My latest project...working with Berlitz Publishing hide this™ series, we want to collect all of your funny language faux-pas in one spot...So, click on Up Your Bottom!, share, read & weep (with laughter)...!francesca maggiburntbythetuscansun
History has just been made: An Italian politician just went down for his sexual picadillos, in what is a very first for this country. I mean, we’re talking about the place that gave us Caligula, Popes with 17 kids, Caesar & Cleopatra and then Marc Antony & Cleopatra, and Emperors gifting sumptuous villas for their mistresses.
While on vacation with my American nephews and niece, we got to talking about the hullaboo in America over Barack Obama’s (supposed lack of) birth certificate,
the ‘Birther’ movement (which to this blogger sounds a lot like people
proposing natural childbirth), the bill introduced in Congress to force
Presidential candidates to ‘prove’ their certificates are for real (as
if government seals on original birth certificates were not enough
‘proof’), and so on.
Michelle Obama & kids visited the Pantheon yesterday. It has been twittered, and it's probably TOTALLY UNTRUE, in the friend of a friend of a friend sort of variety of info that our TOTALLY COOL FIRST LADY donning black leggings - leggings!- under a black dress asked for a doggy bag at the restaurant.
As I’ve stated many times before (and like many before me), Italy is nothing if not a land of contradictions. But, when it comes to looking at life’s petty inconveniences, if not truly huge disasters, the Italians always turn to the exact opposite of what one would expect.
When you first break with tradition, it often comes accompanied by a soundtrack similar to a herd of elephants in a china store. I’m thinking of things like, oh, little black girls attending a white school in America’s south, the investiture of a gay Bishop, the end of Apartheid, or even the first sounds of Elvis’ form of Rock n’ Roll.
Along with much of Italy, I've been
personally celebrating the filmmaker - visionary - & unbelievably
talented Sergio Leone. It's the 30th anniversary of his death. Don't
know quite why I never got into these 'Spaghetti Westerns' before, but
boy, the visual impact & awesome scores by Ennio Morricone will
drain you of such emotion, it'll leave you as dry as the sun-baked
Arizona desert -- and definitely thirsting for more.
This week we honor the 100th birthday of pretty much the only woman in Italy who is truly respected for her mind, Rita Levi Montalcino, Nobel prize winning scientist and senator for life. And to think that she did it in an epoch in which women could barely make it to the upper echelons of anything but the top shelf at the Esselunga Supermarket. And while she is a source of pride for all of Italy, she’s still, unfortunately the exception that proves the rule.
I remember back in the day when I taught nursery school, and each year, we’d ask the kids, ‘Where does orange juice come from?’ And we were invariably met with, ‘A Can. The Freezer,’ or some other variant [ask ‘em where money comes from…and you’ll always get, ‘A Machine.’].
We’d then proceed to make fresh squeezed o.j. with them. In Italy,
where bottled fruit juices are the next best thing to drinking the
All of us are still reeling from the quakes felt all the way to Rome
and from the horrific images of the damage done to one of the most
pristine and picturesque places in Italy. The rescue and mobilization
of volunteers and squads from nearly all of Italy was exceptional – the
response was immediate, well-organized, and all those affected who
could, pitched in to pull people from the rubble. I even saw pictures
of Spanish rescuers with dogs searching for survivors. Teams of
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