Archive for the ‘current events’ Category
Voting from Abroad in Italy (for Democrats)
We’ve discussed what’s going on in the Italian political sphere, so it’s only fair that I also talk about my homeland, the United States, in this extremely important election year.
Some of you have asked whether I, as a dual Italian-American citizen, can vote in American elections as well as Italian–and the answer is yes. And up until this year, all I had to do was ask for my absentee ballots in time.
FYI, in order to get absentee ballots and vote the old-fashioned way, Americans living abroad can visit the Federal Voting Assistance Program or the Overseas Vote Foundation for specific state requirements.
But this year, there’s another option, at least for Democrats.
If you’re a Democrat, you can, for the first time ever, vote *online* in the Democrats Abroad Global Primary. If you’re in Italy, you can also vote in person in Rome, Florence, Milan, or Bologna. See DemocratsAbroad.org for more details.
If you’re a registered Republican, though, this option isn’t available to you just yet so you’ll have to go the absentee route.
Now, who should you vote for? Well if you’re still undecided, there are plenty of online quizzes that will match you up with the candidate whose views are closest to yours; my favorite is from Glassbooth.org.
You’re given 20 points to allot among a list of issues depending on how important they are to you, and then you answer a series of more specific questions.
Click! And you have the candidate whose views are most similar to yours.
How’d I do? Of the remaining candidates, Mike Gravel and I are apparently peas in a pod at 85%–who knew? I hadn’t even heard of him until I took this quiz. Quite depressing actually.
Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and I meet at the 74% mark, while John Edwards and I agree 73% of the time.
I have to be honest. I’m not uber-excited about any of the candidates (I would’ve loved to have voted for Dennis Kucinich or Joe Biden . . . or Al Gore!), but I do know I’ll be voting Democrat in November. After all, I am pretty much what you’d call a Yellow Dog Democrat and proud:
That’s for you Cherrye!
No matter who you’re supporting, BE SURE TO VOTE!
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[tags]elections, presidential election, presidential primaries, voting overseas, voting abroad, glassbooth, democrats abroad, yellow dog democrat[/tags]
heath ledger: 1979-2008
I wasn’t planning on writing a post about this, but I just have to. I was literally lying awake the other night thinking about the sudden death of Oscar nominated actor Heath Ledger, so I knew I’d have to write.
Because that’s what I do when I need to work through something.
And seeing as though nearly a week has passed since Ledger’s death but it hasn’t strayed far from my mind for more than a few minutes at a time, clearly I need to work through this.
I wasn’t a particularly huge Heath Ledger fan, and I’m not one to be emotionally involved in the lives of celebrities in general, so what’s the deal here? Why does the mere thought of his smiling face send me into an emotional downward spiral?
I don’t know how many 28-year-olds die every day in the world. However many it is, it’s too many, and each one of those deaths is tragic. But it’s Ledger who has made me stop and look squarely at death.
Death that comes at all ages, sometimes when we expect it, but more often when we don’t.
And I think of Ledger’s 2-year-old daughter Matilda, who, by all accounts, he simply adored. Indeed, being a father was a “cosmic” experience for Ledger–and it showed to anyone who caught of a glimpse of him and his little girl around New York City.
And then I think of his former fiancée and mother of his child, Michelle Williams, just four years younger than I am, raising her daughter in a world without Ledger.
Obviously I don’t know what happened between them, but as their split is only a few months old after three years and a child together, well, I have to believe that there are still a lot of deep feelings involved. My heart truly goes out to her–and to all young parents who have lost their partner in raising a child.
It’d be nice if the media would leave Williams and her daughter alone right now, but we know that won’t happen.
Here on the homefront, P didn’t know precisely who Ledger was until I pointed him out (P’s not great with names of foreign actors), but once he realized who Ledger was, P, too, was drawn into a pool of sadness–very unlike him, might I add. He’s not what I’d call into the whole celebrity gossip scene.
“Sono sempre i migliori quelli che se ne vanno,” he said while shaking his head–the rough Italian equivalent of “only the good die young,” a sentiment that Robin expressed the other day as well and to which I replied that I couldn’t help thinking of Natalie Merchant’s song “River” about the tragic death of 23-year-old River Phoenix in 1993. Not all the lyrics apply, but they’re pretty close to how I feel about Ledger’s situation as well.
A piece from the The Huffington Post written by Star Jones entitled Reporting on the Dead also does a good job.
Toxicology reports and the final word on what caused Ledger’s death will be coming in soon, but honestly, it doesn’t matter to me what killed him–unless, of course, it was, as suspected, a fatal prescription drug combination that others may learn from.
What I mean is that no matter how Ledger died, his life, his work, his passion, his down-to-earth way of living touched millions of people, and perhaps in death, he’s reaching out to even more of us.
I still can’t put my finger on why this has affected me so deeply, but I know that others feel the same way. Even though they didn’t know one another, actor Daniel Day-Lewis couldn’t get Ledger off his mind during an interview with Oprah Winfrey during which he was supposed to be discussing his Oscar nomination for There Will Be Blood:
“I didn’t know him. I have an impression, a strong impression, I would have liked him very much as a man if I had. I’d already marveled at some of his work, and had looked forward so much to seeing the work that he would do in the future.”
I think this sums up how a lot of us feel about Ledger–he just seemed like a guy you’d love to hang out with at the pub and yet also someone who took his work, his craft, and his family so seriously that you couldn’t have anything but respect for him as a man.
And I do hope this remains his legacy. He deserves nothing less.
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[tags]heath ledger, michelle williams, river phoenix, daniel day-lewis[/tags]
italy’s government falls…again
Last night Prime Minister, er Former Prime Minister, Romano Prodi lost a confidence vote in Italy’s Senate after he had easily won in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house. You can read details about what happened here and read my friend Paola’s take (with which I happen to agree) on the whole thing here (in English).
FYI, the lead-up to the vote included spitting, fainting, and one senator being taken out on a stretcher. And yes, those are Prodi’s oh-so-mature opponents popping the bubbly just after the results were announced in the above photo. They were actually scolded on live television by Senate President Franco Marini who told them to put away the bottle as “We’re not in an osteria.”
So what does this mean? Well we could be looking at either an interim caretaker government (which just might be led by . . . Prodi) *or* a so-called snap election.
Because goodness knows what Italy needs is more elections. It’ll be up to President Giorgio Napolitano to decide.
As Eric Reguly notes in this article, this turn of events opens the door for the return of Silvio Berlusconi, Former Prime Minister, billionaire, controller of a large chunk of Italian media, and, in some political circles, the Anti-Christ, as the leader of the Bel Paese.
On a personal note, this could also mean that I’d get to vote for two countries’ leaders in one year.
Still, I’d prefer the interim government to give President Napolitano a bit of time to fix the electoral system so that fewer parties would be able to spit (literally as it turns out) and fight for control in Parliament. The last election put 40 different parties in there, which turned into a lot of power struggles, strange bed fellows, repeated confidence votes, and general chaos.
Ah, and a fallen government.
Kinda feels like déjà vu all over again, doesn’t it?
The last time Italy’s government fell eleven months ago, I posted this and suggested we all turn to alcoholic children’s snacks to ease our pain.
But I say we up the ante.
I hear that Hershey’s is making some mints whose packages resemble street packets of cocaine–although not for too much longer, so hurry and grab yours today! Talk about an Ice Breaker!
Click here for a photo on the off-chance that you, too, had no idea what a mint that resembles a street packet of cocaine might look like.
And that’s all I have to say about that.
Buon weekend a tutti!
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[tags]italy, italian government, romano prodi, silvio berulsconi, confidence vote, giorgio napolitano, politics, hershey’s, icebreakers[/tags]
having a ball in rome
*Updated to direct you to what Juli, a trusty correspondent in Umbria, dug up about Graziano Cecchini and the ball stunt: Behind the Balls.
The other day Rome’s Spanish Steps were having a ball.
Well, actually a half million of them as red, blue, yellow, and green balls flowed down one of the Eternal City’s most famous landmarks.
The rainbow spectacle was the doing of Graziano Cecchini who commented that we use “art — if we want to call it art — to stress our malaise.”
Cleaners were on the ball, so to speak, and got the lot of balls cleared out rather quickly, although they also had help from tourists who grabbed some of the only free souvenirs they’d find in the Bel Paese. Word has it that some balls even quickly found their way to eBay.
Some of you may remember Cecchini as the mastermind behind this last year:
This is the Trevi Fountain dyed red in October. Leaflets found nearby said that the red represented the red carpet of the Rome Film Festival and the water was dyed red in protest of the expenses incurred organizing the event.
After the Trevi Fountain incident, Cecchini was investigated for possibly damaging historical monuments, but experts said that, thankfully, none of the red color had seeped into the 18th century fountain’s marble structure.
So what do you think about such displays?
Art? Vandalism?
Inspiring? Disgusting?
Does it make you want to browse listings of Rome hotels, make a reservation, and wait for another show?
And would you have, ahem, grabbed a ball–or did you?
Do tell.
Buon weekend!
"grease" out, "w00t" is the word! (plus vote for me & a word to expat bloggers in italy)
Various announcements this Friday, so let’s get to it:
Merriam-Webster has recently named its Word of the Year. It’s “w00t” and yes, those are zeros in the middle of it. Yes Virginia, this is a word that’s not even made up of letters.
W00t is defined as “expressing joy (it could be after a triumph, or for no reason at all); similar in use to the word ‘yay.'”
Hey, who knew that “yay” was a word?
Anyway, you can read more about “w00t” and its origins here. As much as I love an evolving language, are we getting a bit too lax on the criteria when words are made of numbers?
I’m kidding (mostly) but what I’m really wondering is how long it is before I hear Italian children shouting this in the piazza:
“Ci vediamo dopo…w00t!”
Eh. I guess it’s still better than all the English-turned-Italian technological terms that have become part of the lingo around here like clickare, downloadare . . . bloggare. Don’t get me started.
Vote!
As you may know, I recently entered this photo in Write From Karen’s Photo Contest 5: Holiday Cheer:
Doesn’t Pap Pap just *scream* Holiday Cheer?!
You can read more about the background of this photo here in my official entry to the contest, but let me just say that for the record, Pap, who has since passed away, put these bows on himself of his own volition. And it was so very out of character that the hilarity was monumentally increased.
You still have time to enter your own photo (until 4 pm Central today) but then just an hour later at 5 pm Central today, I invite you to vote for my photo in the contest–voting lasts through the weekend until 8 pm Central on Monday, December 17, so you have a few days to get to it.
There will be a voting poll here when the precincts open.
Make your voice heard!
Grazie mille in advance!
Enter/Email!
This is a note to my fellow expat bloggers in Italy. If you haven’t already, head over to Valerie’s 2 Baci in a Pinon Tree to see about a contest she’s running just for us.And to those who aren’t expat bloggers in Italy, head on over to Valerie’s anyway for some great reading on her and her husband Bryan‘s move to Ascoli Piceno in Le Marche from New Mexico.
Valerie is trying to compile a blogroll of all of us expats who blog from Italy–a very worthy pursuit–and so she’s asking us to send her an email at:
italybloggersAThotmailDOTcom
with the following info:
Your Name (as well as your blog moniker if you use one)
Your Blog’s Name and URL address
A one-line description of your blog’s focus
Your Location (city and region)
Send the email by December 30 and you can win “[a] brand-spanking new English translation of the quintessential Italian cookbook, Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well by Pellegrino Artusi.”
Sounds great to me!
And that’s all for today kids. Busy weekend ahead for many of us, I’m sure, so…
Buon weekend!
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[tags]woot[/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
