Winter: Italy’s Less-Travelled Season

December 9, 2005 Deirdre Straughan Leave a comment

^ Premana, December 2003

A great deal of ink has been expended on the glories of Italy in the summertime. Many tourists never see Italy’s winter, which has its own beauties.

This year, it looks as if we’re in for a severe winter (by Italian standards). The higher peaks we can see from our house were not snow-capped by November 1st as they had been the previous two years: “Ognissanti, neve sui canti” goes a local saying – “By All Saints’ Day (Nov 1), snow on the peaks.” Snow began falling Nov 25th, and went on through the 26th, then again the following weekend (considerably reducing the guest list for our dinner party on Dec 3rd). It’s been clear and bitter cold (freezing or below) since, and the forecast is for even colder; I have put on my nice warmÂ Ugg boots and will not be removing them until April!

Most of the snow at lower elevations has melted in the sunshine, but as my train passes through the farmland between Lecco and Milan, the fields and trees are heavily frosted, where thick fog has turned to ice.

Christmas lights and decorations are already up. I put up some strings of white lights as soon as daylight savings went off, to counter the depression of long, dark nights; everyone else seems to have the same instinct. Colored lights are beginning to appear on trees in people’s yards, and this year’s decorative innovation is Santa Claus dolls dangling on ladders from balconies and windows – trying desperately to deliver gifts, one supposes.

The natural world is winding down; my nasturtiums and morning glory vines have frozen and then thawed into soggy messes – although, weirdly, the daffodils are already sprouting leaves. Many Italian gardens contain persimmon trees (cachi – pronounced KAH-ki), which by now have lost all their leaves, so the round, bright orange fruit stands out sharply against the dark brown branches. The problem withcachi, even if you like them (I don’t), is that they ripen pretty much all at once, so for a few weeks everybody who has a tree is drowning in fruit and trying to give it away to everybody else.

It’s time for winter fruits and vegetables: apples, pears, broccoli, artichokes, pumpkin. For my Indian dinner last weekend I experimented with pumpkin samosas, and they were such a big hit that I’ll have to make them again soon.

In our neighborhood, a clear winter day offers the best views of Lake Como and the surrounding mountains, minus the haze that impedes visibility in summer. My digital camera broke back in October, which is very frustrating now that we’re in the best time of year for photographing.

Dec 5th was the feast of San Nicolo’, patron saint of Lecco; the 7th was the feast of Sant’Ambrogio (Ambrose), patron of Milan, and the 8th the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Public schools in Lecco gave a three-day holiday in the middle of the week, Milanese schools (and many businesses) are off from the 7th through 11th. Ross’ private school is officially closed only for San Nicolo and the Immacolata, but they’re not bothering much with lessons on the other days because so many kids have gone off skiing for the whole week.

As for me, I’ve been working, since I’ll be taking days off later in the month to go to London for a Woodstock alumni gathering, and then Dec 26th I leave for Arkansas, Austin, and Las Vegas (Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show again, and this year I have to play booth bunny. I’m more or less looking forward to it, but know it will be shatteringly hard work).

In between, we’ll celebrate Christmas at home with our friends Ravil and Amanda – quite a change from last year when, for the first time ever, we had both sides of the family present. However, as Ravil says, we can be loud enough to make up for this year’s slimmer numbers. Especially him and Amanda, who areÂ opera singers.

Woodstock School

Hogwarts Memories

November 29, 2005 Deirdre Straughan Leave a comment

I’ve just re-read the latest Harry Potter book, and am re-watching themovies, in anticipation of seeing the latest movie this week (it’s showing in English in Milan: even if there’s only two seconds of Alan Rickman in it, I want to hear his original voice! And I can’t stand the Italian names of the characters).

It struck me that the experience of going off to boarding school (even a non-wizarding one) must be exotic to many people – but it’s familiar to me. Let me count the ways…

Before heading to Woodstock School in India I, too, received a list of required school supplies, which I was advised to pack into a trunk that could be locked, with my name painted on. I don’t remember all the details of the list now, but I do remember being flummoxed by the requirement for warm clothing: we had been living in mostly-tropical Bangladesh for almost a year, and, even had I brought any winter clothes with me, I was a growing teenager. Fortunately, we discovered an open-air market in Dhaka where second-hand clothing donated worldwide to various relief agencies was resold (with or without the agencies’ knowledge?). There I found a couple of sweaters and a pair of jeans. (Wizard’s robes were not on my school list, though the need for formal attire for church was mentioned.)

So far JK Rowling hasn’t told us how students NOT based in London get to Hogwarts. From the fact that they all meet up on the Hogwarts Express, I deduce that they all go to London first, wherever they’re coming from, and then take the school train.

For Woodstock, the situation was a bit more complex: our school had to deal with students coming from Bangladesh, Thailand, the Middle East, Africa, Nepal, the US, and just about everywhere else you could think of (bit more of a cultural mix than Hogwarts!). They tried to arrange for us to arrive on the same flights, but staff nonetheless spent many sleepless nights in Delhi, meeting group after group off the planes. (In those days, India was considered more a stopover than a destination for airlines, so they mostly landed in the middle of the night on their way from Japan to Europe or vice-versa.)

After gathering us into larger groups, which usually involved a day or two at the YWCA in Delhi, the school also arranged our travel up to Mussoorie. By my day, this was mostly in chartered buses, but there were still groups arriving from all over India by train, as they had since 1900 when the railhead reached Dehra Dun (the town in the valley below). Before that, students had travelled by bullock cart and on horseback. Even in the late 1970s, a few whose parents were missionaries in remote corners of Nepal still made the first part of their journey back to school on their own two feet.

There were no lunch trolleys on our buses. Instead, we stopped at Cheetal Deer Park, which didn’t actually have many deer but could whip up the world’s tastiest cheese pakoras for a busload of students in no time flat.

No matter how you reached Dehra Dun, the final leg of the journey was up the narrow, twisty, switchback road to Mussoorie. There’s a point where the air suddenly changes, becoming fresher and cooler and cleaner after the dust of the plains, and a few curves after that you can see Mussoorie, strung out along the ridge at 6000 feet.

The end of the line for buses was (and still is) Picture Palace bus stand – though the Picture Palace that gave it its name no longer shows films, having been turned into a business complex. At the bus stand, coolies would swarm over the tops of the buses, getting down our trunks and cases, hitching them up onto their backs with ropes slung around their foreheads. Barefoot and bandy-legged (a bit like house elves, now that I think of it), bent nearly double under their loads, they would nonetheless usually beat us down to the dorms, where our trunks were piled along the hallways til we came and dragged them to our rooms, newly-assigned for the year.

Rowling’s living arrangements for Hogwarts students are absolutely shocking: girls and boys living in dorm rooms separated only by a stairwell? Sharing a common room in which they can mingle as late as they like, with no staff supervision? Good heavens! What hanky-panky these young witches and wizards must get up to.

At Woodstock, the girls’ and boys’ dorms were a good 15 minutes’ walk apart, with the girls’ dorm, Midlands, stuck out on a ridge about as far as you could get from anywhere else on campus. Boys were allowed no further in than a sitting room at the entrance, closely (if not always successfully) guarded by a dorm supervisor; the same was true for girls at the boys’ dorm, Hostel.

Except once a year, when each dorm held an “open house” in which visitors from all over the school could stroll around, admire everyone’s creative room decor, eat a “fancy” meal, and the opposite sexes could (gasp!) hang out in each others’ rooms for a few hours. With staff constantly prowling the corridors, of course – the rule was that every bedroom door had to be open, and if two people were sitting on a bed together, three of their feet had to be on the floor.

One huge difference between Hogwarts and Woodstock: the Hogwarts kids eat a lot better than we ever did (even if pumpkin juice actually sounds pretty disgusting). School food was legendarily bad at Woodstock, even worse than institutional cooking usually is. If Rowling ever attended boarding school herself, her descriptions of meals at Hogwarts may well be fantasies left over from her school years. Many teenagers obsess about sex. At Woodstock, much of the time, we were too busy obsessing about food!

There is little mention of between-meals snacking at Hogwarts, whereas at Woodstock we depended heavily on “tuck shops” at school and in the dorms, as well as the baker who would come around at recess and after school with a tin trunk full of home-made cookies, cakes and candy. And we lived for Saturdays, when we could go into the “buzz” (the local bazaar) and gorge ondosas, curries, and Tibetan noodles.

The major point of reference for students at Hogwarts (and, I suspect, at many traditional British boarding schools) is the “house” into which new students are “sorted” at the beginning of each school year. The kids live, go to classes, eat, and study mostly with their house-mates, and are not even allowed into each others’ common rooms (there’s no mention of an annual “open house”). They view members of other houses as rivals or even enemies.

The reference group for Woodstockers is the graduating class. We had houses only for intra-mural sports, to encourage athletic activity among those not good enough for the school teams. No one took the houses seriously enough to care much about Sports Day, except as a day free from lessons. (In earlier decades, Sports Day had been competed between classes, which generated more enthusiasm, although the seniors usually had a decided advantage.)

Our houses had boring names – in our day, simply 1, 2, and 3! Today they’re named after birds (Merlins, Condors, and I forget the third). Nowhere near as compelling and evocative as Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Slytherin.

The class of ’78 did revive a tradition of the class word, which was supposed to be made up and its definition kept secret, though nowadays they run to the well-defined and obvious (“Intrepid”). My own class of ’81’s word is “Bijplufszkcian” – weird enough for Rowling, I think. No, I’m not going to tell you what it means.

Hogwoods Revisited

Dec 17, 2005

My fellow alumni responded enthusiastically to my article comparing Woodstock with Hogwarts. Stan Brush wrote:

“ONE big difference between your experience and ours pre-1947. We DID come by special trains, reserved compartments on regular trains that converged on Dehra Dun. Complete description inFarewell the Winterline.”

“Farewell the Winterline” is Stan’s engaging account of his childhood in India and Woodstock, and his adventure-filled trip back from India to the US when he graduated from Woodstock during WWII.

Many WS alumni have similarly fascinating stories, some recounted in Living on the Edge, a collection of tales including wonderful (and sometimes hair-raising) descriptions of epic train journeys across India to get back to school each semester.

Other comparisons came up. It’s not uncommon for some Hogwarts students (especially Harry Potter) to stay at school during the shorter vacations (in their case, Christmas and Easter; at Woodstock, the shorter vacation was in the summer). Zafar pointed out that one of his classmates never went home for summer holidays, because her parents were missionaries in such a remote part of Nepal that to get there took two weeks’ walking – the summer break simply wasn’t long enough for her to get home and back.

Eva Schawohl wrote:

“I think one of the big differences between Hogwarts and Woodstock is the monkeys.. I would rather have had to deal with dragons and pixies than those wretched monkeys. Especially the one that got into my room one Saturday morning in 11th grade. My great revenge was that I got one of them in the bottom with a broom… but not before he had gone through all my drawers and eaten a book. Though the vision of a monkey bouncing on my bed with my underwear on his head did keep me laughing for a while.”

[Monkeys as the anti-house elves? – D’]

The one thing we did have similar to Hogwarts is the dungeons, known as the music cells. Does anyone remember those terrible, cold, dark, damp cells with the tiny windows, with the ancient pianos in them? I think Snape would have found those cells more than perfect for Potions or Defence Against the Dark Arts classes. With any luck, he could have petrified the guy who played French horn really badly next to me every day after lunch.

Yes, everyone remembers them, and they were indeed dungeon-like, complete with “jailer” in the form of Mrs. Biswas. Not that anyone thought of her that way – she was well loved at Woodstock for 47 years – but she was a dragon about making us practice music properly during our practice periods. She seemed to know what piece every person in 20+ cells was supposed to be practicing, and could hear from two floors up if you weren’t. The only time we could get away with anything was during the weekly Music Department staff meeting. A group of us who happened to have practice that period would sneak out of the cells to sing pop songs, accompanied by Craig on Mr. Lind’s grand piano. At least it was music!

Today the former music building has been rebuilt into a bright, pleasant business center, and the music cells, in a different building, are new, sound-proofed, and named in honor of Mrs. Biswas.

Perhaps the largest similarity is the fact that no one knows actually where Woodstock is. Just as Hogwarts is not mappable, Woodstock isn’t either. I always had the impression that the school changed position, depending on were you were standing. Besides that, how many people have I met since that have thought the school is in America, on the grounds of the famous festival.

I think it is funny that the food thing really did persist through generations of Woodstock students. I was there from 1988 to 1990 and the rumour was the school spent 7 rupees [~15 cents)] a head on food, am not sure if this was per day or per meal, though I had had better tuck in the bazaar or Cozy Corner for Rs. 7.- than at school. As the saying goes, an army that is fed badly, fights harder, so perhaps there was some morality in serving us Chinese noodles that left a puddle of grease on the tray, or chapattis with the consistency of shoe leather. Toughen us up and then send us to fight in the world!

Kim Shafi ’74:

I can think of the pranks we did, an example specific to Woodstock: when solemnly getting “up to no good” such as setting of big firecrackers with the help of incense sticks set just so on the fuse so that it would be ignited deep within study “hall” time; the secret short cuts that we trod to get to forbidden places unnoticed when we should have been in bed; being selected from among all others for special punishment meted out by Ron Kapadia [Woodstock’s equivalent of Argus Filch, but far more dangerous] and then getting to leave a personal marker – a sort of badge of honor – on that old hard paddle…

Another alumna pointed out other similarities such as the schools’ being perched on high hills, and the kids walking around at night in a forest full of dangerous animals, even when we weren’t supposed to. Yes, dangerous animals. Woodstock is set in thick Himalayan jungle on protected land, and there are still leopards out there, though dogs are at far more risk from them than people.

I noted in the last Harry Potter film (which I saw, and greatly enjoyed, a couple of weeks ago) that the scriptwriter also seems to know something about boarding school. I can’t recall Rowling ever mentioning study hall in the books, but in the film there was a scene of a lot of kids studying together at long tables, whispering and passing notes – when they could get away with it, under the nose of Professor Snape.

Italy travel

Milan: A Shopping Guide for Teens

November 20, 2005 Deirdre Straughan 1 Comment

^ The sun never sets on Benetton

Last Christmas season (Dec 2004) our teen expert, Ross, took me out to see where the cool young people shop in Milan.

MM Shoes, in via Torino near the Duomo – trendy shoes and boots at very reasonable prices
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The Calzedonia chain features socks, stockings, lingerie, and swimwear. All over the city.

Fornarina – very in, but also expensive (even their graffiti matches).

We continued down via Torino, past the Colonne di San Lorenzo, to Porta Ticinese (the big archway you see in this photo – one of the gates to the medieval city).

Beyond is Corso di Porta Ticinese, full of interesting, funky boutiques as well as chain stores. Some of our favorites are the shops featuring hand-made clothing and accessories of bright Asian silks.

Armani Jeans, also in Corso di Porta Ticinese

Later, we met up with Ross’ friends Ilaria and Filippo in front of the H&M in San Babila…

…and strolled over to the “Golden Quadrilateral” – bounded by via della Spiga and via Montenapoleone, this is the high-end shopping district. It’s fun to look at the gorgeous window displays, even when you can’t afford anything!

Valentino

Even baby strollers get the star treatment. (The Aprica shop on via Montenapoleone does seasonally-themed displays, you can see another onehere.)

India, Italy

Thoughts on the Futures of India and Italy

November 19, 2005 Deirdre Straughan 1 Comment

top: a family of Indian tourists at St. Peter’s in Rome

My India travel vlog, from the trip I took with my daughter this summer, is still in progress. There’s more video to edit, more photos (by Ross) to add, and, most of all, more thoughts to share.

What struck me throughout the trip, but especially in Mumbai, was the ferment of growth and change. The atmosphere reminded me of Silicon Valley five years ago: everyone feels that they have a chance to be part of something exciting and rewarding.

My Indian friends and classmates are doing well, which may not seem surprising – most of them came from the elite in the first place (otherwise they could not have afforded to attend Woodstock School). But they, too, have ridden the economic roller coaster over the last 20 years, and the fact that they’re heading up again now is thanks to talent and hard work at least as much as accidents of birth. It’s also thanks to the entrepreneurial energy unleashed in India since the economic reforms instituted in 1991 by then-finance minister (and now prime minister) Manmohan Singh.

India’s economy is growing at 6 to 7 % a year, and anyone who has been observing the country can see the effects. New roads are being built in the major cities, and new highways connecting them that I’m told are as good as American ones (haven’t seen for myself). Delhi is very proud of its rapidly-growing subway system – our travel company driver was eager for me to take a look, in spite of the fact that I was paying him to drive me around in a private car. Traffic is horrendous, but Delhi has cut pollution noticeably by requiring all public transport vehicles (buses, taxis, and scooter taxis) to run on CNG (compressed natural gas), and allowing heavy trucks into the city only late at night.

I don’t actually like Delhi, though; there’s something about its attitude that annoys me. Mumbai is another story. It’s a delightfully insane city, the largest I’ve yet been to (Tokyo, when I visited around 1971, was at the time the world’s most populous city, but I think it had around 8 million inhabitants then; Mumbai today has 15 million*). Yes, there are millions of people living in horrible slums; I did not see those, but I know they exist. What I did see was people living in mile after mile of roadside shacks built against walls and buildings.

Just another slum, you say? Yes, but… these shacks (called “hutments”) are two stories tall, made of plywood with solid wood frames, and roofed in corrugated tin or plastic sheeting. They have doors that can be locked, and many boast television sets inside (running on current pirated from the nearest electric wire) and satellite dishes on the roof. By the standards of the villages their inhabitants came from, this is cushy living. Shilpin explained to me that these people come from the countryside to take contract jobs in the insatiable Mumbai factories, or to earn a good living as day laborers. They leave their aged parents back in the village to protect the family land, and send money home for their upkeep.

The reason they don’t have proper housing is that real estate in Mumbai has become so expensive that no one can afford it. There have been two amnesties in which hut-dwellers were moved into city housing, and took on all the duties of citizenship such as paying taxes and electricity bills. However, there is so much demand to live in Mumbai that the hutments were immediately rebuilt and re-inhabited.

This is all indicative of India’s overall growth. People come to the cities to get jobs, which are plentiful (though not as plentiful as they could be – more economic and labor market reforms are needed), and fewer people are needed on the land as agriculture has become more productive..

It’s an exciting time to be in India, and Indians have much to be proud of. There are still enormous problems, to be sure, but there is also a sense that progress is being made and problems can eventually be solved.

And what of my other “country beginning with i”? Italy… is going nowhere. It experienced heady growth in the 1960s and 70s, culminating in the sorpasso in the early 1980s, when Italy’s economy was declared the world’s fifth largest, surpassing the UK. It’s been mostly downhill from there. Italy did well in skilled manufacturing when those jobs were still in the west, but is now becoming a rust belt of abandoned factories as globalization sweeps manufacturing jobs to the east. Like Americans, Italians bemoan the loss of their manufacturing jobs even as they rush to buy goods made cheaply in China.

The same shift in economic emphasis has happened in the US, of course, but the US as a nation has a broader skill set, so has been able to move up the value chain from manufacturing to services. Now that service jobs are also going overseas, the US can concentrate on R&D. A majority of the world’s scientists and engineers live and work in the US, although many of them were not born American. The next wave of growth will come from intellectual property, and the US will lead that wave (though this source of competitive advantage will also eventually be at risk from the growing pool of intellectual talent in India and China).

Italy (and most of the rest of Europe) is not well positioned to move up the value chain. Italy, in particular, is not supportive of research. As with so much else in Italy, university research centers are fiefdoms controlled by “barons” who give positions as patronage rather than on merit. Corporate R&D is almost non-existent (with notable exceptions such as Fiat, and, on a much smaller scale, the company I work for). Italian scientists and engineers mostly flee to the US if they want to get any serious work done.

Italy’s economy is hostage to entrenched and conflicting interests, with little hope that real and necessary reforms will be carried out by governments of the right or left. Though the need for such reforms is recognized by the Italian public, as I learned in a conversation on the airport shuttle bus the other day, with the bus driver and another passenger.

The passenger (a woman) has two daughters, one working in France and one seeking work in Germany – both having given up on finding decent jobs in Italy. One had been employed at Malpensa airport, doing customer service (in multiple languages), working shifts at 5 euros an hour, with no permanent contract nor any hope of one, nor any guaranteed minimum of hours. If we assume 40 hours of work per week, that’s only 800 euros a month – not enough to live on in or near Milan. No wonder she gave up after 16 months. “Something’s wrong here,” says her mother. “We slave to put them through school [both her daughters have university degrees], and they can’t find jobs in Italy.”

The bus driver looked in his 30s, and had “immigrated” long ago from Calabria in Italy’s deeply poor south. He’s had this steady job for several years and says the salary is good, but the work is demanding and often keeps him away from home. Home is a 40 square meter (430 sq ft) townhouse out in the country, 16 km from Bergamo, which cost him around 120,000 euros – a price he considered reasonable, since the place will be easily resellable when he is ready to move to something bigger (presumably when he decides to marry). Interestingly, he has no interest in returning to Calabria except for vacations – “life is different there, too slow. I’m used to life up here now.”

Both recognize that something is wrong with the pensions system. “Perhaps we promised too much before,” mused the driver.

Neither expects any of the current crop of politicians (left or right) to do much good.

As Beppe Severgnini says in The Economist‘s The World in 2006, “…the country must decide what it wants to be. It may opt to do nothing, and become an ageing, former manufacturing country, where local lobbies and special interests can gorge until the money runs out. Or Italy can become a welcoming service country, driven by design, tourism, and technology: an accessible land, easy to do business with, confident in its tolerance, creativity and flair.”

Unfortunately, I don’t hold out much hope that Italy is ready to make the big changes needed to attempt Severgnini’s Plan B. When I ask why things are the way they are (in any context), the response is usually a shrug and “It’s always been that way,” even when the person agrees that “the way it’s always been” isn’t necessarily good. As Severgnini puts it, “People are afraid of change.”

Italy can and probably will limp along, with the younger generations living off savings accumulated by their parents and grandparents. To be sure, they can still live a very nice life: sunny beaches in the summer and snowy slopes in winter, eating and drinking well, hanging out with friends they’ve known all their lives. There’s a lot to be said for that, and most of my daughter’s peers aspire to no more. They’ll settle for any job near home that allows them to go on living exactly the way they always have. (They’ll be lucky to find that job, however.)

Maybe it’s the American in me that says: “That isn’t enough. How can you stand to sit around and watch your country slide inexorably into poverty and oblivion? How can you spend your working life doing something you don’t even care about?”

If I was a typical Italian mother, I’d urge my daughter into whatever university course and profession seemed most likely to keep her close to home. Though I’m in no way a typical Italian mother, I adore Ross and would love to live near her for the rest of my life. But, for her own sake, unless something changes drastically, I hope she gets out before she stagnates along with the rest of Italy.

I Did It Again

Apparently, I should be working for the Economist – I publish the same thoughts, before they do. This week’s (Nov 24) edition contains a survey of Italy titled Addio, Dolce Vita, whose leader goes on to say: “For all its attractions, Italy is caught in a long, slow decline. Reversing it will take more courage than its present political leaders seem able to muster…”

Italy in Decline: Umberto Eco Joins the Chorus

Feb 5, 2006

Today’s Corriere della Sera carries an interview with Umberto Eco, whose new book, a collection of essays titled “A Passo di Gambero,” (“Walking Backwards”) debuts Wednesday.

“Guardi, l’Italia nei cinque anni appena trascorsi si Ã¨ messa sulla strada del declino. Se andiamo avanti cosÃ¬ diventiamo definitivamente un Paese da Terzo Mondo.”

“Look, Italy in the last five years has set itself on the road to decline. If this goes on, we will definitively become a Third World country.”

…Da caustico il tono diventa un po’ amareggiato quando il discorso si sposta sull’immagine dell’Italia all’estero: “Mi prende un senso di profonda umiliazione vedendomi fatto segno di tante manifestazioni di affettuoso cordoglio”.

…From caustic his tone becomes somewhat bitter when conversation turns to Italy’s image in the world: “I feel profoundly humiliated to be offered so many expressions of affectionate condolence.”

I’ll be buying the book.