—Some benevolent
organization named Napoli Subway Letteratura has returned
for its fourth edition of Juke-Box Letterario, distributing free
booklets (average about 16-20 pages) of short stories
and essays by young Neapolitan authors. The small-format
staple-bound booklets sit in racks at most metro and
cable-car stops; they are gobbled up almost immediately
by the waiting masses. Similar projects in Rome, Milan,
Palermo and Venice have met with success.
—One of the worst eye-sores in the city for the
last 20 years has been the burned-out shell of the Jai alai stadium in
Fuori Grotta. It burned down in 1986 under mysterious
circumstances ("Say, who was that masked man
with the Molotov cocktail?") and since then has been
sitting there. If you thought the national ball sport of
the noble Basques was pretty much useless in Naples
—they tell me that people used to go to bet on the
games— the latest spin on "useless" calls for the
renovation and conversion of the premises to an
ice-skating rink! Work was supposed to start nine months
ago, but according to a local paper, "the workers didn't
show up." (That's fearless investigative journalism for
you! Why not just say that if the Mob doesn't want you
to play Basque-t Ball, why would they possibly want you
to ice-skate? A flabby populace is a vulnerable
populace.) There is opposition to the plan from quarters
that see the premises as more socially relevant in the
guise, perhaps, of a center for activities for youth or
the elderly. So, who says that kids and old people might
not enjoy some time on the ice?
[Also see Two Things that
are Gone.]
—A totally modern
550-bed hospital —one of the largest in Italy—
is under construction in Ponticelli, an eastern suburb
of Naples. The so-called Ospedale del
Mare ("hospital of the sea") was
planned by local architect, Pasquale Manduca and will be
"earthquake proof." It had better be, say critics of the
plan, for the premises are right on the edge of the "red
zone," the area near Mt. Vesuvius that civil defence
planners have to evacuate in case the scourge of Pompei
and Herculaneum decides to erupt again. In any event,
completion of the hospital is optimistically set for
2008.
(update-2016-that's
right, 8 years behind schedule!)
—The oldest basilca in
Naples, the church of Santa
Maria Maggiore (photo, right) was ceremoniously
reopened this month with a concert by the "Ensemble vocale di
Napoli." The reopening of ancient churches in
the city, if only as centers of historical and cultural
focus, is dear to the heart of a number of organizations
in the city, including the Portosalvo
Committee, named for one such church of extreme interest
and in a state of extreme disrepair. [Also see this
entry, Beneath the Oldest
Basilica in Naples.]
—A large port for pleasure craft has just opened
at Castellammare di Stabia,
right at the beginning of the long Sorrentine peninsula.
Marina di Stabia is
billed as the largest in Campania and one of the most
important in the Mediterranean. That last claim has yet
to be tested, but it is attractively close to Sorrento,
Capri and the entire bay; also, it much less congested
than competing ports farther in towards Naples. The port
can host 1,200 craft at floating piers and 200 at shore.
Gee, Jennifer Lopez has already showed up in her
63-meter "Phoenix." From what I hear, she has quite a
beam on her.
—Some (Jason Lanier) call it "digital Mao-ism"
and some call it Whitmanesque faith in the ultimate
wisdom of the people. I call it "Wackipedia." Those
familiar with the anyone-can-edit on-line encyclopedia,
Wikipedia, know that the articles range from world-class
scholarship to rabid teenagers writing about their
favorite garage bands (usually their own). The Italian
Wikpedia article on Antonio Bassolino, former mayor of
Naples and current president of the Campania region of
Italy is very short, no doubt due to the tendency of
partisan know-it-alls and party hacks to delete sections
that they don't agree with (a technique, you will
recall, much favored by the late Josef Goebbels). The
discussion behind the article is much more interesting
than the article itself because that's where the
shouting matches take place. The Wikimeisters have had
to block the article from further editing.
(late-August, 2007)
—I Took the
Ferrari to Work Today. When I first saw one of
these things coming down the tracks about three years
ago, I thought they were filming another Star Trek movie.
Fixed rail
urban transport systems in Naples have usually been on
the order of Toonerville Trolleys of the kind that
unwashed urchins —the scugnizzi— hang on
to the back of for free rides. The longest such rail
line in Naples used to be the number 1 line that ran
from Bagnoli into and
through the city all the way to the east end of town at
Poggioreale. Thirty years
ago a ticket still cost a paltry 50 lire (ten cents).
Then, they tore up the tracks for most of that stretch
in order to widen roads for car traffic. The number 1
now runs between Piazza Vittoria in the west (adjacent
to the Villa Comunale) and
Poggioreale in the east, still a good chunk of Naples.
The ticket costs 1 euro. The new tram is shown in the
photo on the right.
Anyway,
when it passed me for the first time, I was afraid to
get on and contented myself with reading the painted
autograph on the side: "Pininfarina." This is in
reference to Battista Farina (1893-1966), founder of the
famous chassis design company that has turned out a
number of snazzy versions of Maserati and Ferrari. The
company still bears the name and has gone into designing
classy street cars. This new model is called the Sirio
and is built by Ansaldo Breda, the largest Italian
manufacturer of light-rail transport systems, with
various models now lightly prowling urban rails all over
Europe from Oslo to Ankara and, indeed, in the United
States in Los Angeles, Boston, and Atlanta. This model,
the Sirio, is an articulated train with driver
compartments at both ends. In the interior, single rows
of seats are aligned on each side, facing the center;
thus, you can make easy eye contact with the person
across the way or with the navel of the person standing
in the aisle. The two motors run on asynchronous
triphase alternating current fed by insulated gate
bipolar transistor inverters and choppers. This makes me
wary of spider-manning myself to the back for a free
ride. Of, course, there is no back, anyway.
—Turtle Point. The
gentle giant of the deep pictured here is the Loggerhead
Sea Turtle (Caretta caretta). (I'm no marine
biologist, but I think that means "turtle-turtle".) The
creature is common to many of our planet's seas. While
not exactly on the endangered species list, they would
surely be on the battered species list, if there were
such. Most of their problems have little to do with
whatever naturally ails turtles; the creatures are
simply victims of civilization. They wind up with
cracked body shells from collisions with boats; they
injure their flippers trying to struggle loose from
fishing nets, or, in the worst cases, the flippers can
be sliced off by the props of passing motor boats; they
get fishing hooks embedded in their flesh or even
swallow them; or they can simply be poisoned by
pollution and, as a result, be blind or have lost their
delicate sense of direction.
For many years in
Naples, the Anton Dohrn
aquarium in the Villa
Comunale did valuable veterinary work in taking in
these wounded creatures from local waters. That work has
now been expanded greatly by a new facility —a "Turtle
Point"— on the premises of the old Italsider steel mill
in Bagnoli, an area that
is little by little making
its way back from long decades of urban blight.
The new facility is on 600 square meters and houses 23
tanks dedicated solely to caring for these creatures,
rehabilitating them and returning them to the sea.
Exemplars of Caretta caretta arrive from all
over the Mediterranean at what is now one of the largest
such rescue facilities in Europe. In 2005, the center
took in about 90 sea turtles and managed to return half
of them to the wild. The others did not survive. The
freed turtles are outfitted with temporary tracking
devices so marine biologists can follow them. There are
now plans to expand the center with a larger, adjacent
facility.