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THE VIEW FROM CHAOS MANOR

View 203 April 29 - May 5, 2002

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Monday  April 29, 2002

Rome. 

For some reason I didn't copy over last week's VIEW to this computer, so I'll start here with a summary of what we did since we got here.

We got here last Wednesday night,  and found our apartment, and Thursday we took a walk in the local district, the Priti, which is a middle class suburb of the Vatican Borgo. The main feature of the Priti seems to be an enormous Papal fortress now converted into an academy for the Carabinieri. I have noticed that most of the police stations around here have the papal beehive showing their origin. That includes the one across from Castel Santangelo. That old Papal fortress has been converted into a national museum largely dedicated to the history of the Carabinieri, the national para-military police. 

In 1870 the House of Savoy's royalist  forces broke through the Porta Pia and took Rome, which was at that time ruled by the Pope. There was a brisk but short battle, and the Pope retreated to the Vatican, and was left there while Rome became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy. There remained a theoretical state of war between Italy and the Papal States (of which the Vatican was pretty well all that was left) until 1929 when Mussolini negotiated a highly popular Concordat that left the Vatican a sovereign state within the city of Rome, and made Rome undisputedly part of Italy.

Castel Santangelo, built as the tomb of the Emperor Hadrian but long converted into a fortress and prison, was taken by Italy as part of the spoils of war of the Papal States, as were all the various government buildings and many palaces in the city.

You'll note that year, 1870. The Kingdom of Italy was formed in 1861 after Garibaldi began his uprising in Sicily, but due to French power the city of Rome remained under Papal rule. This wasn't anything new. In 1848 there were widespread revolutions all across Europe. One of them was in Italy, and there was a brief Republic, but after France put down her own revolution French troops restored Papal authority in the Papal States. The Kingdom of Italy had to make do with a capital in Turin after 1861, and then apparently Florence, but in 1870 France had new problems and Napoleon III didn't have much to spare to aid the Pope.

Even so, Italy didn't get everything the nationalists thought they should have. Italia Irredentia, unredeemed Italy, included not only Savoy -- the original seat of the Dukes of Savoy who became Italy's royal family -- but Nice (Roman Narboinsis or Narbo), and Trieste over on the east side. They got Trieste by choosing the right side in World War I, and one reason Mussolini sided with the Axis in WW II was in hopes of getting Savoy. Instead they lost part of the region around Trieste to the democratic government of Marshal Tito. Italy kept some of the Austrian provinces they acquired in World War I, but I understand that in places the largely German population keeps blowing up post office boxes. George Washington warned us not to become involved in the never ending territorial disputes of Europe... But they did get to keep Trieste. They haven't managed Savoy and Piedmont (which were given to France for some help in yet another of those territorial disputes that American seldom learn about and that George Washington warned us to stay out of).

This generation doesn't seem to take these things so seriously, but whether that's maturity or a general malaise of the west which doesn't take much of anything seriously is a matter for another discussion.

Our walk took us up to St. Peter's and then down past Castel Sant'Angelo, and Friday morning Roberta woke up with a cold that soon developed into a full fledged stomach flu that laid her out until Sunday, and left her unable to do anything at all. It hadn't seemed so bad Friday morning, so she stayed in the apartment while I did a long walk around Rome with my Olympus camera. That resulted in three photo-essays which I'll post here later. Just now they're available to subscribers for an early look. I'll notify them by email. If you subscribe and haven't received anything about where to find the stuff, let me know. On that score, fair warning: I have moved some long-unrenewed subscriptions to the inactive list, and those won't be getting mailings.

Saturday I didn't want to leave Roberta for long, so I took a short walk Saturday evening. Sunday she was able to go out for breakfast but not much else. 

Sunday night I got some writing done. Hurrah.

And today we will take another walk, and we have dinner with friends this evening.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Tuesday, April 30, 2002

Roberta is recovering. We had dinner with friends, and got back late. I have been entirely unable to adjust to the new time, and I don't get to sleep until about 4 or 5 AM, after which I want to sleep until noon. This isn't good.

At 1500 I went out with the camera to the Spanish Steps, and I will get a good photo essay on the cultural wars from that. It's going to take a bit of work, but I think I have some good photos that have inspired some interesting thoughts.

 

Tuesday night was the opera. Foolishly I didn't take the camera. The Teatro dell'Opera is small by our standards but magnificent. It says it was restored in 1938, Victor Emmanuel, Reggio, Benito Mussolini, Duce, and someone else who was governor of Rome being responsible for the work. 

The opera was Adriana Lecouvrer, which I had not only never seen but never heard of. I really don't know much about Francesci Cilea or his librettist Arturo Colautti either. Fortunately there was a plot summary in English. My Latin is a bit rusty, and of course there aren't any supertitles although I found myself futilely looking to where they are in the LA opera house. The scene is Paris in 1730 and begins at the Commedie Francaise. Adriana Lecouvreur was the best known actress in Paris, and a friend of Voltaire. The plot is based loosely on a true story and is best summarized as aristocrats and theater people behaving badly.

 You don't expect things to turn out well, and they don't. It's a well known operatic fact that nothing improves a soprano's voice like TB. In this case the soprano, who plays a great actress devoted to her work except for an all consuming attachment to a heroic but faithless aristocrat (played at the opera's opening by Enrico Caruso, but not tonight) is perfectly healthy until she is poisoned by a sniffing a bunch of faded violets. That has no immediate effect, but after about ten minutes she gets weaker while her voice gets stronger. That goes on for another fifteen minutes, punctuated by brief collapses before she's reinvigorated for another aria. Eventually she dies, of course. She was poisoned by the mezzo-soprano, an aristocratic Princess. The Princess has been using her baritone husband's love nest for liaisons with the tenor and isn't about to let a good tenor get away. The husband has been trying to seduce Adriana, but Adriana isn't interested, being completely enthralled by the tenor who has been having an affair with the Princess in the same house that the Prince has been using to dally with another actress until he can trade her in on Adriana. He has more or less managed to get rid of Duclos, the other actress, but he gets nowhere with Adriana. We presume the Prince and Princess are stuck with each other after Adriana dies.

They had really interesting poisons in those days.

There is a very well performed ballet in the third act. All operas performed in Paris had to include a formal ballet. Parisians expected a ballet, and the composer had no choice but to put one in no matter what that might do to the plot. In this case the ballet, the Judgment of Paris (five dancers, Mercury, Paris, Juno, Minerva, and Venus, complete with golden apple of discord)  is performed as a ballet for the entertainment of the guests of the Prince and Princess, so it fit right in, but the composer got his revenge by having Adriana and the Princess have a deadly quarrel during the climactic scene of the ballet, and the dancers don't get any applause until their third act curtain call.

 There are curtain calls after every act. Many of the performers aren't in Act Four, and some never appear for the final curtain call. The baritone Prince isn't seen after the third act, nor is his nasty little sidekick the Abbe Chazeuil. The mezzo Princess isn't in the fourth act either, but she gets in on the final curtain calls, as do the dancers from Act Three. It all seems rather unfair, but perhaps the Prince wanted to get home and didn't want to stick around for Act Four so he could get his curtain call. 

The voices are very good to excellent, the orchestra under Daniel Oren was excellent -- Oren not only gets top billing but his name in the same large typeface as the composer.

The costumes and sets are splendid, it's all very professionally done, and it's an excellent production. Roberta is more fond of opera than I am, and knows a lot more about what to look for, but I liked it just fine.

 

 

 

 

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Wednesday, May 1, 2002

Now I have the cold. Slept late, then worked on my books. We leave tomorrow so we thought we'd go out after 3 PM to buy some postcards and gifts. Wrong move. In Rome at least, all the stores close at about Noon every day for 3 hours. Today is Wednesday and although the signs say they will reopen at 3, none did by 4. We'll try in the evening, but nothing, grocery or clothing or jewelry or anything else is open over here in the Prati district. I suppose it may be different over in tourist parts of the city or even in the Borgo up by the Vatican but I am not really up to walking that far. We may have to do without the gifts. Roberta is recovering, but this thing has laid me out. I walked a good distance yesterday but I sure wouldn't be able to cover that route today.

Everyone says Americans work too hard and too much. Certainly they're trying to set us a better example here. Roberta reminds me that this is May Day, which may have more significance here than in the US. 

And indeed that was why everything was closed. Ah well, saved us considerably money...

 

                                                  

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Thursday, May 2, 2002

We are home. Left Rome at 0700 Rome time, it is now 9:45 Los Angeles Time. It has been a LONG day with many adventures.

Delta may be ready when you are, but I'm not ready to face Delta again for a while. With luck Roberta's bag will be delivered tomorrow.

And in fact it was delivered at 0312 this morning...

 

 

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Friday, May 3, 2002

Home. It's column time, but first to clean up the mail.

The KLEZ virus is everywhere. I have got 20 copies of it in the last hour. If you haven't done something about it, do so. It often  appears to be from a friend. It won't do anything unless you open a mail attachment, so don't to that.

And I find several announcements of new DSL supposedly in my area. I'll try, since I am really tired of this stupid satellite and its utter unreliability. It will often just stop working, and then start again, for no reason whatever. Overloaded? Who knows. But since it is so stupidly slow you don't know if it is going to die off or not until it finally gives you the page cannot be displayed error, then you have to try again, and that takes a long time, and by then you know the satellite isn't working properly again. I hate it.

Why does http://www.bestproductnet.com send me spam about my septic tank? I don't have one. But they keep sending this stuff. I wish I could require the spammer to inspect his own product. How much septic tank business can they get by spamming the net with this junk? Eric is right, until physical unpleasantness happens to spammers nothing will be done about it. Yet they have to have ways for suckers to send them money. Surely that would let them be located? I long for thegodfather.com to go into business.


From another place:

Supplementary data:

from: http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-885833.html , dated April 17,
2002

"A 7-year-old Minnesota boy has patented a method for swinging side to
side, meaning he could conceivably take playmates to court if they try
his new trick without permission.

U.S. Patent #6,368,227, issued April 9, describes a method for
swinging 'in which a user positioned on a standard swing suspended by
two chains from a substantially horizontal tree branch induces
side-to-side motion by pulling alternately on one chain and then the
other.'

People have up until now only swung in a back-and-forth motion, or
sometimes have twisted the chains so that the swing spins when
unwound, the application says. But by pulling on the chains one at a
time to induce a rocking, back-and-forth motion, 'the present inventor
has discovered certain other improvements in the art of swinging on a
swing,' the application says. 'Licenses are available from the
inventor upon request.'"


Oh God O Ottowa.

 

 

 

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Saturday, May 4, 2002

I have posted a number of addresses on the badmail page. These were returned from the May 3 mailing. In some cases the situation was temporary and I have done nothing.

When the mail was returned and there has been no renewal since 1999, I have removed that name from the mailing list.

I have flagged some names with renewals in 2000; if those are returned again they will be deleted.

I have sent copies of the mail rejection notice to the last known address of all current and 2001 subscribers.

Thanks to all. Please check badmail to see if you are on there.

I will try to post MAIL today. There is a LOT of course.

And if that horrible person writes me about my septic system again, I will find that spammer and let the spammer inspect a septic system first hand. I am weary of stupid and ineffectual spam: who in the world will get his septic tank pumped as a result of spam? Some moron has sold a get rich scheme (DID YOU KNOW THAT THERE ARE 21 MILLION septic tanks that need pumping!  Our system---) and imbeciles are sending the spam. Ye gods.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Sunday, May 5, 2002

Building new machines. Posted a lot of mail that had accumulated. Got several 2 Ghz Plus systems going, as well as a dual Athlon 1.7.

Deadlines are upon me...

 

 

 

 

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