.italiaball/puck.

Another world in our world (Part 1 of 2)

Posted on May 18th, 2008 by Lango.
Categories: marsico nuovo.

“I let my mind wander where it wanted to go, spooling through my life and adventures, relishing the subtle threads that seemed to link all my experiences and that had combined to bring me here, into the heart of Basilicata, perched on the cusp of something wondrous…”

- David Yeadon, Seasons in Basilicata

How does one describe in words an indescribable series of events?

I stepped out of one world and into another about a month and a half back, and time stopped.

Taking the next step in my search for living distant relatives in Italy, I drove 900 kilometers (560 miles) south to Marsico Nuovo, the small mountain town of just over 3,000 inhabitants in the region of Basilicata where my Italian heritage began. It was from this tiny town, blanketing the hill where it sits like a patched quilt, that my great grandparents left everything they had and everyone they knew in 1890 to head to the unknown - America - the land of hope “where the streets are paved with gold.”

View of Marsico Nuovo from agriturismo

They left along with millions of other Italians from the region, a significant amount during the period of 1880-1920, convinced after years of suffering from natural disasters (earthquakes, volcanic eruptions), poverty, and disease in the region, that the only hope of survival was to leave everything and everyone behind, not knowing whether you’d ever see those relatives and family again, and board a ship in horrible conditions for three weeks to arrive in a country where another language was spoken, only menial labor was available, and your nationality was amongst the most vilified of immigrant groups to ever come ashore in America.

Hardly streets paved with gold.

And in a cruel bit of irony, it was most likely those Italian immigrants doing the actual street paving upon arrival in America.

I drove down with Magdalena, an Argentinean friend who I met in Florida in early ‘07, who’s currently teaching in Rome, herself also in search of long lost relatives in a small town only about 20 minutes from Marsico Nuovo. Our plan: one day in Marsico Nuovo to hopefully find any existing distant relatives of mine, half of a day in Pignola to hopefully find any of her distant relatives, and half a day in Potenza, the region’s capital and a city of about 75,000 people, visiting a mutual Italian friend’s family (he teaches and is doing his PhD in Florida, where I also met him).

So, armed with my great grandparents’ names and their dates of birth, we descended on a quiet and unsuspecting Marsico Nuovo town on a Sunday night, eagerly anticipating a Monday spent scouring every nook and cranny for anyone who knew my great grandparents.

Monument of the fallen soldiers, outside town hall

I had reserved a few nights at an agriturismo in town days before, and upon arrival from Rome Sunday night we noticed that the street on which the agriturismo was located was not coming up on the navigation system in the car. Needing help, we stopped at the first open bar we saw, which had a decent crowd (15 or so) intently watching an Italian Serie A soccer game on the TV hanging from the ceiling.

Usually not much will distract an Italian watching soccer, but two obvious non-locals walking through the door that night did the trick (remember that we’re talking about a town of 3,000 where not only everyone knows everyone, but everyone knows everything about everyone).

This is also a town and a region that is used to people fleeing, especially youth, for more job opportunities to the north. Their curiosity as to why two young adults with funny Italian accents were there that night took over, and they started inquiring about our presence.

We explained that we had both come down from our adopted homes to the north to spend a few days in search of distant relatives, hoping to bridge generational gaps going back 100+ years.

A group of four men detached themselves from the game and wanted to know more. Upon revealing my last name (shared by quite a few families in this small town) and what I knew about my great grandfather, they were already convinced I’d be leaving with a few more relatives in hand, and they immediately named different families who were likely possibilities. One of the men, Gianni, took a step closer to us. He looked me in the eyes and said in his rough southern Italian, “I see it in the shape of your nose, and your eyes, your eyes… I already know who your distant relatives are here.”

And in the end he was indeed spot on.

Gianni describing to me the Val D’Agri, the valley surrounding Marsico Nuovo

More chatting followed and then we realized it was past 11pm, and we had not yet checked in to the agriturismo, nor eaten dinner. No worries, Gianni assured us, his best friend Pino owned the agriturismo, and he’d lead us there in his car and make sure everything was all set. Michele, another interested party at the bar, said he’d take care of the dinner part. A quick phone call to his buddy who ran the restaurant up on the hill made sure they’d stay open past midnight for the two weary and hungry travelers.

Just two hours into our stay in Marsico Nuovo, and they were already moving tiny mountains to accommodate us in any way possible. And starting early Monday morning we were about to have our understanding of the word ‘hospitality’ completely redefined.

Our day started with a trip to the comune (town hall) to initiate some research. We climbed the stairs of the municipal building, walked down the corridor to the room with voices, and found ourselves in the town ‘library.’

And by library, I mean a room that rivals the size of my living room, boasting a selection of books perhaps equal in number to the selection sitting on my bookshelf at home.

But what the town library lacked in actual reading material, it was more than made up for by its librarian Giovanna, an absolute saint of a woman who committed herself to being the best host imaginable for Marsico’s two new guests.

Giovanna the town librarian

After briefly explaining our stories to Giovanna, she proceeded to introduce us to every human being who entered the town hall that morning, including Giovanni the area psychologist, Gino the town cop, and all their colleagues in the various municipal departments. Just about the only person we didn’t meet that morning was the town mayor.

We didn’t meet Mayor Domenico Vita until the afternoon.

But back to the morning, because at around 10am Giovanna proposed a little sight-seeing tour of Marsico Nuovo with her as a guide, apparently safe in assuming that the town library was unlikely to get swamped that morning with patrons.

We ran into Gianni outside town hall, the man who led us to the agriturismo the night before, and he joined us on our tour. They were intent on showing us two churches in town, one which also served as a small museum. Being Monday morning, however, both churches were closed (along with stores, this is very common outside of the big cities).

But we had connections. Gianni called up Gino, the town cop we had met earlier, and Gino came up to drop off the keys.

And so Gianni opened the church for us.

Our tour continued, down to the town’s main strip, stopping every time Giovanna wanted to introduce us to someone new, which was every 11 seconds. We stopped at the bar for caffé, then when leaving Giovanna spotted the town doctor walking to his office. She yelled out.

Mario invited us up to his office, through the waiting room and past waiting patrons, through the analysis room with assistants busy transporting samples, and into his office where he reached into a cabinet to pull out two copies of a rather thick book. He proudly showed us a 400-page book of photographs on the history of Marsico Nuovo and its people, assembled and written by him. Overall, at least a thousand photographs inside cover all aspects of Marsico, its history, and its people since the beginning of the 20th century, all of which have been scanned and are available for viewing online.

Mario opened each copy of the book, and wrote short dedications to Magdalena and I, and signed and dated each copy. A pretty nice gesture from someone who didn’t know either of us until just 10 minutes prior.

And so we slowly meandered back to the town hall. It was approaching lunch time, and Giovanna had another great idea… She would cook both of us lunch at her home about 200 feet from the town hall. After all, she said, the pasta sauce was already made.

Well, if the sauce is already made…

Giovanna in her kitchen

An hour preparing and an hour or so eating and drinking local wine filled us to the brim with fine food and drink, and also provided us a further glimpse of day-to-day life in this forgotten region of Italy.

Some more research at the town hall that afternoon revealed the neighborhood where my great grandfather grew up, and with that information Gianni was convinced at which family I would be soon calling distant relatives.

So it was time to go a-knockin’.

Part 2, new relatives galore, coming soon…

Click here for more pictures from the morning.

4 comments.

My other car is a Zamboni

Posted on March 7th, 2008 by Lango.
Categories: hockey, lodi, piacenza.

A little more than a month back I made a wonderful discovery.

First, though, the series of events that led to this discovery…

One weekday night in late January, I saw hockey played on roller skates.

A baseball teammate from nearby Lodi had asked if I’d be interested in checking out a game. It was the first time I had ever seen this sport played, though for the past two years I’ve been perusing articles about it in the local paper, a bit curious about the game and its appeal. Called hockey su pista here, it is apparently referred to as hardball hockey in the States, though I had never heard any reference to the sport in the US. The international powers are Portugal, Spain, Argentina, and Italy, and other countries rarely challenge their dominance in international play.

Incorporating parts reminding me of knee hockey (low nets, goalies always down on one knee), roller derby (roller skates, though sadly not as much physical contact), field hockey (shorter, curved stick), and floor hockey (basic elements of hockey), it sort of plays like overtime 4-on-4 in the NHL, in that players have some space to move, and are able to cycle the ball in the offensive zone for extended periods of time. There is little contact however, disappointingly, at least with respect to ice hockey.

The following video from the game is an example of a penalty shot given when a penalty is called on the opposing team (and a card is drawn). The offending player exits the playing surface for the penalty box for five minutes, but another player can substitute him during that time. At this time the home team, Lodi, was losing by a few goals, but had been given another chance to close the gap following a penalty on the opposing team…

The size and energy of the crowd surprised me, but my local friend explained that the sport is very popular in Lodi. Ice hockey not so much, as you’d have to head closer to the Italian borders with France, Switzerland, and Austria to find the ice hockey “hotbeds.”

Anyways, chatting further, I let it slip that I loved playing inline hockey growing up on the neighborhood streets in the States, and that I really enjoy watching ice hockey, always wishing I had played organized hockey as a youngster. This resulted in the following exchange with my friend…

Him: “Credo ci sia una squadra di hockey inline di Serie B qua a Lodi.” (I believe there’s a Serie B-level inline hockey team here in Lodi)

Me: “C’è una lega qua in zona?!?!?!? (There’s an inline league in this area?!?!?)

Him: “Si si.” (Yeah)

Me (jumping out of my seat): “Sei un grande!” (You’re the man!)

At this time I was already imagining myself on rollerblades becoming the Italian Gretzky, and basically tuned out the rest of the game we were watching, lost in my thoughts of past street hockey glory against neighborhood kids half my age translating into Italian inline stardom.

Upon returning home it took me approximately .14 seconds to google the league web site and find a Serie B team in Piacenza, a neighboring city to the south to where I’m living now.

And the Piacenza team was playing at home that Saturday night.

And so of course I was there, resisting the urge to hop the boards in streetclothes and grab a stick from an unsuspecting player. The quality of play surprised me a bit, and I would later find out the Piacenza team boasted a former Czech Republic ice hockey player as well as others with top-level Italian ice hockey experience. A chat with the Piacenza coach following their game led to me attending practice that Tuesday, a day after purchasing hockey rollerblades and extra equipment (helmet, elbow pads, shin pads, etc.) from an ex-player. One more practice that week and, despite still being a bit rusty, I was already making my Serie B Italian inline hockey debut the next weekend as defenseman in our game at Forlì towards the Adriatic coast…

This game was very interesting, you could say, for one particular reason.

It was my first time ever playing an organized hockey game in my life.

Meaning I had never suited up for a game with a referee, in a league, etc., whether on ice or an inline rink. Prior to Forlì, I had only played inline hockey on the street and in outdoor rinks with friends, rather sparingly, at least over the last few years. And here I was playing in an Italian 3rd-division hockey game against the top team in the league, and against players who had been playing organized hockey for quite some time.

Being my first legit game, this meant that certain little things that undoubtedly come naturally to seasoned puck players, do not necessarily yet come naturally to me.

For example, getting dressed.

I had only a slight idea as to how to put all that equipment I had just purchased on me in a manner in which it would actually function. You certainly don’t outfit yourself with all this equipment and protection when going down to the local tennis court to shoot a street hockey ball with some friends. Undoubtedly, my Italian teammates were wondering what drugs their coach was smoking for allowing this American who couldn’t dress himself not only to play defense, but actually start as a defenseman against the division’s top team.

Which brings us to the act of playing team defense. Again, when with friends, the defensive side of the game, you could say, suffers a bit. You don’t find much organized team defense in pick-up games. Rather important knowledge for a defenseman I would say, no?

Now I have watched thousands of ice hockey games whether in person or on television, and feel like I can hold my own talking about the game even with my Canadian friends who learn hockey before even learning to speak, but it’s a slightly different beast when you’re out there trying to keep the puck out of your own net with real live opponents streaking down the wings at you in the defensive zone.

As you can see, and I’ll fully admit, I have had some learning to do. Fortunately the basic hockey skills (skating, shooting, passing) I have down. It’s the little things and nuances of the game that only come with game experience that i need to master. But I’m learning pretty fast, and finished +2 in our last game (there were two goals scored by my line while I was playing, while none were scored against us, thus I finished +2), and generally felt comfortable and confident as well. It helps a lot that every practice is two hours of intrasquad playing.

And believe me, you’ll all know if I score a goal in a league game.

With the weather starting to turn and baseball preseason games beginning shortly, though, I’m going to have to cut short my already abbreviated hockey season fairly soon, but when baseball ends this fall, hockey picks up again, and I resume my quest to become the Italian Gretzky.

A bit unlikely, yes, but I’ll happily settle for being the next Dino Ciccarelli.

9 comments.

Patrick Ewing and the Poisson process

Posted on March 4th, 2008 by Lango.
Categories: codogno, queueing theory.

Ugh. Just what I needed this Saturday morning at the supermarket, a reminder of my least favorite grad school class, Operations Management.

Saturdays usually get pretty crowded, as supermarkets are all closed on Sundays (along with most everything else). Some supermarkets also are closed Monday mornings or Thursday afternoons, or from 12:30pm to 3:30pm every day during the week, or one grocery store will have whole wheat bread while another doesn’t, which makes it necessary to plan out your grocery shopping around strange hours (at least to Americans) and various stocking patterns, or you can find yourself without bananas or tomatoes or milk or Nutella (scary!) and no way to buy it (convenience stores with extended hours and limited grocery sections do not exist).

Obviously the supermarket store manager must have slept through his ops management class as well, as at peak buying time there were only two of four registers open, while at least ten people waited in each line with carriages full of groceries. And don’t think Italians wait patiently or in orderly fashion.

What was that queueing theory all about again? Something about teams playing better when their star players are absent? Oh wait, no, that’s the Ewing Theory.

Queueing theory, on the other hand, has to do with waiting in lines, and in high traffic times of the day it would be beneficial to have all checkout lanes going, as to provide the best and most efficient service to the customer, and reducing waiting time. At lower traffic times you can reduce checkout staff and still not have service affected.

But doesn’t that actually make good business sense?

And that, quite simply, is why it will never be used here in small-town Italy.

3 comments.

Which window level of the Duomo should be a triple?

Posted on January 27th, 2008 by Lango.
Categories: pienza, tuscany, wiffleball.

You ever get the feeling you’re doing something you’re certain no one else has ever done before?

Tonight I was out enjoying some good vino bianco with a friend and teammate when the discussion turned to our trip to Pienza, Tuscany in November and our unique experience one night in its main piazza. I was on writer’s strike at that time, let’s say, and therefore you won’t find nary a mention of it here before this. Fortunately, though, our blackleg friend Fango was amongst the traveling codognesi and documented the four-day waist-expanding trip rather well over at Bici Vecchia.

Fango alluded briefly in that post to wiffleball, referencing our midnight game played in Pienza’s main square, an event surely without precedence in the 550-year existence of Piazza Pio II. Oddly, though, for someone like me who evaluates peoples’ backyards on wiffleball potential, it was impossible not to note immediately how well the piazza is designed for this popular game.

Fango, after perhaps one too many glasses of vin santo, relays another theory, noting that Pope Pius II’s ideal Renaissance redesign of Pienza was certainly undertaken with plastic yellow bat and perforated white ball in mind:

Centuries later, a group of us made good on Pius’ promise to Wiffle athletes. On our recent trip to Tuscany, we played Wiffle Ball in Pienza’s historic central piazza. Crazy, yes, but true. We found many pieces of Pius II’s grand Wiffle Ball stadium still in place and were frequently surprised by the overarching beauty of his plan. The locker room/dugout along the wall of one abutting palace, replete with hooks for jackets. The batting practice cage alongside the ancient well. Infield/outfield practice from the lip of the central door. A perfectly placed circle bricked into the very pattern of the piazza from which the pitcher could serve up Wiffle junk.

He continues:

The lights shone bright on our field. Tickets were scalped to disbelieving neophyte fans for free – we were putting on a show and inviting all of Tuscany, even the papal ghosts, to join us. Except for when the municipal police rolled by: some of us scattered like high schoolers caught loitering in a midnight parking lot; one of us waddled off with the Wiffle Ball bat running the length of his leg. Our official photographer documented the scene. We laughed at the spettacolo and improbability of it all: Wiffle Ball in the House that Piccolomini Built for Wiffle Ball.

An aerial view of the piazza by day can be found here, with our mound clearly visible in its center.

11 comments.

The ballgame’s in the refrigerator, the door is closed

Posted on January 23rd, 2008 by Lango.
Categories: baseball, codogno, food.

One of the great traditions of baseball in Italy is the post-practice pizzeria trip. Over the course of four seasons (this coming season being my fifth in Italy), I wouldn’t even be able to render a guess at how many times I’ve found myself amongst teammates, mouths watering, awaiting arrival of that round, fully customizable creation from heaven.

With all our practices being at night, and often finishing around 11pm, it’s not uncommon to still be working on a pizza and a birra media (regular beer) after midnight a few nights a week. So, essentially, we work out at practice, including conditioning work, and then go gorge ourselves on pizza, insalata di mare (seafood salad), pane (bread), and beer. Not to mention, of course, the obligatory caffè following the meal as well (sometimes with grappa or sambuca), because it is apparently illegal in Italy to pass up any opportunity to drink coffee, even if approaching 1am.

Early on, well before I became a veteran pizzeria-goer, I made the mistake of not joining in the feast like the others (ordering, for example, only a salad). This is not a wise idea, unless you enjoy financing your teammates’ meals and drinks. That is because we ‘pay in the style of the romans’ (pagare alla romana), meaning when it comes time to pay, we’ll divide the check by however many people were at the table, provided you consumed something of course.

Therefore, because each person knows going in that they’ll be on the hook for an equal share no matter what they order, everyone is thinking along these exact lines, increasing the bill further since no one wants to be short-changed. Order another beer? Dessert? Limoncello? Why not?

It’s going to be divided amongst everyone anyway.

(As a side note, interestingly enough, I’ve found two opposite meanings of ‘pagare alla romana’ among Italians (link in Italian), as some believe it means for everyone to pay exactly what he/she ordered (also ‘to go Dutch’), while others contend (link in Italian) it means the opposite, dividing up the bill amongst those who consumed as I’ve stated here. Maybe it’s a geographical north/south thing. That can usually explain a lot. I’ll have to ask around.)

UPDATE: Check it out, I’m the big winner! Thanks Michelle!

6 comments.

And I hear Patty-cake improves hand-eye coordination

Posted on January 15th, 2008 by Lango.
Categories: baseball, canada, codogno.

“It’s probably going to be very strange to see for you, but here it’s kind of normal. Usually it happens around the 5th inning of games here in Fredericton. Because of the location of the field on a farm, we’ll have to stop the game and open a gate in right and let a flock of sheep pass through the field. Crazy, I know, but it only takes like 10-15 minutes, then we get going again right away.”

And I believed it.

At the time I was on a bus in 2000 with my new teammates in New Brunswick, Canada, a small province on the Atlantic coast. We were on our way to Fredericton, and it was to be my first game with the team since driving up from Boston just days earlier. To say I knew nothing about the league and teams would be a understatement. I was ripe for the picking. And one teammate took full advantage, convincing me during the trip (and it was indeed an impressive selling job) that I would see a flock of sheep pass through the field around the middle innings.

Of course, no sheep passed through the field (believe me, he made it sound very plausible). I think I ended up being a little disappointed, but it definitely served as another reminder that as a newcomer to any group or team, it’s pretty much a given that you’ll be targeted in one way or another for humiliation.

Which brings us to last night.

We had our second indoor baseball workout of the year, which at this point is conditioning only. We have a new player joining us from another team, but one who is already friendly with most of the guys, having already played with a handful in prior years. Last night was his first practice, and one teammate, who lives for these opportunities, came up with the idea of doing something completely ridiculous at the beginning of practice, but something in which we’d all take seriously, to see what his reaction would be.

The plan made its way around the rest of the team, but we also needed the coach to buy in to make it work. After a long run outdoors, we all made our way back into the gym and upon entering our coach made everyone line up in a straight line from one end of the gym to the other, all facing forward, for the first exercise…

“Ok, mani sulle ginocchia.” (Hands on knees)

“Faremo questo all’inizio, è un esercizio importante.” (We’ll do this exercise to start practices, it’s an important one.)

“Pronti?” (Ready?)

“Ok, dai, fate la cavallina!” (Ok, come on, let’s go everyone, leapfrog!)

7 comments.

Of or relating to the Byzantine Empire

Posted on January 11th, 2008 by Lango.
Categories: codogno.

I just returned from a trip back home to Boston for the holidays. It was great seeing fam and friends, the city of Boston, and being able to spend some of that green play money.

This was my first trip back home since effectively moving to Italy a little less than a year ago, and one question I got asked frequently while home was, “Are you going to stay in Italy long-term?”

Now, I really love the city of Boston. It has everything you’d want in a city, as far as I’m concerned, and every time I go back I seem to like it a little bit more. You can even confuse it for Europe (and Italy) at times. So why do I live in Codogno, a small town of 15,000 people, including zero other Americans?

That’s the question I get asked often here from Italians. “If you love Boston, why are you living here in Codogno?”

It’s not as easy to explain as you’d think. Italy can be impossible at times. I’ve completely given up trying to rationalize certain aspects of society here, lest I drive myself insane. Now I’m very fortunate I can still play baseball for some money here in addition to work, but that’s certainly not all that’s keeping me here. And of course there’s the people, the food, the wine, etc., but that doesn’t explain it either. There’s just something about living in Italy (at least in Codogno/Milan and Parma, the two areas I’ve called home) that makes it difficult to see myself somewhere else.

It’s not easy to put into words, though. At least my own words. Fortunately, Tobias Jones, in his excellent book The Dark Heart of Italy, finds a way to describe this feeling, which he shares (emphasis mine):

“I realise I have become something I never thought possible: patriotic and proud about being an adopted Italian. In more honest moments, I realise that I might never quite be able to leave the country. That longing to leave, and the inability to pull yourself away from the bel casino, the ‘fine mess’, has been written about for centuries. Using the usual prostitution metaphor, one of the country’s most important patriots, Massimo D’Azeglio, wrote: ‘I can’t live outside Italy, which is strange because I continually get angry with Italian ineptitude, envies, ignorance, and laziness. I’m like one of the people who falls in love with a prostitute.’ That, in fact, is precisely the feeling of living here: it is infuriating and endlessly irritating, but in the end it is almost impossible to pull yourself away. It’s not just that everything is troppo bello, ‘too beautiful’, or that food and conversation are so good. It’s that life seems less exciting outside Italy, the emotions seem muted. Stendhal wrote that the feeling one gets from living in Italy is ‘akin to that of being in love’, and it’s easy to understand what he meant. There’s the same kind of enchantment and serenity, occasionally insecurity and sadness. And writing about the country’s sharp pangs of jealousy and paranoia, Stendhal knew that they exist precisely because the country’s ‘joys are far more intense and more lasting’. You can’t have the one without the other.“

What he said.

7 comments.

Hey, what do ya know. They’re little footballs…

Posted on January 10th, 2008 by Lango.
Categories: codogno.

After more than a few months of complete and utter neglection, I’ve decided it’s time to resuscitate the site. You’ll notice a few changes, of course, as I’ve simplified things and pulled some of the bells and whistles. One new bell (or is it a whistle?) is the ability to change the background picture by clicking on any of the little square boxes at the top. Ok, that should keep you entertained for about 15 seconds…

Hmmm, now what?

3 comments.