And it's still only January?

OK, I've had enough of this freezing weather. There's no point in trying to enjoy a bucolic life in a winter that's as surprisingly evil as this one. It's too cold outside to do any pruning or cutting back, much less think about cleaning out the cantina. The wood's all chopped and ready for use and other than that, who cares? Although many of my friends and neighbors are heading even further north to happily stagger through drifts of snow and develop bright red cheeks and noses, I just want to hug the fireplace. I don't ski, skate or find any thrill in careening around corners in a flat-bottomed boat. I don't even like hiking around on hills covered with slippery leaves that hide the loose rocks and wild boar holes so easily avoided in good weather.

We had some 24-hour snow in Todi last month and I took the same series of photos I take every time it turns white outside. There's the one of the garage, the panorama of the Umbrian hills, the tall cypress in the driveway and the close-by firewood hutch. The pictures are the same year after year because I refuse to put on yet more layers of outerwear plus lace-up boots and crunch around the property in search of the perfect snow-laden tree. No, these four shots are available from various windows and I have plenty to send out whether a massive five inches fall or there's merely an early-morning dusting. Nobody looks at them anyway, so why bother taking more? I'll just label them by depth and email them according to the latest precipitation.

My streaming choice is Classical Minnesota Public Radio because their weather is always worse than ours. The frequent temperature updates help me to put our latitude into perspective and remember how really awful it is in the Midwest and Northeast at this time of year. At least the small amount of snow we receive generally melts in a couple of days and doesn't hang around like black lava until the middle of March. We left our snow shovel in New York 22 years ago and now my only step-cleaning measure is to toss handsful of granular fertilizer out the front door. Works just as fast as salt and doesn't kill the grass or leave any marks behind. Try it.

The Incredible Shrinking People of Italy

It's been a super holiday season, but it ain't over till the fat lady diets. Fortunately, that's not a problem at my house nor in most of Italy. While clothing sizes in the USA have shrunk to make porky people feel better about their girth, the opposite is happening in the boot of Europe. It's a chic boot, indeed, with pants and pullovers so tiny it's really hard for a tall, skinny Yank to find anything that fits. How extraordinary it is to buy an XL garment that I don't dare wash for fear I'll never get into it again.

After 22 years in Italy I no longer have a clue what size I am in the States. Without losing (or gaining) an ounce I have gone from a size 12 to a size 8 and -- on one memorable shopping day in New York -- even found myself zipped into a pair of size 6 jeans. Here in Todi I can't even find the equivalent of a size 12 and if I were 30 years younger a cropped top would look obscene. Young Italian women are so svelte they spend hours looking for teeny tops and pout if they can't find one that shows off their navel.

Italians have hearty appetites. They consume tons of carbs, don't go out of their way to exercise and eat lots of yogurt simply because they like it. During the year-end holidays, you never hear party guests moaning about having to go on a diet right after the first of January. Instead, dinner table conversations invariably turn to the last excellent restaurant meal or the splendid pasta recipe passed on from a friend in Sicily. Only when the current meal is tacitly rated inferior do Italians stop talking about food. It sure beats chatting about politics or the weather.

And this is just the beginning

What a disconcerting holiday season it is for the First World. Millions of folks in the States and Europe are wondering if two clementines and one hollow Chocolate Santa are enough to fill a Christmas stocking or whether it's really necessary to give the kids a gift on every day of Chanukah.

In Japan and Hong Kong, where lavish year-end banquets at fancy restaurants are a tradition, families are thinking of smaller and plainer events or considering just staying home. People who rarely use their kitchens are trying to figure out how grandma made all those special sweets.

In areas of our rich countries where scraping by and doing without is called "life", things can't get much worse and yet everyone fears that they will. And they're right.

The other day I saw an elderly Italian gentleman discreetly filtering through the supermarket's refuse bin. I ran through the emotions of surprise, concern and shame in quick order. This, after all, is small-town Todi and no one is supposed to go hungry here. By the time I'd located a package of chicken parts in the bottom of my shopping cart and thought up a story to go with them, he'd vanished. I really wanted him to have those drumsticks.