Even our tiny community has one that runs Wednesday from about 9 a.m. to noon, although it only has about six vendors. Usually when we pass, we are on our way to catch a train, but today we ride by on our way back from our once-a-week language class at the home of Marco, a retired public school teacher. We discovered Marco when I asked Matteo, a local shopkeeper, if he knew anyone local who gave private lessons. He didn’t know anyone, but one of the customers standing nearby did, and we have been meeting with Marco once or twice a week for the last three weeks.

The parking lot where the San Salvatore market is held has been special to me ever since I discovered that it is the site of my grandfather’s family house. The home has since been torn down, but fortunately cousin Rolando visited Italy in 1969, and he snapped some photos just a year before it was demolished. Lucy is looking now at pots and pans in the casalinga stall, and I note that she could be standing in the very spot where great-grandmother Maria Marchi might have been cooking 110 years ago. Of course, she could also be standing in the toilet, too, though the house most likely would not have had indoor plumbing then.

Market vendors in Italy are licensed and regulated, but they keep all their supplies in large vans and move around to different piazzas. The shops are often run by a husband and wife, and because of their low overhead, they usually offer better prices than the stores. For example, Lucy bought a herb chopper in a beautiful store in Lucca for 22 euros. Then she found a cheaper one in a crowded little side store for 9 euros. She bought it and will take the expensive one back. Here at the market, she sees a similar chopper for 6 euros.  We have been in need of some bigger pans than those provided by the agriturismo, so we choose a pan and a lid, and then we also choose a nice cutting board and a juicer. Our first language teacher here, Laura, taught us that at least in northern and central Italy, price haggling in stores is not done. We would make a brutta figura if we tried to bargain in a store. Markets already offer low prices in the first place, so Laura doesn’t ask for a discount—though she may when she buys more than one item.  Well, we are buying four items, and the bill is about 50 euros, but we are happy with what we have and don’t try to bargain. The shop owners, though, hand us a bin with a wide assortment of cutting knives and tell us to pick one out. The knives are not in their packages, but they look to be of good quality and are either new or nearly new.

Then we move on to the fruit and vegetable stand, where we watch two women each order three or four bags full of fruit. They talk with the vendor a bit about food and cooking, but we don’t see any haggling over the prices. We ask for potatoes, beans, blood oranges and mandarins. Each time the vendor puts them on the scale and tells us the price, and then he puts something extra in, either more of the item we ordered or something else, so we also come back with a carrot and some celery and parsley which he has thrown in, he says, “per sugo,” for sauce.

Lucy tells me at home while she is squeezing juice out of the oranges that the prices and quality are excellent. “I wish we had known about this market earlier,” she says. The fresh juice is sweet, tangy, delicious.  Although some people love the gamesmanship of bargaining, we prefer the cordiality of this local marketplace where instead of having to argue, we are given smiles, courtesy and free samples without asking.

The Spadoni house as it appeared in 1969, when it no longer was

occupied by Spadonis. Note building on the right, which is still standing

and is visible in the picture above of the open air market.

(photo courtesy of Roland Spadoni)

La cucina americana: Brunch

Tuesday, April 5

What is typical American food, anyway? We have invited three Italian cousins—Grazia, Marta and Gianfranco—for pranzo, and we want them to experience something American, since they eat Italian food 365 days a year already. The first things that come to mind are hamburgers and hotdogs, and for sure we don’t want to do those. Of course there are casseroles, meatloaf, steak and potatoes, but we are not keen on those ideas either. Then Lucy comes up with an idea that seems strange at first, but then it grows on us, and pretty soon we have become enthusiastic about it.

She asks me to remember the breakfasts they used to have at the lodge at Snoqualmie Falls. In fact, maybe they still have them, but in any event, these meals are not quickly forgotten, because one delicious course followed another, and pretty soon all guests had to unloosen their belts because the food was too good to refuse. And who can deny that Americans are big on hearty breakfasts and brunches, so having a multi-course brunch would qualify as a typical meal. It would also be completely different from Italian habits, because a customary Italian breakfast would be a brioche and a shot glass of espresso, and nothing else, all downed in about five minutes while standing at the counter of a bar. So it is decided. First course: oatmeal, topped with hot spiced apple compote, walnuts, raisins and whole milk. Second course: blueberry pancakes. Third course: omelet with mushrooms, cheese, onions, green peppers with secret spices from chef Paolo. Fourth course: fruit salad. Dessert: Pepperidge Farm chocolate chip cooks (a recent addition to the shelves at EsseLunga) and gelato (our one concession to the Italian menu).

We eat in the piazza right outside our apartment door, and the weather is perfect. How do our Italian guests like their American meal? They say it is great, and they point out that they have eaten everything and had seconds on some courses as proof that it was buono. We know, of course, that they probably would have said this even if it wasn’t great, and we will never know for sure exactly what they thought, but the meal goes smoothly and we have a great time talking. Afterwards we talk about our families, and they help me identify a few people in old photos that were brought from Italy to America 100 years ago. We are invited to their house for pranzo three weeks from now, and everyone gives hugs and kisses and says, “Ciao, ciao, ci vediamo” several times before our guests leave and we go inside to rest, tired but content.

Seated: Grazia, Marta, Gianfranco. Standing: Head chef Lucia

La famiglia medievale Seghieri

Monday, April 4

As we ride our bikes out of the driveway, we see a tractor coming down the road, and third cousin Fausto Seghieri is at the helm. He apparently has come to help out his mom and dad on their yard. He stops the tractor and says he has a piece of paper for me. He jumps off and runs inside the house of his dad, Mario, and comes out with an amazing document. When we first met, some weeks ago, I asked for more information on his family, meaning his uncles and cousins, and he said he would write this down and I could come get it later. Now I have the paper in hand, but instead of it being information about current family members, he has given me information tracing our family line back the birth of Francesco Seghieri in 1543, complete with the first and last names of each descendant’s wife.

After having spent a couple of hours in the church archives in Pescia trying to find out similar information on the Spadoni side and only getting back to around 1750, I can appreciate how much work this represents. I thank Fausto as profusely as I can, and he hops back on the tractor.

After Lucy and I finish our bike ride, I head straight to the computer and enter in the information I have obtained. The names go thus: Francesco, Marco, Andrea, Seghiero, Andrea, Giovanni, Giuseppe, Seghiero, Torello and then Anita, my grandmother. Fausto and I share the same great-great grandfather, Seghiero.

Suddenly I am inspired to go back to Fausto to get the information I am missing about his side of the line. My great-grandfather Torello was the brother of Natale, Fausto’s great grandfather, and I want to fill in as many details as I can about Natale’s descendants. I print out what I have of Natale’s family tree and head back to Mario’s house to see if Fausto is still around. He has left, but I am still in luck, because his brother Ivano, whom I have not met, is working in the yard and is happy to help me. After a few minutes of awkwardly trying to write while standing up, I am invited to sit inside at the table, where I am joined by Mario and his wife Loretta, who help Ivano recall names and dates. I am slow at writing information, mainly because I have to think so much when they give me numbers.

“Lui é nato ventotto settembre mila nove cento ottantuno,” they will say, and my brain slowly processes one number at a time while I try to repeat the whole thing so I won’t forget it. That would translate as, “He was born 28 September, 1981.” I write this down and show it to Ivano for verification. After about fifteen minutes of this, I suggest that maybe Ivano should be writing this, and he makes the wise suggestion that he continue without me and I come back in two or three days, which I gladly accept.

Before I leave, one more breakthrough occurs. A Seghieri who lives in the long old Seghieri house is married to a tour guide who works in Lucca and speaks perfect English. Nobody thought to tell us this before, but now they give her a call and she comes right over. Her name is Elena Benvenuti, and she has to leave in a minute to go to work, but she will be glad to meet with me on Thursday of this week. Her husband is related to Libero Seghieri, whom we met last year. Libero has done some work on his own family tree, but he and I were unable to find a family connection at the time. Now that I know how I am related to Mario, Fausto and Ivano, that could be the key to fit together many more pieces of this gigantic puzzle.

“Are Libero and Mario related?” I ask.

“Yes, I can’t tell you how, because I am not a Seghieri,” Elena answers. “But if we get everyone together, they can tell you how they are related. We can find out.”

This is very encouraging news for me, because I am eager to find out how I am related to the other people here, especially the ones who run the Casolare dei Fiori, where we are staying. It is also heartening to find out that there are relatives here who are interested in their family history and have done their own research. It would be helpful if I could find someone on the Spadoni side who shares this interest, but I will take what I can get. 

Beware of false foreign friends!

Sunday, April 3

As I work on making reservations for some travel, I am reminded of a verbal blunder I once made while corresponding by e-mail with the proprietor of a bed and breakfast. After agreeing on the dates and cost, I asked how I could send the deposit. I didn’t know the word for deposit and didn’t want to take the time to look it up, so I just called it the deposito, because I was pretty sure I had heard that word before in my travels. True, I had heard the word, but it is not used the same way in Italy. It means warehouse or storeroom. The word I needed was quite different, which I soon discovered when the proprietor wrote back with instructions on how to make the caparra, with no mention of my gaffe, which he had probably heard from other foreigners before.

Such words are called amici falsi, or false friends, because they fool you into thinking you know what they mean, but they actually mean something else. Here are just a few other examples of false Italian friends:

Sensibile means sensitive, not sensible

Educato means polite, not educated

Fame means hunger, not fame

Largo means wide, not large

Fattoria means farm, not factory

Noioso means boring, not noisy

Parenti means relatives, not parents
Preservativi means condoms, not food preservatives

Many, many times the Italian and English words are similar, which makes Italian easier to learn than other languages, but I have seen and heard some funny stories about false friends and other language blunders which are worth relating.

Of course, the problems go both ways. I once saw a sign in Italian about how a museum was being remodeled and thus was temporarily closed. The explanation ended with “Ci dispiace per il disagio.” Agio means ease or leisure, and disagio means inconvenience, which could be translated more literally to mean a lack of ease. The sign included a complete translation below into English, and it ended with “We apologize for the disease.”

My favorite story comes from my friends Steve and Patti. It involves a British missionary lady who was ordering some work done on her kitchen while she returned on leave to England. She had laid out the plans just fine, until she told the Italian carpenters that she wanted them to purchase and install a cabinet, which she referred to as a cabineto, right here. “Qui?” they asked incredulously. “You want it here? But why?”

“Because that where I want it,” she said. “It’s the most convenient place.”

They continued to question her, but she was insistent: “Mettete il cabineto qui.”

And so they did. There is no such word as cabineto in Italian, so they did what they thought she wanted. When she returned, she found a gabinetto, a toilet, installed in her kitchen. 

Renewing Italian families ties

Saturday, April 2

We have cut back on the Italian lessons to one per week.  I am supposed to use the extra time to get to know people here, to research family history and to write, but I have spent the morning doing nothing much. Lucy is shopping in Lucca, and I get antsy to get back to my agenda. It is a gorgeous spring day with weather approaching 75 degrees F, so I decide to go see some cousins on the Spadoni side, sisters Grazia and Marta Michelotti and Marta’s husband Gianfranco. I have procrastinated a bit because I know they don’t have e-mail accounts, so I can’t write them to warn that I am coming. I could phone them, but I really, really hate talking on the phone in Italian. It makes me nervous and I usually do a poor job. Inevitably there comes this dead space when the person I am talking to is probably wondering if I am still there, since something has popped into my mind to say, but I don’t know how to say it in Italian.

So I decide to drop by unannounced, which is probably fine at 1 p.m. on a sunny Saturday. I have last seen Grazia and Marta nine years ago, when Lucy and I lived in Padova. They are my second cousins and don’t speak any English, although Gianfranco does and often serves as translator when American cousins visit. As I pull up to the gate of their house, I see both Marta and Grazia outside, and Grazia walks toward the gate to see who is this stranger who has pulled up on a bicycle and is talking to her with a strange accent. After a few seconds of puzzlement, she realizes who I am and we do the Italian hug and kiss greeting, and then I do the same with Marta.

I am treated to some pasta, carrots, water and wine, and we catch up a little on what everyone has been doing. They are all a few years older than I and are retired, though Grazia does some custom tailoring work out of her home. I talk to Gianfranco mostly in Italian now, and he goes back and forth between English and Italian, but we try to do mostly Italian so Marta and Grazia can keep up. This is the kind of conversation I excel in, because it mostly amounts to the same things I tell people here over and over again—what I am doing here, what are my children doing, am I still working, where do I live and all that.

Lucy is missing out on this opportunity to get to know my cousins, and besides she is a big help in keeping the conversation going, so I decide to invite them all to our house for lunch next Tuesday, and after some extra encouragement on my part, they accept. Lucy is a great cook of both American and Italian cooking, though I know she feels intimidated at the thought of cooking Italian food for Italians. We will try to think of something American to cook, if we can, but it is hard to get some ingredients here. I ask them to bring some photos for me to scan for my family history research, and in this way I am keeping to my agenda—practicing my Italian, getting to know people here and doing family history research.

Another mystery of Italian craftsmanship

Friday, April 1

Everywhere we look, we see marvelous Italian craftsmanship: paintings, statues, architecture, stonework, brickwork, clothing, pastries, pasta, windows and doors and the list could go on. I do notice one area where Italian craftsmanship is sadly and glaringly wanting. The quality of asphalt paving here is abysmal. I do asphalt maintenance for a living in the summer, so of course I can’t help but notice these things, but one does not need to be an expert to recognize the problems.

The autostrade are an exception. They are mostly smooth and in good repair, but almost every other paved road I have seen has its problems, even including many newly done projects. In the first place, most asphalt roads are done without proper preparation of the base, so after a short while, the roads sag and crack. Grass grows right up to the edge of the pavement, so the roots penetrate the surface and cause the edges to crumble away.

And then there are the repairs, which is the part that amazes me the most. Usually when a road develops multiple cracks—that alligator skin appearance—I will use a saw with diamond tips to make a clean cut. Then I will remove the old asphalt. If necessary, I will dig down a foot or two to find out why the ground has sunk and then refill with gravel and compact. A sticky substance called tack coat is then applied around the edges of the old asphalt to make the new stick to the old. Then I replace the old asphalt with hot asphalt, compacting with a plate compactor or roller, being careful to make sure the new asphalt matches the existing grade. As a final step of the repair, I seal the seams of the patch with a hot, rubberized tar to prevent water infiltration. After this, depending on the wishes of the customer, I may seal the entire road or parking lot with two coats of industrial grade asphalt sealer.

Here, the process is much, much easier, though extremely ineffective. A crew will drive around in a truck with cold mix asphalt and shovels. They will put a shovel load here and there and tap it down a bit with the shovel. Then they will move on, leaving the passing cars to compact the asphalt. How they choose which of the many holes to add asphalt to is somewhat of a mystery. There is no cutting, tack coat, hot asphalt, compactor or seam sealing. It looks like they pass by each road every one or  two years, and a single chuckhole may have five or six different patches applied in this manner, while some are completely passed by, making for bumpy and uneven surfaces. As for sealer, I have never seen a parking lot here that has been sealed.

It is amazing to me that a country in which people value style and craftsmanship so highly can tolerate such terrible road work. And roads are obviously very important to Italians, because despite excellent public transportation, nearly every family has a car, and Italians are noted for their love of driving fast. I sometimes wonder if it is done on purpose to slow people down, but I know that can’t be true. Chalk it up there with the Etruscans as another of the mysteries of Italy.