This is just a first impression. And first impressions tend to mislead. But a Sunday stroll on via Sarpi finds an amazing bustle of activity. Fashionable, well-dressed people shop for shoes and crowd into grocery stores, arms full of fresh meat and vegetables. Every shop is open. A gaze into some shows that, beyond the …
Author Archives: hnbjr
Sunday Style Note
Let me point something out for aspiring writers on Italy who wish to dress up their language. Italian is a fairly colorful language, so there are several good metonyms for the country. Il bel paese (“the beautiful country”) has the finest pedigree, having been used by both Petrarch and Dante. If you want to point …
The Bird is the Most Popular Finger
Riding my bike home from work I decided to go through Piazza Affari to check out the Borsa. I was left gape-mouthed by a gigantic middle finger. I wasn’t sure if it was an accident or not. It’s not. By Cattelan, and mild by his standards — recall the infamous Hitler piece of a few …
Immigration is Not Zero-Sum
Elisabetta Burba had a story in this week’s Panorama on Italy’s Chinese population. It’s really not bad writing in that it lists many success stories and is generally favorable. It includes details I didn’t know, such as a quote from one expat Chinese saying that “the Filipinos will work under a boss, but we all want …
Berlusca tonight
Second: Berlusconi spoke in Parco Sempione tonight. I’ve been jogging past the set-up (or rather, altering my route so I can manage to have a run through the set-up) for the past week, and I’ve been noting the contrast of the massive police buildup — not only your standard Guardia di Finanza, Carabinieri, Polizia dello …
Rand Paul
A quick weekend roundup: in my home state, Rand Paul debated Jack Conway, and some coverage — inasmuch as Kentucky has become a major political battleground, is worth reading. I wonder how the legions of Tea Party supporters riding around on scooters will like being told that they have to work longer before drawing some …
A Day in the Life…
Absolutely unrelated to anything else on the blog, this is getting a lot of attention and it deserves it. I won’t try to editorialize on it, but just go read it.
Swiss Intolerance
If you thought Lega Nord images stereotyping Southern Italians and immigrants were bad, check out this new poster against the opening of Swiss borders to Italian (and other European – presumably Romanian) workers. Given that hordes of Milanese commute to Ticino and vice versa and that, uh, Italian is one of Switzerland’s official languages, this …
Chermany
Bloomberg has a couple of excellent pieces out this week on what’s going on with the French and German economies. The story of how Germany lately managed to rally its growth and drive down its unemployment rate is of particular interest to the Italian observer, in that a lot of the success seems to have …
European Stereotypes Maps
European stereotypes have been entrenched since at least the time of the first Grand Tour. But as organizational tools, maps have the power to change the way one perceives the world. Personally, I’ve found alternate maps fascinated by maps ever since getting a Gall-Peters world map sometime in the eighties. So for a little Saturday …