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The Boot Country is bound by laces -- in the form of laws -- so deeply tangled that it often trips up good ideas. That's why it's encouraging to read about organizations who have managed to work through, or around, the legal knots to do something good.
For example, you'd think with the bounty of Italian cuisine, there would be plenty of re-distribution of culinary wealth: not so. It's estimated that 450 thousand tons of food go to waste every year in Italian supermarkets. Until recently, it wasn't legal to do anything but trash it.
Enter Last Minute Market, which gathers and re-distributes food (also in the form of seeds and crops), pharmaceuticals and books, saving them from the dumpster and distributing them to people who need it.
The drive was fired up by Prof. Andrea Segré, chair of the agriculture department at Bologna's university, a full five years before Italy's Good Samaritan law came into effect in 2003.
"Despite a thriving economy and reports of welfare reform success stories, a growing number of people in developed countries have sought emergency food assistance because households did not have access to enough food to meet their basic needs (food deficit). For a variety of reasons, the same developed economies produce a growing quantity of food surplus, this surplus is present everywhere in the food chain, from agricultural production to the retail system. Basically, not perfect enough sell but it is still safe and thus perfectly edible,"says the basic English explanation (in .pdf).
By the time the law came into effect, the organization was recouping 140 tons of a day (from cafeterias, supermarkets and farmers) to charitable organization who in turn fed 250 people and 500 dogs and cats in Bologna.
The feasibility studies run by Segré and his research team of six showed that the average supermarket (5,000 sq.m) could feed about 250-300 people every day on cast-offs alone. The experiment expanded to another seven towns, including Ferrara, Modena, Verona and Florence, and the service is now available in eight Italian regions with projects in the works in Argentina and Brazil. And similar groups have followed the example (siticibo in Milan is one) of the free food-cycling process.
Bravi!
Whatever you make of his policies, spray-on hair or off-the-cuff remarks, Italian politician Silvio Berlusconi has a knack for marketing.
His entrance into politics in the early 90s was marked by a party with a soccer-slogan name: "Go Italy!" (Forza Italia). A catchy song -- that most people can still sing a line or two of -- accompanied it, this at a time when Italy still hadn't properly named a national anthem. The ex-Premier, also a piano bar singer in his youth, penned the lyrics.
Italy creates governments that rise and fall like some kind of perverse carousel, leaving little time for navel gazing. (The inevitable porno-candidates are always on hand to keep things lively, too).
Although media in Italy is still doggedly following the American presidential nomination race, their own government fell and will be back up and running -- possibly only to fall again -- before there's a definitive answer to the Hillary-Obama question.
To better help candidates in his new People of Freedom party in mid-April elections, he has quickly prepared a handy candidate kit that contains T-shirts, buttons, sample speeches -- and info how to best discredit the competition.
The 71-year-old, who held on to the reins for five years making him the record holder for Italy's longest post-WWII government, hasn't run out of ideas yet. Some of them seem a little stale, like this season's slogan: "Get Back Up, Italy!" (Rialzati, Italia!) which doesn't have the ooomph of earlier incitements, sounding more like a scolding than anything else.
The kit also contains a "value chart" for the party, seven goals for the future, a range of buttons and a flag. To counter opposition, it also contains a list of the 67 new taxes the year-long Romano Prodi government voted in and a poll that shows Berlusconi's party nearly 10 points ahead.
Berlusconi, who has prepared kits like this one since 1994, always dispenses some homegrown advice -- famously monitions about not eating garlic -- and his 2008 version does, too.
"Go talk to your local priest, pharmacist and doctor," he advises would-be politicos. "I have a great relationship with pharmacists -- certainly not because I buy Viagra from them."
Words every man of politics should live by.
There is little question about Milan being Italy's most forward-thinking city. The relentless pace, the carbohydrate-starved but gadget-hungry denizens make it seem, well, less Italian than a lot of other places.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing, however. Milan's branch of Catholicism runs at a different pace, too.
The city has its own religious calendar, called the Ambrosian Rite (named after patron St. Ambrose), which means different rituals and different dates -- including one of the latest Carnival celebrations, for example.
So it's not too surprising that local Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi has become a YouTube star.
Once considered a front runner to succeed Pope John Paul, the 73 year old (whose name means something like cow teat) has a kind round face, bright brown eyes and a clipped, Northern accent.
He starts each of the Q&A Lent sessions by sending "A kind greeting to all Internet surfers."
In the videos, also posted on the diocese homepage, he sits behind an antique desk with matching credenza while a blond female journalist asks questions sent in via email from around the region. More than 12,000 questions come in for the weekly session, kicked off for the first time this year especially for Lent.
The questions aren't fluff, either: Tettamanzi gives down-to-earth answers (studied, but not scripted) to queries about the value of confirmation in the sacraments, the meaning of God in our increasingly violent world and sends out heartfelt prayers to a woman who writes in about a crisis of faith brought on by multiple sclerosis.
So far, the results -- the first video was viewed 64,000 times -- have piqued the interest of the Roman Curia, according to newspaper reports.
Even the comments have been remarkably respectful. One Federicomarquis writes: "A nice idea, Eminence, so anyone who wants to can hear your words in private and always. After all, God is the mysterious silence that speaks inside each of us without screaming from the rooftops as many do today..."
The efforts of the Milan diocese to keep up with the times haven't always been appreciated -- back in 2002, overworked priests here devised a do-it-yourself house-blessing kit that got them scolded by Rome. So, it'll be interesting to see whether the Vatican (which up to a few years ago asked for credit card donations via fax) will catch up to video.
Italians love bottled water. Those San Pellegrino lifestyle ads are true, even if you don't always have a group of good-looking young people lingering over a plate of spaghetti, "living in Italian" almost always means bottled water on the table.
The Italian's amore for water places them among the highest consumers of H20 in bottiglia on the planet -- it's an estimated 3.2 billion euro ($4.8 billion) a year business -- and you really do find shoppers scrutinizing the vast water section at the supermarket (Is this good for the liver? Low in sodium?) that many of these spring waters claim.
Since the tap water's just fine, officials have often tried to get Italians to kick the habit. One recent example: a free fountain supply of mineral water (fizzy and straight) from taps in public parks.
It's a tough concept to swallow, since many of these waters come from centuries-old sources -- known as long for their health benefits -- and do taste better.
Just a few weeks ago, as many of us were chipmunking Carnival treats, Don Gianni Fazzini made an emotional appeal to his parishioners: give up bottled water for Lent.
It's a timely idea -- and certainly easier than "carbon fasting" or simply giving up chocolate or wine -- but he was asking for a pretty big sacrifice.
Fazzini's parish is in Mestre, aka the terra firma Cinderella to Venice. Neither the waters in Venice or Mestre -- one of the most polluted, industrial areas of Italy -- really inspire much faith in tap water.
Just think about how much plastic waste you won't create, he urged, reminding them of Naple's trash nightmare.
Families who hold their noses and gulp are asked to donate the money they would've spent on water to a humanitarian project in Thailand, perhaps the good cause will keep them at it until Easter.
