["Veltroni, don't get any ideas" is the message of this poster, put up by Azione Giovani, representing the far-right. The guy was in the process of covering it with a Partito Democratico poster for a referendum to "save the schools" from the proposed, enormous cuts.]
Interesting times here in la bella Italia. Today there's a transit strike that was hardly publicized, leaving many people stuck wherever they were without warning. They usually have the good manners to inform the populace of their impending actions. There are no metro buses at all, so Damiano walked an hour to work this morning. So far today, I've seen no manifestazione passing by the apartment building, but the day's not over yet! There are plenty of videos on YouTube that show the potentially violent outcomes of these days of unrest, and then it seems that the right-wing kids got pissed off that they were shown on TV wielding pipes in the Piazza Navona, so they went over to try and wreak havoc at the RAI studios.
And I'm guessing that you've heard about Berlusconi's latest utterly stupid and inappropriate remark. 1573 comments on the New York Times blog at last count--most of them from Italians, apologizing. O Silvio --
In spite of all of this, you can feel the post-November-4th-collective sigh over here as well. Probably nine out of ten people whom you see spontaneously weeping in the streets are Americans, but the joy all around is nearly palpable. And Italy has always been good for "dolce vita" distractions, even in difficult times.
Food of course is one such.
Almost looks like a dessert, doesn't it? But no, it's a "vellutata di ceci con rosmarino" -- chickpea puree flavored with rosemary, with a balsamic reduction making that pretty design on the top. And the funny little guys in the middle? Moscardini, teeny-weeny squiddy cephalopods, doesn't make them sound very tasty but they are.
And of course, the language here is just about as tasty as the food. You probably recognize the word moscardino as a synonym for dandy or fop, Rodolfo in La Boheme describing Mimi, coquette who flirts with everyone, attracting the attention, for example, of "un moscardino di Viscontino." At dinner, we were laughing about the possibility that dandies were called Moscardini because the curl of their mustaches resembled the curled tentacles of the little creatures. But no, it's probably more like the Italian version of the French word Muscadin, those fancy royalists who went around with the musk lozenges (musk lozenges? ick).
And then the splendidly mimetic word vellutata -- velluto is the Italian word for velvet, so you don't even need to ask about the texture of the chickpea puree. Oh, speaking of such, I promised that I would make some babbaganoush for this evening. Gotta run.
What was I saying about distractions?
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