Easter in Italy, Cell Phones, Cars,Busy Airports Goodbye Don Lemon? And the Mediterranean
April 10, 2023 Volume 3 # 51
A Night At the Opera (House) in Camogli
There are opera houses all over Italy, many large like La Scala in Milan, down to Teatro Donnafugato, in Sicily, the smallest in the country; it seats just 99 people.
Somewhere in between is the Teatro Sociale di Camogli seating 450. Here it is on Easter Thursday, as people settle in.
Here is the stage about half an hour later at the start of the Passion of Christ.
There is an orchestra, mostly strings, a flute and a piano and 28 men and women of the chorus, along with a Soprano soloist, Chiara Basso. The director was Carlo Prunali who is also a baritone in his other life. To show you the breadth of operatic talent in Italy, Prunali lives in Rapallo, which is 12 kilometres away, 8 minutes by train; the station is beside the Teatro.
On the screen behind is the Garden pf Gesthemene which starts off the story, which as a former altar boy, reminds me a lot of the stations of the Cross. The music ranged from Ravel to Bach and the Chorus were magnificent. At one point they left the stage, carrying their lit candles, and surrounded the audience.
It ended with The Messiah, by Handel, not Leonard Cohen.
The World’s Busiest Airports
There are two categories: the first included American domestic flights and Atlanta is tops. It is amazing so many still Americans travel for business when they can zoom, since I assume a lot of those flights are business travel.
The American statistics count passengers in transit so there are some different numbers for international. In this category Dubai is number one and there is not an American airport on the list. London is number two but Gatwick is number 10 so the two added up leave London in first place.
8.5-billion phones, 7.95-billion people
Some people might think of mobile phones as a nuisance. But everyone has one. In Africa mobile phones allow people to talk and text where there are no phone lines and transfer money and buy and sell in places where there are no banks.
Upgrade from free to paid subscription and get access to back issues. Click below.
World Car Glut: Prices Fall
At the peak of Covid, there was a shortage of computer chips and that meant there was a shortage of cars. Modern cars are computers on wheels, and not just the electric ones. Also people were driving instead of putting on a mask and taking public transit. Used car prices went through the roof and there were few discounts on new cars. Now the chip bin runneth over and there are more cars worldwide than there are buyers. Prices are falling. Especially electric cars where there is lots of competition.
One of the reasons this car will hurt the Tesla Model 3, and maybe even the S, is that it is more aerodynamic than the Tesla, charges faster and has the same range as the 3. And inside there is a grown up interior, not the spartan one screen your have to take your eyes off the road to look at,
On Thursday Tesla cut prices in the United States for the fifth time this year. Model 3s are $1,000 cheaper, Model Y’s down $2,000 and the S and X models saw a $5,000 chop. Just last fall a new Tesla was in such demand that used Teslas soared in price. Not now. And it isn’t just electric cars.
UBS, the Swiss Bank, says car production worldwide will exceed demand by 6% this year and that means gasoline and diesel cars, SUVs and light trucks will drop too.
Is Don Lemon for The High Jump?
It is tough for anyone to survive a stiletto hit like this one in Variety, the show biz bible. It goes way beyond his recent remark about Nikki Haley being `past her prime’ and too old to run for President. That got him booted off air for a few days. But this Variety piece goes back 15 years. It details how Don Lemon was so outraged that a woman reporter, Kyra Phillips. was sent to Iraq, a status assignment Lemon lusted after, she received a text saying: “Now you’ve crossed the line, and you’re going to pay for it.” Lemon sent the text. While she was away he tore up notes and pictures on her desk. The Variety piece covers every angle, including saying Lemon is a name-dropper and a snob who keeps a letter from a high status person taped to his computer. He loves being famous, though that’s not a crime.
Don Lemon Tonight was a hot program on CNN during the Trump years. Lemon would mock the President; Trump shot back calling him dumb as a rock. Don Lemon couldn't have asked for more.
Now he is on the morning show with two women, Poppy Harlow and Kaitlan Collins. It is not a happy threesome.
With the Variety Piece, can Don Lemon last the month? The new top man at CNN wants more balance. Don Lemon is not giving it to him.
The vicious Variety piece on Don Lemon: click to read.
Confused Easter Bunnies
Essay of the Week
The Mediterranean
If the Mediterranean Sea were a country, it would be the 10th largest in the world, bigger than any country on its 46,000 kilometres of shoreline and larger than any country in Europe, except the European part of Russia. If you superimposed the Mediterranean over a map of the United States, it would stretch from California to Carolinas, with the Black Sea pushing into Canada.
Twenty countries border the Mediterranean, starting at the top left-hand corner and going clockwise: Spain, France, Monaco, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, Greece, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Algeria and Morocco along with two island countries, Malta and Cyprus, If you want to stretch things, Britain owns Gibraltar.
Could those countries be more different? Israel and Libya; Monaco and Turkey; Syria and France, though France once ruled over Syria and Lebanon, which is why some people there still speak French.
Italy has 7,900 kilometres of coastline, including 450 islands, the largest being Sicily and Sardinia. It is surrounded by parts almost of the Mediterranean with different names: the Adriatic Sea, Ionian Sea, Tyrrhenian Sea, Ligurian Sea, Sea of Sardinia and Strait of Sicily. From the open window where I am writing this, I can hear the waves of the Ligurian Sea crashing on the pebble beach. Soothing. There is a small tide, maybe 40 centimetres at most, since the Strait of Gibraltar acts as a choke point into the Atlantic Ocean.
There are 191 islands in the Mediterranean, from the largest, Sicily, with an area of almost 26,000 square kilometres – and the top population, 5- million – to tiny, unpopulated Sazan (5.7 square km in size) off the coast of Albania.
Menorca, the smaller sister of Majorca, was a British possession from 1708 to 1802. The island Napoleon was first exiled to gave birth to a Palindrome: Able was I, ere I saw Elba. Capri is the beautiful but tourist-jammed island off Naples and the place where Emperor Tiberius tossed his young male lovers off a cliff once he was finished with them.
Once upon a time, the Roman Empire ruled over all the land surrounding the Mediterranean and beyond. Rome reached its peak in 117 AD, but it lasted for another 359 years in the west, and the Eastern Empire, Byzantium, had 1336 years to go before the Ottomans took Constantinople, something that Attila the Hun couldn't manage.
There are three volcanoes in the Mediterranean, all of them in Italy: Vesuvius, off Naples, the most famous that in 79 AD smothered Pompeii and Herculaneum and killed Pliny the Elder, while his 17-year-old son, Pliny the Younger, aka Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, watched from across the bay and later wrote an eyewitness account. When we stayed in the seaside town of Tropea in Calabria, so far south it is in the instep of the boot, you could see Stromboli at night.
Mount Etna, beside Taormina, last made famous in White Lotus, is the most active volcano in Italy and one of the most active in the world. It is always spewing lava, and we watched its spectacular light show on the nights we spent in Taormina.
There are said to be almost half a billion people who live in the countries ringing the Mediterranean. And they eat a lot of fish. There are thousands of places, big and small, where fishermen head out. There are special boats for hunting swordfish, with towers to spot them and then a narrow extended bit at the prow to spear them
The Mediterranean is being overfished, and a United Nations study tut-tutted about illegal fishing. It's still going on. One problem is the use of tight nets that capture even the smallest fish. But wherever I have eaten in seaside eateries from Turkey to Spain, fresh fish is always on the menu. Once in Majorca, I saw a restaurant worker in tiny Porto Petro pluck a live octopus from the shallows, not 20 steps from the restaurant tables.
The fish also have to deal with shipping in the Mediterranean. As we were reminded of when the giant container ship got stuck in the Suez Canal, the great shortcut to and from Asia.
That said, tonight I will dine in a seaside restaurant and maybe have fish. I did last night.