(To read in Italian) Here we are. The last day of January. The month has been almost exhausted. Where did the time go I wonder? It has gone away so quickly. It seems to have flown away. Even if we are on the threshold of February we are still in the middle of winter. For some of us it is indeed a cold one that doesn’t seem to want to end. I was on Skype this afternoon with a friend who lives in Italy and she was trembling from the cold and was wrapped up in a blanket while we talked. She was the first person that I wished a happy February to, because in Italy at three in the afternoon it is already midnight.

For me, I still have a couple more hours before I can embrace a new month. I love turning the pages of the calendar to begin a new month full of new possibilities. I like being surprised by each new foto for each new month. The photo above, is from a calendar that features the orignal photography of my friend Graziana Giotta. This particular image taken by Graziana makes me think of the legend of the blackbird. In Italy these last couple of days are special because the say that the last three days predict how the rest of the winter will go. It is kind of like our Ground Hogs Day. In America, on the 2nd of February, if the groundhog sees his shadow, he is terrified and goes underground for six more weeks. This means that winter will continue a bit longer. If instead the weather if sunny, the groundhog doesn’t scare himself silly and thus emerges from his den signifying that spring is just around the corner.

Here is the legend of the blackbird:

According to tradition, the “days of the blackbird (29, 30, 31 of January) are the three coldest days of the year. If in these days, abiding by the leggend the are the coldest, then spring will be warm and arrive early. But, if the “days of the blackbird” are warm, sprng will arrive late.

The name derives from a leggend, that says that the blackbird, a bird that once upon a time had white feathers like the snow, to protect itself from the cold hid itself and its babies inside a chimney, from which three days later they emerged covered in black soot. Since then the blackbird has black feathers.

The other day when I put this on the Facebook page of Studentessa Matta I received the nicest message from my friend Ella who also shared a lovely song about the “days of the blackbird”.

I have heard from many friends, that these last few days of January have indeed been very cold! So according to the leggend of the blackbird spring will arrive soon and will be very nice this year! Forza! We must suffer winter for only a few more weeks more. Thank goodness I live in California. It already seems like spring! Happy February everybody.

By the way, don’t forget to follow the Facebook page for Studentessa Matta. Every day I put publish tidbits from the news as well as photos. Also follow mi on Twitter (italia_melissa) and we can exchange Tweets.

(To read in Italian) I just finished reading “Case altrui” (Other People’s Houes) by Hilary Belle Walker. The first thing I did after turning the last page of the book? I hugged my dear dog Sinbad. Infact, Sinbad is still beside me trying to distract me from writing at the computer because he wants me to continue to cuddle with him. Ok, he just stopped putting his paws all over me and is now happily sprawled on the floor under my desk. I don’t want to ruin the last story of the book, however I will only say that it is a beautiful love story between a girl and her dog. The book is composed of ten other stories, just as good, that tell not only the story of Hilary and her beloved dog Bart, but also the story of a disorientated American girl, who is looking for her place in a foreign city.

I wrote about Hilary a couple of months ago when I first learned that Hilary, an American from San Francisco, who now lives in Milan, had written and published a book in Italian. My friend Rossella gave me her book for Christmas and I read it quickly. I found it to be entertaining and funny, with a touch of melancholy. We read about her silly misadventures and her attempts to find love, pay the bills and find ways to publish her first novel. We follow along her precarious journey, as she tries to find her balance and inner peace.

In the first chapter she buys a bicycle. This becomes a symbol of her new found independence and a first step toward feeling at home in Milan.

“And then, hands holding tightly to the handlebars, I pedaled away – with the uneasy balance and a soaring heart. It was with that spirit that I finally began to belong to Milan. O rather, that Milan had finally begun to belong to me.”

I found the chapters called “Fenomeno” and another called (like the title of the book) “Case altrui” – Others people’s houses particularly delightful. In the latter the author tells of her desire to see the inside of a house that is for sale in an older part of Milan. She desires it so much that she pretends to be married with money, even though in reality she is not in a position to buy it being of Novelle Poverty. After an elaborate ruse to get inside the hose and after meeting the Signora who is selling it, she is filled with nostalgic longing and regrets the fact that she has lied to the Signora. Her fantasies of how things could be are bittersweet in the face of realty, but also enchanting for their naivety at the same time.

I find it very delightful and charming that Hilary worries about her American accent and that she keeps a diary for writing all the words and Italian phrasesthat she doesn’t want to forget…just like I do when I read an Italian book. Words and phrases like:

Sgranocchiando = munching

Cuccia = dog’s bed

Sventolanto = waving (ha guardato il cane mentre galoppava via, con le orecchie sventolanti)

Malmostosa (per descrivere uno stato insopportabile)

Lavoretti (facendo lavoretti in giardino)

I thought it also endearing her quest to master the Italian language. She writes:

“Jacopo, who I often ask to re-read pages that I write to correct prepositions and grammar, who I sometimes call at weird hours to ask questions about idiomatic phrases and other curiousities about the language, he knows perfectly that my goal in life is to some day have my own bar code…” (publish her own book with bar code)

So Hilary! Well done! You have accomplished your dream! Great job! It was well worth the effort to write our book in Italian, despite the grammar challenges!

Here is Sinbad that now is sleeping like a log while I write this blog!

Repubblica TV talks about the candidates

(To read in Italian) The 2012 Oscar nominations were announced today. Here is the full list of nominees. This time there were no Italian films nominated, but I did read in the on-line journal ANSA.IT that three italians were nominated for artistic contributions. Dante Ferretti and Francesca Lo Schiavo are candidates for production and set decoration for Martin Scorsese’s film “Hugo” and Enrico Casarosa for short film animation for “La Luna”.

After reading over the list, I realize that I should spend more time at the movies if I am going to be able to evaluate any of them this year. Up
until now I have seen only a couple of the films on the list: Meryl Streep – “Margaret Thatcher Lady of Iron”, Michelle Williams – “My week with Marilyn”, Brad Pitt – “Money Ball” e Melissa McCarthy – “Bridesmaids”. So, for me there are a bunch more that I need to watch. But, I don’t think I will be quite so dedicated as my friend Vic, who’s mission it is to watch every single nominated film, including the documentaries, before the the Awards Ceremony. The last week of February, you will find him in some dark movie theater watching the films he hasn’t seen, one after the other. He is preparing for the friendly bets we make to predict the winners. We get together the evening of the Awards ceremony, dressed as the character of the film that we are rooting for and whoever makes the most correct predictions gets bragging rights for the rest of the year.

Even though I haven’t seen all the films this year, I think that Michelle Williams did a great job playing Marilyn Monroe and although Meryl Streep was also great as Margaret Thatcher, I want to see Willams win the Oscar. So, it seems that I need to find a blond wig, a long pair of gloves and a skin tight dress to represent Marilyn at our Oscar Party. Yikes!

At this point for the Best film of 2012, I’m not hazarding a guess…but I do know that the only film that I have seen that made me slip out of reality and into a dreamworld was “Midnight in Paris”. There is something so magical in the idea of slipping through time into another epoca. It has always been a fantasy of mine, to finde a portal that would allow me to meet people from another time in history. I would especially like to meet and talk with the artists and intellectuals of the 1920’s, like Picasso, Dali, Gertrude Stein e Zelda e Scott Fitzgerald. Can you imagine being there, at that definitively golden moment in time, so rich with cultural and artistic developments that changed the course of modern culture. Such a romantic idea…and of course Woody Allen is also a favorite director of mine!

So, what are your favorites? Let me know! If I can’t watch all the films, with your feedback at least I might pick more winners than my friend Vic. After all it’s all about winning!!

(To read in Italian) It has been a busy week on the internet. If you are paying attention and surfing the web this week you would have noticed some unusual things. Wednesday, for example if you had gone to Google’s site you would have found the page with it logo blacked out along with a dozen other sites like Wikipedia, Reddit and Huffington Post that decided to go dark & shut down in a show of solidarity, bringing about the first widespread “strike” on the internet. Why were all these companies up in arms and shutting down their sites for 24 hours? Thy were protesting SOPA e PIPA, two laws Congress is proposing to fight pirating information on the internet. With the excuse of copyright protection they are infact introducing censorship that could have very damaging effects limiting freedom of speech and creativity. Rough consequences, right? It could have repercussions for free sharing sites like Wikipedia and for people who write blogs. In reality, one really doesn’t appreciate how much you miss something until it is gone. Although knew that Wikipedia had gone on strike, I continued to forget the fact and during the black out continued to navigate to the site only to find it’s menacing dark screen. It was just like when there is an electricity black out…one knows that it isn’t working, but every time you go into a dark room you go ahead and flip the light switch. Fortunately for the future of the internet, I read today, that the senators have revoked the proposed bill. A small victory for those who participated in the strike on Wednesday.

As if that wasn’t enough commotion on the internet this week…on Thursday the site Megavideo was closed by the FBI causing an uproar amongst fans.

Megaupload is one of the most impressive film archives of film, music and software. There is a gray zone of illegality because many upload copyright protected files and then they make them available to forums and blogs spreading them around as pirated materials. But for many, like me, that use the site of Megaupload for watching televisions shows and film translated into Italian, like Castle, or Bewitched this is terrible…a real tragedy! Infact I wrote a blog called “Storditi di Telefilm” in which I said Megavideo is a wonderful place for watching films in Italian and practicing Italian.

So, what are we to do now to watch films in Italian? Thank heavens there is still “Un Posto al Sole” that can be downloaded FREE from the RAI site. However, they have also recently made their site a nightmare to navigate. In the past it was rather easy to arrive at the screen to download episodes to load onto your iPod. But, just a few days ago i receive a message from a friend asking me how to navigate the “new” RAI site because they had changed it for the umpteenth time. Yikes! Unfortunately there is no shortcut. Now there are NINE, count’em, NINE steps to find the download link for an episode! It is almost as if they want us to get tired and give up before reaching the goal.

Seeing as this has been a difficult week for us intrepid web surfers, for fun I have decided to list the steps for downloading an episode of Un Posto al Sole. You can consider it a gift from me to you. I know, I am too generous…but that’s the way I am!

Nine tedious steps for downloading an episode of Un Posto al Sole:

1) Go to the RAI site: http://www.rai.tv/dl/RaiTV/cerca_tematiche.html

2) Click “Podcast” in the top menu

3) Click “Video”

4) Click “U” to find “Un Posto al Sole”

5) Click “Un Post al Sole”

6) Find the white link and click (the one with the white arrow and says “Un Posto al Sole 2011-2012”)

7) Important: in the lefthand menu click “Puntate”

8) Choose one of the videos

9) In the menu under the video screen, to the extreme right click Download! Eccolo!

Absurd! Absolutely the maximum steps you could have to read link to download a files!!! But at least you know you know how to find the download link, if you haven’t already forgotten the reason you were looking for it in the first place.

Hopefully this will be a better week for the internet and things in general will be better. Let’s hope that it runs fast, without crashing, strikes or slowdowns, that there will be freedom of speech, world peace and that MegaVideo returns with new episodes of Castle!