BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: COVID-19 may be driving me to drink, and that's fine because I'm walking, not driving.

"If you live in the Bay Area, you’re most likely under mandatory shelter-in-place orders right now."

For all we know, this could be coming to Indiana. Or not.

My Italian pen pal Fabio hails from Milan in the region of Lombardy, the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic. I'm not entirely sure where he lives nowadays. Earlier Fabio was monitoring one of my social media discussions about efforts to temporarily suspend carryout alcohol restrictions in Indiana.

(As of this afternoon, Governor Andy Beshear has confirmed that Kentucky will be doing so, and I'm cautiously optimistic this will occur in Indiana as well.)

To paraphrase, Fabio wrote that he hasn't worked in two weeks and things in Milan are so bad in terms of illness and loss of life that he can't think much about food and drink.

This is sobering, no puns intended.

I've read enough history to understand what Fabio is saying, even if I haven't experienced it myself. It would be the height of absurdity for me or anyone else to marginalize his thoughts, because he's in or near the middle of it, and Italy is suffering grievously -- a state of affairs that America might well be facing.

And yet, everything else aside, it seems to me that we must function in the present as constituted right now. This doesn't mean there is no future, or that we're excused from planning for it. I feel an obligation to my team to do whatever I can to help put us in position to endure this.

We accept the governor's shutdown, and merely want to modify partial closure terms already mandated. Nothing ventured, nothing gained; anyway, if we went on full lockdown for two weeks, once this concluded we'd likely return to partial shutdown for an indeterminate period prior to opening back again in some semblance of normality.

I'm staying home as much as I can. We'd be decently equipped at the house to withstand a two-week mandated quarantine. There's liquor, wine and beer. There might even be food.

As I've been writing this post, a report appeared saying that there are now five coronavirus cases in Floyd County out of 50-something in the entire state of Indiana. Our county is small, and we have 10% of the reported cases? Of course we also know the absence of testing overall means these numbers surely are being under-reported.

Don't ask me to summarize. We're all just stream of consciousness until the fog lifts. It drives me to drink, and I'm not saying no.

The coronavirus is driving us to drink. Maybe that’s OK, by Esther Mobley (SF Chronicle)

This week, America discovered the peculiar pleasures of drinking under quarantine.

If you live in the Bay Area, you’re most likely under mandatory shelter-in-place orders right now. If you’re not, you’re probably exercising some version of social distancing (at least I hope you are) and wondering what measures your community will implement in the coming days and weeks to halt the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Your first concern is probably not how and what you will drink (at least I hope it’s not), but once you’ve gotten the bottom rungs of the hierarchy of needs secured — food, medications, all that toilet paper you’ve been hoarding — you might, as I am, be wondering how to add a little bit of relief and delight to the indefinite indoor sentence that lies ahead.

Why, under these particularly bizarre circumstances, are we feeling so drawn to a drink?

I have some theories ...

Design elements: Is it Market Street beautification or Il Duce's Italy?

Who knew Jeff Gahan was a student of pre-WWII fascist history? It's only a matter of time before Dear Leader channels Il Duce: "We must create a new art, an art of today, a Gahanist-HWC art."

As Bluegill wisely noted:

New Albany’s Market Street project is depressingly familiar - big money, long time, the usual political patronage, generic ugly car-centric result. New Gahania in a nutshell.

This nutshell includes the beautiful people rushing to praise the emperor's nudity as they overlook what he's done to terrorize the less fortunate among us.

Therein lies the biggest part of our city's problem -- that, and street light poles made out to look like Roman plinths for enormous ceremonial statues, which they might yet become during a third Gahan term.

We'll be invading Clarksville before you know it.

#FireGahan2019

The problem? "I had been attempting to live in Italy without living as an Italian."

Catania, Sicily (2016)

The author moved to Italy and found herself perplexed that Italians typically aren't outraged by the sort of relatively minor difficulties that send Americans howling to social media for illusory relief.

And then she learned something.

What Italians Taught Me About Nothing, by Isabella Lazzareschi (Medium)

... Answers to these questions came to me later after moving to a smaller and rather ancient Italian town. Just north of Rome, the Etruscan village of Viterbo was still surrounded by a protective wall from the 11th century — the original cobblestones jutting out at every angle like the mangled teeth of an ancient creature. The both beautiful and haunting deterioration of the city kept both cars and pedestrians at a slow pace, which seemed to fit the overall culture of the self-contained city. After learning every stone of my walk to work, and when every barista knew my coffee order and name, I felt myself relax into the scaffolding of a true Italian lifestyle. Soon after, my aforementioned frustrations seemed to dissipate gently, like the commuters into the streets on that day I waited for a bus that would never come. I learned to value something that Americans avoid at all costs: idle time.

This concept is an unyielding centerpiece around which the Italian culture hangs. Idle time — moments to be present with friends and family, to allow ourselves to indulge in both deep introspection and light-hearted chatter, writing down thoughts that pass through our heads throughout the day — allows us the ability to keep our demanding lives from ruling our existences. To do nothing is to have the power to quiet our surroundings and sometimes indulge in solitude — it is to allow our minds to grow inward ...

Hall of Fame cocktails: "It took a century, but the Negroni cocktail has finally become a sensation in the United States."

Photo credit.

Negroni Week is June 24 - 30, 2019: "For one week every June, bar and restaurants mix classic Negronis and Negroni variations for a great cause."

Learn more about Negroni Week here. It's an idea co-sponsored by Campari, which is one-third of the Negroni.

1 oz Gin
1 oz Campari
1 oz Sweet vermouth

The Campari story begins in the early 1860s, when a bartender-turned-caffe-proprietor named Gaspare Campari started inventing bottled cocktails in the cellar of his new establishment in Milan. He'd mix neutral alcohol with raspberry juice, vanilla, cocoa—whatever struck his fancy—and then sell his homemade libations upstairs. One day, he came up with something he called "Bitter all'Uso d'Holanda"—bitter [meaning a kind of bitter herbal drink] in the style of Holland—based on his notions about legendary Dutch cordials.

The recipe reportedly has not changed since that time: Campari is a blend of equal parts of alcohol, sugar syrup, distilled water, and an infusion flavored with oranges, rhubarb, and—I was told when I visited the main Campari bottling plant in Sesto S. Giovanni, a sterile industrial suburb ten miles north of Milan—ginseng, as well as a mixture of herbs. What herbs? Apparently, only one man in the world knows the answer to that question—the factory director. And he's not telling. So great is the secrecy that some ingredients for Campari are reportedly shipped straight to the director's office in plain brown wrappers.

To conclude, here is essential reading. You'll be tested on June 23.

LA DOLCE VITA: How the Negroni Conquered America, by David Wondrich (Daily Beast)

It took a century, but the Negroni cocktail has finally become a sensation in the United States.

Until the cocktail revolution of the last 20-odd years, the Negroni was Patrick Stewart before Star Trek called.

The Italian-born mix of gin, vermouth and Campari had its fans, enjoyed the critics’ respect, and was well-known in the country of its birth, but it was far from a household name in America or the rest of the world. Now, of course, it is—like Sir Patrick himself—a global icon, and one of the most popular and beloved things in its field.

But the Negroni wouldn’t have been able to climb those last steps to the peak of Cocktail Olympus if it hadn’t been waiting right there at the bottom of the stairs, ready for its call. How it got to that stage is, I think, the most interesting and even illuminating part of its complex story, and it has not been well understood ...

Hello, Larry ... and Jeff, and Warren, and HWC: Improve the city by slowing the cars in walkable places.

The folks at the Strong Towns feed at Twitter finished Sunday with two excellent links.

First, something perhaps never before uttered at a Board of Public Monetization Works and Selective Safety meeting in New Albany.

"If you're looking to help small businesses thrive, maybe you should start thinking about how to slow down your commercial streets."

Cyclists Spend 40% More In London's Shops Than Motorists, by Carlton Reid (Forbes)

New research from Transport for London (TfL) claims that people walking, cycling and using public transport spend more than motorists in local shops. Conducted by Matthew Carmona from University College London's Bartlett School of Planning, the research reveals that those not in cars spend 40% more each month in neighborhood shops than motorists.

The research was conducted in areas of London which have benefitted from Dutch-style streetscape improvements, such as the addition of cycleways ...

From London, Strong Towns moves to Italy.

"It's not every day that you hear about an Italian village that followed North America's lead and ran a highway through its downtown. Will they do what most American cities are afraid to do, and use good design to #slowthecars in their walkable places?"

Italian Village Installs Speed Cameras, Records 58,000 Infractions In 2 Weeks, by Merrit Kennedy (NPR)

... "We hope that these speed gauges can be an effective deterrent to motorists and that they can benefit the citizens of Acquetico, because you do not want to make cash with the fines, but it is necessary to protect people's safety," the mayor told the news agency, according to BBC.

Why so fast?

The mayor proceeds to explain that the highway is designed for speed, and drivers use it as designed.

Wait -- might this be the fundamental problem, Mr. Rice?

When do we leave? Documentary films about the South Tyrol.

Confessing from the outset that I am perfectly willing to occupy a comfortable seat on the veranda of a hikers' hut nursing a beer and bowl of stew while watching you climb a mountain ... these are standout documentary films hitting the center of my target: geography, history and culture.

I haven't been to the Tyrol, where Italy and Austria meet and mix, and this must be numbered among my major European travel regrets. It will happen, some day. In the interim, I'm reminded of time spent in the High Tatras (border of Slovakia and Poland) and the French Alps.

Deutsche Welle is my new favorite thing. You can have and keep Hollywood; documentaries are my gig. Here are the synopses.

South Tyrol (1/2) - the Dolomites

The Dolomites are perfect for climbing and hiking in summer. And for skiing in winter. The breathtaking mountain range is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Dolomites boast the world-famous ‘three peaks’ Tre Cime di Lavaredo - Langkofel, Plattkofel and Rosengarten. They are located in South Tyrol, Italy’s northernmost province. The range was named after the French geologist Déodat de Dolomieu, who was the first to study their geology. Today the Dolomites are a World Heritage Site. Scenic spots include the Alpe di Siusi, Europe’s largest high alpine meadow, and Lake Prags. This documentary accompanies a team of mountain rescue workers during a difficult helicopter operation on the Tre Cime, observes Hollywood star Terence Hill during filming and watches an artist whose contemporary wood sculptures were displayed at the Venice Biennale. The camera team also followed in the tracks of World War I, when the front ran right through the Dolomites, and it introduces a young singer who wants to save the Ladin language through her music.

And:

South Tyrol (2/2) - the Brenner Pass to Bolzano

Italy's northernmost province, South Tyrol, begins in the Alps at the Brenner Pass - gateway to the south.

A historical trade route, the pass leads into a landscape that is home to many castles. Perched high upon the slopes stands a mountain shelter run by the Lunger family. The documentary accompanies the Lungers at work throughout an entire season.

High above the valley the mountain refuge Latzfonser Kreuz offers a spectacular view of the Dolomites. It is also the highest place of pilgrimage in South Tyrol. The Lunger family manages the shelter. Every year they leave their home in the valley to move up the mountain for five months.

The documentary accompanies the family at work throughout a season. Daughter Tamara is a mountaineer and during this time she makes an expedition to K2, the world’s second-highest mountain. The film also shows a new shelter under construction. Its modern architecture has caused quite a stir. From there the journey continues to the construction site of the Brenner Base Tunnel. Later, the filmmakers visit a woman who has dedicated her life to caring for a castle. After meeting an innovative carpenter who produces wooden handbags, they get a peek over the shoulder of a doctor who examines the glacier mummy Ötzi.

Our Sicilian interlude in Catania was a back-to-the-future experience.

From the conclusion of last year's pirate-for-mayor campaign to this foggy post-election Sunday in late November, 2016, I've been a bum.

Not a lazy bum, mind you, because my strange pro-bono life has been active, if unremunerated. After 25 years of trench warfare in business, there has been a sabbatical of sorts, with time to reflect. It must come to an end soon, and the process of grieving already has started.

Temporarily freed from the necessity of analyzing spread sheets to amuse villainous bankers (among other distasteful self-abnegating human tricks one must perform in the service of capitalism), those sectors of my mind as yet operating functionally after all these years of high living seem intent on disgorging a steady stream of personal interests and fascinations submerged during the NABC era.

Among these are volcanoes, which led directly to our decision to skip American-style Thanksgiving for an Italian respite in Catania, Sicily, and proximity to Mt. Etna. We've returned from the journey, and I find myself contemplating vexing questions:

• Why has it taken me 27 years to return to Italy?
• In 31 years of European travel, how could I have ignored Sicily?
• Now that Italy possesses as many as 1,000 craft breweries, does any other European country honor cultural hedonism to such a wonderful extent?

In Catania last week, we lived like it was 1987, when I was fortunate to spend two weeks of early summer enchantment in the hill towns of central Italy, managing to eat, drink and sleep on a budget while absorbing art, architecture and ambiance ... and sacrificing very little of what passes for modernity. It was glorious.

My last previous visit to Italy came in 1989, in Rome and Pisa. Precisely because it was a more hurried itinerary, the impression of timelessness wasn't as vivid. Later, owing primarily to beer geography, the focus shifted northward. I haven't gotten close to the Mediterranean in 16 years. It's a regrettable omission.

At the moment, I must confess to being overwhelmed by the Catania experience. Honestly, there was at least one moment each day when a feeling of gratitude and thankfulness gripped me, and I was on the verge of falling to my knees and shedding a few joyful tears.

Being a good disciple of Northern European restraint, I kept it together and refrained, but maybe next time, the flood gates will be breached, because plate tectonics might explain more than Mt. Etna's looming volcanic presence. Shift happens in one's own consciousness, and it's happening right now with me. I've no idea where it leads, and that's the best part.

Following are two books that explain the whys and wherefores of Italy. The links are an introduction, not a conclusion, rather like the swirling inside of my noggin. First, published in 1964, and previously read prior to my first Italian visit in 1985, Luigi Barzini's book remains a go-to.

The Italians: A Full-Length Portrait Featuring Their Manners and Morals, by Luigi Barzini

In this consummate portrait of the Italian people, bestselling author, publisher, journalist, and politician Luigi Barzini delves deeply into the Italian national character, discovering both its great qualities and its imperfections. Barzini is startlingly frank as he examines "the two Italies": the one that created and nurtured such luminaries as Dante Alighieri, St. Thomas of Aquino, and Leonardo da Vinci; the other, feeble and prone to catastrophe, backward in political action if not in thought, "invaded, ravaged, sacked, and humiliated in every century." Deeply ambivalent, Barzini approaches his task with a combination of love, hate, disillusion, and affectionate paternalism, resulting in a completely original, thoughtful, and probing picture of his countrymen.

More recently, in his book The Italians, John Hooper supplies an update, perhaps striking a more topical note with Americans.

All the more reason for taking a second look, which is exactly what John Hooper, a veteran British journalist who covers Italy for The Economist, has done. It is fitting that the dust jacket on his version of “The Italians” features a graphic depiction of a cup of espresso; like the beverage, his book is brisk, bracing and to the point. While it stands up well enough as an independent work, it is even more useful as a kind of updated appendix to the Barzini original, taking in subsequent economic, social and political developments such as the collapse of traditional Italian communism, integration into the euro bloc and the rise of the flamboyant right-wing demagogue Silvio Berlusconi, which Luigi did not live to see.

There'll be more photos as I sort through three cameras, and a bit of writing once thoughts are organized. Stay tuned, and thanks for reading.

In Sicily, too: Put down your device and pay attention to driving.

The Sicilian debriefing might take a while, but in the interim, I'll simply note that our Mt. Etna excursion driver/guide offered scathing comments about the encroachment of distracted drivers in his neck of the woods. Given that driving in a place like Sicily involves a good deal more negotiation than we're accustomed to indulging in L'America, my hunch is that enforcement there eventually will be as draconian as the drunk driving laws, which typically involve zero tolerance.

Biggest Spike in Traffic Deaths in 50 Years? Blame Apps, by Neal E. Boudette (New York Times)

The messaging app Snapchat allows motorists to post photos that record the speed of the vehicle. The navigation app Waze rewards drivers with points when they report traffic jams and accidents. Even the game Pokémon Go has drivers searching for virtual creatures on the nation’s highways.

When distracted driving entered the national consciousness a decade ago, the problem was mainly people who made calls or sent texts from their cellphones. The solution then was to introduce new technologies to keep drivers’ hands on the wheel. Innovations since then — car Wi-Fi and a host of new apps — have led to a boom in internet use in vehicles that safety experts say is contributing to a surge in highway deaths.

After steady declines over the last four decades, highway fatalities last year recorded the largest annual percentage increase in 50 years. And the numbers so far this year are even worse. In the first six months of 2016, highway deaths jumped 10.4 percent, to 17,775, from the comparable period of 2015, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

“This is a crisis that needs to be addressed now,” Mark R. Rosekind, the head of the agency, said in an interview ...

Nutella: "Michele Ferrero, Italy’s chocolate king, died on Valentine’s day, aged 89."

Nutella had not penetrated the south Hoosier hinterlands in 1985, when I toured Europe for the first time. Somehow I managed to avoid it then, but fell hard in 1987, when a jar became a staple of train trips, youth hostel stays and local bakery visits. It goes surprisingly well with cheap beer snatched hurriedly off the shelf from a corner grocery.

The first place Louisville area establishment in which I saw Nutella offered for sale was Lotsa Pasta.

Fond memories; very, very fond.

Obituary: Michele Ferrero: Sweet secrets, in The Economist

IN THE only interview he ever gave, to La Stampa, Michele Ferrero did not once remove his sunglasses. This was not just to shield his weak eyes, but to conceal himself. Modesty was a habit. People sometimes called him a genius; he would turn the question gently back on them by saying that, yes, his second name was indeed “Eugenio”, and his mother liked to call him that; but he was glad to be simple Michele, the boy with the thick Piedmontese accent whose life had come to revolve round the farmers of the Alta Langa and their abundant, delectable hazelnut crop.

His love of privacy also had a commercial purpose. He needed to keep secret the recipe for his hazelnut-chocolate spread, Nutella, of which 365m kilos are now consumed each year round the world, and which along with more than 20 other confectionery lines made him Italy’s richest man, worth $23.4 billion. He laughed when he heard that the recipe for Coca-Cola was known to only a few directors of the company. Even fewer knew exactly what went into each jar of Nutella.

Mussolini, Ethiopia and round vs. square houses.

One thing leads to another. First, a passage that caught my attention in an essay about Mussolini's desire to remake Addis Ababa: "The round houses of the Ethiopians were regarded by Italian architects as irrational and unhygienic."

When Fascists Tried to Remake Ethiopia, by Jonathan Coppage (The American Conservative)

When Mussolini’s army invaded and ultimately occupied Ethiopia, the Italian fascists did more than expand Italy’s African empire; in their eyes, they obtained an opportunity to build a capital from scratch.

As Rixt Woudstra details at Failed Architecture,

The idea of Ethiopia as a tabula rasa—a blank slate—was omnipresent in the writings of architects and urban planners occupied with the designs of the colonial capital between 1936 and 1939, who considered the country devoid of any structures of architectural significance. Contrary to the fascination of Libyan whitewashed courtyard house – their simplicity, colours and volumes perfectly in tune with modern taste – the round houses of the Ethiopians were regarded by Italian architects as irrational and unhygienic.

So what's the issue with round houses? Not a lot. Here's an old but good explanation.

Why Our Ancestors Built Round Houses - and Why it Still Makes Sense to Build Round Structures Today, by Rachel Ross (Inhabit)

The oldest forms of indigenous shelter were often round in shape. (Think the Southwest USA Hogan, Mongolian Yurt, North American Teepee and the Greek Tenemos, among others.) Why did our ancestors choose to build round? Because the ovid shape -- eggs, earth, tree trunks, and stones -- is what they saw reflected in the surrounding natural environment. And, as usual, Mother Nature knows best. There is some nifty natural science that makes round buildings more comfortable, more energy-efficient and safer -- especially if you combine the ancient shape with modern materials!