-
(Nov 12) It’s not clear why anyone
would steal this bicycle. It was built by the Mario
Schiano company near Naples solely for the purpose
of delivering pizza. A company spokesman said,
“There’s not another bike like it. Whoever took it
can’t sell it, get rid of it or even ride it around.
And it’s only good for delivering pizza.” But it's
certainly good for that; it was built especially for
Gino Sorbillo, proprietor of a well-known pizzeria
in Naples and has served his pizza couriers well for
quite some time. Well, someone nicked it in the
night between last Saturday and Sunday. Gino
searched the streets until four a.m. Sunday before
calling the cops and reporting the theft. He even
offered a reward —a real bicycle— to anyone who came
up with it. The cops finally found it the next day
in an alley in the Pallonetto di
Santa Lucia area (the hill above Santa Lucia
and the Egg Castle). Conclusion? It was a nasty
prank. Maybe the thief didn’t like the pizza.

-
(Nov 12) It has
rained so much recently that a part of the
terrain near Lake Averno washed away the other day
and revealed part of the dark basalt blocks
typical of ancient Roman road construction,
leading experts to say, at least tentatively, that
the find is part of the road bed of the ancient
Roman road, the via Domiziana, the road built
under emperor Domitian in 95 AD to facilitate
access to the port of Puteoli (Pozzuoli) and to
nearby Portus Julius, home port of the western Imperial fleet
in the waters of Baiae and Cape Misenum. The find
does, in fact, correspond to the route of the road
as marked on ancient maps. (photo: O. de Simone)

(Nov 12) Nice
parking lot. The local paper, il Mattino,
ran a photo feature on Parking for the Privileged
the other day, calling the situation scandalous. The
photo shows the privileged parking at the Capodimonte Museum. All
of the photos were similar; anywhere there is a nice
public monument or museum, such as the entire space
in front of the National Museum, those who work
there are allowed to park in front or at least
nearby. “Work there” doesn’t mean the janitor,
either; it’s the high mucky-mucks with a few letters
after their names. I mean, you don’t expect them to
find a legitimate sparking space or garage and …gasp!…
actually pay for it, do you?!
(photo:
S. Siano e G. Di Laurenzio)
-
(Nov 12) A
prominent craftsman, Luigi Liverino, from
Torre del Greco, has prepared this splendid manger
scene, or presepe,
to be presented to Pope Francis. The piece is
entirely of red coral and cornelian shell (in
reference to the color of corneline, a variety of
the semi-precious quartz, chalcedony). Torre del
Greco is the local center for highly valued
ornamental work in shell and coral. Recently, two
other similar manger scenes, also by Liverino,
were commissioned by clients and presented to the
pope's predecessor, Benedict XVI. Liverino intends
to present this one personally to
Pope Francis.

(Nov 13) The Italian
acronym ONLUS means organizzazione non
lucrativa di utilità sociale (Non-profit
Organization for Social Utility). It is a
nation-wide umbrella designation for private
organizations that promote social services. Among
these is the Center for Childrens’ Health and within
that group there are organizations that promote such
things as music education and reading programs for
children. The latter is named Nati per Leggere
(Born to Read). A “Born to Read” center has opened
on the premises of the 18th-century Villa Cerillo in
Bacoli, just up the coast from Naples. It intends to
address the needs of children between the ages of
six months and six years. In collaboration with the
local library, the center will provide information
to parents on how to choose reading material for
their children and how to stimulate early enthusiasm
in children for reading.
(Nov 16)
eventy items from the
Treasure of San
Gennaro collection in the Naples Cathedral
are now on display in Rome in an exhibit entitled
The Treasure of Naples. This is the first
time that such items have ever left Naples for
exhibit elsewhere. This photo (credit: Getty
images) shows one of the items on display: a
necklace in gold, silver and precious stones
created by Michele Dato in 1679. The items are
considered to be some of the most precious
religious art in the world. The exhibit is at the
Fondazione Roma Museum in the Palazzo Sciarra on
Via Marco Minghetti 22, in Rome. The exhibit runs
through February 16, 2014.
(Nov 16) The
expressions vary from
the poetic-sounding Terra dei Fuochi (Land
of Fires) to the in-your-face "Triangle of Death."
The latter is clear; the former refers to fires
from burning piles of illegally dumped rubbish,
often toxic. The death part refers to the high
rate of cancer in the “triangle” shown in the
image (right). The areas at risk extend
well-beyond the lines on the map. The burning is a
mob (Camorra, the Neapolitan Mafia)
activity. The situation is so bad that the
archbishop of Naples, Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe
told an audience at an environmentalist convention
recently that ''Those who pollute are not in the
grace of God and may not take communion.'' It's
not clear to me if this will have any effect on
the perpetrators. I’d feel better if this were the
Middle Ages.

The Flegrean Fields are roughly the
pink areas in this image.
One such group is
Culturavventura (Culture Adventure); since
2008, they have promoted kayak and canoe excursions in
the fabled waters of the Bay of Pozzuoli. Yes, you can
paddle where, as Virgil
tells us, Misenus, master of the sea-horn, the
conch-shell, made "the waves ring" with his music and
challenged the sea-god Triton to musical battle. If
you like to snorkel or scuba dive, you can even dive
on the ruins of the ancient port! The association even
has ambitions for an itinerary that will lead from
Misenum to Hadrian’s Wall in Britain so you can follow
the expansion of the Roman Empire. I don’t think they
plan to do the whole thing in kayaks.
Other
organizations besides Culturavventura include
"Misenum" (specializing in land excursions in the
Campi Flegrei); the Archaeological Group of the
Campi Flegrei; the Legambiente
(Environmental League); the Pozzuoli Diocese
(specialzing in religious tours); etc. They do
amazing work with few resources.

(Nov 22) JFK in Naples. On the occasion of
the 50th anniversary of the assassination of US
President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, various
Neapolitan newspapers today recalled JFK's visit
to Naples on July 2, 1963. It was the last stop of
a European tour that had included, one week
earlier, the president's famous "Ich bin ein
Berliner" speech in Berlin. The visit to
Naples was the first time that a US president had
ever visited the city and the people went crazy.
(I have spoken to many who remember the visit and
they are as crazy about it now as they were then.)
The president landed at Capodichino airport and
went by helicopter to the NATO base in Bagnoli; he
arrived there at 4.39 on a fine summer afternoon,
accompanied by US secretary of State Dean Rusk,
Italian president Antonio Segni and Italian prime
minister Giovanni Leone. He gave a short speech
reaffirming US commitment to the defense of
Europe. He quoted Shelly's lines that "Italy is a
paradise of exiles" and said how greatly he
appreciated this paradise in his own brief exile
from Washington. He then returned to the airport
by car, a black Lincoln convertible with the
top-down. This photo (from il Mattino) is
one of the classic shots* of the president's car
moving through the city. (The other person
standing is Italian president, Segni.) It shows
the president's car moving through a dense throng
of onlookers along via Caracciolo, the seaside
road between Mergellina harbor and the city. In
terms of security, it was a nightmare. Delirious
Neapolitans crowded around the car. One man
actually tried to leap into the car to hug the
president. At one point, someone threw a bouquet
of flowers that landed in front of the vehicle.
Kennedy had the driver stop so the flowers could
be retrieved and so he could wave them at the
crowd. He was all smiles and so was the city. It
was a fine summer afternoon.
(Nov 25) Street pianos.* 'The Out of Place
Pianist.' I saw the
gentleman in this photo playing piano on via
Scarlatti the other day. I have seen many street
musicians in Naples. Some of them are not bad and
some are very good. This guy was great. Two things
stood out: he was playing a baby grand piano
and he wasn’t accepting tips. So he was more than
a little bit different even from the very fine
young Russian pianist I saw once playing excellent
Chopin on a portable fold-up electric keyboard
while his wife and daughter worked the crowd for
coin. This man’s name is Paolo Zanarella.
He was born in Campo San Martino near Padova, up
north. He is 45 years old and has been playing
piano for 35 of them. He is conservatory trained
and his forte is European classical piano music,
then classical-sounding piano film music, then his
own compositions, and then music that he just
makes up on the spot. He is a great promoter of
improvisation. Zanarelli's motives in life are
getting fine music out to the people on the
streets, promoting music among young people, and
sponsoring youth choirs. He is a national treasure
and is known as "the out of place pianist" because
he plays any and everywhere he can, from small
mountain towns, to a barge floating down the Grand
Canal in Venice, all, he says, "...so people who
might not otherwise have a chance to go to a
concert can hear and learn to love this music."
He's an eccentric. We need more of them.
Similar item at this
link.

*These
are sometimes called 'public pianos," but they are
not necessarily the same thing. The one shown
here is on the street, yes, but it's not 'public'.
It's his piano and he has hired himself out to the
city to play for passers-by. You cannot walk over,
sit down and play. That would be a true 'public
piano' of the kind linked just above, where it says
'Similar item'. Neither kind is an example of
"busking" -- street musicians who perform for tips.
The kid in this image on the train is busking.
Another kind of busking , more traditional, is this.
(Nov 27) THE
EX-NATO BASE IN BAGNOLI. (Earlier
miscellaneous items on the base are here and here.) The
ex-NATO headquarters is the 40-hectare (100-acre)
green patch at the top of this photo. It is about
1 km from the Bagnoli coast line, (visible in the
lower left-hand corner). As I note at the second
of the two links (above), when the base moved some
distance to the north recently, there were two
possibilities for the disposition of the old base:
one was "...to return the space in Bagnoli to
about what it used to be when it started out in
1940...a 'Young People's College' ...a
giant youth facility including schools, sports
facilities, leisure activities, etc." Another
plan was to use the premises for Naples city
office space shifted from the downtown area, thus
freeing up some of those spaces in the city. This
morning's il Mattino reports that the
first plan, the Youth Center, seems to have been
selected and that it is now a matter of ironing
out the details between the Bank of Naples (owners
of the property) and the city council.
The
city is sponsoring a get-acquainted event this
coming Sunday with music and guided tours for the
general population within this once verboten
citadel; it is part of a plan to let the
locals know what is at stake. It is
considerable. When the military moved, they left
pretty much everything intact: ample office space,
meeting rooms, restaurants, shops, a large
swimming pool, a church, an athletic track, tennis
courts, and a lot of parking space. There are
still two functioning facilities on the base, both
of them schools: the International School of
Naples and the Montessori School, both offering
elementary-though-high school curricula in two
languages, Italian and English. The potential is
great, for if these premises can be integrated
into the community, it could "restart Bagnoli." Il
Mattino warns, however, that "we have heard
this before." That's what they said about the even
larger tract of land that used to house the
Italsider steel mill about a mile from NATO in
Bagnoli. Whatever those plans were, they took a
staggering hit earlier this year when the mob burned part of it to
the ground. The good news with the ex-Nato
base is (1) that it comes almost ready for use;
(2) it is a totally "gated" (and barbed-wired)
community, thus relatively safe (if you beef it up
with about 100 Dobermans); (3) it even has a
helo-pad if you want to chopper your kids to
school).

-
(Nov 28) The
tradition of the 'Wishing Tree' is dealt
with in detail elsewhere in
these pages. Briefly, Antonio Barbaro, a
local businessman, puts up a large Christmas tree
every year in the Galleria
Umberto, across from the San Carlo Theater,
and passers-by scribble their wishes, sentiments,
declarations of love, desire for world peace, etc.
on slips of paper and impale them on the branches
of the tree. They are fascinating to read. At the
end of the holiday season, the scraps of paper are
printed in book form and sold, the profits going
to charity. It is, by now, a hallowed tradition.
(This blending of the northern tradition of the
Christmas tree and the southern tradition of
votive slips of papers is a good example of
syncretism... I mean, just so you don't feel that
you're totally wasting your time reading this.)
Almost as time-honored, however, is the tradition
that kids from the nearby Spanish
Quarter, a rough section of town, shall
steal the tree. This is usually followed by
Keystone Kops antics to find and retrieve the tree,
and then also followed by expressions of outrage
from concerned citizens (most of whom recommend
three remedies: German Shepherds, Dobermans, and
Neapolitan Mastiffs), and then followed by whining
sociological drivel about how the poor underclass
street kids are driven by poverty to theft
(overlooking the fact that said impoverished
urchins all now have iPhone 12s and organize the
theft by flashmob). This year, Mr Barbaro put the
tree up waaay too early. There wasn't a
single scrap of paper when the kids nabbed it in
the middle of last night and dragged it into the
Spanish Quarter. They paraded past the video
surveillance cameras, shielding their faces. One
even showed his middle finger to the camera (a
good old gesture from the USofA —talk about
syncretism!) and made off with the gigantic piece
of happy lumber (from up near Normandy, so I
read). The coppers got it back in record time and
took it back to the Galleria, tailed by Oliver
Twist wannabees who taunted the cops with shouts
of, "We're going to get this back, you know! Why
not just leave it here?" Mr. Barbaro has a
solution.Hhe says he's going to start putting up
two trees, one for the passers-by and one for the
thieves.
- (Dec
19) Recently
appearing in an issue of the underground rogue
newspaper, The Daily Warren, and
mysteriously signed "Sanity Claus and the
Caroliars," this item, entitled Pope Does it
Again!, makes reference to the Neapolitan
tradition of stealing the Wishing Tree (see item
directly above this one). The complete text of the
item is as follows:
"Pope Francis,
known for slipping out of the Vatican to feed the
poor, was seen in a 3-wheel, green lizard in front
of Naples’ very own Galleria Umberto. His
friend, Archbishop Konrad Krajewski, was
searching for a broomstick in the cab to put in
front of back wheels to keep the lizard from rolling
away.
"It is unclear whether they took turns driving down
from Rome or if a former car thief commandeered a
grocer's lizard to drive them down. Prof.
Matthews was unavailable for comment.
"Earlier in the week the Vatican Almoser’s
Office received a note from Matthews
explaining how everything was related to Naples, and
the Pope could be related, too, if he’d only kip on
down to take part in Naples’ annual waif
celebration; namely, stealing the Christmas Tree
from the Galleria. The point of the theft
would be to read the notes Neapolitans attach to the
branches of the tree. The notes speak of their
hopes and dreams as well as their hunger and
homelessness.
"Krajewski and Pope Francis were only too happy to
drop everything at the Vatican in order to prove
everything else is related to Naples. They are
expected to stay an extra day in order to collect
enough money for a train ticket back to Rome."
 |
ed.note:
The Green Lizard (also known as the Green
Ape [bee] from the original Italian) is a
very popular vegetable transport vehicle
originally manufactured for very popular
vegetables in 1948 by the Piaggio
corporation of Pontedera, Italy. The Papal
“Lizzie” may be white.
|

(Dec 22) The
Presepe & Pulcinella. Neapolitan
craftsmen are currently putting the finishing
touches on a gigantic manger scene, a Neapolitan presepe,
in St. Peter’s square in Rome. Pope Francis, of
course, has been sending down snacks and beverages
for the workers! Meanwhile, back in Naples, two
interesting bits of cultural blending mark the
Christmas season: two presentations of the presepe
that show the traditional Nativity figures of the
Holy Family in the guise of the famous Neapolitan
mask, Pulcinella.
One is called “Pulcinella scende dalle Stelle”
(A pun on the title of the best-known Italian
Christmas carol, Tu scendi dalle Stelle.
See this link for more
on that carol.) It is the idea of Michele Del
Gross, director of a local theater company with a
particular interest in the history of the presepe.
The second is “Quanno nascette Pulecenella”
(again a pun on a Neapolitan carol, Quanno
Nascette Ninno [When the Child was born],
inserting the name Pulcinella for Child in the
text; Pulecenella is dialect spelling). It
is presented by Bruno Leone, the latest in a long
line of puppeteers who have dedicated themselves
to preserving Neapolitan lore. Putting a
Pulcinella mask on Joseph and Mary and presenting
the unborn Christ child in the form of an egg
waiting to hatch may seem frivolous, even
sacrilegious. Of course, it is neither. It's just
what people do in order to feel a little closer to
the mystery.

(Dec 23) The city has decided
that Piazza Plebiscito,
the large square bounded on the east by the Royal
Palace and on the west by the large church of San
Francesco di Paola (in photo, right) cannot take too
much more crowd-stress; that is, even small damage
unintentionally inflicted by tens of thousands of
persons crowding into this largest open space in
Naples for holiday festivities. At this time of the
year, such festivities have traditionally included
some sort of a Christmas concert, large scale installation art set up in
the square, and, of course, on New Year's Eve, a
full-scale celebration with music and fireworks. The
square will not be dark or closed, but there will be
nothing officially loud, large and inviting to tempt
those who are attracted to such things. There are
other things going on in the city on a smaller and
interesting scale (such as those mentioned in the
item directly above this one). A large tree has been
set up in Piazza Plebiscito; it is artificial,
metallic and looks nice when illuminated at night.
Also, a few large globe ornaments (photo, above left) are
mounted in the square and nearby. They are globes
you would hang on the branches of a tree if the
tree were a thousand feet high. They are
illuminated at night and also look pretty nice.
It's all very low-key, and maybe that's not such a
bad idea.
(Dec 24) The Pope to come to Naples! Overheard in
the Vatican yesterday: Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe of
Naples was in Rome yesterday to present the pope
with the gift of a magnificent presepe, the
traditional Neapolitan manger display. At one
point, this exchange took place:
Cardinal: You Holiness, please come to Naples. If
you don't, they are going to stand me up in Piazza
Plebiscito and shoot me!
Pope:
OK. I'll be there. We don't want another martyr.
(Dec
26)
The new Mediterranean
Museum for Music, Art and Traditions
has been opened.
See
this link.
(Dec 29) The
hard-hearted folks at city hall have
had some time to think things over.
They have declared that Piazza
Plebiscito will not be a wet blanket
(see Dec. 23, above) on New Year's
among large city squares in Italy!
Nay, we will have fireworks and
"flying lights" over the square and
all along the seafront on via
Caracciolo. No one, least of all,
me, knows what "flying lights"
are or how they might differ from
your standard fireworks. I'd like to
think that inefficient and pompous
politicos are going to immolate
themselves in gas-bags over the
city, but that is probably not going
to happen.