This year’s Corteo Manzoniano featured many of the same actors and costumes as last year, but added a new twist, winding through the streets of Lecco at night, by torchlight.
In this video: Renzo and Lucia, lanzechenecchi, Cardinale Federigo Borromeo, i Promessi Sposi, Lecco, torchlight parade, horses
Sadly, the longer version planned for the next afternoon was rained out. But the evening was a success – they’ll be doing it again next year, and I may be able to get better footage then.
This year’s Corteo Manzoniano featured many of the same actors and costumes as last year, but added a new twist, winding through the streets of Lecco at night, by torchlight.
In this video: Renzo and Lucia, lanzechenecchi, Cardinale Federigo Borromeo, i Promessi Sposi, Lecco, torchlight parade, horses
Sadly, the longer version planned for the next afternoon was rained out. But the evening was a success – they’ll be doing it again next year, and I may be able to get better footage then.
It’s been a while since I wrote about the Italian education system, specifically as relates to my daughter. Last year, her second at the liceo artistico, was a disaster. She started the year with three academic “debits” – courses she had failed the year before, and was expected to study over the summer and be tested on in the fall. She and others in her situation were given extra tutoring by the same teacher who had done such a poor job of teaching them math and physics the previous year. Needless to say, it did not do them a lot of good, especially as they were at the same time trying to keep up with all the new material being introduced in class (by the same poorly-organized teacher*). They were given two chances at the make-up exams; Ross flunked all of them.
We were puzzled as to her status at that point. The head teacher (of her class’ group of teachers) explained that she would carry forward the academic debits, which would be taken into consideration when determining her status at the end of the second year. If she passed the second year, the debits would simply be erased and forgotten. This seemed odd, since failing to pass the tests meant that she had never properly assimilated the first-year material, and now would never have another opportunity to do so.
In any case , Ross had fallen into a vicious cycle of assuming that she would fail tests, and then fulfilling that promise; none of us was surprised to be told that she would have to repeat the second year (along with a number of her classmates). Local headlines said that it was a record year for flunking in Lecco, with students at one school even contemplating a lawsuit (on what grounds I don’t know).
Although she partly (and with some justice) blamed herself, Ross was bitter, and did not look forward to repeating the year at the same school. We couldn’t think of any workable alternative, except to try the “traditional” four-year curriculum at the same liceo artistico, which would involve more hours of studio art, and no math or physics after the second year. None of us was sure this was a great idea, since the traditional program had the reputation of being a parking lot for kids who had failed repeatedly and were simply waiting to be old enough to leave school for good. But we gritted our teeth and hoped for the best.
As we got closer to September, Ross increasingly dreaded returning to school, and was thoroughly depressed by the time it started on the 12th. The first day confirmed her worst fears: her new classmates were all demotivated rejects from other schools and classes. Liceo artistico tradizionale was not the answer.
But Ross quickly found her own solution. Many of her friends attend, and recommend, a local private school. So Enrico visited the place on Tuesday, Ross and I had a look on Wednesday, we enrolled her Thursday, and she started Monday morning. Ever since we made this decision, Ross has been motivated and enthusiastic about school as I haven’t seen her in years – which is wonderful!
One irony lies in the curriculum. This school offers two indirizzi (tracks), liceo linguistico Europeo (European linguistic) and liceo della communicazione. Ross can’t do the linguistico now, having missed a year of Latin and German – too much material to catch up. The curriculum that best fits the work she’s already done and the subjects she’s interested in is communications, with a subspecialty in technology, leading to a maturita’ (national school-leaving exam) in science. This is the same exam she would have done if she had gone to liceo scientifico, an option she would never have considered! In this curriculum she’ll have extra math (five hours a week total), plus physics and chemistry, as well as IT courses. And, so far, she’s perfectly tranquil about this choice. Maybe she got her father’s math gene after all.
So, after years of pain, things are looking hopeful on the educational front. I’m sure it won’t be an entirely smooth ride, but, hell, it couldn’t get much worse than what we’ve already been through!
Tuesday: Two days in the new school – so far, so good…
* We later learned that this teacher was trying to cope at home with a husband dying of cancer… In the circumstances, it would have been in everybody’s best interest – especially the students’ – to give her a paid leave of absence.
next: school year abroad?
I mentioned that I was going to be on TV, part of the audience on the Italian political talk show L’Infedele hosted by Gad Lerner.
Lerner showed far more political bias than he had in the previous show I attended (partly about Microsoft, partly about taxes – two inevitabilities of modern life?). My friend David Callahan and I were flattered to be specially shown to seats in the second row, stage right, until we realized that they had put us on the side of the cattivi (bad guys), as Lerner jokingly remarked. I was seated behind Gianni de Michelis, a long-time bastion of the Italian Socialist Party (abundantly disgraced by the Clean Hands anti-corruption investigations years ago), who had been Italy’s foreign minister for years during his heyday. Staring at the back of his greasy head for hours was not particularly edifying, his political opinions even less so.
The topic of the evening had been changed from “George Bush and Iraq” to “Are we winning the war [on terrorism]?” More broadly, should the war in Iraq ever have been started and have we (the Coalition) won it? There were several videomontages of recent violent events, with disingenuous voiceover narration. And, as I had expected, Giuliana Sgrena took part, remotely from a studio in Rome.
Someone had told me she wasn’t likely to participate, as she hadn’t given any interviews since her disastrous exit from Iraq, and was still recovering from being shot by American troops at a blockade as she was being carried away from her kidnappers (the Italian secret service officer who had secured her release was killed outright). But there she was, and, after so long a silence, she had plenty to say. As did everyone else, though few said anything sensible or surprising. This, too, was disappointing. Lerner picks intelligent guests from both sides of his topics, but these two groups were each entrenched in their own positions, and nobody was listening to anybody else.
The show was being broadcast live, with commercial breaks every 20 minutes. As break time approached, a young producer would hold up a sign for all of us to see: 4 minuti. 2 minuti. 60 secondi. Pubblicita’. These were largely ignored by whoever had the floor at the time, in spite of Lerner’s efforts (more determined in some cases than others) to shut them up. We missed one break by at least 10 minutes. Even on a TV schedule, Italians will be Italians… The show ran overtime by about 15 minutes, as is common for many live shows in Italy. Tivo would have a hard time working correctly here.
The one distinguished guest I felt any sympathy with was Anna Prause, seated on the “good guys” side. She had gone to Iraq with the Red Cross, then was hired by the Iraqi government to help set up the new Ministry of Health. As the situation for foreigners in Iraq deteriorated, she was eventually advised to leave, advice which she took only reluctantly.
When she finally got the floor, she exploded, saying that, while things in Iraq are still bad, and more dangerous than they were before, things are also better in many ways that are not understood or mentioned by the press. She gave an example: one of her tasks for the Ministry of Health had been to set up a new headquarters, planning everything right down to office fixtures and furniture. A year ago, she could not get her Iraqi colleagues to make a decision on anything even as minor as the color of the office furniture. Not because they were stupid or had no opinions, but because they were accustomed to watching carefully to see what opinions they were supposed to have, so that they could parrot those back to their political masters.
A year on, they not only had opinions, but were very happy to argue about them. This, she said, demonstrated an important change for the better in everyday Iraqi life, in spite of the ongoing violence. Is security more important than liberty? That’s a fundamental question which almost every country faces today. Personally, I come down on the side of liberty, but I’d like to hear from Iraqis themselves how they feel about it.
That evening forced me to confront and clarify my own very mixed feelings about what’s going on Iraq and how it all went down.
I always knew (who didn’t?) that Saddam was very bad news for the world and especially for his own people. He was a monster, partly of American creation, so the US had some responsibility to clean him up. The sanctions imposed after the first Gulf War caused tremendous suffering among the Iraqi people, without adversely affecting their “leaders”. I have mentioned my schoolmate who was married to an Iraqi and lived in Baghdad -through two wars – until her death from cancer last year. When I met Shahnaz and Achmed in 1996, Achmed’s salary as a schoolteacher was 3000 dinars a month: just about enough to buy a pack of cigarettes. Of course they couldn’t survive on that; their extended family, like everyone else in Iraq, was scraping along by selling off valuables and assets, and getting poorer all the time.
Yet Saddam seemed to have accomplished a sort of brainwashing (not surprising – as absolute dictator, he controlled all the media). People didn’t like him but, as Shahnaz insisted, “In Iraq we have a saying: better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.”
Post facto, it’s clear that most Iraqis didn’t feel that way, and are relieved to have got rid of the devil they knew for so long. So I can’t regret that the US military went in and removed him. I am, however, furious at how Bush & Co. lied, cheated, and manipulated the American people into agreeing to this, and then managed it so badly. There are plenty of other reasons to be angry at the Bush administration, but on this issue I may come out feeling much as I did about Reagan: I hated his methods and attitudes, but must, however grudgingly, applaud some of his results.
Dec, 2006 – No, never mind. Removing Saddam was never worth what’s happening now.
above: This sign outside IBC will be funny to Firefly fans, and no one else.
I’m just back from IBC, the International Broadcasting Conference (at least I assume that’s what it stands for), in Amsterdam. It’s all about technology for television – from cameras and lights to satellites and set-top boxes. Most of the equipment and software are far beyond the reach or needs of a video beginner like me. But that’s what we would have said about video cameras not that long ago, so I amused myself in speculation about how soon some of these tools would move into the hands of “prosumers,” and then rank amateurs. And I formulated some ideas about how I could help that happen.
The biggest stand was Sony’s, demonstrating HD (high definition) TV. They and several others had sets crammed with intricate objects and, in several cases, live people, so that you could truly appreciate the fine resolution of the HD videocameras there for testing. Three of these displays had women getting made up by professional makeup artists. Actually, one of them was getting full body paint, which might have been interesting if I’d felt like standing around to watch it. The point was to look through the cameras at the level of detail that could be achieved. I noted that one camera had been left zoomed in on the model’s rear end – not a lot of detail there.
Sony also had a huge screen to display the output of its HD cameras, with a beautifully shot and skillfully edited sequence of breathtaking images. After their own ten-minute ad, they ran a teaser for a film, also presumably shot in HD, called “Mystic India.” I don’t go in for that whole mystic India shtick, but the footage was so amazing that I’ll have to track down and buy this film.
Show tchotchkes (give-aways) are not what they used to be – mostly cheap pens, and it seemed as if every stand was offering a drawing for an iPod, as a way to get your business card. I did get a logo-printed stopwatch from some company, advertising the speed of its processors. The only company giving t-shirts was Adobe, so I now have a nice Adobe t-shirt (black) with the IBC logo on the back. And, perhaps even better, they gave me a two-DVD set with trial software and video tutorials on how to use it. I was entranced by the demos of their professional film and audio editing software. (Down, girl! You don’t have time to play that hard.) But I stayed away from the Apple booths – drooling over computers is so unattractive.
One of the coolest things I saw was fuel cell camera batteries, from a company called Jadoo – which must have been founded by an Indian, because jadoo means “magic” in Hindi. And magic it is: battery packs for professional camera operators, no bigger or heavier or more expensive than the traditional rechargeables, but with longer shooting times, and environmentally friendly: just attach a small cylinder of hydrogen to the recharging unit, and the only emission is a bit of water vapor.
I overload quickly at hyperkinetic events like this; when you’ve got an attention surplus, an environment in which everything is moving and talking and visually extremely attractive is a constant assault on the senses. And it’s physically tiring standing or ambling around hall after hall. Everyone at these shows soon becomes miserable, and will listen to any sales pitch, if they can sit down in the meantime.
As for Amsterdam itself, I barely saw it. The first night we ended up going back to our hotel (way the hell out somewhere – everything in town was booked) for a very mediocre meal. Saturday night we had dinner at an authentic Dutch restaurant (a student hangout, really). A bit too authentic. I was surprised to find that the Netherlands are behind Italy in one sign of civilization: smoking is still allowed in restaurants, and there isn’t even a separate smoking section. So the restaurant was very smoky, and I’m paying for it now with lung and sinus congestion. The dinner, at least, was excellent: the best liver I’ve ever eaten, sliced thin and very tender, topped with fried onions and bacon. And some pretty decent fries. With mayonnaise, of course.
On Sunday, I met up with Jan and Joel, two American vloggers in town for this week’s VlogEurope meet-up. It’s always fun to meet face-to-face with people you’ve met through email or video; you sort of know each other, but there’s plenty left to discover. After that I got together with Woodstock alumnae, two of whom I hadn’t seen since schooldays, and another I’d never met at all. This was the opposite of the earlier meeting: these were people with whom I had had little or no contact in 25 years, yet we still (and always will) have a great deal in common at the most fundamental level.
