Military Milk

It Does the Troops Good.

Upon going to the military supermarket at Ederle Army base recently, I discovered military milk.

Yes, the US Forces stationed in Europe have their own brand! It includes meat products, too. We ended up purchasing the pictured milk carton to fill my visiting father's cereal bowl and angus beef with the symbolic eagle on the packaging to make some "real" American hamburgers, while on Italian soil back in Padua.

Plus, the base has Bank of America ATMs and real US mail boxes scattered across the property. It's almost spooky how much of America you can find on a US military base. They have definitely succeeded in creating "home" away from home for the soldiers.

Then you go beyond the barbed wire fences and find the rest of the world!

What's the Perfect Wine?

Since my husband and I will be closing on our very first house tomorrow, I would love to celebrate with a fantastic bottle of wine. I welcome your suggestions for what would be most appropriate.

I can splurge a little but can't break the bank since there is simply too much furniture and so manyappliances to buy by April, when we plan to move in.

So please share your wine saggezza e consigli.

Promising Forever

This question gets asked repeatedly when I meet new people: "Rimani per sempre?" (Are you staying forever?) It comes after exchanging names, jobs, origins and a few other odds and ends.

How strange of a question. It is so total in its scope. Forever. In the introductions phase of a simple conversation, I get asked about my plans to stay or not stay in a place for my entire living life. No American would ask the same question to a fellow citizen if that person moved from Baltimore to Buffalo or even among Italians to someone who moved from Padua to Palermo. However this question seems perfectly normal to ask a foreigner who has come to live in their town or neighborhood.

I usually respond that the only time I have had to answer a question including the word "forever" in it was when I said my wedding vows and those only apply to my commitment to my husband. Everything else can change, and maybe should.

As foreigners, we are novel to locals but also threatening. An expat has chosen to radically leave their "natural" surroundings for somewhere completely new and different. And if that expat already left one place once, they could do it again in the new place of residence. It is almost as if the people are calculating whether they should bother to get to know me for fear we could become friends and then I might leave them in the future.

In life, one of the only things we can count on is change. As humans, many of us really don't want to face that fact. We hope things will stay the way they are. Italy gives this impression more than other countries, especially when compared to America. The buildings are old, if not ancient, and there is a sense that the passage of time has not disrupted much over the centuries.

It's not true.

I can just look at my street and see the flood of changes in the 3 years since I moved here: road became one-way, bike path installed, 2 new constructions built, one more house in construction, the bar changed ownership and the pastry shop remodelled. My street may be a superficial example but it proves a point. Things change. Period.

So I may change. In fact, I am changing houses to start. I'll be moving to another section of town that is technically not even in Padua (since it makes up its own comune) but sits squarely within what is considered the city limits.

Even though I am changing, I am not leaving, for now. So sit tight Paduans and refrain from asking what really is a "dumb" question, if you think about it.


Disclaimer: Paduans aren't the only ones who have asked it. I think people do this all over the world. I just want to be specific since I am An American in Padua.

Let Lions Sleep

I was ready to become a lion "queen" this Carnival, which ends this year on Tuesday.

However I am letting the lions sleep: the costume and the woman. I got a cold with fever that has kept me under the sheets for the weekend. It has really been unfortunate because I haven't made myself a costume in years and I was really looking forward to using it.

Usually I go to the Venice carnival and take pictures of others' elaborate frocks while, this year, I was ready to disguise myself as an African animal and accompany my father along the calle for his first carnevale experience.

He had to go without me.

Now I am starting to feel better but have to maintain plans to take my father snowshoeing tomorrow in the Dolomites so there's no more window of opportunity for carnevale this year for me.

Beh, c'è sempre l'anno prossimo.
(Well, there's always next year.)

The costume will remain folded and wait for its debut in 2011.

A Portrait of Berlusconi

Berlusconi, a sculpture by the Kosovar artist Sisley Xhafa, currently living and working in New York, but who started his career in Italy in the '90s. This gigantic "thinking buddha" is made of sand. While living in Italy several years ago, the artist was already concerned about the mounting xenophobia bubbling in the country against the new immigrant population.

The work was commissioned by the Roda Sten gallery in Goteborg, Sweden.

White for Winter

I continue with another list, please note Mr. Eco.

This time I haven't penned it.

[Blue] begins a list....[he] moves on to white. There are seagulls, he says, and terns and storks and cockatoos. There are the walls of this room and the sheets on my bed. There are lilies-of-the-valley, carnations, and the petals of daisies. There is the flag of peace and Chinese death. There is mother's milk and semen. There are my teeth. There are the whites of my eyes. There are white bass and white pines and white ants. There is the President's house and white rot. There are white lies and white heat.

Excerpt from Ghosts by Paul Auster.

Faces in Time: Padua's Mayors

Welcome to a miniature gallery of Padua's mayors which you can find at City Hall. I have found them interesting for anthropological reasons: the hair styles, facial hair flair, big glasses and distinguished titles. Here are a few of the most interesting:









To contrast, this is our current mayor, Flavio Zanonato, 2005-now, looking "fly" in a non-institutional portrait.



Images: framed pictures by An American in Padua, color picture of Zanonato from Il Mattino online