Non Ci Si Puo Nascondere ("You can’t hide")

I stared out from the veranda, a covered, tiled perch built into the cliffs above the Tyrrhenian Sea, searching for something to say, some original way to describe the beauty. Something pithy. We were in Praiano, a cluster of houses and small businesses along the main coast road (a two-lane traffic nightmare that probably started centuries ago as a cart or donkey path), wedged between the tourist meccas of Amalfi and Positano. Eighty steps (I counted) straight up, above our rented villa, SUVs, delivery trucks, Fiat 500s, Mercedes, Ferraris, motorcycles, and busses navigated the road, competed for space, dodging pedestrians, parked cars, and each other, sometimes bumper-to-bumper, a volume and intensity of traffic that allowed no time to admire the stunning vistas below. It was mid-May, not even high season. The swarms in summer hats and sundresses, white suits and loafers, would-be protagonists in perfume commercials or art films no one was making, had yet to descend in force on the former fishing villages. But there were still too many people. And we were among them. 

Folks of means have appreciated the beauty of this coastline for centuries: Roman emperor Tiberius luxuriated and, for fun, tortured and murdered his enemies here. Roger II, the enlightened Norman 12^th-century king of Sicily, was a fan. Boccaccio waxed about its beauty in The Decameron. And many writers and composers have since chosen to work here: Wagner, Goethe, D.H. Lawrence, Wolf, Steinbeck, Gide, and E.M. Forster. Gore Vidal, of course, lived here for decades in obscenely luxurious circumstances. If you’ve the scratch, you can book your event at his villa in Ravello, “La Rondinaia.” But for most of its history, despite Amalfi’s 10^th -11^th-century parenthesis as one of Italy’s great maritime republics, this had been a poor area of fishers and farmers, hard to access except from the sea - and what arrived via the Tyrrhenian wasn’t always good news or welcome. The coast is studded with towers built to scan the horizon for signs of pirates - mostly Saracens, hit-and-run raiders who, well into the 16^th century, kidnapped and sold villagers into slavery, pillaged and destroyed towns, decimated their populations, and stunted the local economy. It wasn’t really until the postwar, mid-20^th century, when popular culture and Hollywood figures like Bogie and Bacall, John Huston, Grace Kelly, etc., discovered Amalfi, that the hordes of “beautiful people” began to be drawn to the place, like narcissists to a mirror. Maybe it’s my cynicism, my tendency to see the worst in everything, but it seems that the current, more democratic tourist armies invading Amalfi are hoping to see, live, or recreate a mythical time that might not have ever existed. And, ironically, their own presence, their numbers, makes experiencing that past or any meaningful present impossible. But this ignores the inarguable and ineffable beauty of the place. All the tension, the frenetic lunacy of the road, the confinement of Amalfi’s narrow, human-choked medieval streets, could be forgotten on this veranda. The late-afternoon sky above had turned from the pewter-gray that dominated part of our stay in Cilento, the area just to the south of Amalfi and Salerno, to a postcard blue. It was doing what the sky in Italy often does, tricks that make perfect sense of the line “nel blu dipinto di blu.” That blue was reflected, with complex gradations and glints of sunshine, in the sea, whose detail could be admired to the horizon. Beneath and to the left of us, Praiano fanned out down the cliff to the shore. Visible to the right were the well-defined silhouettes of Capri and, much closer, parts of Positano, the ships in its bay, the town densely spread across the mountainside. The few clouds present seemed there for effect. It defeated language. I had nothing witty to add. We were traveling with our Canadian friends of nearly thirty years, two Toronto-based academics and their twenty-year-old daughter. Praiano was the last stop on a 10-day swing through Southern Italy that began in the Salento in Puglia, moved west to Matera and then the Cilento, before arriving on the Costiera Amalfitana and these cushy digs. I’d met the couple in 1998 while studying Italian in Firenze. Husband/Dad’s a modernist historian and author of books on the Florentine Republic and Machiavelli (whose original documents he’s held in his own mitts), and whose career arc has made me both wistful and proud. His path was one I once considered, history being my jones. But my lack of discipline, drive, and a host of other attributes necessary for success in the academy foreclosed that possibility. He’s a gifted storyteller, a guy who ought to be writing about his own experiences. At nearly ten years my junior he’s also, fortunately, a bon vivant open to occasional bacchanalian excess who refuses to bend to societal expectations of moderation, performative probity, and caution - forces that seem to be swallowing whole the soul and spirit of many of my contemporaries. A kind of death before the tomb that supposedly affords dignity. This trip had not been the “sybaritic idyll” that I’d jokingly suggested. There’s no way anymore that I could or would want to do that for 10 straight days. And this guy’s no drunk. But I was comforted knowing that, on any given night, crushing most of a post-dinner bottle of amaro or grappa was a possibility. Wife/Mom is an accomplished, high-level university administrator, and, maybe, dad’s tether to responsibility, the force keeping him honest. Could be I’m projecting. Grounded, sensible, intelligent and quick-witted, she eschews small talk and welcomes real discussion. Her constancy and patience, I think, much like Cathy’s in my situation, keep things on an even keel. Not that she can’t loosen up, enjoy the wine, and go with the flow. She’s fun. Better still, she’s interesting. But there usually comes a moment when she wraps things up, wisely decides that she’s had enough or just the right amount, and heads for the arms of Orpheus. A lesson I seem incapable of learning.

Daughter has been the fifth member of our collective at tables in Italy, Canada, and Philly for over a decade. She’s seen some shit. Sober, self-contained, observant, pleasantly unnerving (if that’s a thing) the way quiet, hyperintelligent people can be when you’re a gibbering fool getting into your cups in front of them. Like her mother, she’s patient and possessed of a wry sense of humor. Owing to her parents’ international ramblings, she’s seen a nice chunk of France and Italia. Good company. And integral to what is a tight, remarkably adaptive unit. I love these people. They were with us, in part, at my request. I’d burned through most of my Schengen time sitting in our house in Penne, Abruzzo, drinking Montepulciano, eating pecorino from just up the mountainside in Farindola, and torturing an acoustic guitar while waiting on an Italian citizenship repeatedly described to me as imminent. Without drowning you in detail, that was not the case. So, I found myself with a few weeks of precious time left to kill in Italia, away from the US’s quotidian horror. The Canadians obviously knew “La Toscana” well, and I’d shown them parts of Abruzzo. So, I suggested a deeper dive into the South, a place I loved and most of which they’d never seen. “Il profondo sud,” aka the former Magna Grecia, Enotria (“land of wine”), where the impact and influence of ancient dominations - Greek, Italic, Roman, Byzantine, Norman, Arab, Hohenstaufen, etc. - remained palpable, and created a remarkable diversity in architecture, customs, comportment, dialects, and DNA. Places where I figured we could be pleasantly distracted, get properly drunk, and eat well. The Canucks were game. But America, at least that unruly, incomprehensible chunk directly south of the Canadian border, proved a constant presence. Though our friends hadn’t asked, I’d promised not to let the horror command my moods; the trip was also to escape myself. But each day, with coffee just before or after our daily constitutionals, walks or runs that allowed us to justify what we’d eat and drink later, we’d all take to our phones, laptops, or tablets and briefly scan the headlines. And that was enough to feed the anxieties, nurture the rot that had insinuated itself into the tissue of every moment, good or bad, since at least November. A 4-year-old American citizen with Stage 4 cancer, the daughter of immigrants, deported without medication. Documented immigrants seeking to comply with the law ambushed outside their INS and court appointments. Others, including citizens, disappeared, without charges or due process. Venezuelan refugees, most of them without criminal records, seized and, against the rulings of multiple jurisdictions including the Supreme Court, sent to a gulag in El Salvador. The grotesque White House Chief-of-Staff suggesting the suspension of habeas corpus. International students speaking their minds detained, deported, their visas revoked.  Our top universities targeted, blackmailed, under siege, demands for Soviet-like oversight of classes and curriculums shoved down their throats. Funding cut or pulled completely for medical and scientific research. Our social safety network gutted, including food and educational needs for millions of poor children. Medicare and Medicaid threatened. Incoherent trade policy that trashed the markets and pushed the economy (the world’s healthiest when this administration took office), toward a recession. Pronouncements and policies from the President and his tragicomedians more in keeping with a White Supremacist or Fascist government than the putative leader of the free world. Videos of Cabinet meetings in which the president was fluffed and fawned over to levels approaching parody that could have been from “The Death of Stalin.” A $400 million bribe from a state sponsor of terrorism in the form of a pimped-out private plane. A quotidian firehose of criminality, incompetence, and cruelty. Anyway, there’s only so much distraction that good company, blue skies, clusters of trulli, and bottles of Susumaniello can provide. But the view from this veranda was pretty choice. So, I leaned in. The Prof opened a bottle of Falanghina and sat at the outdoor table, lobbing crossword clues to his daughter, a daily ritual that I’d come to appreciate. Mom sat in the living room, the French doors open to take in the air and view, reading up on the Sentiero degli Dei (“Trail of the Gods”) high above Positano, promising a healthy schlep, stunning views, and gonad-shrinking terrors for anyone with a fear of heights (this included me and her husband). Meanwhile, Cathy spread out on our bed (which, like that of the Canadian couple, turned out to be rife with bed bugs, a fact that didn’t become apparent until the second night), decompressing and disappearing into her phone after a white-knuckle drive from the Cilento (her burden as my personal chauffeur should never go unacknowledged). As usual, a selection of Mark Knopfler’s solo work, the Prof’s go-to, provided the soundtrack. I admire Knopfler but will probably avoid the Glaswegian/Geordie’s oeuvre until I see these folks again. Weeks later back in Philly, I can still hear the dobro. I kept my mouth shut and reexamined the view. Fishing and pleasure boats bobbed in the water beneath us. Down the slope and to the south, the 17^th-century San Gennaro, Praiano’s mother church, towered above the surrounding buildings, its tiled cupola reflecting the early evening light. On the cliff below, lemon groves camouflaged in green netting extended almost to the sea; their perfume occasionally rose to the railing where I stood. North up the coast near the horizon, Capri, Tiberius’s pleasure and torture park (and the isle that inspired one of the world’s simplest dishes of mozzarella, basil, tomato, and EVO - but without the bufala and volcanic soil, often the most futile to make. If you’ve ever eaten an insalata caprese near Napoli, the dish made nearly anywhere else is ruined. Can we please stop putting it on North American menus? Unless we’re ready to deliver something worthy of the original?). Closer to us, 8 kilometers up the coast, was the hive of Positano. Even at a distance, it looked busy. And then - suddenly, as I’d somehow not seen it crest the horizon - a large, masted ship moved toward us. It came close enough to allow me to make out some details and then turned south, toward Amalfi, exposing its profile: three masts, about two dozen sails, and a black-and-white striped hull, like an 18^th- or 19^th-century warship. Big for a modern sailing ship - enormous, really. And it dawned on me what ship it was, and that I’d seen it before up close, docked on the Delaware River in Philly: it was the Amerigo Vespucci, the Italian navy’s training vessel and jewel. A quick phone Google provided the details: inspired by an 18^th-century, 74-gun ship, its hull and masts made of steel; built nearby in Castellammare di Stabia and launched by the Fascist government in 1931; 331 feet long from bowsprit to stern, with a standard crew of around 270 and over 400 in summer, with the Naval Academy’s midshipmen aboard.   And named, of course, after the Florentine cartographer and explorer in the service of Spain, the guy who apparently first suggested that Colombo’s “discovery” might be a new continent. Which prompted a 16^th-century German cartographer to slap a latinized version of Vespucci’s first name on maps of the new world, a practice that stuck. And in that small way, a beautiful but Fascist-made ship brought America again to mind. Had I been alone, I might’ve cracked.   Given our view and the absurdity of navigating the road above, we set up on the veranda for dinner, leftovers from our last meal in Cilento, plus a ton of mozzarella di bufala from Tenuta Vannulo - maybe, depending on who you talk to, the finest producer in the world - that the Prof had scored that morning. Visits to Vannulo are by appointment only; they don’t deliver to local restaurants, and the “mozz’” must be reserved for pickup. The bufali graze all day, listening to classical music and occasionally maneuvering up to their enclosure’s rails for mechanized massages. It’s hard to argue with the results. Cathy and I’d toured the place years before and so went on ahead to find our rental villa and meet its caretaker, an encounter for which I should’ve packed brass knuckles. Perhaps the daily trauma of dealing with entitled, international assholes stressed out from the coast road gives you a hair-trigger, but minor complications (the Booking.com directions were, by his own admission, wrong) had the guy - a brutally-tanned troll in white tank top and shorts who seemed incapable of listening to what I was actually saying and engaged in an argument I’d not started and had no interest in - in a state by the time we finally laid eyes on him. For the first time in decades, I raised my voice with an Italian native (the last time was 1998, in Firenze, with the Prof present; if you’re out there, Alessandro, I’m still your huckleberry). But I reeled it in, and by the end of the conversation, he was offering advice on how to handle our next rental of the place. As if. Anyway, the Vannulo stuff was added to the cheeses - Prof dubbed them “road mozzarella” - he’d collected from other producers along the way. Impulse purchases, and more “mozz’” than five people could reasonably consume in a week. But it’s hard not to love a guy that captive to the moment. Table conversation centered on what we’d seen on the trip, their morning visit to the Vannulo farm and the nearby ancient Greek temples in Paestum, differences between southern and central Italy. The Prof reflected on the challenges presented by the coast road, how every errand or stop along its path had to be handled “like a SEAL-team operation.” We were nearing the end of our trip. We’d spend the next day together before parting company, them heading to Napoli and Ostia, and back to Canada. Cathy and I would swing north through Molise and spend two days at our house in Penne, before a last night in the village of Tagliacozzo in Abruzzo’s hinterlands, convenient to the autostrada for a morning drive to Fiumicino. So, as happens, thoughts turned back toward regular life, the North American grind.   The Prof mused about possibilities for his next project. He was leaning toward a study of Cortez’s letters from Mexico, the exact nature of which remained vague, but it would be a departure from his usual area of focus. The aim was to get a grant that would allow him a year or so off from teaching duties to research. In moments like this my wistfulness about not sticking with the academic path morphed into envy. But, of course, in return for those monies, one had to produce something worthwhile and publishable. The pressure would be on no matter how leisurely the days unfolded. Of course, a major avenue for such funding - through US universities - had recently disappeared. Those sources had fallen victim to policy changes and cuts. He lamented that, in just over four months, the US had forfeited its great advantage as THE destination for researchers, scientists, academics, and intellectuals of all stripes. The gutting of funding, the suppression of dissent and free speech, the Federal government’s attempts to control curriculums and scholarship, and the bald racism and xenophobia of immigration policy had made the US a pariah. The impact of all this, potentially for generations, would be hard to underestimate. I thought about the scene in “Oppenheimer” when a newly arrived, German-Jewish scientist says that The Manhattan Project’s biggest advantage over their Nazi counterparts might be antisemitism; many of the best experts were Jews and therefore excluded from Hitler’s efforts to create the bomb. What would our government’s intolerance and the resulting brain drain cost us? Prof lamented our fall without any apparent schadenfreude. Three of Yale’s experts on fascism had just jumped ship for positions at the University of Toronto. My sense was that he was dealing with a sense of loss. Different from ours, for sure, but still.

All three Canadians at the table had complex relationships with the US. The Prof’s late mother was an American, New Jersey born-and-raised, who’d been a defiant defender of our virtues in the hotbed of (now completely justified) anti-US sentiment that is southern Ontario. His father had emigrated from Eastern Europe, first to western Pennsylvania before heading north for Toronto. A mathematician whose career allowed him to move about the globe, he’d taken his family with him during multiple US posts. The Prof had seen and lived in parts of the US I’ve never visited; when we first met in Firenze, our conversations often turned toward life in Chicago, where he was a graduate student, his drinking escapades with friends there, and his appreciation of the city’s blues scene. The Prof gravitated toward roots music, and, beyond Mark Knopfler’s Chet Atkins/American country-influenced tunes, his playlists were culled from artists from the American south. He’d done his post-doc work at an Ivy League university, and his mentor and cohort of colleagues all lived and taught in the US. He would say, unsolicited, that his American degrees were crucial to his career advancement, and gave him an advantage, even in Canada. He held both Canadian and American passports. Prof’s wife had also done graduate work in the US, though her affection for it was more measured. Her commentary on American culture, made without malice but blunt in its summations, often leaned Margaret Mead-ish. She’s Canadian to her marrow but acknowledges that her American degree and US work experience had also been important in her career path. And their daughter was born during the Prof’s post-doc, at the hospital that was part of that same Ivy League school. The US looms large. And they live - happily, it’s worth noting - in Ontario, where the economy is so complexly intertwined with the US’s that untangling it seems impossible, and the implications of doing so potentially catastrophic for both sides of the border. That economy and the sovereignty of their nation has been threatened without cause by a bully. A sunsetting, would-be dictator with a “D”-student’s grasp of economic and political policies has expressed the desire to annex their home in a kind of 21^st-century Anschluss - only achievable via a military invasion and, even then, not really. No one in Canada pines for that hookup. We put that ass in the world’s most powerful seat, and our northern friends in the crosshairs. Our terrace above the Tyrrhenian Sea was a kind of microcosm for the whole US-Canada situation. Which made it both appropriate and sad when they said that they would, most likely, not be crossing the world’s longest undefended international divide anytime soon - as a form of protest, a mode of resistance, and refusal to normalize the situation. A feature of our long friendship has been their regular visits to Philly, pantagruelian dinners at Le Virtu’ and the pleasant, languid mornings and afternoons that follow. During COVID, when Canada opened and travel was again possible, the Prof had driven solo from Toronto to Philly for an “American” martini (filled to the brim of a 7.5-ounce glass) and a meal at the restaurant. But for now, at least, all that’s over. Which hurt to hear. But we understood and supported their decision. None of this is normal. It often feels absurd and irresponsible to go about our business at the restaurant, proffering and promoting dishes and wines, as if our democracy wasn’t dying before our eyes and crimes weren’t being committed in our names. But capitalism - even this Late-Stage, rigged version - staggers inexorably forward, and the beast has to be fed. Commerce doth make cowards of us all. Alienation from our neighbors and separation from our friends are part of the price we pay for irresponsibility. Loss is part of life. And what have I lost? It feels like everything: every aspect of American culture, every childhood memory is tainted, robbed of meaning. My grandfather Alfonso, who left his Abruzzese village in a cart, distractedly tussling my hair while we sat on our couch watching men walk on the moon. Hours spent together paging through the American Heritage history books my parents collected for patronizing their local supermarket (can you imagine?), him explaining the photos from his perspective: the promise that had pulled him to emigrate; his love for FDR; the sacrifices of the Great Depression and the Second World War; the loss of JFK; and the heroism of MLK. Stories about my great-uncles Charlie and Fritz - the former who’d fought through Sicily, Italy, France, and at Bastogne, before liberating a death camp, the latter a Seabee who’d built runways in the Pacific while under fire. My dad teaching me baseball and football, gathering my friends and organizing games with him as official pitcher or QB. The water ice he’d buy us all afterward. Waiting on tenterhooks for the next episode of “Batman” (“Same Bat time, same Bat channel”). Warner Brothers’ cartoons, Bugs Bunny’s comic perfection. My dad making me watch “Duck Soup,” “The Bank Dick,” “The Grapes of Wrath,” “Twelve Angry Men,” and “Inherit the Wind.” The war on the nightly news, the anti-war protests. Johnny Carson’s monologues, “All in the Family,” “MASH,” and “Barney Miller.” My big brother Fred taking me to see “Sleeper,” “Love and Death,” “Young Frankenstein,” and “Star Wars.” Discovering Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Buddy Holly. Hearing Hank Williams, George Jones, Tammy Wynette, Marty Robbins, and all the other classic country coming from my mom’s radio in the basement, where she spent her days sewing. My dad’s pinochle games with his Italian brothers from other mothers, the Sinatra and Prima, the loud slap of the cards, and parolacce echoing into the wee hours. Butterflies in my stomach before football practice. The 1972 Olympic basketball team’s “loss” to the Russians, and the redemptive 1980 “Miracle on Ice.” Everything. Above all, a sense of empathy, belonging, and purpose, frayed and beaten, that’d somehow survived Vietnam, Watergate, Iran-Contra, the daily contradictions and betrayals of American life, bottom-line capitalism, and growing up blue-collar and lower middle-class in the Rust Belt.

In 2008, sitting at our bar with staff and a folk music group visiting from Abruzzo, tears in many of our eyes, watching a Black man become President. It felt alive then, the mission, the possibility, the promise. Like we might get there. And then we went mad. Or did we just reveal ourselves? Was it all always a lie? The skies above Positano and Praiano were overcast the next morning. Clouds clung to the mountains above us, obscuring our views. Mercifully, the Sentiero degli Dei hike was off. The path is described as relatively easy but demanding attention. Our churlish host had mentioned that a few folks - he happily noted that some were American - had popped their clogs trying to walk it. Fog didn’t seem a prescription for happy trails. In all honesty, I’d never considered going. Though he’d deny it, the Prof’s mood seemed to rise noticeably, like a condemned man who’d just gotten a call from the governor. So, we squeezed into their rental car and, with Prof at the wheel, drove the nine kilometers to Amalfi. It was a Sunday, but the traffic was somehow even more constipated than the day before. We inched, lurched, and congaed the distance. Wedged into the coast and tapered as it moves from the sea into the mountains, Amalfi (even while stuffed like a sausage with sweating, human meat) is objectively beautiful. Though there were clouds above the hills here too, the town itself was bathed in sunlight. It was a hot morning, and the throngs were already dressed for summer. The main piazza was shoulder to shoulder. Some occasion was being marked: mounted carabinieri in dress uniforms with plumed bicorne hats towered above the crowd; on the stairs leading to Amalfi’s Duomo, La Cattedrale di Sant’Andrea, their official brass band blew through a selection of Italian pop classics. At one point I recognized an Ennio Morricone medley. Sant’Andrea, by the way, is a marvel. Originally built in the 9^th- 10^th centuries, it combines Arab-Norman, Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque elements. Its complex polychromatic façade shimmered in the morning light. From my vantage, maybe 60 meters below, it vibrated like a beehive as streams of tourists entered and exited beneath its high, central archway.  As we squeezed up the main street, the Via Lorenzo d’Amalfi, deeper into town, the congestion wore on me. It wasn’t just the crowd’s density; it was the pace at which it progressed. That lethargic, bovine gait of consumers lost in “spectation,” a tentative waddle made somehow obscene when the adults are dressed like toddlers against the heat and deeply engaged in licking gelato cones. This modern invasion, a capitalistic orgy, violated the place, obliterated its culture and character, whored them out for small coin. What a deal we’ve made! Am I wrong in thinking that the merchants and service staff in tourist meccas often wear the vacant, disassociated facial expressions of dancers in strip clubs? No, I’m not being fair and I’m aware of the irony. I was in a foul mood. I took my leave from the group and left the main strip, disappearing into a tangle of medieval alleyways and streets that spread up toward the rocky mountain face. At a relatively quiet piazzetta, a handful of Italian tourists were sitting at a caffe, all wearing the same red t-shirt with a white cross in the center. And it occurred to me that many of the shopkeepers and their staff were wearing blue t-shirts with a white, Maltese-style cross. At that moment, two other groups entered the square, one sporting white shirts with the red cross of St. George and the other the busy flag of La Serenissima (Venezia), whose main feature is a golden, winged lion holding a book and a sword. Which was when I realized that we were visiting Amalfi on the day of its historic regatta, a celebration of Italy’s four former great maritime republics: Amalfi (blue shirts), Pisa (red), Venice (pimped-out lion), and Genova (Cross of St. George). A boat race, medieval processions, the Amerigo Vespucci on display, etc. Which mitigated some of my disquiet about the crowds, but none of which I was feeling. Near the top of the town, I found a trail with steps that wound up the mountainside. The climb led me high above Amalfi. To my left, covered groves of lemons swept down the hill to the crotch of the valley and the ruins of mills. I could hear the sound of a powerful stream. I wasn’t completely alone on the climb. I stumbled into a handsome Neapolitan couple’s make-out session. We exchanged nods and smiles. There was a chubby kid in a yellow tank top and Spiderman shorts having a moment with his cup of gelato. Not one but two elderly Japanese couples, the women using ski poles, passed me, working their way back down the hill and politely wishing me “Buon Giorno.” I passed a very old woman, bent and holding a bag of groceries, inching her way up with a cane. She declined my offer of help but beamed as she thanked me. Dark clouds covered the top of the rocky mountain face. I turned to see the town and the coastline still in sunshine. The weather in Italy sometimes seems bipolar, turning on a dime with fronts arriving violently from nowhere and then disappearing in a moment. I thought I should probably turn back before the skies opened but wanted to linger a little in the quiet. Above the crowds, I could see the beauty again.

The mess in my head sorted itself into something like clarity. The “great” democracy in which I’d been raised - with all its faults, failures, compromises, and tantalizing moments of promise - was dying, maybe beyond hope, and something else was busy being born. It wouldn’t be the shining city on the hill, the beacon, the example, or the exponent of liberal values. It had never lived up to those roles, though I would argue that it had sometimes tried and to great effect. Now, it had no interest in lofty ambitions and had sacrificed its advantages and virtues in exchange for vengeance, fear and grievance, and the perverse comfort of authoritarianism. When a star implodes it can become a black hole, swallowing all that surrounds it. We have power beyond our wisdom, too much influence for so ignorant a people. So, while I felt the vestiges of hope wither, I also felt an enormous weight of responsibility. To limit the damage, to stand in the way, to protect what and who I could. To return the blows, regardless of my impotence. And that impotence presented as nausea on a cellular level.

Italia was a good place to contemplate all this. Everywhere we’d been on this trip had once been part of great but long-dead realms or empires. Magna Grecia, Rome, Byzantium, and the kingdoms of Napoli and the Two Sicilies. The Rinascimento began in Firenze, where the Prof made his bones, with its advancements in art, science, literature, philosophy, and a new emphasis on humanity and the potential of the individual. It spread throughout the peninsula and the rest of Europe and laid much of the groundwork for the modern world. But owing in part to a lack of vision and unity, their greed, arrogance, and pettiness, the Italian states pissed their advantages away. Much of what we see – architecture and art - when we visit Italy are the artifacts of its former greatness. What compels many of us to return over and over and to covet a place here is the relative beauty of its persisting culture. For me, this is especially true of the regions from Abruzzo south. Their courtesy, conviviality, ability to live in the moment and appreciate what is present, actual, and good. Italians seem mostly at peace with their faded glory and fall from prominence. They’re comfortable in their own skin.

But Italy is no oasis: the ignorance, racism, and weakness for a strongman that fueled the rise of fascism didn’t end with those corpses hanging upside down above that Milanese gas station. It lives on in Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia and other parties on the Right. The Left is fractured, ineffectual, self-mutilating, and purity-obsessed. It has abdicated responsibility for navel-gazing. And as focused as I am on southern Italy, I see that the impacts of a unification that subjugated the regions of its former Kingdom, defined its citizens as racially inferior, forced a diaspora that depopulated much of its territory, and turned it into a colony of the north, are still very much felt. Generally speaking, Italy doesn’t seem willing to confront any of this.

As for the US, no single midterm or presidential will fix what’s wrong with us or erase the stain. That would take not only the extinction of my and earlier generations, but also the type of soul-searching we’ve thus far proved unwilling to do. Much of what defines our current stupidity can be traced to a culture in denial and desperately clinging to its own mythology, a situation exacerbated by social-media algorithms and curated information bubbles. None of us seem able to look deeply into that “dark, truthful mirror.” The lack of empathy and the cruelty that define the zeitgeist might just be by-products of zero-sum capitalism, our rigged Darwinian experiment. We’re gladiators inured to suffering and death, performing to enrich and entertain quasi-demigods, obsessed with one day joining their caste. It might be funny if it weren’t pathetic.

But I had this moment. I could smell the lemon groves beneath me. You’ve not experienced lemons until you’ve been on this stretch of the Tyrrhenian coast. Whence limoncello. The view was lovely, magical. I knew that the fat kid I’d passed a hundred meters below had savored his ice cream. The young couple had not wasted their day. I walked back down the hill into the throngs, back to the Via Lorenzo d’Amalfi to meet the others. The coast road back to Praiano was temporarily blocked for the festivities, so we drove up to Ravello for pizza. I thought about Gore Vidal, staring out over the sea from “La Rondinaia,” a tumbler of Macallan’s in hand, cursing William F. Buckley. Could he have imagined the coming nightmare? Back at the villa that night, we dined again on the terrace, the Prof making a sugo from salsiccia al pezzente (“beggar’s sausage”) we’d brought from Matera. We drank some wine and chatted. A swallow flew into the house and became trapped behind the armoire in the daughter’s bedroom. After some hysterics and comic drama, we caught and released it. We went to bed and were mauled by bed bugs.

We said our goodbyes the next morning, without fuss. Ten days together is a long time, but we’d survived. I’m not sure when we’ll see our friends again; maybe we’ll head up to Toronto in the fall. Though the contrast it provides, so close to our own mess, makes the trip complicated. It’s hard to explain just why. I admire their city, but it ain’t Philly. We want to fight and protect our home which, like all American cities, is under siege. It seems only a matter of time until there are soldiers on our streets. The masked Gestapo is already here. Now we’re building concentration camps and giving them “catchy” names. I don’t think the Canucks are coming down anytime soon. I don’t think they should. I just hope that one day they’ll want to.