It’s Snowing Inside
It was so cold inside our apartment today, Jennifer covered our oldest dog, Raster, with a fleece blanket. Already wearing a sweater, the arthritis-ridden six-year-old Schnauzer is so easily impacted by the cold that his first impulse, whenever we take him outside, is to freeze. In his tracks, that is.
It has been a cold winter in Milan, the likes of which I haven’t experienced in years. Though Europe as a whole has been experiencing record low temperatures, we’ve been unfortunate enough to have our building’s heat switched off a total of fourteen days in the last twelve weeks.
Unbelievable, isn’t it? There is something distinctly cruel about it. However, the owners of the roof, who decided to build an entire new floor above us (we live on the top floor) say that there’s no way around it. What’s worse is that they have no inclination to warn anyone. We find out when we get cold.
The heat was turned off last Friday. Eager to warm myself up, I decided to take a walk, and shoot some pictures of falling snow. One block way. I found the dog above, relieving himself in front of these election posters, urging Milanese to vote for the Lega Nord, Italy’s leading anti-immigrant party.
The Money Channel
Self-explanatory. Watching TV in Rome, January 31st.
Out of the Ghetto
The February edition of Pagine Ebraiche is now out. Pictured above is an author interview, centered around the publication of Israel vs. Utopia. The title is “From the Venice Ghetto to Rishon Le Zion”, in reference to my family’s greater path of migration to Ottoman Palestine. It’s the first of two pieces of Italian press on the book, the second of which is forthcoming next month.
There are a couple of errors in the profile, but they’ve since been corrected. It’s an otherwise terrific piece, which, most importantly, gave a certain member of my family, extremely self-conscious of our Italian heritage, an enormous amount of pleasure to read. Granted, his Italian is about as rotten as mine, but still good enough to get the gist of an 850 + word newspaper article.
Beware of Phoneys
The Italian army assists the police and undocumented foreign workers in rooting out unauthorized Prada imitations from China. Corso Buenos Aires, Milan.
Taking Samples
Over the course of the past two weeks, I’ve made a point of taking my digital audio recorder on my daily errands. Turning it on whenever I leave, the goal is to record as much of the city as I can.
Milan is as vibrant an audio experience as it is a visual one. For every image, such as the photo above, of an elderly Roma on the floor of the Duomo subway station, what you hear can be just as moving.
Warhol’s Milan
Election poster, PDL candidate. Milan, 01/10.
Mao, by Andy Warhol. Early 1970s.
Redistributing the Protein
Judging from the dozens of red stars hanging from the ceiling, the politics of this restaurant were unmistakeable. That the agitprop coincided with the best plate of meatballs I’ve ever had made it all that much more amusing. Trastevere, 12/28.
Middle Eastern Advertising
Migrant worker-directed mobile phone advert. Loreto station, 12/09.
Personal Aggregation
I hadn’t heard of the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography before it ran one of the first pieces on Israel vs. Utopia. Today, I was informed that the book had made it’s 2009 best-of list. IvU is the 6th book cited, as you work your way down the page. The reviewer writes with an enormous amount of energy, and is extremely supportive.
I just did an interview with a terrific local journalist, Anna Momigliano, for Italy’s Jewish monthly, Pagine Hebraiche. We covered a lot of territory, relating to the book, as well as my family’s background in Venice. It was a nice change of conversational coordinates to navigate, though I wish I’d had more time to do my homework on my Italian ancestors.
Planet Kebab
The hummus was excellent, even though it could have used a bit more tahina. Jennifer was definitely impressed.
All I could think about was repurposing the name of the place for a new book title. Vacationing in Trastevere, 12/29.
