The First Briefing Book Was Anything but Brief

I spent all day Sunday glued to Barack's web site for a last review of the Citizens' Briefing Book. For nine hours I only moved from the screen when it was absolutely necessary, but even at that I could only cover four subjects in depth.

I don't envy the staff members and/or volunteers who are sifting through the public's thoughts. It will be pretty easy to eliminate comments posted in the wrong category: most of them belong in personal stories. My goodness, there were an awful lot of people who just wanted to whine rather than follow instructions and make a suggestion.

Then there were those whose ideas should have been in Economy rather than Health Care or in Veterans rather than Education. Perhaps a lot of writers figured it wouldn't hurt to put their complaint/suggestion in each and every category, just to be safe. And did anyone else notice a wee bit of commercial lobbying going on?

The majority of folks, however, figured out exactly what to do and obviously appreciated the opportunity to participate in the world's longest blog. There weren't many original ideas, but the Will of the People came through loud and clear.

It was also nice to see that very few contributors took it upon themselves to annoy the rest of us. It shouldn't be difficult for Obama's people to remove the one-line cry to end economic slavery that popped up on every page of every subject in the Briefing Book. If anyone finds out what that was all about, please leave a comment or send me a note at lacasellaumbria@yahoo.com.

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.

Saturday Kindergarten

This afternoon we held the Izzalini kids' Christmas party and I made three different doughs and five different cookies to take to the event. I thought I'd just stay an hour and chat with people, but I wound up getting involved in their Christmas ornament project and didn't return home until supper time. I made an outsized plastic globe with Santa dreaming of the gifts he's going to distribute and Donner dreaming of getting back to the forest. It was far too subtle for the tall and small people of Izzalini. They all made globes with mangers inside.

Our Izzalini Christmas tree was put together today by a nice young guy with a cherry-picker. Tomorrow we dedicate our outdoor manger scene and then the lights will be turned on. Oooooo! I think the tree is about 25 feet tall and has three strings of lights.

Speaking of cookies, this was the first time I've made any in about 20 years. I picked out three new, simple recipes and made the dough yesterday. Early this morning I formed and baked the cookies and found out what worked and what didn't. Shame on me, I practiced on the kids. They were all gobbled up, however, even the misshapen ones.

As I was working I remembered my mother's one and only holiday cookie. She made a roll-out dough, which I am now convinced contained no butter but only Crisco, and stamped out various theme patterns. They were AWFUL.

Welcome to Storm Central

We've been waiting and waiting for rain and now, by golly, we're getting it. Also wind, hail and great sound-and-light effects. It's not very cold -- about 52 F. -- but certainly dark enough to warrant turning on three energy-saving lamps in the soggiorno during the day. I do not feel the slightest guilt.

From the Internet weather map I gather that central and southern Italy are stuck in a low front that gives us a good smack, drops to lick the sole of the boot and then heads north again. It's pretty on the map -- great circles of red and yellow and green swirling around restlessly -- but real life during a country storm is largely monochromatic.

When it's raining, there's nothing to be seen in any direction. After a downpour passes, I check outside and see gray sky, gray trees, gray leaves and, of course, my gray stone house and matching metallic gray car. With luck, Harry, the red cat, runs out and momentarily forms a bright spot on the landscape.

The odd spells of clear sky and flashing sunshine that occur in this type of storm come on so suddenly that it's rather like watching The Wizard of Oz in 3-D. The land sparkles and the colors are sumptuous, but there's no time to spare. That's the instant we race outside for firewood or drive off to wherever we need to go before the next siege starts.

2008 Olive Harvest - The End

The unreliable neighbor in our mini-cooperative still has not returned to Izzalini to pick his olives. The rest of us have decided to quietly eliminate him from our group effort. Next year we'll look for another partner. Or maybe our own trees will have such an abundance of fruit we won't need one. Time will tell.


In the meantime, we're looking forward to transferring our oil to one-liter bottles and celebrating the harvest with bruschetta. There's nothing quite as satisfactory as slicing up a loaf of day-old country-style bread, toasting it over wood coals and then annointing it with fresh, home-grown oil. Our local bread, called pane comune, is made without salt and is a perfect foil for the tasting. Thereafter, I do sprinkle a bit of salt on the bread but I don't tell anybody.

If you'd like to see bruschetta-making, click on today's title.