Month: October 2022

No, Big Tech isn’t going to save the world. But it’s made our little world a little easier

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If you’ve ever worked with me, you’ll know that I have distinct geek tendencies. Back in the late 1990s I took a break from being a full-time editor to play with machines. The project involved bringing a few newsrooms up to modern standards. One newsroom went from an archaic and incredibly strange Windows PC and Mac setup with no way to track files, to what was then the standard for publishing, the Quark Publishing system. But it was pretty no-frills at the time, with the first project not having direct Internet access until a year or two after the system was in use.

I think about technology a lot, although at this point I don’t earn a living by sharing those thoughts. But with our weird one foot in each place life, I have to say that tech has smoothed the way, making it easier to stay in touch with family and friends, and—sometimes I’m not completely convinced this is a good thing—it’s made it easier to live similar lives on both sides of the pond when it comes to music and video. I guess that I’m writing this because I get tired of the constant drone of negativism about where we are in 2022 when it comes to humans and machines. Yeah social media can be a menace. But the emphasis is on “can.” It doesn’t have to be and the fact that it’s easy to misuse makes it more important for us to be vigilant.

I’ll come clean right away: We’re in the Apple ecosystem; we trade a little more expense for fewer complications. The Spartan Woman started it years ago when she brought a Mac home from school one summer. Her school’s principal figured that the computers would be safer living with teachers than stored in the school over the long holiday. Back then I was taken immediately by how easy the Mac made it to do stuff like move files around, rename them, duplicate them, etc. I was a convert, and the following year, we bought our first Mac. I actually used it to gather wire copy and send it into the publishing system at work.

SO WHERE DOES TODAY, AND THIS BLOG come in? Well, when you think about it, we’ve got the digital equivalent of an RV—we carry our media home around, as long as we’ve got an internet connection. Only it weighs a little less and uses a lot less energy.

Our approach: We only buy laptops as computers, and we have iPhones; they like to work with each other. iPads are optional. We have little HomePod mini speakers, so we can have our music in both places without carrying around CDs (remember them?). All of our devices work with both U.S. and European voltages. I bought some Apple plugs that fit right into the AC adapters, so there’s no bulky and problematic adapters. We’ve laid in a supply of European rechargers, too, so that we don’t have to cart everything around. The only time things get complicated is when we aren’t going from one home to another directly. In that case, we need a couple of rechargers with Euro or American plugs to work in hotels and rented apartments.

Casa, dolce casa, discreetly high tech

In Italy, we don’t watch broadcast TV; we have a smart TV with an Apple TV. I know that’s redundant, but the Apple TV interface is much easier to use, and it gives us access to more services. The setup gives us Italian public TV stations via the app RAI Play, plus all the streaming services that we use, like Netflix and Mhz Choice. By the way, the latter is terrific, featuring European programming with subtitles, just in case you’re challenged by, say, Icelandic.

I guess that I wouldn’t be writing this post if we just vacationed for a week or two. Back then, we somehow managed to live without our music collection for a couple of weeks. But we’re older and spend a lot of time at home, especially in the winter, when Umbria is usually dark, cold, and wet. And thinking back further, The Spartan Woman and I wrote each other nearly every day that we were apart. Yeah, it was sweet.

Now, though, I can do remote work when it happens. Our hilltop Italian ‘net connection isn’t the fastest, but it gets the job done. And when it wigs out, we use our phones as hot spots. So what if a video chat is grainy or freezes every so often? It’s better than paying through the nose for a 3-minute phone call, like in the old days.

Some practical tips:

• You’ll need a lot of rechargers, recharging cables, adapters, dongles, etc. Put them all in a big Ziploc bag and carry that bag in hand luggage. Make sure your devices are fully charged; USB ports on planes aren’t the most powerful. Buy a portable battery pack or two just in case. (My bag of tricks on the right.)

• Put your laptop in a padded case. Because of airport security, make sure it isn’t a pain to haul it out and open the case. The faster you can get stuff in and out, the faster you’ll get through security. European airports seem to have more sophisticated scanners and the more polite security folks don’t make you take everything out of a knapsack or computer bag.

• If you have a choice, buy what you can in the U.S. Italian value-added tax (sales tax in Amurrican) is 22 percent, versus 8.something in New York. The weakening Euro means higher prices in Europe in general. There are negligible differences between U.S. and Euro models, but you might be disoriented by the laptop keyboards on European models. They typically have a bigger “return” key, and have keys for letters with accents, such as è and á.

• Don’t expect to find wifi everywhere. In fact, if you’re a frequent traveler, you might notice fewer hotspots than before. Why? European mobile plans cost a lot less than plans in the U.S., and typically have tons of high-speed data included. So Europeans these days have less of a need to hook up to a wifi network when what the speeds they get on cellular networks is perfectly adequate.

What’s that about how you can’t go home again?

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I’m sitting in the kitchen of our house in New York. It’s been awhile since I posted from here, say, six months or so. We got here a week ago and I guess I could’ve posted some fluffy thing about our smooth voyage back to the land of the compulsory national anthem.

But then it happened.

We innocently took ourselves up the street to our friendly locally owned pharmacy for the latest Covid omnicron bi-whatever booster shot. We’d faithfully gotten every vaccine, every booster. In Italy, we stayed away from crowds. We wore masks when we weren’t obligated to. We got here via one long van ride piloted by our friend Angelo, one night in a beachside hotel, an early morning cab ride and two Lufthansa flights, the first from Rome to Munich, then Munich to JFK. The flights were jam-packed, so much so that we got alerts on our phones to check hand baggage if possible to leave enough space in the overheads.

So we masked on board, except for meals. Sorry kiddos, but these old peeps gotta eat and drink. Then, remasked, The Spartan Woman settled in for some movies, while I, the dissolute blogger, took advantage of some pharmaceuticals and the delicious bubbly Henkell Trocken supplied by Lufthansa to get some needed sleep. As far as I’m concerned, the best flight is the flight that I barely remember.

Immigration in NY was swift, lubricated by a nice conversation with an elderly lawyer and his charming wife while on line for Mr. Passport Man. “How long was your stay?” asked the passport guy. “Six months, more or less.” Welcome home. An Uber later and a frenzied Lola the Bassotto (dachshund in Italian) was doing circles and screaming at the top of her lungs when we saw her. It was nice to be back.

So fast forward…it’s Saturday. We take the pooch out for a walk and head for the Greenmarket. We’re always thinking of Sunday pranzo (midday meal, spiritually more than just lunch), so we buy mussels, some beautiful tuna and swordfish, chard, and apples. Corn, too. In other words, we’re back to our New Yawk life.

Snug Harbor: Where art and botany live together in perfect harmony

Or so we thought.

It started late Saturday. You know that intuition that something isn’t quite right? I felt hot. I felt cold. I felt hot and cold at the same time, I couldn’t tell the difference. Pressure built up in my head. I looked over to TSW. She seemed to be a bit ragged too. It got worse. We tested. Negative. Phew. It’s just a reaction to the booster.

It wasn’t. A day (or was it two? It’s all a blur) later, TSW tests positive. I took a few home rapid tests, still negative. Still, as of Monday morning I would’ve been happy to have been knocked unconscious. I put my hoodie on and wrapped myself up in a fleece blanket. Then took it all off and hung out in my T-shirt. Rinse. Repeat. Or something like that. In the back of my fevered brain (yes, I had a fever of 102 by this point) I knew I was on deadline for an actual, someone’s paying me article. In a mighty show of pitiful mind over matter, I sat up and banged out a draft. Then I collapsed in an easy chair. I don’t remember much else except that an hour before filing the piece the next day I decided that I wrote it backwards, and rearranged paragraphs. Good thing I had 30 years of editing experience, so doing that didn’t take much brainpower or patching around the moved pieces.

She had to rest after all the excitement of seeing us.

More tests for me. Same result. TSW and Dr. Joe said get thee to a PCR test. Did that. Still negative, while TSW, daughter no. 2 and BF of daughter no. 2 all positive This does not make sense. Nope. None.

So that’s where we are. We get a little better every day. The other three at least have a name for how rotten they feel. Trust me, I’m not having sympathy pains, though by now I’m a day or so ahead and can approximate a human being.

We never did have that nice seafood dinner.

Enough of that old stuff. Let’s see some modern architecture

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People come here to see old stuff. There’s Assisi, with the hundreds of years old basilica, with Giotto’s frescoes. Perugia has a still intact Etruscan gate and mysterious Etruscan tombs on its outskirts. Spoleto has a Roman amphitheater. For those of you who missed Ancient European History 101, the Etruscans predated those newcomers, the Romans. You can see more modern construction from, say, the 1500s. And apartment buildings that are 100 years old or more are considered to be kind of new.

Along comes Kid no.2 and her partner in art and life. We haven’t seen them in months. And the atrociously hot, then tropically rainy summer kept us from going out much. (So did our continued Covid vigilance) So when those two arrived, it gave us a chance to get out of the house, off the mountain, and play sightseeing guides for a week.

What do you want to see? we asked. “Al (the BF) wants to see some modern architecture. Well…. But it does exist. Umbrians don’t sit on their ancient marble doorstops. And to be honest, looking for modern works was a nice break from Olde Europe,

Friends told us about Il Carapace, a winery like no other. The name means shell—most commonly a turtle shell, but animals like shrimp and lobsters have them too, The producers of prestigious wines like Ferrari bubbly, Lunelli, decided that they wanted a statement canteen.in their Umbrian winery, Castelbuono. So they commissioned sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro to build it.He’d done work for them before, but I have to say, this building came almost as a shock as we drove through sunflower fields and old-style vineyards. The Carapace rises out of the landscape like some alien space ship, a little menacing and a little humorous at the same time.

He asked for modern. He got it.

The surprises don’t end when you enter the belly of what could pass as a Klingon ship. The theme is copper, which clads the exterior, and whose paint adorns the inside. You feel like you’re in the belly of the beast, and a 360-degree view lets you meditate on the ancient vines. Castelbuono produces Sagrantino—Umbria’s most prestigious wine—and Rosso di Montefalco, a less intense, more easily quaffed red wine. If you need a Tuscan comparison, think Brunello to Rosso di Montalcino. The aging barrels sit in a huge underground space.

We had to eat, espcially after sampling three wines with a little nosh, so we left the Carapace to get lunch in nearby Bevagna. We were back in old Umbria, which has its abundant charms, not the least of which was a salad of raw ovoli mushrooms, which in their way looked as alien as the Carapace.

The mushrooms from another planet

A COUPLE OF DAYS LATER, we went to Foligno. We’d never been, except to the train station, which is a major transfer point for trains from the main Rome-Ancona line and the pokey local “regionale” to Perugia. The object? The modern art museum, the Centro Italiano Arte Contemporanea.

Foligno is unexpectedly interesting. On the outer rings of the small city, there are lots of Stile Liberty, or Art Moderne villas. There’s a long wide pedestrian street filled with porticos with bars and restaurants, and tons of shops and terrific window shopping. Who knew?

The modern art museum has one thing in common with the interior of the Carapace: a copper color. It basically looks like a copper box in the middle of a older neighborhood, and is instantly recognizable because of that. The permanent collection is pretty small and unfortunately they were between exhibits. But there’s more….

A 10-minute walk brought us to a deconsecreated church, the Chiesa della SS. Trinità in Annunziata. where, in the middle is a giant skeleton replica, by the secretive and subversive artist Gino de Dominicis. Its official name, “Calamita Cosmica,” or cosmic calamity. It’s pretty amazing, the kind of thing that held our attention as we walke around it. It’s not just the thing itself; it’s the context. De Domicis is described in the work’s website as “a controversial figure in modern postwar Italian art, with an eccentric personality, himself an endless work of art, original and full of secrets.” All I know is we just stared in wonder as we walked about the beast and tried to take photos that did it justice.

Well, why not?

Of course, we worked up a powerful hunger after that expedition. Happily, Foligno was there for us, with a festival of first courses. In the progression of an Italian meal, the “primo,” or first course, is actually the second. It’s composed of pasta, soup, or rice. Note that it is not what Americans call a main course; to an Italian, a huge plate of overcooked spaghetti serving as the main meal is a travesty. The festival was terrific, even if it was a rainy day and we had to traipse all over the center of town. Big signs and a handout map guided us to various restaurants around town that served regional primi; it was fun to pick and choose, for a really good price of €5 (5 bucks) a plate, with cheap good wine to go with it.

A “tris” of primi

We’ll be going back to Foligno as soon as we can. The festival got us acquainted with what seemed to be dozens of cool bars, restaurants and shops. Can’t wait.

Don’t worry, it’s still safe to visit us

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When I was 18 I was shipped off to my grandmother and aunt in Sicily. I didn’t have a summer job, it was in the middle of a bad recession, and my parents didn’t want me hanging around. It was terrific; my Italian cousin and I spent a good part of that summer hitchhiking around Palermo, going to the beach, getting a good buzz on in the local bars, and going to parties. Even as a 17-year-old, he was an excellent tour guide, and I got to know my father’s city.

Why am I telling you this? Back in 1975, Italy’s communist party typically got about a third of the vote in national elections, and the American press was sounding the alarm that the country “would go communist.” As I got ready to leave for Italy, people kept asking me if it was safe to go to a place that was really about to turn, you know, communist. I was a smarmy college kid then and dismissed all the talk. And when I got to Italy, I saw that things hadn’t changed much since the last time I’d been there, except that the developers’ rape of Palermo continued apace. And that was definitely not a commie plot.

In other words, after this last election, which will bring the right to power, don’t sweat it too much. I am not dismissing its importance, however. I am not a fan of Giorgia Meloni and her fascist-descended Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) party. The tone of Italy will change. But life will go on, as it did a couple of years ago when the Matteo Salvini’s Lega right wing party dominated the news with its hostility toward refugees sailing across from Libya. The tone of the country will change in ways that matter most to foreigners in government and media, and locals who pay attention to government machinations. But you’ll be able to visit the Vatican, have an Aperol spritz at aperitivo time, and do the things that most people do when they visit Italy.

I’m not trying to trivialize things. But at my age, I’m trying to be less hysterical about everything, and definitely less hysterical than Americans tend to be. And I’ll try to explain why 40 percent of Italian voters (about a third didn’t bother to vote) chose the right wing coalition.

First of all, you can argue that the outgoing government headed by “SuperMario” Mario Draghi (left) was illegitimate—it’s a fact that he wasn’t elected. The outgoing parliament, elected in 2018, had two leading parties, the 5 Stelle (5 Star) rebel party and the right wing Lega. The first government (in parliamentary systems, the term “government” means administration featuring one or more parties) was a coalition between those uneasy partners. 5 Star is a weird, populist group composed of disaffected people, techies, environmentalists and libertarians that tries to evade the usual left-right definition. (When it comes down to it, it’s a volatile sort of left-ish party that doesn’t know how to effectively govern.) The Lega’s Salvini, who was interior minister in that administration, decided that he’d rather be prime minister and spent the summer playing DJ and flirting with the ladies on the beach. Campaigning, in other words.

Salvini brought down that coalition of convenience, but got fucked: The Democratic Party (PD) and 5 Stelle got together and did an end run around him. He and his party were cast out of government, while the previous losers (the PD) became part of a governing coalition. (When I say cast out of government, I mean the ruling coalition. They stay on as members of parliament.) After a PD-5 Stelle coalition fell, Italy’s president during the Covid pandemia got most major parties to play nice and unite under Draghi; Meloni kept her party out of it.

SO, WAS “DEMOCRACY” SERVED by this? The end run pissed a lot of people off—a lot of conservatives, but also people who thought that the will of the people, as expressed in the election, had been subverted. And it wasn’t the first time; back about 10 years ago during the Euro crisis, investor speculation led to the fall of Silvio Berlusconi’s regime and the installation of a technocratic administration. And the dissatisfaction wasn’t just among people on the right. A lot of people who might have voted for the center-left felt that the PD left them out in the cold, that, basically, the PD and its allies were basically supporting governments that were more anxious to satisfy institutional investors rather than people. (This all begs a bigger question: What does the left stand for anyway? That’s another blog post. Or ten,)

So where are we now? First of all there’s none of the weird histrionics that characterized American transitions of late. The winning coalition partners are jockeying for position. Meloni and her male partners are negotiating and probably arguing over cabinet posts. Given the bad showing of Salivini’s Lega, you can probably bet that he isn’t going to call the shots in her government.

What won’t and will change? Unfortunately, they’ll be restrictions on immigration and probably more rhetoric directed at preserving the traditional family. A lot of the latter will fall on deaf ears. Lots of Italian couples don’t bother to get married, even after they’ve had kids. Unlike what happens in the U.S., I don’t think the incoming government will dismantle Italy’s terrific public healthcare system and other features of this fairly modern welfare state. We’ll still have fast trains, a decent amount of public transit and most of what makes Italy’s quality of life so good. We’ll also probably see more demonstrations as unpopular programs are introduced. Meloni now owns whatever happens and won’t be able to stand in opposition.

A word about the democratic process. Much of the press coverage of the election asked, through an American filter, whether Meloni and her crew are “a danger to democracy.” It’s really too early to tell but I have a couple of thoughts on that score: First of all, Hitler was elected. Both George W Bush, first term, and Trump were “elected” despite having lost the popular vote. And both U.S. presidents ruled as though they’d been given a mandate. I think we as Americans confuse procedure with substance. There’s more to governments and nations than whether people voted or not—there’s substantive issues, and whether governments are responsive to what their citizens need.

The U.S., even before this recent crisis of democracy, has pretty much screwed its populace for the past 40 years. Workers lost most protections, healthcare still remains a pay as you play game, as does most of politics. Millions of jobs were shipped overseas, and Americans aren’t guaranteed paid time off, as are Italians and citizens of the European Union. So ask yourself whether Americans can really say that before the advent of a wannabe strongman like Trump, that their democracy was really working anyway.

Image credit for chart at the top: CC-by-SA 4.0 (Wikicommons)

Meloni photo: Vox España, CCO, via Wikimedia Commons

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