Flying in.

Driving to L’Aquila this morning gave me hope. But then it always does, even before. From the hill town of Navelli where we spend much of the summer, past the devastated but once enchanting and hidden Castelnuovo di San Pio. The morning light tinging a slight burnt orange the slopes of Gran Sasso to my right somehow magnify the feeling that it’s more than just the infancy of another day. The road construction and heavy vehicles slowing me down seem just incidental as I move towards where I used to live. 

Hope. 

Helping L’Aquila Soar Again

To everyone who loves Italy,

I grew up in Wisconsin but have been lucky enough to call L'Aquila my home since 2001. My wife, Silvia, teaches Renaissance history at the university here and my daughters, Sofia and Emily are in school. Fortunately all safe after the Earthquake less than two weeks ago although, like thousands of others, we don't know when, or if, they'll be able to live again in our apartment. This message isn’t about us - our car wasn't destroyed and thanks to the hotels on the coast we have shelter and most things we need for the immediate future. I have work to get back to in Rome.

Reconstruction in the long-run and getting people into stable shelter and some normalcy will take time. To date a third of the buildings surveyed are unsafe to live in, and the historical center has not been included in that survey yet. Tens of thousands of people are in the tent communities in and around L’Aquila and many more are guests in hotels like me, or with relatives in Rome and elsewhere.

I have been told that the media in the US and UK have already moved on to other subjects (no Americans like me died or were seriously injured), although many grass roots groups - mostly connected to academia or the Italian-American communities are still very active.

With a few friends, both in the US and England, we noticed that we could help both the people of l’Aquila and the city and region that we love. We started with the first English-language group on the subject on Facebook ( L'Aquila Renaissance - Helping L'Aquila and Abruzzo , http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=66535648631&ref=ts)

We have also set up this petition in favour of L’Aquila and the villages and towns around it: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/laquila-renaissance/signatures.html

For now the group tries to give information on how to donate form the USA (often tax deductible). The list is incomplete.

USA
- NIAF - The National Italian American Foundation have created a Abruzzo Relief Fund & their online donation form is in English. Again here you can make a fast & easy online donation to assist in helping L'Aquila now and rebuild their lives, it's tax free for those in the US.
https://www.niaf.org/relief/Relief_info.asp
Italian Academy Foundation (IAF) has established a L'Aquila relief fund. Additionally, the IAF headquarters in L'Aquila (Bisegna) is open to the victims of the April 6, 2009, earthquake who are seeking shelter. View the IAF website at italianacademyfoundation.org.
Catholic Relief Services http://www.crs.org/emergency/italy-earthquake.cfm
- The Sons of Italy Foundation (SIF) has created an Emergency Relief Fund. View the Order Sons of Italy in America website at www.osia.org.
UNICO Announces Initiation of Fund to Aid Abruzzo Italy Earthquake Relief. website at www.unico.org-
The American Red Cross https://american.redcross.org/site/Donation2?idb=514161456&df_id=1094&1094.donation=form1&s_subsrc=RCO_link

UK
- Global Giving for Abruzzo - http://www.globalgiving.co.uk/pr/2700/proj2695a.html
- Red Cross UK - http://www.redcross.org.uk/donatesection.asp?id=93852&entrypoint=37220_mainItaly

While no one can argue that the human loss is greater than the cultural loss, I am also worried that during the reconstruction, the beautiful old city will be neglected. If I had talked to be before the quake, I would have spent half the conversation trying to convince you, especially those living in or visiting Rome, to come look at this jewel that so few Americans see but is an hour and a half drive from the Eternal City. I hope to be able to push the city like that again soon.

As always, to make sure things work in the long term it will be helpful that people keep on experessing, through letters and email, to officials in L'Aquila, in the Italian government, and in the U.S. government, the Press and other “piazze” in favor of rebuilding the city and not expanding it. Many of us have seen the result of the "modern urban suburbs" created, some never finished, after similar events, In the long term we hope that this group - and what may grow out of it, can contribute to the future of this city just as the world’s love for Assisi and Florence help their rebirth after natural disasters.

Thank you.


L’Aquila, April 16th

Joshua Lawrence
L’Aquila, Italy / Madison, Wisconsin.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=66535648631&ref=ts

Earthquake in L'Aquila (we are all fine - we were lucky, our prayers for the rest)

We woke up at 3.30 a.m Sunday night/Monday morning to a Earthquake that was 5,7 richter but brought down the entire antique city center, and, unfortunately, many new buildings as well. Me, my wife, daughters and extended family are all alive and unscratched. We were able to save the animals two days ago too. But almost three hundred people lost their lives, 1000 injured and tens of thousands are homeless, at least temporarily. I am staying with relatives almost 100 km away now where we can no longer feel the aftershocks. I thank everyone for their words, worries, prayers and offers of help. I've always believed in people, now I believe in them even more. Even if some "people" are the criminals who built the modern buildings that fell - Abruzzo is seismic but usually this magnitude does not bring down modern buildings if they were designed and built properly.

Galleons and Sloops in the Apennines.

The Garibaldi Caffè e Enoteca is another of my favorite little places in L’Aquila. It’s a neighborhood all-hours place kind of like the Bar Pasquino under my apartment in Rome. In other words, cappuccino, brioche and newspapers (in Italian only) in the morning, wine and spirits from aperitivo time until after midnight. Both have pannini and other simple but delectable food at lunchtime, but I’m always somewhere else then.

The place was tiny when I first stumbled in 10 years ago. The walls were lined with bottles, boutique chocolates and fake masterpieces up to the arched ceiling and stacked along a wall like in an art counterfitter’s hideaway. Davide and Daniele the two friendly and attentive young brothers who own and run the place also have a gallery that sells professional fakes of famous paintings. As I write this I have two enormous scenes of venice above me (Tintoretto, I believe) Klimt, Hopper, and Van Gogh above the wall of white wines and grappas in front of me, Renoir, Modigliani, Monet and Bottero to my left. When I first stumbled in back then were the model sailing ships among the wooden chess sets and humidors filling the windows. They also have a small but interesting selection of cigars and a nice little bench on the cobblestone street outside - no smoking in bars in Italy anymore.

Despite being on a medieval street 2000 feet up in the mountains the boats fit in because the place was tiny, lined with dark hardwood, the bathroom was tiny like those on sailboats and after a few glasses of wine the world might start to pleasantly sway. They have added another room since I first started coming here, but the lived in, slightly cluttered atmosphere is the same.

This evening as I’m killing time before I meet up with my eleven year old daughter who hanging out with friends in the main square (I’m sometimes jealous of kids growing up in Italy. Just me, a notebook, and a plate of olives, mixed cold cuts and taralli (crispy dried bread in bite sized curls) meant to dampen the effects of a glass of Pecorino, white wine from varietal native to Abruzzo that is undergoing a sort of Renaissance here. The music goes back and forth between Spanish jazz and Astor Piazzola inspired lounge.

The only thing missing is dinner, but recently Davide and Daniele opened up the Punto G - Piacere della Griglia grill (literally “G Spot - Pleasures from the Grill”) across the street. Strictly carnivores only.

But that’s another post.

carbonara.wordpress.com

Rosemary’s nose

Rosemary’s nose

The quick basics of Italian cooking: keep it simple and care intensely about the ingredients. Try to get them fresh and in season unless the preservation method makes them something better (sun dried tomatoes, for example, or spicy artichoke hearts or salt cod, the list a mouth watering few). I learned my first year here as a college exchange student in Bologna that one of the easiest ways to impress dinner guests is is baked potatoes and rosemary.
But you need fresh rosemary. Rosemary is a brush-like wooden herb that grows well even in cold corners of walls and outside windowsill pots. It’s a compulsory ingredient in Easter roast lamb and other early Spring dishes all over Italy, but especially in the mountains and the hills. Here around L’Aquila many people have a bush growing in a corner of their yard.
Cut the potatoes thin - whatever potatoes you like. I like them razor thin but have been known to cut them into thicker disks with the skins still on. Spread it out over oven paper or a pan slightly greased with olive oil. Sprinkle more olive oil, salt and a couple handfuls of fresh rosemary twigs. Bake away until they look as crispy as you like them. Open the oven a crack occasionally to free up the aroma of baked rosemary to fill the kitchen and tease the the dinner guests who are keeping you company. Bring them to the table warm, making sure that the plate gets passed around under everyone’s nose.
And if it smells good, it tastes good.

expatinitalia.blogspot.com
carbonara.wordpress.com

Panzerotti

I just got back from a Friday business trip to Milan. The trip was a whirlwind of appointments but still, as I crossed through Piazza del Duomo on my way from one meeting to anther, I felt something familiar call out to me and draw me in for a greasy tasty pause: Panzerotti from Luini.
Even though the Luini bakery is tucked out of site behind the back entrance to Milan’s up-market La Rinascente department store, it is an institution.
Luini means panzerotti, and panzerotti mean deep fried pocket pizzas. Puffy and a bit chewy, the dough is slightly sweet and very addictive. The classic version is simple tomato and mozzarella, other seasonal versions (mozzarella and ham, pesto and cherry tomatoes) and so on give you enough variety to harden your arteries almost every day, and when I used to work nearby it was hard to resist.
Originally just a bakery, it’s now traditional stand up street food at it’s best. Their other specialty is focaccia pugliese and other traditional baked treats from the Puglia (Apuglia) region of Italy.


Via Santa Radegonda 16, Milano, www.luini.it

(Di solito questi posti li faccio a carbonara.wordpress.com

Them apples

(Cinnamon Fall)

I missed apple picking weekend at Fabrizio’s this year, we came two weeks late this year and could only pick the stragglers.
Fabrizio is a friend of mine who lives in Trastevere in Rome but he’s originally from a small town near L’Aquila called Colle di Lucoli, a small hilltop village on the way up to the Campo Felice (“happy field”) ski slopes. His house is in the middle of beautiful area of rolling hills dotted with tiny stone villages full of hiking trails and curvy roads.
As Fabrizio was growing up his dad would plant a new apple tree every year on the steep slope cascading down from his childhood house. He planted a different tree every year - varieties ranging from big red delicious to the tiny, yellow apples called “limoncello”, which means lemony, a name which derives from their color, small size and aftertaste. They were once once coveted in the mountainous areas of central Italy because as they shriveled up slightly during the winter in basement storage rooms they became much sweeter just before spring.
It’s an organic apple orchard, in the sense that neither Fabrizio nor anyone else does anything to the apples or the trees. Bugs, birds, squirrel and the like have free reign. Many of them are scarred and ugly. But tasty. I’m not as adventurous as I may seem - I strategically bite where they are not scarred and where it looks like bugs have not travelled. Tiny, little bites. But wonderful.
The wind knocks most of them down before we can get to them so the sloping field is filled with the smell of wild mint and baked apples. We were able to fill just got two bags, not enough for apple sauce this time around.
Three years ago we came the right weekend and there was a bumper crop. After lugging buckets of them to the apple storage room (which doubled as storage for wine, oil and preserves from their little garden) and the pile was shoulder-high we stared taking the rest directly to our cars.
But what do you do with buckets full or apples in a city apartment?
Applesauce, of course.
No real recipe. Peel and cut the apples in little pieces, cook slowly in a big pot with just enough water at the beginning to keep it from sticking until the apples melt. If you want it a bit sweeter or more rustic at the end, melt in some honey. And my favorite touch - cinnamon to taste. I love the smell of caramelized apples, honey and cinnamon just before I take it off the burner.
Then eat and smile.