Archive for the ‘current events’ Category
Happy Liberation Day Italia!
Today is one of Italy’s biggest holidays: la Festa della Liberazione or Liberation Day, celebrating the country’s liberation from fascism thanks to Allied troops at the end of World War II.
Read on...Earth Day 2008: The Plight of the Honeybee
Today is Earth Day, 24 hours for us to stop and really think about how our actions affect the environment.
Of course we should do this every day, but, according to the Earth Day Network website, since 1970, April 22 has represented at least one day per year for people around the world to “celebrate the earth and renew our commitment to building a safer, healthier and cleaner world for all of us.”
The Earth Day Network site offers many ideas as to how you can get involved:
Volunteer. Go to a festival. Install solar panels on your roof. Organize an event where you live. Change a habit. Help launch a community garden.
Communicate your priorities to your elected representatives.
The possibilities are endless! Do something nice for the earth, have fun, meet new people, and make a difference.
This Earth Day, I’m going to tell you about the birds and the bees.
OK, really just the bees, but I wanted to make sure you were paying attention.
The plight of honeybees may seem small in comparison to many of the other problems our environment faces, but make no mistake–the fact that millions of honeybees are dying (Colony Collapse Disorder) can have disastrous effects not only on flowers and honey but also on food production, including many of the fruits we hold so dear.
Honeybees pollinate about a third of the food we eat, and without sufficient numbers of bees, these crops simply can’t survive.
Why are bees dying?
A few reasons:
- stronger pesticides (which, incidentally, can be toxic to humans as well);
- loss of natural habitats due to urban expansion;
- changes in farming techniques that replace native vegetation with pasture grasses for cattle; and
- more frequent severe droughts in some areas like southern Italy
The endangerment of honeybees has been big news in Italy. The National Beekeepers’ Association (UNAAPI) has seen drastic drops in honey production–as much as 50%–because of a silent “slaughter of bees.” Along with southern Italy, Tuscany and Umbria have also been hit hard.
Environmental group Legambiente and the Slow Food movement have teamed up to help the UNAAPI create a buzz about the endangerment of bees; hopefully world leaders and lawmakers will work together to ensure that we all avoid getting stung by a major loss of honeybees.
For more information and what you can do to help, see PBS’s program Endangered Honeybees and Häagen-Dazs’s page on how to Help the Honey Bees.
if you can’t touch yourself, who can you touch?
Did you know that it is now illegal for Italian men to touch their genitals in public?
So ruled Italy’s highest court, which wrote that such touching “has to be regarded as an act contrary to public decency, a concept including that nexus of socio-ethical behavioral rules requiring everyone to abstain from conduct potentially offensive to collectively held feelings of decorum.”
Such big words for a simple act!
As all of us living with Italian men know, a man’s touching of his, ahem, nether regions is a well-established and time-honored method of warding off malocchio.
And I don’t just mean someone giving someone else the Evil Eye–I’m talking about the mere mention/implication/thought of death or other bad things happening (I can see P “protecting” himself even as I type this!).
So, Italy’s highest court, until you’re willing to outlaw bad luck, I’m thinking gratuitous crotch-grabbing in the Bel Paese is here to stay.
I’m just sayin.
And speaking of cannoli . . . hah!
Buon weekend!
P.S. Thanks Carol for the tip on the news piece!
——————
[tags]malocchio, italy, italian men[/tags]
philadelphia going to the birds
Last week, a high school in my former adopted city of Philadelphia was closed for a day while personnel cleaned up after 85 Rhode Island Reds.
For the fowly-challenged, those are hens.
On Sunday, February 10 around 9:30 p.m., four unidentified males entered Northeast Philadelphia High School and let the birds loose, supplying them with plenty of chicken feed throughout the hall. For some reason, no alarm sounded upon their entrance and the hens weren’t discovered until hours later when the “school building engineer” showed up for work.
Can you imagine that guy’s face?
School was, not surprisingly, canceled that day, and the incident is under investigation by the Philadelphia School District, the Philadelphia police, and the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.
Students returned to the bird-free zone the following day. Here’s one them, senior Laura Weiszer, with a t-shirt commemorating the hen invasion:
“I’m into chickens ya’ll” is what’s written on there.
As for the hens, they were taken to nearby Fox Chase Farm. Sorry, but I can’t help wondering about the wisdom of letting the hens in the foxhouse. Hah!
The Philadelphia School District has two farms and will keep some of whatever hens aren’t claimed by their rightful owners.
I have to admit that I thought this was all pretty funny when I read it–especially after I was assured that the pranksters left food for the hens.
Even school officials saw the humor; in reference to the fines that those responsible will have to pay, district spokesman Fernando Gallard said, “It’s not going to be chicken scratch.”
See, if this happened in Italy, all the hen droppers would need to do is come up with a motive behind the “protest” and they wouldn’t have to pay anything.
And really, wasn’t this *so* much more inventive than simply throwing some balls down the Spanish Steps?
A whole lot messier though.
————–
[tags]philadelphia, hens, rhode island reds, northeast philadelphia high school, fox chase farm[/tags]
inspiration on the golf course
I’m not a golfer or golf fan, but some stories transcend sports:
Legally blind, 92-year-old nails hole-in-1
On January 10, Leo Fiyalko used his five iron to drive the ball 110 yards and straight into the fifth hole of the Cove Cay Country Club in Clearwater, Florida. Although he’s been golfing for 60 years, this was Fiyalko’s first hole-in-one–and he didn’t know he had accomplished it until he walked up to the hole in search of the ball.
Fiyalko has macular degeneration, a disease that destroys the macula, the part of the eye that allows us to see fine detail. According to Yale University research, as many as 10 million Americans are affected by the disease and 1 million of those are legally blind like Fiyalko–indeed, macular degeneration has left Fiyalko with only peripheral vision in his right eye.
Of his amazing shot, Fiyalko said, “I was just trying to put the ball on the green.”
This inspiring story reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from Les Brown:
Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.
P.S. Happy Groundhog Day!
*UPDATE: One of our most beloved central Pennsylvanians
PUNXSUTAWNEY PHIL HAS SEEN HIS SHADOW.
Sorry to say that means 6 more weeks of winter.
—————
[tags] golf, golfing, hole-in-one, leo fiyalko, stars, groundhog day, punxsutawney, punxsutawney phil [/tags]
Michelle Kaminsky is an American attorney-turned-freelance writer who lived in her family's ancestral village in Calabria, Italy for 15 years. This blog is now archived.
Calabria Guidebook
Recipes
