This 15 minute interview with Justice Antonin Scalia is RARE, and took place on "60 Minutes" on Sunday April 27, 2008. While many consider Justice Scalia "Right Wing", he considers himself an "Originalist" (in interpreting the Constitution).
He also gets great pleasure out of describing The Constitution as a "Dead" document, in contradicting teachers who describe it as a "Living" Document. While few of us would be able to match Scalia's Intellect or his Debating Skills, I dare to question Scalia's reasoning, and my basis would be while I agree with Scalia that The Constitution was a Remarkable, and Revolutionary Democratic Innovation, it was still created by "Imperfect" Human Beings in a Less Enlightened Era, who were Neophytes at dealing with a New Concept, not to speak of Egos and Self Interest (both personal and state),......and was therefore a LESS than "Perfect" Document, so it does not deserve to be looked at as sacrosanct.
After all, it permitted Slavery, and Women had No Rights. And as Brilliant as Scalia is, He is unable to Recognize that the Framers even recognized their fallibility, and PROVIDED for AMENDMENTS, of which there has been TWENTY SEVEN, the last in 1992, and unquestionably more to come, which makes The Constitution a "LIVING" Document.
In Scalia's Defense, he says that if person's want certain social circumstances or change, although he philosophically might not agree with it, the answer is LEGISLATION, not to "Imagine" that right being in the Constitution.
Also, what I do give Scalia credit for, is his referring to the "pride" he was able to bring to the Italian American Community, by his appointment, to partially "offset" the Mafia "albatross" the Media has hung around the neck of the Italian Americans.
Click here: CBS News Video - Top Stories and Video News Clips at CBSNews.com
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=4048750n?source=newsletter
On so many Videos there are stops and stutters, but the Interview is worth the distractions.
I was fortunate enough to see it on TV.
Thanks to Walter Santi.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Video: Justice Antonin Scalia Interview on "60 Minutes" with Lesley Stahl
Monday, April 28, 2008
The Heart says Fiat 500. Common Sense and the Wallet says Hyundai.
Hyundai, on the other hand, is South Korean and follows the familiar route with its car design, emulating what it hopes Europe will approve. The five-door i10 hatchback is its newest model, coming to market alongside the Fiat 500, which is the less practical of the pair because it does not have rear doors.
Although the i10 looks the much larger of the two, there isn't much in it. It is considerably heavier, and this shows in the way they drive and how they perform.
Hyundai is conventionally upright, whilst the Fiat's tail slopes away and its contours are rounded, in a deliberate homage to its spiritual sire, the original 500 from the 1950s. Fiat in the 21st century was fascinated by the success of BMW's Mini in reprising the mood and magic of the 1959 Mini. The Mini and the Fiat 500 surged into the Swinging Sixties and the emerging pop culture.
It is this mix of style and heritage which helps the Fiat wow, whereas the Hyundai, with no such history of la dolce vita, passes without much attention. The Hyundai is neat but fairly anonymous. However, when my son collected the 500 he found it surrounded by onlookers.
With two passengers and a weekend's luggage on board they then drove 200 miles. I expected there to ensue a fair amount of grumbling and back-stretching, but all three were alert and unruffled by the trip.
This 1.3 diesel model averaged 55mpg. It was quiet enough for none of them to realise it was in fact a diesel car. However, the entry price is £9,300. Only the 1.2 petrol 500 comes cheaper, at £7,905. Whatever else it is, and there is plenty to admire, the 500 is not a cheap car.
The exterior is attention-grabbing and when you look inside you find a matching brightness. This white test car with body stripes in the Italian colours had a matching white synthetic fascia panel with ivory instrument pods. The rest of the interior was light and lively.
Its nearest iconic equivalent is the modern Mini, but the Fiat interior is cooler, less contrived, smarter and more appealing. It is not, though, a physical rival to the Mini, which is the more substantial car with much bigger engines and a meatier personality.
Supposing money is scarcer and you cannot afford the Fiat 500? Then you may turn to the Hyundai i10. It is practical, roomier than the Fiat (en extra two inches in shoulder width in the front seats), and prices range from £6,495 to £7,595, depending on trim. All have the 1.1-litre 65bhp petrol engine which delivers an official average 56.5mpg on two of them, and 119g/km of CO2, meaning cheap road tax.
My test car was the Comfort version, fitted with a four-speed automatic gearbox, which brought its price to £7,895. For this you get air conditioning, electric windows, keyless entry, 14-inch alloys, front fog lights, and a five-year warranty with unlimited mileage. Metallic paint was an additional £325. That is quite a package of value for money.
The four-speeder is far from an exciting performer and also plays havoc with emissions and performance. The i10 with manual gears is already quite lazy, needing 15.6 seconds to reach 62mph from standstill. The automatic lengthens that by three seconds, reduces average economy to 47.9mpg, which is not at all bad, and hoists the CO2 emissions to 139g/km.
Small engines and automatic shifting bring compromises, and this Hyundai is par for the field. It goes about its gear changing smoothly, but noise levels are higher. Yet if you spend much of your time in slow traffic they are so much easier than a manual gearbox. I drove it home from a busy city centre in thick traffic and thought: yes, automatic cars are more restful. Just sit there and steer.
Whilst offering more for your money than the Fiat, the Hyundai did not ride as nicely, giving passengers a tougher time on patchy road surfaces. Other than that, and its generic greyness, it was fine as everyday transport.
Common sense and the wallet says the Hyundai. The heart says Fiat.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
100th Anniversary of Rome Olympics... That Didn't Happen
On Budget, But Five Months Long: The First London Game
Independent UK
Saturday, April 26, 2008
One hundred years ago this weekend, one of the longest and most celebrated sporting events in history began in west London.
Despite the current obsession with all things Olympian, there is nothing planned to mark the anniversary of the 1908 Games. But the events that gripped Edwardian London that summer marked the year the modern Olympic movement matured into an international phenomenon.
Lasting five months, the Games were the longest in history, but it was an Olympiad London was never meant to have. The event had been awarded to Rome but, in 1906, Mount Vesuvius erupted, killing more than 100 people and badly damaging Naples. Italian funds were diverted to the rescue effort and London was tasked with holding the Games instead. Organisers had just 24 months to put everything together.
A grand opening ceremony at White City Stadium was followed by a simple game of rackets. Athletes from across the white industrialised world (no African or Asian nations were invited) participated in 110 events in 21 sporting disciplines. More than 2,000 competitors, including 37 women, from 22 countries travelled to the capital of the most powerful empire in the world to take part.
In four years time, 14,500 athletes will return to London to participate in 29 sports and 39 disciplines, accompanied by 20,000 members of the media and 31,500 sponsors and their guests. Spectators will be able to buy about 9.2 million tickets for an event that is likely to cost at least £9bn - but probably much more.
The Games of the IV Olympiad, as the 1908 Olympics were billed, cost just £80,000. The stadium cost £60,000, while the rest went on staging the events. Most of the money came from donations.
Although the costs were under control, London's first Games did not pass without scandal. Until 1908, the marathon course had always been 25 miles long, but it grew to 26 miles and 365 yards thanks to Royal Family. At Windsor, where the race began, the Princess of Wales insisted on adding a mile so that her children could watch from a balcony. And at White City, Queen Alexandra was not content until she had the best view of the race, which forced organisers to extend the course again by another 365 yards. The length remains the same to this day.
At 5.17pm on a blisteringly hot afternoon in July, Italian marathon runner Dorando Pietri limped into the stadium. He had just 350 metres to complete but was so exhausted that he ended up running the wrong way round the track. Stewards turned the 22-year-old around but were forced to come to his aid again after Pietri collapsed. When he finally crossed the finishing line 10 minutes later, the crowd erupted in a deafening roar. The stadium that day was packed - 75,000 people had crammed in to see the finish of the race, well beyond the stadium's official capacity. Not that that helped Pietri win gold.
Despite his efforts, the Italian was disqualified after the American team complained he had been unfairly helped over the line. First place instead went to New Yorker Johnny Hayes.
The Games created many unlikely heroes. British archers William and Charlotte Dod, who claimed their ancestors fought at Agincourt, became the first brother and sister medallists, while Swedish shooter Oscar Swahn, who liked to wear a top hat and heavy overcoat, won two golds at the grand age of 60.
While there was no torch relay, the opening ceremony was a contentious affair. The Finns, incensed that they should have to march under the flag of Tsarist Russia, refused to carry any banner, while the Americans failed to dip the Stars and Stripes as it passed the royal box. Team captain Martin Sheridan explained at the time: "This flag dips to no earthly king". Controversy, it seems, goes with the territory of the modern Olympic Games.
Berlusconi's Wife Calls for DE-Unification of Italy
Italy Must be Broken Up, Says Berlusconi's Wife
Telegraph, UKBy Malcolm Moore in Rome
April 26, 2008
| Silvio Berlusconi's wife added her voice yesterday to the growing calls for Italy to be partitioned. In an interview with La Stampa, Veronica Lario, 51, said: "Italy has never been well-suited to being a single country, and has never matured enough to become one. There is no longer any value in a unified Italy." Ms Lario, a former showgirl, married Italy's prime minister-elect 18 years ago after catching his eye on a television show. Since then, she has rarely courted publicity, but does run Il Foglio, an influential newspaper. The prospect of a devolved Italy has grown significantly in recent weeks since the Northern League, a secessionist party, won strong support in the general election. Umberto Bossi, its volcanic leader, has repeatedly threatened to "take up arms" against the "corrupt" politicians in Rome who divert the wealth of Italy's North to the impoverished South. Ms Lario disclosed that she was a fan of Mr Bossi and added it was time for Italy to stop being "snobbish" about the League, whose politicians are frequently coarse and populist. "This is a disillusioned country, even after Berlusconi's victory," she said. "The League expresses concrete demands from the most productive part of Italy, which is tired of dragging the rest of the country and does not find itself represented by the Left-wing." Mr Berlusconi, who will find it difficult to maintain a majority in parliament without the League's support, is likely to make Mr Bossi a cabinet minister. He could also appoint Roberto Calderoli, Mr Bossi's second-in-command, as deputy prime minister. In the past, Mr Calderoli has called for immigrants to be shot in their boats and for a national pork-eating day to defy Islam. "If the people have voted for Mr Calderoli," said Ms Lario, "that gives him credibility". |
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Domenico Mancini Publishes "Il Giornale Italiano" in Detroit last 10 years
Italian-American Entrepreneur, 72, Makes Waves from FraserDetroit Free Press Domenico Mancini was just discovering a passion for journalism and a drive to dig for information in 1998 when he was told: "Get your own newspaper." Mancini of Fraser had gone to work that year for an Italian-American newspaper in Clinton Township. He had a desire "make the community more connected and informed." He volunteered his time to report and to drum up more business for the paper. "I went to the newspaper and I said, 'Let me help.' They said, 'What do you know about newspapers?' I said, 'Let me show you. In two months if I not help you and show you what I can do, you tell me good-bye, so long.' "Within weeks, Mancini, a builder by trade, had become a regular contributor of news reports and the generator of many new distribution sites for the paper. "I was writing social, political, cultural articles," Mancini, now 72, recalled of his newfound passion. "I was challenging public servants, questioning decisions." When he started working on a potentially damaging story about an Italian-American politician in northern Macomb County, it did not come as good news to the men who had given him a shot at newspaper work. "They called me one day and said, 'You're making waves.' I said, 'That's what a newspaper is supposed to do.' They said, 'They're our friends.' I said, 'It's our job to keep the citizens informed,' and I said, 'They are also my friends, but they're in public office.' " They told him to get his own newspaper. And that he did. Within weeks that same year -- now nearly 10 years ago -- he started Il Giornale Italiano, Italian for "the Italian News." One of his first steps in starting a newspaper, which he would publish from top to bottom, was meeting with a friend to inquire about a computer and other tools of the trade. "He said, 'You're nuts.' I said, 'We established I'm nuts; give me what I need.' " "I spent days and nights, all my waking time away from work" as a builder. "Three weeks later I had a newspaper on the street." Il Giornale Italiano is still on the streets. Each month 5,000 copies are delivered to Italian-related businesses in metro Detroit, down to Ohio and across the country to California. The father of two children, now grown, started the paper at a time when free newspapers weren't as commonplace as today. The paper is written almost completely in Italian. It's tabloid-sized. There are stories on subjects such as changes to Italian law that would affect residential property owned by Italian-Americans and financial assistance from the Italian government that is available to Italians and Italian-Americans living in the United States. "I thought people should know this money is there. I pressed the point. I kept making waves." He knew his paper was read when the Italian consulate in Detroit reported being bombarded by calls and that there was no more money to hand out. Visits and calls to the consulate's office, which is on Griswold and Jefferson downtown, are a regular part of Mancini's reporting beat. He considers himself a civic journalist and wants to be a contributor to the community at large. To that end, he offers two free citizenship classes each year at the local library. The next one is in March. He also is trying to convince Italian-American young people to pursue journalism. "I am trying to get young kids involved," he said. "We are not represented in journalism." The paper runs ads, too; many of them run repeatedly but are not paid for by the advertiser each time. "I'm losing money. Most of the ads don't pay.... At the end of the month the printer still has to be paid." It costs him $710 a month to print it. That does not include his own time and labor. He also delivers the papers. "My wife says, 'Stop it.' I can't. "You know it's a lot of work, but I love when the people respond and I see I can make a difference. "It justifies the time and money." Mancini lives with his wife, Maria, in the home he built in 1972. When he started his one-man newspaper, he was still working as a builder. A few years later he retired and made it a full-time pursuit. "One day a lady called about a year back. She was asking a lot of questions. No accent. No broken English. Perfect English. I said, 'Who are you?' " She was from the Immigration and Naturalization Service and said they had learned of his newspaper and wanted to put him on their list of stakeholders in the Italian-American community in case they needed assistance with that community. "To me it's fascinating," he said. "Some people are recognizing it." Mancini said he was contacted two months ago by a California business owner who said he received copies of the paper from a relative in Michigan and wanted copies to put out in his place of business. He shipped them and still does, and word keeps spreading like that. "I hope some people there will start their own Italian-American newspaper," he said. "More information, more participation equals better citizens." The paper is reported, written, designed and laid out in an office in a bedroom in his home on Garfield between Utica and 14 Mile. There are two computers, a printer, a scanner. Many newspapers and books and tools of the trade are all around -- including wall-to-wall wires holding clipped-up pages of the January issue. "This is just a room. This shows you how a simple citizen can work to make a difference." Mancini and his wife moved to the United States from Rome in 1970. They had visited family of his wife in Pittsburgh in 1965 and were transformed. "I saw here more opportunity. ... People had more respect for the fellow human." He makes it clear he loves Rome and Romans, but he sees himself as American. That is not to say that he doesn't hold on to his culture and stay connected to his birthplace. Wanting more Italian immigrants to maintain their link to their homeland was what convinced him to start the paper. "There was a lack of information. There was a disconnection from the culture. I said we have to do better," he said. "We should all be informed." He goes on to mention the resignation the day before of Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi following a no-confidence vote from the Italian senate -- a story he will bring to readers. He also was at a stage in his life when he felt he should do something more altruistic, more meaningful. "I had a struggle for a long time. I was finally making good money. Finally when I felt successful I started to look around, get involved more with the community. I saw it was a loose community." He wanted to "invest my time to bring it together. "I said this has got to be a field where I can make a difference." Though Mancini believes in good, old-fashioned newspapering, he will soon be expected to drop his cut-and-paste method of laying out the paper and prepare it on software for the printer. He is trying to figure out how to pay for it and convince his wife to make the investment in a new computer, software and training. "I am the last of the breed," he said. "But I want to keep on making waves." KIM NORTH SHINE can be reached at 313-223-4557 or at kshine@freepress.com. |
California Assemly Bill AB1863 For Schools to Include the Contributions of Italian-Americans
Farmers Focus on Italian Roots
But the 55-year-old owner of the Fruit Bowl, which includes a fruit stand, bakery and ice cream shop, say the roots of other area Italian-American farms go much deeper.
"My family doesn't go that far back," he said. "I'm kind of the unique one."
Lucchetti will be one of several speakers next month at a conference at Las Positas College in Livermore discussing the contributions of Italian immigrant farmers in the Central Valley. There will be panels of speakers from Stockton, Modesto, Madera and Fresno talking about the histories of those areas and their own experiences.
The conference is the first event in a partnership between the Western Regional Chapter of the American Italian Historical Association and the community college. Organizers hope to hold more events discussing the history of those immigrants, said Teri Ann Bengiveno a Las Positas history instructor and president of the historical association chapter.
Bengiveno said the majority of Italian immigrants, especially in California, came in the 1880s to 1920s, heading here from Ellis Island on the East Coast or other entry points, such as New Orleans.
Ken Scambray, an English professor at the University of La Verne who grew up in Fresno, said census records show nearly 23,000 foreign-born Italians in California in 1900. That grew to nearly 101,000 by 1940.
"Italians were the largest (group of) foreign-born Europeans in California and the U.S.," he said.
Lawrence DiStasi, a Bolinas resident working on the conference, said Italians worked along with other immigrants in agriculture.
"A lot of them started small. Very often they would work for someone else," he said. DiStasi said many have now become owners. "Most of them are still there."
Yet they say it is a history that's not widely recognized.
Scambray said the 1960s push for ethnic studies and away from a "Eurocentric" view of history made studying Italian history unpopular.
"There developed an anti-European sentiment," he said. "People stopped thinking about Europeans in the United States."
Bengiveno also said their community also has not pushed hard for recognition.
"Italians and Italian-Americans really haven't demanded the story be told," she said. "It's not going to be told by itself."
She said the focus on Italian-American history has been on the East Coast, where the Italian population is bigger.
That, however, is beginning to change, conference organizers said. They are supporting AB1863, a bill introduced in January that would encourage schools to include the contributions of Italian-Americans in social studies. A similar bill had made it to the governor's desk during the previous legislative session, but was returned at the request of the Assembly, according to the state's legislative information Web site.
As for Lucchetti, the farm owner, he said the number of Italian-American farms is declining along with the disappearance of family farms. Some farmers don't have children, and some of their children have gone into other businesses.
Lucchetti said he remembered telling his dad, now deceased, that he was going into farming.
"He said I was crazy," Lucchetti said. But he said many Italian farmers remain. "I'd say we're still a significant force."
Eric Louie covers education. Reach him at 925-847-2123 or elouie@bayareanewsgroup.com.
Lynching of Italian POWs at Ft Lawson, in Seattle, WA, Gets Correction of Revisionism
| A Staten Island Trombonist Breaks a 64-Year Silence About a Military Race Riot A violent tale of justice and injustice from America's uglier racial past Village Voice by Tony Ortega April 22nd, 2008 |
| As Barack Obama pointed out, matters of race in America can be complicated. He's right, and here's a prime example. First, the easy version, the post-MLK, new-day-in-America version: A couple of years ago, a Seattle TV journalist noticed an odd monument at a place called Fort Lawton on Puget Sound. Asking around, he learned that the unusual grave was just about all that was left to mark one of the strangest, and most forgotten, episodes in World War II. The monument marked the 1944 death of an Italian POW found hanging from a noose after a night of rioting by black American soldiers at the segregated fort. It was, supposedly, the only time in American history that a black mob had lynched a white (well, Italian) man. More than 40 black soldiers were subsequently tried in the war's largest court-martial, prosecuted by a young Leon Jaworski, who went on to prosecute at Nuremberg and Watergate. Twenty-eight of the Fort Lawton black soldiers were convicted of rioting, and two of the 28 were also convicted of manslaughter in the death of the Italian POW. None served more than four years in custody, but all of the convicted were dishonorably discharged. At the time, the event was terribly embarrassing for the military and the American government. Within a few years, President Truman would integrate the armed forces. For Jaworski, the trial "notorious at the time" put him on the fast track to his later triumphs. But the Seattle journalist, Jack Hamann, suspected that there was more to the story, and he spent years digging into long-buried government documents to discover a much more troubling tale. What was never in much dispute was that some of the black soldiers stationed at the fort, drinking heavily the night before being shipped out to a possibly very dangerous Pacific location, reacted to a fistfight between one of their own and one of the Italian POWs by swarming the Italians' barracks and beating the living hell out of many of the Italians as well as some white American MPs. Also not in dispute was that the rioters had stabbed unarmed victims with knives and used wooden clubs to break limbs, and that one black soldier drove a Jeep repeatedly over a tent that had men in it. It was probably something of a miracle that more people weren't killed. The dead man, Private Guglielmo Olivotto, was found in another part of the camp at dawn the next morning, hanging from a noose that had been tied to a wire at an obstacle course. What Hamann uncovered, however, was that right from the start, the MPs and the officers in charge at Fort Lawton handled the case by doing just about everything wrong. Evidence was destroyed, statements weren't taken when they should have been, and soon it was almost impossible to figure out which of the black soldiers at Fort Lawton had taken part in the beatings and which hadn't. Hamann discovered that those were the conclusions of Brigadier General Elliot D. Cooke, who was called in after the riot to conduct a thorough (but secret) investigation of the incident. General Cooke found, to his disgust, that the white men in charge at Fort Lawton had completely screwed up the post-riot crime scene. But Cooke's investigation was never made public until Hamann unearthed it decades later. Jaworski had known Cooke's findings, but he kept the investigation secret from the officers who were brought in to defend the black men accused of rioting. Hamann's subsequent book about the affair, On American Soil, thoroughly condemns Jaworski for his actions: The prosecutor knowingly ignored exculpatory evidence in the secret investigation and relied instead on questionable snitches to convict men whom he should have had reason to believe were innocent. On American Soil demonstrates that not only was the investigation of the riot botched, but that there was also good reason to suspect that a white MP "an unreliable man that Jaworski used as a prosecution witness" had the motive, means, and opportunity to commit the murder of Olivotto. There was no physical evidence, and almost no circumstantial evidence, to tie the two black soldiers convicted of manslaughter to Olivotto's murder. Now, here's the feel-good payoff: Hamann's book was such a thorough debunking of Jaworski and the court-martial that the military, reacting to howls of protest from family members of the convicted soldiers (nearly all of whom are now dead), ordered last October that the convictions be overturned, and that all of the soldiers receive (mostly posthumous) honorable discharges. The military reversing itself after more than 60 years. Amazing. In late January, there was a touching ceremony at the Wisconsin grave of Booker Townsell, one of the men convicted of rioting. There was evidence, suppressed by Jaworski, that Townsell had never even left his barracks the night of the riot. Now, his family was able "more than 23 years after his death" to hold a new ceremony giving Townsell the official military burial that he deserved. An Associated Press story about Townsell's ceremony, which included a mention of Hamann's book, was carried by newspapers around the country. One of them was the Staten Island Advance, a copy of which made its way to a modest home on Arnprior Street. And that's when the feel-good story gets a little more complicated. When Anthony DeCesare saw the story in the Advance, he says, he nearly became sick to his stomach. DeCesare says he was at Fort Lawton the night of the riot and can still vividly remember seeing the bloody Italian POWs and American MPs being brought into the hospital where he was receiving treatment for post-concussion symptoms. DeCesare had kept that memory mostly to himself for 64 years. But then there was the story in the Advance, and he says he couldn't believe what he was reading. DeCesare, you see, is seriously pissed off. "It's crooked. It's not the story. It's not the truth," he says. "The whole thing stinks." Next month, Tony DeCesare will turn 93 years old. He lives in a small bedroom that's been turned into both a sickroom and a shrine. For years, he was confined to the second floor of the house, until he finally convinced the VA to install an elevator so he could visit his sister, who lived downstairs - both were too frail to use the stairs and could only shout to each other. That sister is no longer living, but another, Mary Cadier, 85, has come over as DeCesare receives a visitor. He's sitting in a chair next to his bed, wearing a blue robe over pajamas. In front of him is a folding tray piled with documents of his military career. On the walls of the room are other artifacts of his military experience: the Croix de Guerre citation from a grateful France, a detailed drawing of the Panama Canal, where he served before the war, other medals and letters of gratitude. Also mounted on the wall are two trombones and a baritone horn. DeCesare's first love was music, and it was part of the reason he joined the military to begin with: to play in a military band. He was born on Staten Island but spent much of his youth in Maine, where his father, an Italian immigrant, was, of all things, a Protestant minister. DeCesare says that he'd started playing trombone at the age of five; he was 20 years old when he enlisted in 1935, and soon found himself on his way to the Panama Canal with the Fourth Coastal Artillery band. There, he likes to point out, he played for the Japanese admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who received an official military welcome to the Canal Zone. "If we had known then what was coming in a couple of years," he says, "believe me, we would have given him a different kind of welcome." After two years in Panama, DeCesare had picked up a fungal infection that seriously damaged his lungs, permanently ruined his prospects as a trombonist, and convinced him to take an early discharge. But when war broke out in Europe, he re-enlisted and was shipped to England in 1940 on the Queen Mary. Again a military musician, he was with the first American troops stationed there since World War I. He still has a British newspaper clipping "yellowed, but laminated" that lauds the "crack band" for marching into town. After Pearl Harbor, DeCesare was part of the first major American military offensive of the war, the invasion of North Africa. In November 1942, sailing on the Queen of Bermuda, he went over the side with the others at a beach in Algeria, climbing down ropes and loaded down with gear. The men were so weighed down with what turned out to be antiquated equipment, DeCesare remembers, that many of them simply drowned before they could get to shore. And then things got worse. The reflections on their goggles, he says, were providing something for the enemy "both German and Vichy French" to shoot at. "Guys were getting shot through the head and the eyes" we were greenhorns," he says. Stuck on the beach, they hunkered down. A big shell, he recalls, landed near him but didn't explode. "I didn't move, or I'd go to kingdom come," he says. Eventually, they had to retreat to the ship, landing later at Tunisia. There, he was promoted to technical sergeant and bandmaster - an odd distinction when you're storming beaches, to be sure, but the title didn't get him out of doing jobs like digging graves, he points out. Without a chief warrant officer in his outfit, DeCesare says, disciplining the men of his unit fell on his shoulders. But the last thing he wanted was to send a soldier to a court-martial. When he had to discipline men, he says, he'd have them run around in a square. He didn't want to be known as a pain in the ass - he didn't brook wrongdoing, but he tried to be lenient. Later, riding in Jeeps over mountainous terrain, DeCesare and his men found themselves in an action that became known as the Battle of Kasserine Pass. "We cornered the Germans," he says. "We thought we had them licked. But General Rommel had his tanks dug into the Atlas Mountains." Infantryman DeCesare and his troops followed the U.S. tanks into battle. "We lost," he says. He never knew how he was wounded; he just remembers coming to in a British ambulance and being told to relax. "There was a captain with his legs blown off," he says. DeCesare's skull was fractured, and he'd suffered a concussion. He can only speculate what happened—a shell exploded near him, he supposes. Shipped back to the States for a lengthy recovery, he was suffering from brain trauma - like many of the soldiers coming back from Iraq today, he points out. He was sent to a hospital at a post in Virginia and then was moved to Georgia before being sent by train all the way to Fort Lawton, near Seattle. He was only there for a few months before being moved again to a hospital in Spokane, where he was photographed receiving a Purple Heart in October 1944. Two months later, after being sent to another post in West Virginia, he was honorably discharged. He would receive the Bronze Star for his service. But during his short time at Fort Lawton, in August 1944, one of the most significant episodes in his life occurred. The night of the riot, bloody men were brought into the hospital where he was staying. "The men were bleeding badly. I couldn't, you know, tell you exactly what their injuries were. But they were bleeding bad," he says. Some were POWs, speaking in Italian about what had happened. Others were white American MPs. And some, DeCesare insists, were Japanese. The Italians, he says, were saying that they had been attacked in their barracks by black soldiers. Others talked about being attacked at the fort's obstacle course. But what struck him more than anything else, the thing that haunted him for 64 years, was what a medical officer said to the men on the ward: "You patients, you haven't seen anything. Any of you talk, you're going to get court-martialed." DeCesare repeats it again and again, trying to convey how much it struck him at the time and made him keep quiet about the event for so long. "I swallowed that for 64 years," he says. "Who's going to listen to what I have to say, especially when I got a head injury?" Then, after all that time, suddenly a news story appears in the Staten Island paper saying that it was all a mistake, that the men convicted for the crime were being exonerated. That the military apologizes for the results of the court-martial. And an old man, who still talks about the "colored" section of the fort, who is Italian-American and couldn't help but sympathize with the Italians injured in the riot, says about Booker Townsell, a long-dead soldier whom he never met: "He don't deserve freedom." Sure, you don't even have to say it: DeCesare is just a classic old-school racist, unhappy that "colored" soldiers are getting away with something. It's an easy diagnosis. Except that DeCesare's a bit more complicated than that. There's another yellowed news clipping that Tony DeCesare keeps, this one from 1965. After he was discharged, DeCesare served as a cop for the VA and was finally declared fully disabled in 1954. He couldn't work in law enforcement anymore, but he could still read and write music, and he was still an avid churchgoer, something he got from his dad. He wanted, more than anything else, to help young people make music. But he hated how much young people were kept apart by their different affiliations. In 1965, the Staten Island Advance reported that DeCesare had formed the Summerfield Inter-Faith Orchestra. "What does music have to do with brotherhood?" the article asked. "Anthony DeCesare says it has a lot to do with bringing people together." The article describes DeCesare's efforts to bring together young musicians from different faiths: "We Protestants have been holding back . . . . We've been ignoring the ecumenical spirit." There's a photograph showing DeCesare leading six musicians. A trombone player. A violinist. A percussionist. A sax player. A pianist. A baritone horn. Three of the musicians are black. In 1965. In Staten Island. "I started the Inter-Faith Orchestra in 1965 to bust up this racial, religious discrimination," he says. Heatedly, he points out that some Catholic priests prevented their parishioners from taking part. How does that square with his anger about the Fort Lawton decision, which surely must have something to do with the race of the men who are now being exonerated? "This is about the incident," he replies, "not the race of who caused it." To make his point, he compares the Fort Lawton situation with Abu Ghraib. He's convinced that although low-level soldiers took the heat for what happened at the Baghdad prison, their superior officers should also have been held accountable. At Fort Lawton, he says, not all of the black soldiers took part in the beatings, but nearly the entire black barracks emptied out in response to the rallying cry for the riot, as Hamann's book shows. "The whole unit is guilty," says DeCesare. "There's the problem. . . . I felt really bad. I was in that hospital and saw that. 'Keep your mouth shut or you'll get court-martialed.' " As for the men who were convicted on tainted evidence, he says: "I feel sorry for what happened. If they can prove they didn't take part, that's fine with me. It's not my intention to hurt anybody. It's to tell the truth." Jack Hamann says that he doesn't doubt DeCesare's assertion that he was at Fort Lawton's hospital, but he points out that in talking with the few other witnesses who are still alive, he's found that their memories are often very different from what they said to investigators decades ago. Records at Fort Lawton, for example, indicate that there were never any Japanese POWs held at the Seattle fort. And there was no testimony about Italian soldiers also being attacked at the obstacle course, despite what DeCesare says he remembers the Italian POWs saying. DeCesare's memory, those records suggest, is simply faulty about those details. He doesn't take kindly to that suggestion, however. But even with those discrepancies, Hamann says it's interesting to consider the Italian-American perspective on the Army's about-face, even if some of it is predictable. "I, too, have run across a couple of pissed off Italian-Americans (none of which, as far as I know, have read the book)," Hamann writes to the Voice in an e-mail. "Their spin: why are these damn blacks getting all the attention, when it was Italians who were beaten and lynched?... Of course, that perspective misses the point: Despite the convictions, justice was not served in 1944. "The truth is, Jaworski screwed both the black soldiers and the Italians," Hamann says. He's right. And what his investigation has achieved is remarkable. The anger of a 92-year-old Staten Island man can't really take away from it. But it's also easy to understand DeCesare's frustration. From a 64-year remove, it's not difficult to condemn the flawed justice meted out to black soldiers - men who were already suffering the indignities of a segregated military - for a long-forgotten criminal incident. But for the man—perhaps the only person still alive today—who saw the victims of that crime being treated for their injuries, the military's decision to sweep the whole mess aside by overturning the court-martial verdicts en masse provides little sense of justice having been served either. After the Voice first exchanged e-mails with Hamann about DeCesare, the author mentioned the Staten Island man in a lecture at Seattle University, a Jesuit institution. Hamann says that it prompted one of the professors there to approach him about conducting a public mass for Olivotto as a way to reach out to the local Italian-American community. DeCesare, the professor pointed out, might not be the only one sensitive to the way the story of the military's about-face was being reported. "I thought it was a great idea," Hamann says. In the end, the most striking thing about talking to DeCesare " even knowing that he's messing up the program, our necessary national mea culpa after centuries of being on the wrong side of so many things" is to see how a single night's episode can be the most passionately remembered thing in a life nearly a century long. When asked about his experiences in the decades since - what were the '60s like? The '80s? "DeCesare mostly draws a blank. It has to be drawn out of him that he was married and divorced, and has a daughter with whom he is now closer than he was in the past. His sister says Anthony spent much of his time helping older relatives. And he did continue to write music; he wrote and arranged a march in 2003 to commemorate the soldiers going to Iraq. But except for those details, which feel like asides, he comes back again and again to that night in 1944 and that portentous command: Hold your tongue or be court-martialed. What a thing to carry around for 64 years. http://www.villagevoice.com |
Italy's Padre Pio Goes on Display in Glass Coffin in Southern Italy
Italy's Padre Pio Goes on Display | |
| The body of the popular Italian saint, Padre Pio, has gone on display in a glass coffin in southern Italy. Padre Pio was said to have had stigmata, or bleeding wounds of Jesus, on his hands and feet. His body was exhumed in March on the 40th anniversary of his death. He was canonised by Pope John Paul II in 2002. More than a million people are expected this year to see his body, which is said to be well-preserved. But there is reportedly no sign of the stigmata. The head of the Vatican office dealing with sainthood, Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, led a special open-air Mass in San Giovanni Rotondo, in Puglia. "This body is here, but Padre Pio is not only a corpse. Looking at his remains we remember all the good that he has done," the cardinal said. Afterwards, Cardinal Saraiva Martins led a group of Church officials into the crypt of Church of St Mary of Grace for a private viewing of the body. Placed in a glass coffin, Padre Pio was dressed in a brown robe and his was covered in a life-like silicone mask. Huge following Already, more than 700,000 people have registered to view his body, and more are expected to make the pilgrimage to the Capuchin friary in San Giovanni Rotondo where it is displayed. Among the pilgrims attending the mass on Thursday was 80-year-old Assunta Antico, who is confined to a wheelchair. "I had a stroke two years ago. I'm paralysed and I want to walk again," she told the Reuters news agency. Padre Pio had a large following both before and after his death. Some of his devotees say he could foretell the future, as well as know people's sins before they had confessed. Some viewed him as a fraud, however, and for many years the Vatican itself was sceptical and banned him from celebrating Mass in public. One Italian historian wrote last year that he may have used carbolic acid to produce his wounds. Before his death, the Roman Catholic Church said it was convinced the monk's claims were not false. The monks who exhumed his body in March said it was in "surprisingly good condition", despite no special measures having been taken to preserve it when he was buried in 1968. "We could clearly make out the beard. The top part of the skull is partly skeletal but the chin is perfect and the rest of the body is well preserved. The knees, hands and nails all clearly visible," said Archbishop Domenico D'Ambrosio, who led the service to exhume the body. | |
Friday, April 25, 2008
Italy and US "Spoleto Festivals" Renew Ties Ended 15 years Ago
In what appears to be a petty gesture, no works by Gian Carlo Menotti are on the schedule. Even worse, No Italian works of any nature seem to be on the two week US Schedule. This "reunion" has a bitter taste!
The Spoleto Festival U.S.A. and its long-lost partner in Italy, the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Umbria, have announced that they will renew an association that ended 15 years ago.
The two arts festivals say they are discussing at least one joint opera production for the summer of 2009. Spoleto U.S.A.’s music director, Emmanuel Villaume, is to conduct at the Italian festival this summer. And there is even talk about forming a single orchestra, though that possibility so far appears remote.
Beyond that, officials refused to offer more details.
“This is the beginning," said Nigel Redden, the general director of the American festival in Charleston, S.C. "We share a genetic makeup, even if it’s not a matrimonio," he added, using the Italian word for marriage.
Giorgio Ferrara, the new director of the Italian festival, said of a collaboration: "The desire is strong. I’m convinced it should be done." He said he foresaw collaboration on opera, theater works and a joint orchestra, though he said high costs would make the orchestra a difficult goal.
The rapprochement was set in motion by the death last year of the composer Gian Carlo Menotti, who, in 1958, founded the Italian festival in the Umbrian hills 80 miles north of Rome. Mr. Menotti founded Spoleto U.S.A. in 1977, and for a time the two festivals shared top staff members, an orchestra, a chorus and chamber music programs.
But after the 1993 season Mr. Menotti cut ties with the American festival at a time when it was having money problems and after years of tussling with local officials. The "subtext," Mr. Redden said, was Mr. Menotti’s desire to impose his son, Francis, adopted as an adult, as director of Spoleto U.S.A.
In 1997 Francis Menotti took over as artistic director of the Italian festival, although his father’s influence remained strong, and relations between the festivals remained chilly. Last summer was the first edition since Gian Carlo Menotti’s death and was subject to criticism, Mr. Redden said. "Apparently it was quite unsuccessful," from both the point of view of audiences and ticket sales, he said.
Meanwhile tension had been growing between Francis Menotti and Italian officials in recent years. In late November the culture minister, Francesco Rutelli, effectively ousted Mr. Menotti and put the festival under the control of Mr. Ferrara, a film and theater director. A ministry statement said the intention was to restore the festival’s "glorious past," noting that public money had paid for the restoration of many spaces the festival used.
Mr. Redden blamed the Menottis for the festivals’ 15-year separation. "It was a one-way street," he said. "Now that Francis has left, it just makes sense that we establish a partnership that is different from one we had before."
The phone at a number on the Spoleto festival Web site still controlled by Mr. Menotti was not answered Wednesday. The site, www.spoletofestival.it, makes no mention of the 2008 season and still contains details from last summer. The new management’s site is www.festivaldispoleto.it.
Mr. Redden said he and Mr. Ferrara had begun discussing a collaboration almost immediately after Mr. Ferrara’s appointment, and they visited each other in their respective countries.
In the first sign of collaboration Mr. Villaume will conduct "Padmâvatî," a rarely heard opera by Albert Roussel, to open the Italian festival this summer. Sanjay Leela Bhansali, a Bollywood film director, will handle the staging.
Mr. Redden declined to discuss the proposed operatic co-production for 2009. Alessio Vlad, who is overseeing the music program at the Italian festival, said Mr. Redden had suggested the obscure opera "Louise" by the French composer Gustave Charpentier. That presented a problem, Mr. Ferrara said, because he hopes to organize each festival around a country, and France is having its turn this summer. He said the matter was still up for discussion.
The Italian festival this year is exceptionally flush, having received $7 million from the national government, out of a budget of $11 million. The rest comes from local government and private sponsors. The total is about twice last year’s budget, though it was unclear what the former management spent because it has not provided an accounting, Mr. Ferrara said.
Mr. Ferrara put together his program in a quick four months. The offerings reflect his background in theater: there is a greater proportion of dramatic works compared to instrumental music, dance and opera pieces, which he said was an effort to correct a past imbalance.
The programs include several French plays, a "Threepenny Opera" directed by Robert Wilson, world music ensembles, a performance by the Orchestra of the 18th Century conducted by Frans Bruggen, chamber music concerts dedicated to Messiaen and Ravel, and an evening of male dance including Savion Glover and others. The festival closes with a concert by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Daniel Harding.
No works by Gian Carlo Menotti are on the schedule.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Tourists 'Stripping Ancient Rome Bare'
Tourists 'Stripping Ancient Rome Bare'
By Malcolm Moore in Rome
| Rome's ancient monuments are so poorly guarded that tourists are taking away mementos of their visit to the Eternal City with impunity. Archaeologists said yesterday that Trajan's Forum, in the heart of the city's classical ruins, had been stripped of all the fragments of statues and shards of amphorae that adorned the site until recently. To highlight the problem, a reporter from Il Messaggero newspaper carried away large boxes full of ancient artefacts during the daytime without being challenged. An archaeologist working at the site, who asked not to be named, said: "Everything has been taken from Trajan's Forum. The close-circuit television cameras are pointless, and the gates are practically non-existent. Even a child could climb over them. "The treasures of ancient Rome are very vulnerable, but there are lots of gaps in the security system of one of the most important archaeological areas in the world." He added that he had often seen people in restricted areas, collecting keepsakes. The newspaper blamed the 20 million tourists who pass through the city each year for the looting. "Who knows how many of these small fragments now adorn living rooms all over the world?" it said. The forum was built in AD 112, followed by Trajan's Column in the following year. The whole area is currently undergoing reconstruction, including the insertion of a raised walkway for tourists. "This is an open-air museum," said Eugenio La Rocca, the head of Rome's cultural heritage authority. "You have to bear in mind that we cannot cover every angle, especially since restoration work is going on. We cannot put bunkers of guards everywhere. If we did the whole of Rome would be a giant bunker. "However, the area is closed off and the television monitoring system is connected to a cabin staffed by guards. It is also connected to the police." Mr La Rocca said the most valuable artefacts were fully catalogued and carefully stored away in warehouses. |
Monday, April 21, 2008
Cassini Spacecraft to Saturn Mission, 11 years old, Extended 2 more Years
11 Years in Space
Student Operated Press (SOP)
by Krzys Wasilewski
If THEY are out there, Cassini-Huygens will certainly find them. This innovative robotic spacecraft is not only an example of how the enormousness of the human mind equals that of the cosmos, but also shows that cooperation - not competition - leads to success.
On April 15, 2008, the mission that was originally scheduled to end in of July this year was extended for two years. Despite financial problems, NASA decided that the Cassini-Huygens project was too important to be scrapped. "This extension is not only exciting for the science community, but for the world to continue to share in unlocking Saturn's secrets," said Jim Green, the director of NASA Planetary Science Division.
The spacecraft began its mission on October 15, 1997. It was one of the first projects run together by three space agencies: NASA, European Space Agency (ESA), and Italian Space Agency (ISA). The Americans were responsible for building the orbiter " Cassini" named after the 18th century Italian astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini. The probe was the result of the ESA scientists and technicians who gave it the name of Huygens to commemorate Christiaan Huygens, a Dutch mathematician and physicist from the late 17th century. The Italians provided a special antenna to control the spacecraft.
Eight thousand people from 16 countries on both continents worked like one person to make sure that their beloved child would lack nothing. The preliminary talks on the joint project began as early as 1982, but several more years would pass until the first elements of the spacecraft were constructed. Since the very beginning, it was ESA that was pushing the mission further, seeing the project as yet another chance for cooperation between European nations and the United States. But in the early 1990s Cassini-Huygens was temporarily put on hold as the American Congress refused to continue financing the costly and risky project. Twice, in 1992 and 1994, did NASA engage its full authority to sway reluctant representatives and twice it succeeded.
Seven objectives were set for the transatlantic spacecraft. When the eyes of the world were nostalgically turned to Mars, the Red Planet (think of the Total Recall movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sharon Stone), the Americans and Europeans decided to send Cassini-Huygens two planets further, to Jupiter. The scientists hoped that the mission would help them answer several important questions - from the structure of Jupiter's numerous rings to the construction of the planet's satellites, with special attention put on Titan.
But Cassini-Huygens carried on board something more than just a sophisticated mechanism. As a truly international venture, it was equipped with a special DVD disk with the voice of over 616,000 people from around the world wishing their best to whomever might hear them. Although the idea was nothing new - Voyager 1, one of the pioneers in space probing, and newer Galileo had several plates with human signs - the then revolutionary DVD technology managed to include more signatures than all the previous missions put together.
Cassini-Huygens reached its target over seven years after it took off from Cape Canaveral. On Christmas day, 2004, the probe separated from the orbiter and began its lone journey towards Saturn and its satellites. In the meantime, some countries had disappeared and some had been born; the World Trade Center twin towers in New York had been destroyed by murderous terrorist attacks; and some of the space aircraft's builders had died, joining their beloved child in the endless journey through space and time. The European Space Agency had undergone changes. From 10 states that had founded the agency in 1974, it had spread to 17, with several more countries waiting for admission.
The data provided by Cassini-Huygens exceeded original expectations. In only the first two weeks, the probe managed to send to NASA headquarters 350 pictures. Most of the pictures of Saturn and its surroundings that we can admire in albums and on the Internet have been taken by the American-European mission. What is more, high resolution photographs of Titan have proved that Saturn's largest satellite contained vast resources of liquid methane and hundreds of times more natural gas that the entire planet Earth.
Cassini-Huygens will start the 11th year of its service in October of this year, but despite its advanced age - who now remembers the obsolete computers from the late 1990s? - it is still working and providing scientists with valuable information. "New discoveries are the hallmarks of its success, along with the breathtaking images beamed back to Earth that are simply mesmerizing," said Jim Green.
Putin Says Italian Women, Second only to Russians in Beauty and Talent
He also called Russian women the "most talented and beautiful," adding that they could be challenged only by the women of Italy.
At that, Berlusconi laughed and the reporters cheered.
MOSCOW " President Vladimir V. Putin, who during eight years of centralized rule has kept his private life largely sealed from view behind the Kremlin’s walls, on Friday bluntly dismissed rumors that he had secretly divorced his wife for the affections of a gymnast less than half his age.
The moment, prompted by a question from a Russian journalist while Mr. Putin held a news conference at an Italian villa with Silvio Berlusconi, the prime minister-elect of Italy, was met with the mix of relish and confrontation that Mr. Putin has often displayed in his sessions with journalists.
He paused and answered another question, and then returned to the subject and pushed back. "What you are saying has not a single word of truth," he said.
The question followed the publication on Thursday of an unusual article in Moskovsky Korrespondent, a Moscow newspaper owned by a former Soviet intelligence officer, which said that Mr. Putin, 56, planned to marry Alina Kabayeva, 24, an Olympic gold medalist in rhythmic gymnastics who has been voted in polls as one of Russia’s most beautiful women. Interfax reported Friday evening that publication of Moskovsky Korrespondent had been suspended "for financial reasons," according to its parent company, National Media Company.
Mr. Putin has been married to Ludmilla Putina, 51, since July 1983 - two months before Ms. Kabayeva was born. The couple has two grown daughters, but Mr. Putin and Mrs. Putina are not often seen together in public, which has long fueled rumors that Russia’s president has had a wandering eye.
Ms. Kabayeva has been a member of Parliament since she was selected for a seat late last year by United Russia, the political party Mr. Putin controls. She has not spoken publicly since Thursday, when the article appeared and its claims were picked up and circulated by newspapers and Web sites in Russia and beyond.
Her spokeswoman threatened legal action against Moskovsky Korrespondent if it did not run a correction.
After denying the article’s contents, Mr. Putin softened a bit and remarked that Moskovsky Korrespondent was not the first to speculate on his personal life.
“In other such publications other successful, beautiful young women and girls have been mentioned," he said with a smile. "I don’t think it will be a surprise if I say that I like them all, because they are all Russian women."
He also called Russian women the "most talented and beautiful," adding that they could be challenged only by the women of Italy.
He then ruminated briefly on the limits of privacy in public life - a condition that he suggested was true even in the climate of limited civic discourse in Russia, which Mr. Putin himself has done much to produce.
“Society has the right to know how public figures live," he said. "But even in this case, there is a limit: private life, which no one has the right to trespass."
He added, in familiar form, "I have always disliked those who, with their infected noses and erotic fantasies, break into other people’s private affairs."
Whether the article’s underlying assertion " that Mr. Putin was romantically involved with Ms. Kabayeva " would stand was not clear. But even the owner of the newspaper, Aleksandr Lebedev, distanced himself from it.
Mr. Lebedev wrote a follow-up article in the paper on Friday, saying that he had been away fishing, and without phone communication, when the original article was prepared and published. Upon his return to Moscow, he said, he had concluded that the article was false.
“I do not like when journalists pull sensations out of thin air," he wrote. "Everything that is written there falls into this category."
He called the report "nonsense" and said it was based on a source he described as the "O.B.S. news agency." Those initials, he said, stood for "one babushka said."
Interfax reported that the paper’s editor, Grigory Nekhoroshev, had resigned.
But the paper’s deputy editor, Igor Dudinski, said the staff stood by the article, adding, "We had information, and we reported it."
Television viewers were spared the speculation, the denial and the backpedaling.
The evening news broadcast on the state-influenced television station NTV did not cover the rumor or Mr. Putin’s remarks. Instead, it devoted extensive coverage to Yuri M. Luzhkov, Moscow’s irrepressible mayor, visiting a factory that makes fertilizer from cow manure.
Book:"Peace" by Richard Bausch: US Soldiers in Italy in Closing Days of WWII
'Peace' is the Goal, But it is No Easy Target
Peace. By Richard Bausch. Knopf. 193 pages. $19.95.
This riveting new novel by Richard Bausch is a terrible but true reminder in a season of war.
It tells the story of a company of American soldiers scrabbling up an Italian mountainside in the closing days of World War II. The Germans are retreating, and Bausch's crew has been sent on a thankless reconnaissance mission: to confirm the retreat without being killed.
Peace is just around the corner. To die now would be to die a pointless death.
What "Peace" makes stunningly clear, though, is that - stripped of talk of honor, duty and a clash of civilizations - death in war has no point, indeed, no value. The book begins in the aftermath of one horrifically illustrative event.
Nine soldiers came upon a cart full of wet straw by the road that concealed an escaping German and a woman. The German sprang from hiding and killed two Americans before he was shot and killed by a corporal. When the woman began screaming, a sergeant walked over and shot her in the head.
This death overshadows every scene in "Peace," lending their mission a cursed quality. The moment - the bullet they cannot hear - waits for them around every corner, beneath every civilian cart. And perhaps no one would care, or even report it?
Bausch uses this tension to great advantage. It chisels his 24 chapters down to minute-by-minute essentials, dialogue whispered and hissed across the eerily desolate hillside as Bausch's seven soldiers, whom he brings vividly to life, creep toward an enemy they cannot see and barely hear.
Bausch is best known as a short story writer, and his skills at compressive drama are on full display here. In a short time a reader comes to know these soldiers quite well: Marson, the former baseball star turned infantry captain; Joyner, the bigoted, paranoid, expletive-spewing teetotaler; Asch, a young Jewish man who responds to the stress of constant vigilance by summoning up bleak trivia.
In moments like this, Bausch's perfectly balanced little novel opens up and becomes about much more than whether or not seven young Americans will survive the night alive.
He uses such rhetorical asides wisely, though, keeping the book's focus on the taut particulars of a forest at night and the soldiers' rising paranoia that an elderly Italian man they dragged from a cart and brought with them as a kind of guide might actually spell their downfall.
These interactions - coupled with flashbacks of a relationship the soldiers enjoyed with a young Italian boy who brought them wine - conjures the vast, unspooling chaos of war.
All the rules of normal conduct have been suspended. Generosity can be lethal; sleep will get you killed. Through much of the novel Bausch's characters don't know exactly where they're going. Once you start reading this tale it's very difficult to put it down. Peace, it makes clear, is not complicated. Peace is when the killing stops.
Manhattan resident John Freeman is writing a book on the tyranny of e-mail.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
A Stroll in Rome: The Requisite Stops
... Night now does not really darken Rome so much as illuminate the many parts that matter, a real-life chiaroscuro of the city where Caravaggio lived and painted. With the daytime heat cut in summer, diners at Da Giggetto in the Jewish Ghetto can ponder both their artichokes and the boney, floodlit columns of the Octavian Gate, which stood there a century and a half before Christ was born. Not far away, the Colosseum " where Enlightenment-age tourists wandered at night with notions of Rome maybe even more romantic than ours " rises with singular heft, each stone arch glowing in the night.
Rome at night is, in short, a city lit like a theater, and, especially in the warmer months, should be enjoyed like one. In fact, Georgina Masson, who wrote the 1965 classic "Companion Guide to Rome," recommended the night as the time Rome should first be seen. The first of her book’s walking tours starts where Rome began, the Capitoline Hill " where Michelangelo designed a piazza, she said, like a 'stage set'" overlooking the nubby ruins of the Forum. "Seen by day it requires something of the knowledge of the archaeologist and the imagination of a poet," she wrote. "But at night ... it is not nearly so difficult to picture the stately ranks of colonnaded temples crowned with the gilded statues and the basilicas rearing their great hulk against the night sky."
It’s hardly a new thought (it is literally one of the oldest), but in my nearly four years here as the bureau chief of The New York Times, I have found that there is no better place than Capitoline Hill to see, in one dramatic sweep, so much of Rome’s history - especially, as Ms. Masson advises, if one starts at sunset.
A superb walk through time might start on the far side of the hill, on Via dei Fori Imperiali. To the south, the Colosseum glows. Up Via di San Pietro in Carcere is Michelangelo’s Piazza del Campidoglio, with a replica of the equestrian statue of the philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius (the original is in the Capitoline Museum) unlit but no less heroic at night, a lone horseman in the center of the city, as has often been noted, at the center of the world. If the Forum is antiquity, the egg-shaped piazza and three palaces are among the finest of Renaissance buildings, stripped of detail at night, revealing more their harmony and, if you are that sort, romance.
A walk down Michelangelo’s steps leads to more of this mix of ages: across the street stands the mini-Colosseum of the Theater of Marcellus, and to the right, the ruins of the Octavian Gate. Here, as elsewhere in Rome, the approach to lighting seems much like Italy’s approach to food: there is so much to work with that it seems pointless to dress things up; the light accents, simply, what is already there...
Beyond the ruins, on Via del Portico d’Ottavia, the Jewish Ghetto still thrives, with many of the shops buzzing into the evening hours, and nearby is the tiny Piazza Mattei, where four bronze boys play in the Fountain of the Turtles. Stop, at Largo Argentina, where the columns of the Republican Victory Temples, more than 2,000 years old, jut into the night sky (though it is harder then to see the scores of unwanted cats given sanctuary there). It is a good place to end this mini-nocturnal tour of Rome’s history because it was there " not at the Forum " where Julius Caesar was killed, on March 15, 44 B.C,...
History, though, is not the only reason to walk at night. As residents well know, Rome, which evolved not on a triumphal scale, but on a very human one, is simply a lovely place to stroll. Romans are out in numbers to enjoy the summer nights, so visitors can feel assured they are doing generally as the Romans do.
One place to experience this local life is at Piazza del Popolo, once Rome’s northern gate. Every night, but especially on warm weekends, crowds of Italians stroll and shop, with their teenagers working hard to be cool as they wander about the piazza. Our family has gone there often, allowing ourselves to be pulled into the human wave that drifts south on Via del Corso.
The obvious destination from there is Piazza di Spagna, which is full of people day and night. For all the over-the-top adjectiv