EIGHTY-NINTH
DAY
CULTURAL
SLIDE
December
11, 2005
We really
slipped off our cultural high horse today.
We have been dying to see a movie in English, but the local movie house
that shows the English language films has been very quiet. My guess is that no one much comes. That would certainly be the case with “Mr.
and Mrs. Smith,” the loser film made to announce Brad Pitt and Angelina
Jolie. These two very attractive people
could command the screen with almost any but the most trite pap and cartoon
style movies. This is a real disaster. At least give us something moderately
watchable; I hope these guys did not even get a review. Frankly, I really don’t care about who is
doing what to whom, but this tiresome piece of violent garbage is very
unworthy. It won’t happen again. I keep thinking “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” will
come. At least it might be intelligible.
We have
both been reading lots of books.
Kimberly has turned me on to books about Rome,
which is all she’s reading. The latest
of the bunch is a very pleasant book by Alan Epstein titled, “As the Romans
Do”(our computer won’t underline). It is a memoir of a family from California
and their move to Rome, first to the suburbs and then to the central city. It is warm and wise with lots of toleration
for the Roman way. I must admit that one
of the subjects he takes on is on my own list of most irritating Italian
shopkeeper traits and that is specifically about making change. No matter what the situation, whether at a
newsstand or a fancy boutique, whenever cash is presented the people who are
taking it want the exact change. I
remember this from other days in Italy when the lira was the medium of
exchange. There were about 1700 Lira to
the dollar before the Euro came into being and the lira traveled up or down
when the dollar was weak or strong. It
was easy to see the problem with all of those large bills and thousands of lira
changing hands in each transaction. With the Euro in play, I don’t get it. The vendor is always shocked when you hand
him a twenty for a transaction that cost 11.55E. They will immediately ask for the correct
change and sort of pout if they are forced to give up change from their own
register. This even happens in the big
supermarkets. Everybody is constantly
digging through his or her pockets trying to come up with exact change. I guess the European Union is having trouble
making all that coin and paper.
On a more
positive note, the Roman water is the best city water I have ever tasted. It still comes from the same sources that
fueled the Aqueducts in Roman times.
What is interesting is that everyone on the street is carrying bottled
water. We buy the Frizzante but mostly
drink the tap water. It is sweet and
fresh. I think that water is one of the
things that made the Roman Empire so successful. San Francisco water is good, New York is
better and Rome seems to me to be best. Kimberly swears by the water in
Portland.
I am
fighting a monster cough and cold. It is
really cold and wet in Rome. This place
in January makes SF look like a suburb of Palm Springs. Every night it’s close to freezing and it
does not warm up much. So much for the
Mediterranean climate of the region. We
are lucky because the rooms in the apartment are warm and cozy. It could be even colder. We are reading like crazy, continuing our
exploration and missing our other lives some of the time.
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