Lo Zombie politico

What is it about Silvio Berlusconi and Italy?  The former prime minister, leader of one of the country's two largest political parties, and member of the Senate, has been convicted of tax fraud.  Finally, it's an unappealable conviction.  Meanwhile, he faces charges in at least two other proceedings.  One involves buying votes and the other underage prostitution.  Political commentators repeatedly point out that in any other Western democracy he'd be gone; he'd have quietly disappeared to Arcore, his villa near Milan, to spend more time with his family and maybe his football club, A.C. Milan (which could use some help at the moment).  Instead, like some political zombi, he's still very much a part of the scene, showing his fangs most days on the front page of most newspapers.

Tim Parks has a good piece (subscription required for full access) in a recent (maybe the latest) New York Review that talks about all of this.  Parks is originally from England, but lives in Italy, is married to an Italian woman, and they have been raising their family there.  Still, it sounds like he might be losing patience.  Describing recent media coverage, he says that "it was almost unheard of for anyone to suggest that regardless of moral concern or the desire to uphold the rule of law, Berlusconi simply cannot be of any use to his country politically . . ."  He also has some interesting things to say about the country's "vocation for factionalism."

I don't live there.  I'm in Washington, D.C., several thousand miles and six time zones away.  I've never had to struggle through the glue-y bureaucracy or been required to ally with an influential patron to protect my job and career, things which Parks (and others) see as a normal part of Italian society.  So why do I care that the country finds it so hard to address, let alone deal with, its collective problems, things like youth unemployment, the environment, and, of course, organized crime?

I'm not sure.  I'm not Italian-American and, so far as I know, I don't have any Italian ancestors.  The one's I'm aware of are all from further north -- Germany, Ireland, and Scotland, in particular.  But I have Italian friends and I've gotten to know some of their teenage children.  And this, I think, is the emotional connection.  These are remarkable kids with enormous talent and so much promise.  They deserve a better country.  They could contribute so much, but they're likely to leave and make their contributions elsewhere -- in England, in Australia, or, if we're lucky, the U.S.  There are other reasons to care about Italian politics, but right now that's probably the most important.

John McPhee talks about writing

In the past few years, John McPhee, who’s now 82, has been talking about his writing, not the articles and books so much as the writing itself.  This is remarkable for someone who has almost never referred to himself in his earlier writing.  Several of these articles on his craft were published in the New Yorker, where he’s been a staff writer since the mid-1960s.  These are available on-line in the magazine’s archives, but I’m pretty sure the full versions are only available to subscribers.  In 2010, he also gave a long interview to Peter Hessler (another New Yorker writer) covering some of the same ground and this is freely available on The Paris Review's site.  I just came across it the other day and I highly recommend it to any non-New Yorker subscriber who’s ever enjoyed McPhee’s writing and/or is curious about how he does it.

A new deal for cyclists in Italian cities?

Positive news from Italy this time.  The association representing Italian cities is proposing some really interesting ideas to make life easier for urban cyclists.  Earlier this week, the Associazione Nazionale Comuni Italiani (ANCI; National Association of Italian Municipalities) presented a set of draft ideas to the Minister of Infrastructure and Transport, Maurizio Lupi.

© Agence France Presse

Maybe the most remarkable of their proposals would be a change in the burden of proof in case of accidents.  In legal disputes. the "less vulnerable" vehicle would need to show that it was not responsible for damage to the "more vulnerable" vehicle, or injury to the latter's driver.  As a cyclist, it's amazing to think that if I was hit --god forbid! -- by a car in, say, Milan, the legal focus would be on the driver to show that he or she wasn't at fault.  What better way to get motorists pay more attention to cyclists.

Some other ANCI proposals would:

• Allow for bike lanes along the right side of each direction of roadways;

• Require, in certain cases, an additional light on traffic signals for cyclists giving them a head start in making right turns;

• Allow cyclists to travel in both directions on one-way streets; and

• Require apartment building owners to provide bicycle parking areas.

The city officials are taking advantage of the fact that the transportation committee in the Chamber of Deputies is preparing to revise the national traffic code (Codice della strada) and that the Minister will be submitting his ideas for revisions sometime before the end of the year.

It's thought that the bicycle measures stand a good chance of being included in the code revisions since the same officials proposing the ideas would be responsible for their implementation.