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SOS
Some columns back, I wrote about my eating experiences in the Cinque Terre, the "five lands" on the western coast of Italy that feature stunning views, gorgeous beaches and some of the best food on the planet. It's where I learned to love anchovies, because anchovies don't really taste the way they do in the U.S.—salty and bitter. For export they are packed in salt and that ruins the delicate flavor. To eat them fresh, just caught off one of the coastal towns in the Italian Mediterranean, is a special treat, and an eating culinary I won't forget.
The Cinque Terre was once virtually unknown to American tourists. Then travel writer Rick Steves, who stumbled on it in the 1970s, began writing about it enthusiastically, and the tourists started coming. When I was there the restaurants featured photos of their owners posing with Rick, and they were sure to mention that they had been recommended in his guide book. Because of Steves' unflagging enthusiasm for the Cinque Terre experience—no outside roads, no cars on all but one of the islands, and until recently no Internet or credit cards—the place became popular, maybe even too popular by some standards to still be a "get-away." Rick himself became uncertain about whether the attention he had brought to the Five Lands was ultimately a good thing.
Recently and tragically the area of the Cinque Terre was destroyed. Massive mudslides, said to be caused by overbuilding on the overlooking hills and triggered by heavy rains, wiped out most of the two largest towns, Monterosso and Vernazza. About a dozen people were killed. Property damage is probably incalculable.
Not surprisingly, this tragedy has received little coverage in the United States, possibly because Angelina Jolie and Bono have yet to fly a dozen photographers there and pose in front of the devastation. But the people there are not just sitting around. They're already heavily into rebuilding their precious towns, which you can see if you simple check Google for the latest images. The reconstruction effort appears to be heroic, and it is being done by everyone from the largest Italian corporations to the average citizen.
I was thinking this morning how that contrasts so much with the United States and its "Can't Do" attitude towards just about any civic construction project nowadays. We have plenty of money to blow up Iraq and Afghanistan and then give Halliburton and Blackwater exclusive no-bid contracts to rebuild, but we can't seem to find the resources or the will to help most of New Orleans, which was destroyed by decades of U.S. neglect of critical infrastructure in the first place. We just "don't have the money." These are "tough times." (What times aren't?)
The Italians are in the midst of one of their worst economic crises ever, yet they realize that an Italy with the Cinque Terre is unacceptable. They are just rebuilding it now; they'll argue about the costs and payments later, and being that they are Italian they undoubtedly will. (And before anybody gets all steamy, I am half-Italian, so like Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese, I am allowed to make comments like that about my brethren.) The point is they see the more important, bigger issue, something we have lost sight of in this country. They may be from difference beliefs, different political parties, and have different interests. But they are all Italians first and foremost. And good food, good views and cultural heritage are of paramount importance to all Italians. And did I mention good food? Because I've never met an Italian who didn't like to eat, this one included. I've also never met an Italian who wasn't fiercely proud of his heritage and contributions to civilization.
The pictures I'm seeing from the region are heartbreaking—it's really difficult for me to look at them. A street I walked down, a store I shopped in, a restaurant where I ate scrumptious seafood…all gone. Not just damaged. Gone! Eaten by a wall of mud. But the people will rebuild, are rebuilding, wasting no time with arguments, finger-pointing, and economic studies. Someone even handwrote a small sign that says, "Now that we've lost everything it can only get better." That reflects an amazing spirit of resilience. Everyone is pitching in. There's a lesson here that we could learn from our Italian friends.
John Grabowski
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