Just a bit more then I’ll stop, I promise

A very good friend has written a blog with a point of view quite different from  mine expressed in my last post (he usually writes about education, with an insider’s view; his blog is well worth reading).  Here’s what I put in his comment section:

Here’s a voice of reason… I’ve been thinking over your post and the various comments made in response.  I don’t see how a total ban on ‘guns’ would ever work.  But I do think there are a panoply of weapons that have no business in the private citizen’s gun cupboard.  Hunting guns? certainly.  Small hand guns for protection? if you must.  But automatic weapons that are designed for a battlefield?  no.  So why not a partial ban? We do that with fireworks, for heaven’s sake.  Small are okay, large, not (because they are dangerous). Then, I also think that anyone who wants to use a gun must prove that s/he knows how to use it responsibly.  We have to do that before we are allowed to drive automobiles.  People who have guns could be required to carry insurance in case of unforeseen accidents.  Perhaps the insurers would be more careful about background and mental health checks than gun stores are!  We require our doctors to carry insurance lest they hurt us; we require vehicle drivers to have both licenses (after passing two kinds of test) and insurance.  Why should we not regulate guns in the same manner?  They are every bit as lethal as cars, and I’m guessing a lot more lethal than your typical doctor.  And the regulations would not be any more onerous than those already in place for other situations.

********

I’m willing to back off my No Guns Ever Under Any Circumstances stance because I begin to see it’s probably impractical at the very least.  But I think the above are some pretty good ideas!

I promise to return to more light-hearted and on-blog-topic posts very very soon…

Slaughter of the Innocents

Tags

Gun control, Mass killing, Sandy Hook Elementary School, Violence, Violence against children

Illustration courtesy of goboxy.com

“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” (Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States)

“When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.” (Bible, Book of Matthew, Chapter 2. There’s nothing modern about killing children.)

We don’t much like guns and we don’t have any.  Many of our friends, though, do like guns and do have them.  These friends fall into three categories: hunters, who keep their rifles and ammunition locked up in gun cabinets; target-shooters, who also keep their weapons under lock and key; and those who keep weapons for self-defense.   Presumably these later keep their weapons loaded, locked and close at hand.  The reason I don’t like guns and don’t want one anywhere near me is I’m afraid I might use it, against someone innocent, someone guilty, or on a really bad day, myself.

Gun ownership in the U.S. is an incredibly complex issue. Exactly what the Second Amendment, quoted above, means has been hotly debated pretty much since it was adopted (you can read about Second Amendment cases that the Supreme Court has heard here, earlier Second Amendment cases seem to have had more to do with States versus Federal Rights rather than the right to bear arms per se).  In any case, so far the judges have found in favor of the interpretation that private citizens have the right to own, keep at home, and use pretty much any kind of gun. Forty-nine states have laws which allow carrying concealed weapons of varying types.

As we are all too sadly aware in these days, there are plenty of guns to go around.  The best estimate I could find on various web-sites was about 300,000,000 or more guns in the U.S., which works out to almost one for every man, woman and child in the country.  The following chart offers lots of interesting gun statistics, including the most obvious: that the US has more guns per capita  than any other country in the world. Italy, in comparison, has about ten guns for every one hundred people. In many parts of the world there are fewer than ten guns per hundred citizens.

I know – it’s teeny.  If you click on it it will be larger, and if you want to see it in much larger format, click here. The graph on the right show people in favor of gun control (white line) and those against it (black like).  The number of Americans against gun control in the U.S. has been growing in the last few decades.

There is no end of data available about gun ownership and use in the U.S.  The question we all must face, and answer, in the days ahead is this: how can we keep guns out of the hands of people who will abuse them, without abrogating the rights of those who use them responsibly?  Regulation has been a joke up to now.  I’m adding my voice to the growing chorus saying enough is enough.  The precious right of all of us to carry a weapon (assuming the Constitution gives us that right, and I’m not convinced that was the framers’ intention) is not worth the lives of the twenty little six- and seven-year-olds and six adults who were gunned down in school in Newtown last week.  It just isn’t.  Let the guns be held in militia headquarters and if you want to go hunting or target shooting, go check one out.

I hear my friends howling that they have the absolute right to protect their loved ones.  But I have to ask, is your right to protect your family worth the lives of all the children who have been slaughtered in the spate of school shootings over the past years?  Have you ever actually needed or used your gun for self-protection?

It is such a can of worms.  95% of gun owners are probably responsible and careful. The people we know are obsessively careful with their weapons.  But the havoc wreaked by the other 5% in gang shootings, murders, and rampages ruins it for everyone else.  The number of people killed by accident by guns is astonishing (680 in 2008) and again, it is frequently the children who suffer.  According to The Survivor’s Club, every day five children in the U.S. are injured or killed by handguns.

I wish there were an easy answer, but there so clearly isn’t.  And I wish a rational and calm discussion could take place, but I think that’s unlikely as well.  People who have guns become enraged at the idea of having to give them up  (being someone who has gotten on very well for many years without a gun I have to wonder why) and people who want gun control are equally emotional, vituperative and accusatory.  Anti-control voices tell us there are so many guns already in circulation that limiting their purchase or ownership now would be next to useless in stemming the violence, that we would be removing guns from the law-abiding while the crooks and nut-cases would still have access to theirs.  That may be true, but somehow it would at least feel like a start.

Can we not all work together to keep guns out of the hands of those who will misuse them?  It shouldn’t be impossible to identify those individuals.  If you haven’t read “I am Adam Lanza’s Mother” you can do so here for an idea where we could start.  It would be nice to think we have evolved, at least a little, since the days of Herrod.

A disturbing event…

Tags

Bicycle Thief, Crime in Italy, Petty Crime in Italy

Still from the 1948 De Sica film “The Bicycle Thief,” courtesy of filmnight.org

You know how sometimes something happens in the wink of an eye, and you’re left with your mouth hanging open and an endless loop of ‘I should haves’ playing in your brain? That’s what happened to us last evening.

We parked at the train station on the way to a friend’s house for dinner. As we approached the section reserved for parked motor scooters I saw a large man who  looked… well, he just looked suspicious. So I stopped and watched him. He was bent over a very expensive bicycle that was chained to the metal railing of the parking lot, next to some old junky old bikes. As I watched he went snick, snick, the chain, which was very thin, fell away from the bike, and he began to turn. Then he saw me watching.

The man I saw was using a much smaller tool. Photo courtesy superstock.com

“E il mio bici! E il mio!” he said, brandishing his chain cutter. This pegged him immediately as a non-Italian. ‘Bici’ (pronounced bee-chee) is feminine because it’s short for ‘bicicleta,’ a feminine noun.

‘ I bet. E la tua adesso,’ I thought to myself as he hopped on and pedaled off. Speedy hadn’t noticed what was going on and had walked ahead a little, but turned back when he sensed my absence. By now the thief, because surely he was a thief, was pedaling out of the parking lot.

I felt so stupidly helpless. There I was with a camera in my purse, but my hands full of umbrealla and a focaccia in tinfoil. If only I had gotten a photo of the ladro! But I didn’t, and it’s been driving me nuts ever since.

When we arrived at the dinner party we told our hostess and the other guests what had happened. “What should we do?” I asked, “Should we call the police?”

“Eh, beh!” said one friend. “What are the police going to do? When the thieves broke through my wall and stole my safe the police didn’t come for three days, even though I called immediately.” So last night, on advice of all present, we did nothing. Besides, I had an ace up my sleeve.

I knew our friend the policeman would be coming by for a visit this afternoon, so I decided to wait and ask him, which I did. He just shrugged. “It happens every day,” he said. “There’s nothing to do.” So there’s an end to it. I’m not sure I could identify the thief if I saw him; everyone says it’s good I didn’t take his photo as he might have become violent (I disagree, but…). It just doesn’t sit right with me, though.

Putting this together with two other incidents that have occurred since we returned has taken a bit of the shine off our joy at being reunited with Rapallo. The first thing we saw when we got home was that someone had destroyed the facing around the sewer pozetta (box) that Speedy had worked hard at making attractive.

Evidently a very large, heavy something was brought down on the heavy, solid metal cover over the box; it has a big rusty dent in the top. All the facing stones popped out of their cement base from the force of the blow. Well, maybe it was an accident (though honestly, it didn’t look like one).

Then we realized that none of our outdoor lights were functioning. Why not? Probably water got into the lines, we surmised, because it has been exceptionally rainy of late. But no. On further examination today I realized that the light bulbs have been stolen. Three lightbulbs.  How lame is that??!  And note that in order to take them someone had to go to the trouble of unscrewing and removing the glass globes.  We were lucky, I think, that they replaced them – yet more work!

It all got me thinking about how different some things are in the States.  What I sometimes don’t feel so much here is a sense of all of us in a community looking out for each other’s welfare. The police evidently have so much to do that something like a stolen bicycle just doesn’t register on their crime-meters. (I’m not being sarcastic, there’s an enormous amount of crime here it seems, and the police have to jump through hoops to follow correct procedure. Read about it here.) If we don’t look out for our fellow citizens, who will? I was guilty last night for not doing something, anything; the police are guilty for not caring about petty crime; the thieves are guilty for breaking the social contract, and we’re all guilty for looking the other way when we see something wrong.  It’s all  disturbing, and I hate that I’m part of the problem. I’m not in favor of armed vigilantes prowling neighborhoods (ahem), but I certainly think we should all take an interest in looking out for each other.*

Am I crazy?

*Disclaimer.  Having had a good rant, I have to say that our neighbors are very kind about keeping an eye on our house when we’re not at home, and even when we are.  I’m sure they’ve saved us no end of problems with their watchfulness.  Are they the exception that proves the rule?

A worrisome development for bloggers in Italy

Tags

Ammazza Blog Amendment, Bobbie Johnson, money.cnn.com

This article was posted on this site this morning  (http://money.cnn.com

Songbirds: Friends or Food?

Tags

Bird-feeding, Feeding Birds, Hunting in Italy, Hunting songbirds in Italy, Illegal hunting in Italy, Trapping songbirds in Italy

Somehow it’s hard to think of chickens and turkeys as birds.  Sure, they have feathers, but we never see a flock of them high overhead, migrating south for the winter, their clucking stirring our own restlessness.  Nor do we startle them when we take a walk in the woods.  We don’t listen for their sweet morning calls and try to identify exactly what chicken it is we’re hearing.  Wait!  Is that a Rhode Island Red or an Ameraucana?  Hand me my binoculars!

No.  Chickens and turkeys are ambulatory food for the most part.

Songbirds, however, are not.  One of the  pleasures of being here in Arizona is watching the birds that come to our feeder every day.

Anna's hummingbird, noisy and aggressive

We don’t get anything terribly exotic (and we have yet to see a chicken) –  many purple finches, the ubiquitous Anna’s hummingbird, Abert’s towhee , Gila peckers, Cactus wrens, and, on the ground below, Inca doves and the amusing Gambel’s quail, which makes a bweep-bweeping sound, reminiscent of burbling water, while it wanders around beneath the feeder.

Male finch enjoying a seed while female thinks about it

Gambel's quail, males conveniently carry bulls eye on their breasts

It’s a pleasure we don’t enjoy in Italy.  Not because there are no songbirds – there are.  We get huge amusement and satisfaction from the merli (a sort of black robin with the unfortunate Latin name Turdus merula, called ‘merlo’ in the singular) which are curious and companionable, and which have the beautiful song typical to thrushes.  We seldom work outside in spring or summer without an appreciative audience of merli.  But bird-feeding as a hobby does not seem to exist in Italy, at least not in our part of the country.  I have never seen a bird-feeder at anyone’s house, and I have never seen bird feed for sale.

Male cardinal

Instead in Italy there is a sizable, though fortunately shrinking, trade in trapping and killing wild birds.  The CABS (Committee Against Bird Slaughter) web site has a great deal of information about the illegal trapping of birds which occurs, in Italy, mostly in the north (Lombardia), the southern Italian coast, Sardinia and Sicily.  There are a couple of good reasons why this illicit activity continues.  One is that it is a matter of long tradition to trap songbirds, and Italy is nothing if not wed to her traditions.  In earlier times songbirds were an important source of protein for hungry Italians. Another reason is that some restaurants persist in serving songbirds, though you will never see them on the menu.

Little birds with polenta, photo courtesy of CABS

Happily, CABS reports that hunting songbirds is truly on the wane in northern Italy, a trend we can only hope (or I can only hope, anyway) will continue.

Gila woodpecker atop a nearby cactus

Hunting for sport is as popular in the U.S. as it is in Italy.  In 2006, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 2.3 million people hunted migratory birds such as doves or waterfowl.  Such hunting is highly regulated; hunters must have appropriate licenses and stamps, and can hunt only certain birds in certain places at certain times.  Sport hunters in both countries are generally dedicated and law-abiding conservationists, interested in protecting the populations of the species they like to hunt.  In a perfectly counter-intuitive bit of logic, sometimes bird populations must be ‘culled’ in order to protect the well-being of the species.  It makes no sense to me, but if the people at Audubon say it’s true, it must be true.  Mustn’t it?

No doubt there is illegal hunting in the U.S., but it is difficult to get away with it.  Some years ago when we lived in Connecticut a man of our acquaintance became very angry at the number of messy geese on his pond and lawn.  He got out his rifle, stood on the back porch and shot one, no doubt hoping to scare away the others.  His neighbors heard the shot and came running to find out what was wrong, so he was caught red-handed.  He did not go to prison, but he did have a reprimand and a sizable fine.  Even worse, he became known locally as ‘Goose Killer’ – and it was not the sort of affectionate and admiring nickname that, say, ‘Speedy’ is.

The illegal taking of birds in Italy is of a different order entirely.  According to CABS, ‘millions’ of birds are taken every year, hundreds of thousands of them in Northern Italy.  They are sometimes taken with guns, as in the wholesale slaughter of migrating birds videoed here (supposedly ‘legal,’ but against the very EU regulations Italy signed on to uphold), and frequently taken in any of several various types of traps, all of which are illegal (bow, snap, snare, cage and nets).

It’s hard to understand what the appeal or pleasure is in trapping or shooting  songbirds.  It’s not as if they’re particularly challenging prey, or especially meaty.  The declining number of traps in Italy attest to the gradual change of attitude towards this cruel practice; but it remains a big problem.

Male finches 'discuss' seating while a female thinks about it all

According to Wikipedia 55 million Americans are bird-watching hobbyists.  They spend $3 billion a year on seed and $800,000 million on bird feeders and other accessories.  Maybe there’s an opportunity here to help the struggling Italian economy.  Don’t kill the birds, feed them. Photograph them.   Enjoy them.  Encourage touristic bird-watching trips. And when the irresistible blood lust of the hunter comes over you, go down to Signore Marrone’s farm and bag a few chickens.

Tragedy on Via Enrico Toti

Imagine my horror when I walked out of my palestra (Energym) and discovered the hideous remains of a murdered male.

It’s horrible enough to find a corpse, but to find one dismembered – I’m amazed I didn’t faint dead away.

I called the police of course and they immediately arrived, put crime-scene tape all around the… crime scene, dusted the remains for fingerprints, and then summoned an ambulance to remove the pathetic body.  They put the time of death at about 8 hours before I called them as rigor was still present.

Minor crimes in Italy are frequently not solved, major ones frequently are, one way or another (we won’t mention Amanda Knox here).  But this crime will be difficult to resolve – there are obviously no fingerprints or dental work that might aid in identification.

Who was the victim?  Why was he so cruelly chopped in half in the prime of life?  And why was he left near the palestra?  There are a few clues, anyway, which will give the detectives a start.  Obviously he’s black. His fine physique suggests he cared about his appearance – perhaps he was an athlete or a model.  Clearly the disposal of his body was done in haste – the perpetrators didn’t even bother to cover him with a few leaves to delay discovery.

It is all a great mystery.  You may not read about it in the papers, but depend on it, I’ll be following developments here in Rapallo.

Death in America

Tags

Murder in America, Shooting in Arizona, Shooting in Tucson, Suicide

Here we are in Arizona, now famous around the world for its violence and death, and I have to tell you that in early January I felt a bit like an  angel of death myself.  Friends visiting from Italy very much wanted to go to San Francisco, so that is what we did for three days in the early days of the new year.  One of our goals?  Walk across the Golden Gate Bridge.  We met our goal on a crisp, breezy (read ‘cold, windy’) afternoon, and it could not have been lovelier.

On almost every bridge support we were somewhat surprised to see one of these signs:

The blue sign says, “Crisis Counseling – There is Hope – Make the Call.  The consequences of jumping from this bridge are fatal and tragic.”  Also, the bridge railings are surprisingly low, making it very easy for would-be suicides to clambor over and make the leap.

On our walk back across the bridge, with the wind mercifully behind us, we noticed a small commotion at rail side.  Indeed, someone had just jumped to his or her death moments before we arrived.  The people responding to the tragedy were extremely low-key and very, very professional.  I doubt many bridge-walkers that day knew that anything untoward had happened.  There’s a reason why they were so good – they get a lot of practice.  Someone jumps off the bridge about once every ten days.  No one survives.

Flash forward a few days to January 8 – what a good day for our visit to Tucson to look for a church my friends particularly wanted to see.  There was a fair amount of traffic in the outskirts of the city, and as we waited in an accident-caused traffic jam the Captain called to tell us there had been some kind of assassination attempt somewhere nearby and we might want to head home.  We didn’t want to head home, so we pushed ahead and eventually arrived downtown.  Downtown Tucson on a Saturday is a very sleepy place – most of the shops were closed and there were very few people about.  I don’t think it had anything to do with the terrible events that had unfolded at the suburban Safeway Market a few hours previous.

These two experiences with our friends, one right after the other, made me feel extremely uneasy – is America really and truly such a violent place?  More violent that the rest of the world?  I’ve waited a long time to write about what happened because it’s taken a while to sort out my thoughts on this question.

Here is a picture of Jared Lee Loughren, the unrepentent man who shot and killed six people and injured twelve others (including the now famously and miraculously recovering Representative Gabrielle Giffords)  in Tucson the day we were there:

This is what insanity looks like, at least in one of its iterations.  And my point, I guess, is that insanity is all around us, not only in the United States, but on every continent in the world, even in our beloved Italy.  It is a difficult to find hard figures, but according to Wikipedia there were 5.7 murders per 100,000 population  in the U.S. in 2006 and in Italy there were 1.06 per 100,000.   The difference between the U.S. and Italy, I suspect, is the ease with which one can get guns and the number of guns that are in private hands.  Here in Arizona, which is one of the gun-totingest states, it is legal to carry licensed guns both openly and concealed.  I can’t tell you how disconcerting it is to be in a store and see a fellow swagger in with a pistol on his belt.

The NRA will tell you that it is not guns that kill, but people who kill.  They will also tell you that it is our Constitutional right to arm ourselves.  The first is a nonsense.  People cannot kill nearly as effectively without guns – it is guns in the hands of people like Mr. Loughren  that kill, and kill often and very effectively.  The second assertion is open to frequent debate.  The second amendment of the U.S. Constitution says, ” A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”  Some say that it means anyone and everyone has the right to own and carry guns.  Others say that the framers intended that guns be owned privately but used in a militia setting to protect the country.

It doesn’t matter who’s right – what matters is that as things stand now there are a lot of guns in the hands of a lot of people.  Most people are responsible and careful.  But there is a small percentage who are not, and they are the ones who are deadly.

So why the description of the suicide at the beginning of this screed?  Only this.  It is disturbed people who kill – either themselves or others.  Some take their own lives, some decide to take the lives of others.  It all adds up to the tragedy of senseless death.  These deaths, all of them, are tragic to the close circle of family and friends around the dead and the killers; but they are also tragic and harmful to the fabric of society as a whole.

So… what to do?  One of the men taking care of the suicide on the bridge told me that if only the authorities would put up a wire fence high enough to make it difficult for people to jump the number of jumpers would decrease.  And it seems logical that if only we could keep guns out of the hands of those who are not stable enough to have them we would all be a lot safer.  The first isn’t happening because the bridge authorities do not want to ruin the view from the bridge.  The second is not happening because no one knows how to do it.

Mobster Caught by a Plate of Spaghetti

Mobster undone by love of mamma’s cooking

Fugitive Camorra clan suspect captured while tucking in

17 August, 17:10

(ANSA) – Naples, August 17 – A suspected member of the Neapolitan mafia, the Camorra, has been arrested by Italian police after being unable to resist his mother’s culinary delights.

Rosario Scognamillo, a 39-year-old suspected of being a high-ranking member of the Grimaldi Camorra clan, was captured by agents Monday while having lunch at his mother’s home.The man, who is accused of criminal association related to drugs trafficking, had been on the run since May. He may have thought his return home would not be noticed with many Italians relaxing on their summer holidays at the moment.

The above was in the English section of the morning’s ANSA web-site. Could there be anything that speaks more clearly of the Italian male’s love of his mother and her cooking?  I imagine she was doing his laundry while he ate, before heading over to the hideout to give it a good clean.

We have frequently been struck by the way Italian parents serve their children.  It is sweet and loving, but we’re not sure it’s doing Italian boys any favors.  According to an NBC report, more than half of Italian men between 25 and 35 years old still live with their parents.  The young women I know tell me they do not want Italian husbands – they are too spoiled.  I wonder if the same thing is going on in the US?

In any case, it certainly makes the job easier for the police, doesn’t it?

A Sad Tale With a Happy Ending, Told in Pictures

Tags

motorcycle, motorcycle theft

Where the bike lives

Uh oh - the bike is MISSING!

That evening the Law arrives

There are forms to filled out and filed

A miraculous recovery and return

Fire!

Tags

brush burning in Italy, burning, burning in Italy, Canadair, Canadair fire fighters, forest fires, Montepegli fire

4 a.m.  Not the hour at which you want to wake up smelling smoke.

Two nights ago that’s exactly what happened though.  At first I thought, Oh, those wild and crazy neighbors have decided to burn in the middle of the night.  A cursory check, though, suggested that this was not true.  There’s not a lot of light at 4 a.m., but there was enough to see that there was a large cloud of smoke trapped by the still air hanging over our whole valley and that it wasn’t coming either from our neighbors’ houses or from ours.

The next morning all of Rapallo was under a blanket of smoke and we had scratchy throats:

The beautiful yellow Canadair fire fighting plane arrived first thing, and spent the entire morning flying from the fire to the sea and back again to dump a load of water.  It’s hard to see the plane in this photo, but you can see the reddish spray of the water it has just released.  The water isn’t red – that’s a trick the morning light played on my camera:

(Here’s a video of a Canadair dumping water on a fire at the Istanbul Airport.)

To fight this particular fire, which was on the next hill over from our valley, the planes approached from the north,

made a steep bank, and disappeared behind the hill.  Very fancy flying.  This looks like it couldn’t possibly end well:

but in fact there were no big crashes.  It is mesmerizing to watch the planes coming and going, a round trip they were making in about six minutes for this fire.  And it’s hard to imagine what skill it must require to fly like this.

I went down to the Port later in the morning to see what it all looked like from there.  There was smoke everywhere:

And yes!  There’s the brave little plane flying back to the fire.  They wasted no time getting to the water, dropping down right over the port and then scooping it up.

Anita, of GPL fame, lives in Zoagli and took this terrific photograph of the plane picking up the water (thanks for letting me use this, Anita!):

Someone should write a children’s book about these adorable planes – The Little Plane that Could (move over, Little Engine)!  I know there’s nothing cute about what they’re doing, or why they have to do it, but the size, shape and color of the planes is just plain appealing.

Il Secolo XIX reported the next day that there were ten fires set on Montepegli behind Rapallo; boys on motor scooters were seen in the area at the time, and the police are investigating with great seriousness.  We were all lucky.  There was no wind, so though the fires burned 8 hectares (24 acres), the nearby homes on Montepegli were not threatened and residents didn’t have to evacuate.

And you know what’s really crazy?  At least two people in Rapallo woke up that morning and said to themselves, ‘Hey! Great day for a fire!’

Go figure.