2. Nov. 5
Massive
Sea-Rescue Saves 1,000
Reported on Nov.4.
Ships of various non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) averted a disaster by taking,
collectively,1000 refugees from dangerously
overloaded boats that were trying to make it to
Lampedusa. Three ships were involved: Sea-Eye
4, Mission Lifeline, and Ocean
Viking. The spotting and rescue efforts
were coordinated by the air-ship and air-air
communications network "Alarm Phone". Ships not
directly involved continue to search for more
"boat people." The Sea Eye-4 picked up
800 persons from 7 different small boats, the
largest of which had two decks loaded with 400
persons. Finger-pointing continues at Tunisia
and Malta as to whose territorial waters these
boats were in. "You didn't do your job." "No, you
didn't do your job." Thankfully,
the NGOs did theirs. The Sea-Eye 4
reports refugees in critical
condition, including pregnant women, hundreds of
children younger than four and unaccompanied
minors.
3. Nov. 6
First Attack
from an Aircraft Carrier — The Battle of Taranto
(1940)
The initial air strikes
against Naples in WWII were
effective against Italian war machinery in the
south. [The strikes against southern Italy
included the bold —and unprecedented— strike
on November 11, 1940, against the large
Italian naval base in Taranto by 21 British Fleet Air Arm
"Swordfish" torpedo bombers (image, left)
off the aircraft carrier Illustrious,
270 km (170 miles) out in the Ionian Sea.
The attack devastated the Italian fleet.
It was the first major
victory for naval air power in the history
of warfare and has been called
"the blueprint for Pearl Harbor." The air-raids assisted the
British desert war against Italian forces in
North Africa, an offensive that would begin in
December, 1940. British air raids on Naples
were night-time raids that lasted until
November of the following year. These raids were crucial to the British
effort to interrupt Axis movements of men and
material to the war in North Africa.
4. Nov. 7
The Tragedy of Taranto
We were the
"other" steel mill. (Everything about
Bagnoli is here.) Our
Italsider steel mill in Bagnoli in Naples (image,
left) was the only one I had ever lived
near. (I used to know a guy from Pittsburgh.
Maybe that counts. The Pittsbutgh football
team is called The Steelers! His old man
worked in the mills.) I never knew that our
Bagnoli mill was a pipsqueak compared to the
one in Taranto (down at the inside top of the
heel of the Italian boot). At one time it was
the largest steel mill in Europe. The steel
industry in Italy came into being because of
underground iron ore and coal noted in 1880
and the cost of importing pig iron from
abroad. The use of iron in railways and
industry saw the renewal of those old
ironworks, largely in the north. In 1884 the
Italian state built a large modern steel mill
in Terni (in Umbria, central Italy). In 1905
the Elba corporation built coke furnaces in
various places, Bagnoli for one, to produce
cast iron. That company was founded in Genoa
in 1905 and became ILVA, the Latin
name for the Isle of Elba, loaded with iron
ore to fuel the blast furnaces. The Bagnoli
plant was big, not gigantic, but big for us.
It was state-owned, but eventually privatized,
and went through a century of two World Wars,
the Great Depression, the rise and fall of
Fascism, and so on. ILVA became "Italsider".
They built our mill, born in 1900 in the
glowing enthusiasm of the Industrial
Revolution and died in 1992 when the mill
closed and the world started to glow "green".
Bagnoli is still a mess. Thirty years later
you can still kick through the bits, pieces,
and girders of the ruins.
The Taranto iron and steel
complex opened in 1965. It gave jobs to 5,000
workers. But by the early 1970s steel
production in the EEC suffered from
overcapacity and foreign competition.
Italsider was no exception. It took heavy
losses during the steel crises in Europe in
the late 1970s and especially 1980s. In 1992
Italsider, in a last gasp to cut overcapacity
and losses, closed the Bagnoli plant. ILVA
kept its plant in Taranto going. It was
massive and could produce 10 million tons of
steel a year. That steel company is now called
Acciaierie d’Italia (Italian Steel
Works) (most people still call it 'Ilva').
There was never any optimism about riding a
"wave of the future." The handwriting was on
the wall years earlier. I grew up in Los
Angeles where we joked "We like "to see the
air we breathe." Even then we had smog alerts.
Now, we pay lip service to moving from fossil
fuels to a green future. (That would be nice,
but it's not a given that we'll make it.) The
image shows protestors in Taranto holding a
sign that says "All the steel in the world
is not worth the life of a single child."
But the steel foundries provide jobs, right?
Yes, now 14,000, but read the sign again.
Taranto has 220,000 residents. It has been a
factory town for decades and people have been
getting sick —and dying— for years because of
air-pollution. Lung cancer death rates are a
third higher than in surrounding areas, and
deaths from respiratory illnesses as much as
50% above average. The political pressures NOT
to close the plant are very strong. But
consider that in 1991 Taranto was declared at
high risk by the Ministry of Environment
because of pollutants put into the air by the
factories, mostly the steel plant. Only 7% of
Taranto's pollution comes from people; 93% is
from factories! In 2014, the Italian National
Institute of Emissions said that Taranto is
third behind Linfen (China), and Copşa Mică
(Romania) as the most polluted cities IN
THE WORLD(!) due to factory emissions.
Read the sign again.
5. Nov. 8
How
the Slave Half Lived
Archaeologists
have found an intact room in Pompeii, a kind
of dormitory for slaves. The room has three
wooden beds, a chamber pot, a wooden chest and
some tall Roman amphorae (jars). The room was
in a villa in Civita Giuliana, a suburb north
of the city. Officials say this discovery
gives rare insight into the daily reality of
slaves. Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the
site, says: "This find gives much needed
context for how the city's rich depended on
the labor of others to prosper...This is a
window into the precarious reality of people
who seldom appear in historical sources
written by men belonging to the elite...[Slaves
are] ... invisible in most accounts...
"What is striking is the cramped and
precarious nature of this room ... It is
certainly one of the most exciting finds
during my life as an archaeologist, even
without great 'treasures' — the true
treasure here is the human experience of the
most vulnerable members of ancient society."
6. Nov. 10
The Ugo Niutta
International Airport of Capodichino
by Luciano Mangiafico
Yes, the Capodichino Airport
is actually named for a person: Ugo Niutta
(1880-1916), a Neapolitan army pilot killed in
WWI. Before they changed the name in 1921 to
honor him, the name of the airport was simply
the Military Airport of Campo di Marte (the
field of Mars). It's at the very top of the
Capodichino hill, leveled in 1812 to make it a
training and parade ground for the army of King
Joachim Murat. It stayed a training
ground for the Italian army until 1918. Early
aeronautics use include one in 1812 when
French balloonist Sophie Blanchard lifted off.
The king was in the audience. The balloon
landed in a swamp. Also, in 1843, Antonio
Comaschi took off in a balloon lifted by
hydrogen prepared with machinery and
techniques developed in Naples. It took off
before a large crowd (hyped up by newspapers
to 200,000) zigged and zagged for 200 miles,
and was aloft for 1 hr and 17 min. It landed
in Quaglietta, a town near Avellino only 103
km/62 miles from Naples as the crow
flies. This was a balloon. Flying enthusiasts
used the field for early air shows and in 1910
formed the Circolo Aereo di Napoli (Naples
Flying Club). In April 1913 one flyer was the
first Italian female pilot: Rosina Ferrario
(1888-1959).
World War I (1915-1918 in Italy) stopped all
flights at Capodichino. It was not until early
1918 that the field became a military airport;
the field was leveled to make smoother
runways. The conversion to a real airport came
in 1918, when a German Naval
Zeppelin came in from Bulgaria,
bombed the port, a factory, and an airship
station in Bagnoli, killing sixteen persons
and wounding dozens. The Italian Army then
stationed three observer planes and 2 fighters
on the field. After the war, the airport went
unused, but for some use by the local flying
club. That changed in 1923 when the Italian
Air Force became an independent service of the
armed forces, the Regia Aeronautica
(Royal Air Force). The airport was enlarged
and permanent structures began to appear,
including housing for trainees in the Air Force Academy.
Then the academy moved to the Royal Palace of
Caserta and an NCO (non-commissioned officers)
school took over the Capodichino quarters. The
airport stayed an air force base throughout
World War II. The Allies bombed
it heavily. After September
1943 the Allies used it against German forces.
In the early 1950s, civilian flights started
and since then Capodichino has become the
fifth largest airport in Italy in terms of
passengers handled, with close to 11 million
in 2019.
Selected
References
1. Maisto, Guido. Ad Astra: Pionieri
Napoletani del Volo. Napoli: pub.
La via Azzurra, 1948.
2. Saggiorno, Carlo. Da Aerodromo ad
Aeroporto (Storia dell’Aeroporto Militare
di Capodichino Ugo Niutta.
3. Tripodi, Carlo A. G. Piccola Storia
dell'Aeroporto di Capodichino.
4. Wikipedia. "Naples International
Airport."
7. Nov.13
My
neighbor has just put up a Christmas tree.
"It's that time of year," he says. Really?
It's the middle of November. This image shows
a presepe (also presepio), a
crèche, a manger scene, depicting the
birth of the Baby Jesus. (My neighbor will
have both a tree and a presepe.) The presepe
starts appearing in the homes of Italian
Christians as the day approaches. You put it
together slowly over many days, piece by
piece, laying the Christ Child in as the last
piece, the night before Christmas "...away
in a manger no crib for a bed, the little
Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head."
The one here, however, has something special
about it: it is made of bits of wood found at
the bottom of the sea or washed up on the
beaches of Lampedusa island, the southernmost
piece of Italy, officially part of Sicily but
just off the coast of Libya. They are pieces
of boats that bore refugees, many of whom
drowned at sea. The boats are made by
prisoners doing "hard time" in a Sicilian
prison. Normally they
make violins and work under the
tutelage of a master lutanist and of a
carpenter. Christmas is different. With that:
One
Christmas was so much like another, in
those years around the sea-town now and
out of all sound except the distant
speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a
moment before sleep, that I never remember whether it snowed for six
days and six nights when I was twelve or
whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was
six.
—from A
Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan
Thomas
With the passage of time, I get more of
those moments. So, there are only I don't
know how many shopping days left till Christmas.
Remember: shop, drop, and roll.
8. Nov. 16
Mt. Etna
on Sicily - Dangerous, Destructive, Beautiful

The visual effect in the
image is a "volcanic light column," caused
by sunlight shining down at sunrise or
sunset plus the red of magma from an
erupting volcano. It is spectacular. The
photographer's name is Giancarlo Tinè, from
Ragusa in Sicily. He is a photo and Etna
enthusiast and, I imagine, has the world's
finest collection of Etna shots!
9. Dec. 1
Closed for Adoption
This
is nicest sign I've ever seen in Naples —maybe
anywhere. Very unusual and good-newsworty. The
owner of the shop on via Chiaia and his wife
have a delicatessen. Yesterday it was closed,
the shutters drawn down and the sign you see
here was taped to the front. It reads: CLOSED
FOR ADOPTION. "WE'RE FINALLY PARENTS". The
reaction of passers-by, Neapolitans and
tourists alike, was immediate: the sign is
marked up with "best wishes", "good luck" and
magically marked up with hearts.
10. Dec. 2
A Film Festival
is Born!

The
famous Venice Film Festival started with
nothing, not even a city. It took them about
1500 years to get the festival up and running.
We already have the city so it shouldn't be
that hard, right? I see (image below,
right) they know in addition to
directors, producers, etc. etc. you need
chairs. That gentleman in the image is from
Opus Continuum, the artists' collective, one
of the groups dedicated to making Villa
Cerillo (red pin-drop, image lower left)
on lake Fusaro
a good venue for art, artists and film
festivals by putting on one event after
another.
Thus, the Phlegraean
Film Festival, the first film festival in the
Campi Flegrei, the "fiery fields". It will
host the talents of national and international
short cinema with a two-fold goal: offer
filmmakers a new space for expression, and
showcase the area's many architectural
treasures to Italy.
The latest edition ended a few
weeks ago. It's a solid film reality; the
awards are typical: Best Film, Director,
Screenplay, Editing, Actor, Actress, etc. The
jury is made up of members of the cultural
association "Drazil Production", for years
specialized in the film industry, as well as
external jury "sector technicians" chosen for
each competence. That includes setting up the
chairs.
11. Dec. 6
Look Right, Look
Left. Oh,
Look Up
On most days, this a
great ride. It's on the one road, the Strada
Statale (Province Road) that leads from
the town of Capri over to Anacapri, the other
town on the island. Maybe two miles. It has a
spectacular view over the whole Bay of Naples.
It's a very winding road, maybe a bit of a
"white knuckle" drive if you're on the outside
—you know, the side
that...drops off.... But that doesn't
happen. Much. On most days, it's fine.
Clearly, as the image indicates, this was not
most days. It happened the day before
yesterday. No one was killed or hurt, but it
sort of looks —with
the door flung wide open—as if someone
just ran for it (last words: "Bye, dear.")
This spot is just before you go around a
bend and head up and into Anacapri. Now
they have to knock that boulder to pieces
and dispose of those bits. I don't see why
you just can't drop the whole thing over
the side. That's where it was going,
anyway. What could happen?
[A few
hours later, from a friend who was there
— it
was a very close call. The passengers (a
woman driving with her
kids in the back) saw rocks flying down
and just got out and ran.] "We were over there when
that boulder fell. It's a miracle that the
mother and her children got out unharmed.
The entire left side of the car is ruined.
In a few hours they are closing the road
for a number of days. Fixing the road and
making it safe again is complicated."
12. Dec. 9
R.I.P. Lina
Wertmüller
Lina Wertmüller passed away
on 9 December 2021. She was one of Italy's
great film directors. Everything I know about that is here.
She was the first female director to be
nominated for the Academy Award for Best
Director, in 1977. I read now that she is
the second woman ever to be honored with
an Academy Honorary Award as a director.
Honorary Awards are for "extraordinary
distinction in lifetime achievement,
exceptional contributions to the state of
motion picture arts and sciences, or for
outstanding service to the Academy."*
*
The other is AGNÈS
VARDA (1928 – 2019).
"...central to French New
Wave films of the 1950s and 1960s,
focusing on documentary realism,
women's issues, and other social commentary..."
Wertmüller depicted her
childhood as a time of adventure, during
which she was expelled from 15 different
Catholic high schools! Wertmüller had an
early fascination with the creative arts,
especially films. She said the best advice
she ever had about making movies was from
Federico Fellini, who told her, "Tell a
good story. You can have all the technique
in the world, but that won't save you if
you're not a story-teller. Tell the
story." And that she did, with the best of
them. Rest in Peace.
13. Dec. 13
Investigative journalism vs
the bad guys

W.B.Yeats wrote in The Second Coming
of a terrible time when "...the
ceremony of innocence is drowned;/The
best lack all conviction, while the
worst/ Are full of passionate
intensity."
I've just read The Outlaw Ocean
(2019, by Ian Urbina). It tells of crimes
offshore — the murder of stowaways, sea
slavery, rape, and torture —the wholesale,
literal "drowning of innocence" in the
ongoing refugee crisis in the
Mediterranean and elsewhere. This link will
take you to my complete entry.
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