Priorities of the Tuderti

The recent terremoto in Abruzze is not a subject for light-hearted blogging. Still, even a horrible natural disaster can provide a glimpse into how a culture functions and thrives.

The morning after the earthquake, our little hill town of Todi sprang into action. The local civil defense committee put together a cooperative of public, private and religious aid organizations and residents were given donation information within 36 hours. A truck with emergency supplies began making daily trips to L'Aquila as fast as residents could fill it up.

"So what?" you're asking. After all, the same thing happens in most of the world. Well, the difference is that Todi normally doesn't do anything in a hurry, let alone in an organized fashion.

First of all, we love getting together for planning purposes but we hate making decisions. It takes weeks, months, even years before the town council votes on a proposition as banal as what color to paint the walls of the new public WC. As soon as everyone thinks the issue finally has been resolved in favor of cappuccino, another concerned citizen will stand up and filibuster for medium-light pistacchio and the matter is tabled all over again.

Second, initial interest in a project is always huge and subsequent action is practically non-existent, even on the part of the organizers. If 100 people enthusiastically show up to help create a social center for new Todi residents (in this case, immigrant workers who embrace Islam), they'll probably never receive so much as a follow-up note announcing another meeting. The social center is a great idea, but it's never been tried before and nobody knows how to proceed. By the time someone takes a first step toward realizing the project, the original "new residents" will be Italian citizens on retirement pensions and their grandchildren will be totally assimilated.

The third reason nothing gets done is that we stubbornly cling to our old methods of mass communication. The favored way to spread the news is still by word of mouth and in today's world the Tuderti are publicity-challenged. Nobody finds out about anything in a timely manner.

If a famous musician is booked to serenade us in our splendid theater, the posters may go up on sidewalk sandwich boards a week beforehand, but the ticket office will be open for only one undisclosed day in advance and at a time that is never announced. This is probably the reason all our performances begin at least 30, and often 45, minutes late: everyone shows up at the last minute hoping to secure a seat.

A great many events are publicized after they occur, perhaps as a kind of review: when we read about it in the paper, we're all assured that Wednesday's dedication of the new bus shelter was a fine occasion and well attended. And if we'd been alert we would have seen that photocopied notice somebody taped to a lamp post on Tuesday.

It occurs to me that this last-minute dissemination of news may be related to the Italian tradition of burial within 24 hours of death. Each town and village has its own wall for death notices and it's imperative to check for new ones first thing every morning. If you're tardy in your perusal, you may miss the 10:00 funeral mass altogether unless you also subscribe to the system of news by word of mouth.

From this practice it's just one step sideways to Todi's ability to make an uncharacteristically swift response to L'Aquila. Everyone is accustomed to moving fast when it comes to honoring the dead, known or unknown, and to speedily comforting the family with home made offerings of cakes or vegetable soup. When it comes to this, just about everything else in our life can wait.