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Coming Late to Being Sicilian

11/19/2011

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            Coming Late to Being Sicilian

    “You’re Sicilian? Have any relatives in the Mafia?”

    That question kept me from admitting to anyone until I was well into my 30s that half my Italian heritage is Sicilian.  (For the record, the other half is from Potenza in the Basilicata Provence where the boot of Italy forms the foot’s arch.  It’s not on the coast, but up in the mountains.  But that’s an
essay for a different blog.)

    Sicily itself sits off the “Toe of Italy” separated from the main peninsula by only a few miles of channel.  It’s so close that Italian engineers are planning either a railroad tunnel (aka, a Chunnel) or a long suspension bridge between the European
mainland that ends at that Italian toe and the port of Messina on Sicily.  Once it opens, I’m on that train.  

    The two history books of Sicily I own both start with the association of the Three-Cornered Island and the mining of obsidian going back to prehistoric
times.  This jet-black stone created by volcanic activity can be chipped and sharpened into cutting blades or polished as art objects. This natural glass is treasured for its inherent simplicity and beauty. 
Sicily is an island of volcanoes, on the island itself, and on smaller islands of its coast.  Obsidian is easy to find there.

    Obsidian:  hard and curved as volcanic glass often
is.  Beautiful when shined to a glossy night-black finish. Not a refined beautiful object as is Belleck porcelain or Waterford or Italian crystal.  And also, knowing how to break it into shards, obsidian can be sharpened enough to use as a scalpel blade; this ancient cutting edge is still in use as such today.

     What’s so ironic and puzzling about being Sicilian is that this island set in the middle of the  Mediterranean Sea is a treasure of history that gets overlooked or belittled even today.  No one should feel any shame for being part of this culture. The Greeks colonized the island long before Rome began to flourish. Siracusae, (Syracuse today), is one of the birthplaces of modern mathematics.  Archimedes, perhaps one of the greatest scientific and logical minds of the Ancient World, not only worked out intricate, axiomatic theorems, but also started other intellectuals and engineers thinking about hydrodynamics, fulcrums and levers, and the
heavens.

     I find it funny that even today Archimedes is listed as a “Greek” even though he was born in Syracuse and lived there most of his life. As a member of the New World, I am American (of Italian heritage, obviously) but I can hardly say I’m an Italian in such a way to suggest I was born in Rome.  So, why call a Sicilian of Syracuse “a Greek”? It’s all part of the bad rap Sicily continuously gets. I believe it stems from the modern bias against Sicily; the Ancients would never have considered Archimedes a Greek.

     Like any subject, you scratch the surface and you find a wealth of information. In 2005, my three brothers and I traveled to Potenza then flew from
Naples to Palermo, rented a car, and drove to Piana degli Albanesi where my father’s parents lived until they immigrated to the US in 1913. (He was born in Sacramento in 1914, an American of Sicilian ancestry.) As its name suggests, Piana degli Albanesi is itself a village of immigrants who fled Albania in the 1480s because the Muslim Turks were pushing into the Balkans after the fall of Constantinople.  

    Isn’t history a wonder?  The Balkans still can’t get along and, even as recently as the Fall of the Iron Curtain, Albanians have been loading up rusty steamers and chugging for Sicily as a refugees.  

     In her book,
Sicily:  Three Thousands Years of Human History, Sandra Benjamin states that the Albresh, (the name for these Sicilians and Italians of Albanian ancestry), have lost their language and
customs. Her research conclusion is a bit premature. During the late Fifteen-Century migration, Albanian Christians settled in 300 villages in Southern Italy and Sicily. (Coincidentally, Potenza was one of the Italian villages although my Mother’s ancestry has none of this Albanian heritage.) Over time in most of these villages, the Albresh have lost their Albanian heritage. As is typical of immigrants, over time most are indistinguishable from their neighbors.  

     Not so in Piana degli Albanesi.  Here, the Albresh
language is still spoken by my relatives.  It is the language of my father and my grandparents, so I learned. My distant Sicilian cousins are teaching their daughter Albresh to keep their heritage alive. She was about 6 or 7 in 2005 when I met her; she spoke formal Italian (the Tuscan dialect), the Sicilian dialect of Italian, plus Albresh from her family, and the basics of English she was learning in school. I am sure before she finishes high school, she’ll know French, as well. And anyone speaking Sicilian/Italian can pick up Spanish with little difficulty. Piana also has an Albanian seminary, started during the Cold War when Albanian Communists banned the Church. 
Young Albanian men can get along with Sicilian Albresh pretty well, even though my linguist cousin informs me that today’s Albresh is more like Medieval Albanian than modern Albanian.

     So, Sicily has this layer of Albanians who came in 1488.  Think of the other layers:  Greeks,
Carthaginians, Phoenicians, Romans, Muslims, Normans, the Spanish, the French, and the Germans (to be ousted by American and British forces in 1943) to provide an incomplete list. 

     The Normans seized contol in 1166, one hundred years after conquering England. The Normans knew a good island to conquer when they saw it.  They united Southern Italy with Sicily to form the Kingdom of Two Sicilies or sometimes, the Kingdom of Naples. From the 1500s or so, Sicily became the
football of Europe, something to kick around the royal households. Shakespeare makes this point in his History Plays where one of the reasons to reject a marriage proposal between the English throne and a French royal is that she’s only bringing the Sicilian crown in her dowry. The Bourbons had Sicily. Then Spain had it.  (They treated the Sicilians miserably, by the way.  Under Spanish rule, a Sicilian peasant
could not get a passport to leave the island; these peasants were virtual slaves in their own fields for 200 years.)

     I am grateful for the Normans for one particular aspect. As rulers of this island, they recognized its rich and varied history. In the 1200s, the Norman King, Roger II, ordered all the “antiquity” in his kingdom be saved. On Roger’s authority, Segesta was saved, at the time, a seventeen-centuries-old
temple.

     The Greek-style temple at Segesta is the only one in the whole Mediterranean that has all four of its column walls still standing. That means its original walls have now been standing for over 2500 years.  All other such temples are partially in ruins. This would include Roman Era temples as well. Look all you want, at the Parthenon, at the ruins in Agrigento with its Valle dei Templi, throughout all the far-flung reaches of the Greek, Alexandrian and Roman empires. Not another temple stands in its original glory like Segesta unless restored by modern archeologists.  

     This impressive and massive temple itself never seems to have had a roof.  This puzzles modern archeologists except those who believe it never intended to have a roof so that different religions could use the same space.  Local, pre-Greek Sicilians worshiped to the sky without needing a
roof. (The mild Sicilian weather cooperates.)  It’s a rare religious community today that shares its worship space without acrimony, but on polyglot
Sicily it happened 2500 years ago.

     And the surviving remnants of the village of Segesta itself, set higher up the rugged hill from the temple, has the ruins of another pagan, pre-Christian temple which then became a Christian Church, then a Mosque, and then finally a monk’s hermitage once the Moors were driven from the island. 

     I consider Segesta one of the holiest spots I’ve ever visited. Humans have found it so for close to thirty centuries. Can’t beat a track record like that.

    So, Sicily is not the darkest island of Europe, not the festering pool of Mafia that too many TV-addicted
Americans have come to believe.

     Monreale Cathedral (a Norman edifice with magnificent Christian mosaics), Segesta, Agrigento with its Valle dei Templi (which the Greek poet Pindar once called “the fairest city inhabited by
mortals”), Villa del Casale, (with the grandest and best-preserved examples of Roman mosaics), Mount Etna (Europe’s largest and most active volcano):  all places I need to visit. It will be a homecoming for me, a return to that rich culture as “multi-ethnic” as any modern country. Rugged and tempestuous, historic and lavish, meditative and boisterous, quiet along its golden beaches but thunderous at the peak of Etna.

    And at its core, a bedrock of obsidian. Hard as
glass, and when necessary, sharp as any forged blade. Traits that have stood me well.  

That's me in 2005 with Segesta Temple in the background.  Note the best take of me, but there it is.  (Shirt bought in Potenza, Italy.)
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"All Children Left Behind"

11/11/2011

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                “All Children Left Behind” –
        The Decline of Reading in Our Lifetime
     
     Several years ago, a Catholic grammar school in the Cities tested their students in the mandated, standardized Minnesota proficiency exams. These students were, by all measures leading up to these tests, “at risk.”  They came from low-income, mostly minority backgrounds.  The school, once a flagship of a parish filled with European immigrants, sat in a
deteriorating neighborhood ridden by crime, drop-outs, delinquency. The parish, however, hung on, kept the doors of its school open, and worked with the low-achieving students who came through the
gates.

    When the results were in, these students—the ones predicted to fall into the lowest percentiles as all US students do from a similar background—scored
among the highest in the state. It’s almost axiomatic that the parents’ ZIP codes predict student achievement. Wealthy ZIPs mean stronger students. This case was exactly the opposite. 
 
    Of course, why? Why did these sure-to-fail students achieve at the Eden Prairie and Edina level?
         
     Easy:  they could read.  Their curriculum included reading Shakespeare in the 7th and 8th grades. Early on, they were tackling The Iliad and
The Odyssey.  When it was time to read, these young scholars read. And they devoured not the educational pap generally flung at students, which limits syllables and includes only preselected vocabulary words slipped
into unnatural and stilted sentences, but they tore through the classics at an early age.  It is the rare exception for a “young genius” not to be an avid
reader.

    Reading. It’s the key and core to all things educational.  These “at-risk” students proved it.  Asked to solve so-called“word problems”?  Math was not a problem for them; they understood the questions. Vocabulary became a breeze.  Getting the gist of the social science paragraphs was ridiculously easy, given that these young scholars read at the 11th- or 12th-grade level.  (Hopefully, they were reading texts before they were dumbed down by the Texas Board of Education.)  

    You want to reform education in the USA?  If so, then get students reading at an early age. Make them read the classics, not books expunged of what’s thought distasteful by some.  Leave Huck Finn alone, for Twain’s sake.  Anyone offended by Twain’s "politically incorrect" vocabulary should listen to 5 minutes of Rap music—our kids are.  They hear much worse on the air waves, they see much worse on cable, than will ever enter a classic novel whose plot they can understand.  There is nothing worse than “textbook” talk, especially now when the uneducated and politically biased and religiously warped are re-writing our students’ textbooks.  
 
    Many years ago I sensed a reading crisis in education was coming. I was finishing my MA in English at Sacramento State before heading off to Notre Dame for my PhD.  I had taught in a Catholic high school for two years by this time, but was between jobs and did some substituting in the Sacramento Diocesan system.  What I saw was done by students at the high end of achievement, so it was even more shocking.

     The 7th-graders I was subbing were asked to read an essay in their textbooks and then answer the
multiple-choice questions at the back of the book. 
Instead of actually reading the essay first, they all thumbed right to the questions, read Question One, and then skimmed the first section of the essay assignment. It was easy to gloss over the essay in pieces, fitting the section of the essay to the questions at the back, get the right answer for each
in turn and never really bothering with reading the essay start to finish.  The questions were in order anyway, meaning, Question 1 asked about the first few paragraphs, Question 2 the next few, and so on.  
 
    These were bright kids; they’d figured out this gig early.  And their test scores showed they were well ahead of the curve. Not bad considering they really rarely ever read anything start to finish in a sustained manner. I am sure their story is not unique.  Why read an essay when the ideas aren’t important and can’t hold your attention? The 10 points at the end are important—satisfy teacher with 10 for 10; forget any notion of actually reading the material.

     Even at the university level, I hear the same sort of notion and witness the same lack of skills. I am always dumbfounded by the lack of basic skills far too many of my students display.  When asked to
read aloud, so many (far too many) struggle over basic words.  I had a student trip up on the simple word melancholy the other day, to give just a recent example. He insisted he had never seen the word
before.  Having graded his written work, it is no wonder he’s such a weak writer.  Poor readers are weak writers, no doubt.  And worse yet, weak writer
and weak reader that he is, he’s convinced “in the real world after college” he won’t need such skills. He is part of the self-marginalizing Twenty-Something Generation I witness each day.

     Another time several years back, I gave out a very short (to me) reading list for a class on the
first day.  I had purposely already reduced the list from seven novels to six by adding two movies in hopes of getting all my students to finish the entire syllabus. At the end of my intro lecture imploring my students to actually buy the books and then read the material, one student returned my printed handouts with the admonition, “Books! Books! Why are all you
professors always demanding we read books?  Can’t you just give us the answers?”  And he was a history
major!  
 
    All this would be of little concern if I was talking about how many copies of
Harry Potter are sold each day. The real issues of declining reading skills are social and economic, not just artistic and recreational.

    The 2004 NEA report, Reading at Risk, demonstrated the steep decline in reading among our young. But the report also pointed out that “these declines will have serious civic, social, cultural, and economic implications,”or so Matt Burriesci concludes in his review of this NEA report.  (
The Writer’s Chronicle, Feb 2008. 
http://www.awpwriter.org/pdf/mburriesci01.pdf.) 
For his review of this NEA report, Burriesci interviewed Dana Gioia, NEA Chairman, who noted “the central importance of reading for a prosperous, free society.” We are not talking about curling up with an Agatha Christie, we’re talking about a skill that is, in Gioia’s words, “both fundamental and irreplaceable for democracy.”

     The NEA report also rightly concludes that “weak reading skills strongly correlate to lower academic
achievement, lack of employment, lower wages, and fewer opportunities for advancement.”  A poor or non-reader is more likely to be incarcerated.  Strong readers are more than likely to vote, participate in cultural events, volunteer their time for charities, and enjoy rewarding careers.

     Life-long readers and learners are the cornerstone of a thriving democracy.  It is no wonder that dictators burn books.  You’ll note that Hitler
didn’t start a program to have his Iron Youth read widely; he closed libraries and destroyed the content of their shelves.  If Germans were to read, he was going to know what they were reading.

     Today, the censorship of the web in some dictatorial countries smacks of the same paranoia and political control.

     But this brings me back to our students, our children, our culture. I find it so ironic and extremely depressing that in a society that has every book virtually at its fingertips, our young people are electing NOT to read.  Hitler shouldn’t have
burned books; he should have made more books available to his Iron Youth.  Given the chance to read, if they are like our youth, they wouldn’t have.

     The lack of interest in reading suggests to me this horrific vision:  Our 11th- and 12th-graders are taught to drive, given their drivers’ licenses, given access to cars and paved roads and the Eisenhower
Interstate System.  But instead (in my dystopian vision), they elect to let their cars rust or run out of gas for lack of the enterprise of filling the tank.  And so, they’re forced to work closer to home (so they can walk). They’re forced to seek entertainment and cultural events within walking distance, never
finding new outlets. They’re forced to live among only their neighbors, never venturing into new neighborhoods with different foods or art style or political takes on the world.

     And it’s all self-imposed.  
 
     Perhaps the Occupy Movement is this generation’s wake-up call.  It reads less, votes less, is more inclined to be swayed by demagogues. 
And at least some now are waking up to the fact that placating the top cats comes by draining the younger citizens and newer voters dry of what society should provide its young:  a stable society; a solid, basic education; a brighter future. 
 
     Readers know of that brighter future.  And, I believe, readers can muster the skills to obtain it on all levels:  personally, professionally, culturally, and globally. 

     Let’s hope our youth don’t skip that part of the essay because there wasn’t a question about it at
the back of their books.  Let’s hope our young readers of today have a thriving economy and fully functioning, just democratic society to embrace as they grow older. Or else, the few remaining readers may have to read about such a bygone society in the neglected History Section of some neglected library. 
      


  


 
 
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On Coffee and Coffee Shops

11/2/2011

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          On Coffee and Coffee Shops

             Like everyone else who makes
               the mistake of getting older, 
                      I begin each day
                 with coffee and obituaries. 
                                     Bill Cosby

    Let’s be clear.  The most up-to-date science of this passing hour is:  coffee and caffeine are the two most heinous villains of our society, bar none.  There’s probably no drug worse for anyone than caffeine, unless you start the list with nicotine, heroin, cocaine, and alcohol. I know my science, and I know that every few years a new double-blind,
thoroughly scientific study comes out blaming coffee for all the evils of the world:  over population, global
climate change, IBS, low birth weight, the Euro-Zone meltdown, Velveeta Cheese, the luckless (not-so) Fightin’ Irish, not to mention the obvious Yugo Automotive Company.  I’m just quoting science, folks.  It’s all right there in the research somewhere.  
              
     Then again, (or so science tells us on alternating weeks in contrast to the above findings) coffee and caffeine are those rare nectars of the gods,
ambrosia from Mount Olympus (if it is located in Ethiopia), sent by the gods to satisfy men and women, to quicken their minds, sharpen their senses.  This rich, dark, steaming liquid with its mild stimulus awakens us, drives us on, supports us, loves us as no other.  Daily Arabica saves us from heart disease, dementia, failing Intro to Post-Modern Poetry taught by a retro Beatnik, early-onset Alzheimer’s, kicking the dog first thing each day, yelling at the paperboy for a late delivery, and general crabbiness around our spouses each morning.  
 
     Scientific results are sketchy, but I firmly believe World War One and the Great Influenza might have been avoided had more Europeans regularly consumed coffee.  I am also sure had Americans consumed more java in the 1920s, the Depression would not have begun.  Coffee and caffeine regularly stop IBS, occasionally PMS, the IRS, and (I firmly believe) the return of the Antichrist (or coffee would not be served as a post-Communion beverage in the basements and social halls of every church in
America each Sunday.)

    Coffee is our salvation—embrace it.  Drop that Diet Mountain Dew in the morning, Sallie, grow up, face your responsibilities like an adult, and drink your coffee.  It saves the planet, Lonny, and possibly your soul.
            
     But don’t spoil it.  There is nothing worse than “flavored”coffee.  Look, coffee is excellent, perfect, in its own pristine essence.  A little cream or milk, okay.  (That’s how I drink it.)  But these whippy-dippy frappes with a dusting of chocolate and pinch of cinnamon and everything else but a cherry, are a sacrilege against the inviolate laws of heaven.  It’s not a dessert; it’s coffee.  Hot and fresh in the morning.  Delicious in the afternoon. Don’t make it into a calorie orgy. 
 
    I mean, have you ever seen a morning news show named after any other drink? It’s “Morning, Joe” with
product placement, a Starbuck’s select brand thrown in, genial conversation and hard news, plenty of coffee and more coffee.  It’s not “Good Morning, Diet Dew,” is it?  Or “Hot Water with Lemon Slice to Mellow Your Day with Regis and Kelly,” right?  How perky would they be after consuming that?  When CNBC tried a new show, “Green Tea Your Day to Successful Investing” (aimed at the unconventional
investor watching at 5 AM after yoga), the DOW tanked.  Green tea’s a killer.
             
     On Break Weekend this semester, we drove to Indianapolis. That first morning, I had to fend for myself and find coffee in the Butler-Tarkington neighborhood near Butler University.  I had a $5 coupon for Starbucks; it was a sunbathed autumnal day.  I’ve visited enough to know my way, and
so off I scurried.  My sister-in-law lives in the same neighborhood that produced Kurt Vonnegut, with
comfortable, well-kept houses, some with 5th bedroom additions and long driveways.  A few blocks brings you to a shopping and restaurant cluster. 
Up Broadway, onto 48th Street, turn at Illinois, Starbucks at the next corner. An easy walk.

    With the Green Coffee Giant in sight, I was pulled aside, distracted by the Illinois Street Food Emporium Bakery and Deli.  It was warm enough to sit outside; a few patrons did.  But, I decided to duck inside.  It was an Alice-through-the-Looking-Glass moment. I might have been transported back to the 1950s.  I stood transfixed by this bakery-deli-café.  I
couldn’t resist the charms of a real, still-functioning neighborhood diner, Formica tabletops and all.  I
ordered the breakfast special:  two scrambled eggs, sausage, whole wheat toast, and a BOLD endless cup of coffee. I was impressed when the clerk at the cash register wrote down my order on a slip of paper. 
Computers haven’t found their way behind the counters of the Emporium.
            
     I can’t say the service was fast, because I waited a long time sipping my free refill.  But the staff was
delightful.  The helpful woman who took my order walked me through getting my silverware (a bit hidden to the side) and made sure I got all the steaming coffee I urgently needed. Not a Styrofoam cup but a gigantic ceramic mug.  
 
     To a writer with an eye for future characters, The Illinois Street Food Emporium was a palate of unmatched hues and texture.  One well-heeled patron in a fitted wool suit was ready for a power business deal. She was perhaps my age; I imagined her in the Butler U Foundation Office raising millions.  Others who strolled in were sweatshirt moms out for a morning walk, chat, and coffee with
friends.  Regulars came in to be greeted by “the usual”as soon as they stepped to the counter. 
Still others saved seats for friends; the Emporium grew crowded but stayed welcoming.  
        
     Indianapolis is a diverse city, and like many metro areas, has its share of racial tensions.  I saw none of that friction at the Emporium as neighbors—young and old, black and white—greeted one another over coffee and a bagel or a fresh cinnamon bun.  

     The place was filled with ease and comfort.  These were Hoosiers, not Minnesota-nice folks, so the level of laughter and conversation and geniality
grew quite loud.  Day after day, meal after meal, this place hosts scores of people from many walks of life who truly enjoy each other.  And I do mean the tables were integrated, not clusters of similar races sitting separated, tolerating each other.  They knew each other, were friends with each other.  It was an amazing sight to savor in our sometimes strained society.  I began to feel like the welcomed odd duck invited alone to someone else’s huge family gathering, a family that liked and appreciated one another.  
 
     My strongest impression of the friendliness of the Emporium was how many patrons knew multiple tables. They entered, got their coffee and donut, and sat with one table, but often they waved at patrons at several others. And, the staff knew everyone, greeted everyone, laughed with everyone. I did feel a bit like the orphan left out of the feast, except my eggs and sausage were that good, in their greasy, home-style way.

     When I finished, I made it a point to thank the staff.  “Well, come back,” they laughed.  I explained I was in Indianapolis only once or twice a year and probably wouldn’t be back until next summer.  “That fine,” they said, “we’ll still be here.”

     Later that day, when I explained to our uncle, Father Tom Murphy, a longtime Indianapolis resident, where I had breakfast, he knew the place well.  “It’s an institution,” he explained.  That and so much more.

     But, my $5 coupon for Starbucks was still in my wallet.  From the Emporium it was a few steps across Illinois to the gleaming and bright coffeehouse.  I love single location beans.  Blends can sneak in lower qualities beans, but I find Starbucks does some excellent combos. I love Sumatran coffee the most, but I tried their Komodo blend from the Southwest Pacific. And I couldn’t resist a pound of the “Morning Joe” variety, a robust Central and South American
product-placement selection.

     The clerk was friendly. He checked to make sure my coupon was valid, got me my take-out cup, Pike’s Peak, and then ground my two choices just right.

     In the corner at two small tables, three patrons sat buried in their computer screens.  One Apple and two HP, no wonder they weren’t talking. The tone was hushed. The largest cluster of friends I saw was three people whispering in a group. More people were speaking into their mobile phones rather than to each other.  Or they were glued to their hand-held units, texting, reading messages, playing Bejeweled. 
I had walked into a crowd of strangers linked by excellent coffee, separated by their own self-imposed isolation.  Most were urban-polished but with a
stylized hard-edged Metro look. A sprinkling of business-suits-in-a-hurry, but most wore clothing with a message and hair styles to impress rather than Colts caps huddled over the breakfast special laughing with friends. Excellent coffee, speedy service, but lacking in soul.

     I don’t think I saw an African-American sitting there or working there.   

     As I walked back to my sister-in-law’s past the Food Emporium, I almost stopped in for one of their fresh cinnamon buns I had earlier resisted, but I walked on.  
 
    Next June, I told myself, or next July.  They’ll still be there.

 


 


 
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