"You may also feel like you squandered your summer — you didn’t sip Negronis on a pebbly Italian beach or admire enough fulsome hydrangeas..."

"... and now have regrets. August can be really challenging, said Amelia Aldao, a New York City psychologist who specializes in cognitive behavioral therapy. 'You are expecting your summer or your vacation to be great, and then it’s not. There’s often a mismatch of expectations, which can be a trigger for anxiety.'"

From "Do You Have a Case of the ‘September Scaries’? Late August can be a time of sleepy summer pleasures — and pit-in-the-stomach dread for what’s coming after Labor Day. Here’s how to manage all the feelings" (NYT).

"Scaries" is one of those babyish words I'm surprised to hear adults using, like "hurty." We were talking about the phrase "hurty words" yesterday. And now it's "September Scaries." But I've already blogged about "scaries" — back in June 2023, "New term learned: "Sunday scaries." It was an answer in a crossword to the clue "Feeling of dread heading into a workweek."

Why are there high expectations for summer when all you're looking for is relaxation? If you just wanted to lounge and booze, how can you feel you've "squandered" anything if it turns out you didn't? If you wasted the summer, isn't that what you wanted? You just wanted it more prettily situated, on pebbles. In Italy.

Here I am, on pebbles, undrunk, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, 2 years ago:

"Through it all, Europeans tried their best to bear up, especially in places where air conditioning is still a luxury, or frowned upon."

"Some people worry about the pollution it causes; some older Italians just believe it’s bad for health."

From "Dangerous Heat Grips Much of Europe, With More to Come/A punishing heat wave broke records in southern Europe and hasn’t peaked yet in some places, prompting warnings to residents, employers and tourists to alter their habits" (London Times).

What is this belief held by older Italians... and could they be right? People love the comfort of air conditioning and at some point feel fiercely attached to it and resistant to hearing that it might be bad. Obviously, it's bad for the environment, but what about our health? 

But first, what exactly to the old Italians think? According to Grok, the idea is that you should keep you body in balance and not move it back and forth between hot and cold. And they speak of "colpo d’aria" or "colpo di freddo" — "blow of air" or "blow of cold" — as a cause of various pains and respiratory ailments. There's a mistrust of modern inventions and a preference for traditional ways, such as opening windows, fanning, and seeking out the shade. Natural seems better than artificial. 

Is there an element of truth in that... truth... or beauty?

I wondered if The London Times had ever talked about "colpo d’aria" in any other article. Answer: Yes, 3 times:

I'm seeing a lot about the Jeff Bezos wedding, but how do we know he's really getting married?

There are motivations to put on this big show that are separate from any reasons to enter a marriage in the legal sense.

Consider this: "The embarrassing truth Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez haven't revealed about their $20m 'wedding'" (Daily Mail)(reporting that a Venetian official supposedly said no registrar had been appointed for the ceremony).

And here's the NYT: "What to Know About the Wedding of Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez/The second marriage for both is taking place in Venice, Italy, under a shroud of secrecy and amid a swarm of speculation": "Italy has a variety of rules surrounding marriage rites, which can involve religious ceremonies, often performed in Roman Catholic churches. The Sánchez-Bezos wedding, however, will be nondenominational, likely of a ceremonial nature."

What I want to know about that couple is why, with all their money, they have, both of them, engineered their face into that post-human fright mask?

Why would the wedding be any less fake than the faces?

And here's Tina Brown: 

The Jeff Bezos-Lauren Sánchez (circa $56 million) Venice-sinking nuptials, tying up every tender on the Grand Canal (and 90 private jets expected), is the big beautiful buster bomb of high-net-worth exhibitionism. Now that the 55- year-old bride Sánchez has proved that landing the fourth richest man in the world requires the permanent display of breasts like genetically modified grapefruit and behemoth buttocks bursting from a leopard-print thong bikini, she’s exuberantly and unapologetically shown that the route to power and glory for women hasn't changed since the first Venetian Republic.

*** 

Sailin’ round the world in a dirty gondola/Oh, to be back in the land of Coca-Cola!

Can tourists run?

The scene on Mount Etna yesterday:

Tourists and guides run for their lives when Mount Etna suddenly erupts pic.twitter.com/HKhTiUCuUe

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) June 3, 2025

What am I looking at? Are these people running for their life? Are they running fast enough?

Here's "An Eruption at Mount Etna Sends Hikers Scrambling for Cover/Videos circulating on social media showed visitors rushing to descend the mountain as volcanic plumes rose overhead" (NYT).

In recent years, authorities have struggled to control imprudent visitors who failed to appreciate the risks of getting a close look at the island’s most prominent landmark. Mount Etna, a stratovolcano, or a conical volcano with relatively steep sides, shows almost continuous activity from its main craters and relatively frequent lava flows from craters and fissures along its sides..... Hannah and Charlie Camper, a couple from England, were... aware of previous eruptions but thought they would be “completely fine,” since “it’s active all the time”.... 

Apparently, all the tourists were completely fine yesterday. 

"For every Lucian Freud, who used to give his models regular breaks and offer them oysters and lobster, there is a Pablo Picasso who..."

"... if he didn’t bed the model in question — didn’t have much care for their wellbeing.... In Florence...  there is a growing debate about the exploitative nature of the relationship between artist and model.... 'Economically, the government has abandoned us,' Antonella Migliorini, a veteran life model at the Accademia with more than 30 years’ experience, told The Times. 'It’s as if we don’t exist.'... She said that some of the Accademia’s ten models were like athletes capable of holding complex poses with twisted torsos and arms intertwined above their heads...."

From "Florence’s life models threaten nude strike over poor working conditions/Models at the famed Accademia claim the poor pay and physicality of the job is pushing the centuries-old tradition to the brink" (London Times).

"I love Italy."

Me after my 4th breadbasket at Olive Garden pic.twitter.com/zHrF2iJv1d

— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) December 13, 2024

"The mythological couples provided ideas for conversations about the past and life, only seemingly of a merely romantic nature."

"In reality, they refer to the relationship between the individual and fate: Cassandra who can see the future but no one believes her, Apollo who sides with the Trojans against the Greek invaders, but being a god, cannot ensure victory, Helen and Paris who, despite their politically incorrect love affair, are the cause of the war, or perhaps merely a pretext. Who knows? These days, Helen and Paris represent us all: each day we can choose whether to focus solely on our own private lives or whether to explore the way our lives are entangled with the broad sweep of history...."

Said Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the Director of the Archaeological park of Pompeii, quoted in "Pompeii: a dining room decorated with characters and subjects inspired by the Trojan war has emerged from the new excavations" (pompeiisites.org).

"In Finland, swinging your arms and other unnecessary sudden hand gestures are quite commonly interpreted as a sign of aggression, which should be avoided unless you want to get your ass kicked."

Writes someone in Finland in a Reddit discussion, "Do Europeans ever use their hand[s] to make 'Air Quotes' in a conversation, for example, to express sarcasm or a euphemism?"

Someone in Slovakia says "If you can't express sarcasm or a euphemism by you voice and tone, you shouldn't be allowed to do it. (I haven't seen it here, but maybe somebody does it.)"

An American says: "I did it in Italy once, and my little Italian cousins absolutely lost it laughing so hard, bc they didn't know why I was wiggling my fingers around (which I understand would look very, very strange if you don't know the meaning)." 

Someone in Italy answers: "We don't do it in Italy. Some people may know what it means because of American movies and TV series."

I know the TV series! It's "Friends":

"Since the ruling, palpata breve - a brief groping - has become a trend on Instagram and TikTok in Italy, along with the #10secondi hashtag."

"Italians have posted videos looking at the camera in silence and touching their intimate parts for 10 seconds straight."

From "Italian uproar over judge's 10-second groping rule" (BBC)(judge ruled that there is no crime if a groping lasts less than 10 seconds).

"Between the time that Aiden Judson and his wife, Laura, picked Sicily as their honeymoon destination and their actual trip in early June, something significant happened..."

"... the second season of 'The White Lotus.' The New York couple had imagined a quiet getaway, hiking across the nearby Aeolian Islands and plunging into the crystal turquoise waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea, far from crowded Italian beach destinations like Capri and the Amalfi coast.... 'When we watched the show, we were so excited, like 'wow, that’s going to be us,' and didn’t realize that it would mean everyone and their mom* would be going to Sicily this summer,' said Mr. Judson, 37, who returned from the island earlier this month. 'It was still stunning and we had some special moments, but it was crazy busy with loud and sweaty tourists packed into narrow streets. It made it difficult to feel the Italian charm.'"

From "Going to Europe This Summer? You’re Not Alone. After three years of pandemic restrictions, travelers are flocking to Europe in record numbers, despite high airfares, limited accommodations and crowded sites. Here’s what you might encounter" (NYT).

"You see adverts on television with models who are very thin, but the mermaid is like a tribute to the great majority of women..."

"... who are curvy, especially in our country. It would have been very bad if we had represented a woman who was extremely skinny."

Said the headteacher, defending his students, who were asked to make a sea-themed statue for their town. The teacher is quoted in "'Too provocative' mermaid statue causes stir in southern Italy/Art school headteacher hails ‘tribute to the great majority of women who are curvy’ amid social media uproar" (The Guardian).

Go to the link to see the statue, which has huge globular breasts and a giant ass. I'd never even thought of a mermaid's ass before, and now I'm trying to think of how the human ass converges with the fish tail in the mermaid anatomy. 

Is the teacher trying to say that because one alternative — "extremely skinny" — is bad, anything else must be good? That's a logical fallacy.

Anyway, what is a mermaid but a sexual fantasy? They asked students for a mermaid, and they got exactly what they asked for. 

"Bali is part of a growing number of popular travel destinations fed up with overtourism."

"Hawaii is considering a bill to dissolve its government-sponsored tourism marketing agency. Amsterdam has been trying to reduce rowdy tourist behavior in its Red Light District, rolling out a ban on pot-smoking on the streets there, reducing hours for restaurants and brothels, and tightening some alcohol restrictions. Italian authorities have been fining tourists in Rome, Florence and Venice for littering, camping, vandalism and traffic violations.... 'We have a lot of tolerance here … but it’s this behavior of I am the more important person. Look at me,' said Fatmawati, an Indonesian personal assistant... 'It’s disgusting — people are tired of it. I’m tired of it.'"

From "'It’s disgusting': Bali locals are fed up with bad tourists/Many in Bali are sick of the disrespect, the illegal work and the indecent social media posts from foreigners" (WaPo).

"After my young husband died... I was bereft. I thought I'd never go out again, much less all alone."

So begins a comment on an advice column dealing with a letter from somebody who felt disturbed by restaurants hosts who asks "Just one?"

The columnist, Miss Manners (in WaPo), though the letter-writer was imagining more negativity than the hosts really intended to express.

But I'm interested in this comment. It continues:

"Trust me, my grandparents, all four of them Italian, never ate avocados, let alone smashed them on toast for breakfast."

"You guys are falling into the romantic Italy trap—breakfast here typically consists of a few cookies dipped in caffè latte, or a brioche or cornetto at the local bar on the way to work. Here in Central Italy, people are seriously into pork and pork products. And no self-respecting Greek would eat low-fat yogurt. The overall message is good, but those details make me smile."

Writes Anthony Paonita of Perugia, commenting on the NYT article "The Mediterranean Diet Really Is That Good for You. Here’s Why. It has become the bedrock of virtuous eating. Experts answer common questions about how it leads to better health."

"Unlike Germany, which was clearly on the wrong side of history and made facing and remembering its Nazi past a national project woven inextricably into the postwar fabric..."

"... of its institutions and society, Italy had one foot on each side, and so had a claim to victimization by Fascism, having switched allegiances during the war. After Rome fell to the Allies, a civil war raged between the resistance and a Nazi puppet state of Mussolini loyalists in the north. When the war ended, Italy adopted an explicitly antifascist Constitution, but the political emphasis was on ensuring national cohesion in a country that had succeeded in unifying only a century earlier. There was a belief, the Italian writer Umberto Eco wrote in his classic 1995 essay 'Ur Fascism,' or 'Eternal Fascism,' that the 'memory of those terrible years should be repressed.' But repression 'causes neurosis,' he argued.... [Now, Giorgia] Meloni is poised to take charge. Her proposals, characterized by protectionism, tough-on-crime measures and protecting the traditional family, have a continuity with the post-Fascist parties, though updated to excoriate L.G.B.T. 'lobbies' and migrants.... [T]he left sees in her crescendoing rhetoric, cult of personality style and hard-right positions many of the hallmarks of an ideology that Eco famously sought to pin down despite Fascism’s 'fuzziness.' She evinces what Eco called an 'obsession with a plot, possibly an international one' against Italians, which she expresses in fears of international bankers using mass migration to replace native Italians and weaken Italian workers....."

From "Italian Voters Appear Ready to Turn a Page for Europe/With the hard-right candidate Giorgia Meloni ahead before Sunday’s election, Italy could get its first leader whose party traces its roots to the wreckage of Fascism" (NYT).

"The relics believed to be of St. Nicholas were brought from present-day Turkey by sailors 1,000 years ago, and his bones have been entombed in Bari ever since...."

"The presence of the relics has long made Bari an unusual linchpin in relations between Italy and Russia and between the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches. In 2007, Mr. Putin himself came to Bari and knelt in front of St. Nicholas’s tomb, just as the faithful did during the prayer for peace.... Larisa Dimetruk, 62, from Lutsk in northwestern Ukraine, said she came to beseech St. Nicholas to make the Russians 'stop their president.' 'Only the people can stop him,” she said. 'We didn’t come here to pray together. We came here for a miracle.'... Others simply felt torn and had no interest in talking politics. 'We’ve all run out of tears,' said Olga Sebekina, from St. Petersburg, Russia, who said her grandmother was Ukrainian and that she still had family there. 'Which side of my heart should break more?'"

 From "Italian City Tied to Russia by a Revered Saint Feels the Sting of War in Ukraine/The port of Bari holds relics venerated by Orthodox Christians throughout the former Soviet bloc. Today it is also home to a spillover of tensions from Russia’s invasion" (NYT).

"It’s an exceptional bridge, and they should keep it like this. Beauty must save the world"/"We can’t always do poetry. We must give security"/"A Venetian would have never built such nonsense"/"That is not a bridge."

Quotes from "Venice Gets a Grip on a Star Architect’s Slippery Bridge/The city will replace the glass on Santiago Calatrava’s footbridge across the Grand Canal with stone after too many pedestrians fell" (NYT). 

Calatrava is not a Venetian. He was born in Spain. Apparently, there's a notion that Venetians do not design impractical — dangerous? — things.

According to one person who fell — "like a bag of potatoes" — Calatrava "ruined the most beautiful years of my old age."

"In Italy’s rural areas, hunting wild boar is a popular sport and most Italians can offer a long list of their favorite wild boar dishes, including pappardelle pasta with boar sauce..."

"... and wild boar stew. But animal rights groups have been adamantly opposed to mass culling. Those beliefs are not shared by some urban residents. 'I am afraid of walking on the sidewalk, because on one side there are the dumpsters for the rubbish and they (the boars) jump on me,' said Grazia, a 79-year-old grandmother.... 'We have been invaded here,' lamented Pino Consolati, who runs a restaurant on a busy street corner in Rome's Monte Mario neighborhood.... One day this week, he said, his sister found 30 boars outside her shoe store when she left at 8 p.m."

 
From "Basta! Romans say enough to invasion of wild boars in city/Rome has been invaded by Gauls, Visigoths and vandals over the centuries, but the Eternal City is now grappling with a rampaging force of an entirely different sort: rubbish-seeking wild boars" (ABC News).

"Italy is a republic, having abolished the monarchy 75 years ago for its disastrous support of Mussolini, and Italians have approximately zero interest in a royal restoration."

"'Never say never,' said Vittoria’s father, Emanuele Filiberto, an Italian television personality who claims the title Prince of Venice, which is also the name of his Los Angeles restaurant and former food truck.... Emanuele Filiberto is currently creating a Crown-like series about his grandmother, Queen Marie-José. 'Totally antifascist,' he said. 'A great antifascist,' echoed Vittoria, who called her a role model. Emanuele Filiberto notes that many of Europe’s remaining monarchs are women, starting with Queen Elizabeth in Britain. Their royal houses have a much better track record of female empowerment than Italy’s Parliament, where women are notoriously underrepresented, he said. 'Monarchies,' he said, 'at least we give the power to the women.'... Like her great-grandfather’s great-grandfather, Vittorio Emanuele II, who united Italy, Vittoria is much more comfortable in French than Italian. When asked if she wanted to be Italy’s queen, she called the concept 'abstract' and said she is just trying to figure out what she wants to do in life. She spends her days studying for finals, modeling midriff shirts on Instagram, dancing with friends and gossiping about Prince Harry and Meghan at school."

From "Paris Teenager’s New Gig: Would-Be Queen of Italy. A Nation Shrugs. The son of Italy’s last king has tapped his teen granddaughter to eventually lead the House of Savoy, pretenders to Italy’s defunct throne. 'Totally illegitimate,' says a rival clan" (NYT).

Can I get a little attention? Does anybody care this year? Seems like they would... this year, especially, but no... Anybody?

It's Columbus Day, but there's way less than the usual hoopla, even though you'd think there'd be more. I found this in the Washington Post, "Much of America has stopped celebrating Columbus Day, but the explorer remains revered in Italy." That's super mild. The observation that has replaced the observation of: There used to be an observation of the holiday, and now there's only the observation that the holiday is no longer observed.  

While many Christopher Columbus statues were toppled this year in the United States — dragged into Baltimore's Inner Harbor, beheaded in Boston — the towering marble monument to the explorer in his hometown, Genoa, Italy, is disturbed only by pigeons....

 “Some vague awareness of his colonialist brutality has only in the last few years made it into classrooms,” said Marina Nezi, a recently retired high school history teacher in Rome. “But [Italy has] a very long history, and school years are often not enough to tell the whole of it.”...  

“There’s a firewall of Italianness that has prevented the critique from breaking through and garnering a meaningful following,” [said Giulio Busi, author of “Christopher Columbus, the Sailor of Secrets."] Toppling his statues “feels like an attack on our nationality.”...

Did you know that with a firewall of Italianness, you can stop critique from garnering?   

In the New York Times, Christopher Columbus hasn't even been mentioned since October 9th. There's not even the observation that the holiday is not observed. Which is to say, it's really not observed. They didn't even see it. They didn't even see the non-seeing of it!

Now, the New York Post offers a cry for us to respect the old tarnished hero. It's a column by David Marcus: