The world’s priciest housing.
This chart shows how many square meters of property a million US dollars will buy.
Since most of us think in square feet, a square meter is 10.764 square feet. So the million dollars in Monaco would get you 161 square feet, smaller than most hotel rooms. A flat in London is 334 square feet and in New York 355 square feet
Head to São Paulo and you get a spacious 2,755 square feet. But like Cape Town, it has a water shortage. You can’t have everything.
Waiting for your cappuccino machine? It might cost you more…
If it is in one of the 12,000 containers on the Ever Forward. That’s because the shipping company has declared General Average, which means everyone pays.
“Considering that the complexity of further rescue operations will require more manpower, equipment and costs to refloat the stranded vessel as soon as possible, Evergreen has for cautionary purposes declared general average and nominated Richards Hogg Lindley as the GA adjuster,” the company said in a statement.
In plain English that means the cost to refloat the boat will be shared by all the firms renting the containers. If your cappuccino machine is in one of them guess who pays"?
Inventor of the GIF format dies.
Stephen Wichita, a brilliant computer programmer, died in March at 74. He invented the GIF, short for graphic interchange format, in 1987, the Stone Age of the Online Era for a long-forgotten service called CompuServe. I was subscriber way back then.
The problem was accessing the online service over land line modems was slow. The fibre connection I am using now in rural Quebec is 349 Mbps (megabits per second) download and 377 Mbps upload. The fastest speed in 1987 was 1200 bps or bits per second. That makes my current speed more than 300,000 times faster, if I have the math right and that’s not guaranteed. The GIF format allowed CompuServe to have moving weather maps. A personal GIF favourite of Wilhite’s was the Dancing Baby, a 3D animation from 1998.
The Daily Telegraph’s obit reported his laconic reaction to an Internet award:
“Wilhite’s acceptance speech was just five words long, and caused a ruckus across online platforms: “It’s pronounced Jif, not Gif.””
Became a patron of the arts. Move up from free to a paid subscription.
The New FAANGs
The old ones are Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google. There is an index that follows all those stocks — oddly enough called the Fang Index. And it is off about 10.47% so far this year.
A money manager named Doug Kass has a new group that is moving up as you can see in the change below. A lot of it is the war in Ukraine which is pushing up the price of oil, fertilizer and food and making even green Germany re-think nuclear.
Wheat Exports stop From Russian and Ukraine
The two countries supply a third of the world’s wheat. Aljazerra ran this chart of which countries get which wheat. Most of them are poor to middle income.
Interesting that Turkey buys lots of Russian wheat and supplies Ukraine with drones.
Copper
“Even if the price of copper were to double overnight it would still be years before we had significant incremental production coming on.” That from a Bloomberg interview with the CEO of Freeport McMoRan. Well he would say that but he is pretty much right. Copper is needed if the world wants to go electric, as in cars.
Canada stopped a copper mine several years ago by declaring the area around it a National Park. The urban, upper middle class young people who work in places like the Prime Minister’s Office in Ottawa don’t like mines. But they do like electric cars.
It’s Climate Change in theory, but not in action.
Witness President Biden releasing all that oil from the national reserves.
If you really want a Green New Deal you encourage people not to drive. But high gasoline prices are killing politicians in the polls.
The coal-fired green governor of Michigan: A rant.
Ditto Gretchen Whitmer, the media savvy governor of Michigan. She wants to shut Line 5, a pipeline that carries oil from western Canada through the United States and passes through the Great Lakes on its way to Ontario and Quebec.
Closing it would also mean propane would have to be shipped to Michigan by rail rather than pipeline. Not that green a solution. The whole issue is before US courts.
Michigan is not that green in the electricity department. Coal is a big number two.
I started thinking about this because of an energy app I look at every day that measures where electricity is generated in Ontario. Nuclear is always number one, but wind is often number three and even edges out hydroelectricity some days. Solar is never much.
But the chart also shows that Ontario often exports power and its biggest customer is Michigan.
Some days it is a bit less, but 1,450 Megawatts is a lot of power, enough to run a small city. It translates into 1,450,000 kilowatt hours. The average house in Michigan uses 908 kilowatt hours a day so that transfer from Ontario— most of it green— keeps a lot of lights on in Michigan. Governor Whitmer might show a little gratitude.
Essay of the Week
Several years ago an Italian group asked me to write the life story of Sam Ciccolini, an Italian immigrant to Canada. Sam and his family arrived in Toronto with next to nothing. He and his brothers started an insurance agency, Masters Insurance, which today is one of the most successful insurance firms in the Greater Toronto area.
The rags to richest saga is one of things I write about often. Here are the first three chapters of the Ciccolini book, which deal with the rags part of the story.
Chapter 1
Early Life in Italy
Salvatore Giovanni Ciccolini was born on July 3, 1944, in the village of Pescosolido in the foothills of the Apennine region southeast of Rome. Pasquale and Filomena (Sarra) Ciccolini had six sons, one of whom died in 1939.
Pescosolido is not prime farming country; it is rough terrain, with fields of wheat and corn framing the olive groves and vineyards on the rocky hills. The scenery is spectacular, sitting on the edge of the Abruzzi National Park; so special it is designated as an area of natural beauty by the European Union.
Sam was born the last year of the Second World War and July 1944 was the peak of the fighting in Italy, in his region in particular. The mountains made ideal defensive positions for the German army. The famous Battle of Monte Cassino took place nearby and the Ciccolini family watched as aircraft from the Allied side made their final bombing runs to attack the monastery that they mistakenly thought was a fortified German position. After the war there were a lot of unexploded bombs in the area, some in the Ciccolini’s own village.
Pasquale Ciccolini, Sam’s father, was a soldier in the Italian army. When he returned home he found his country, and in particular his village and region, even poorer than before. There were shortages of everything and foreign armies, British and American, enforced the peace. The country was often near civil war as partisans, many of them Communists, exacted rough justice on their former enemies, real and imagined.
Pasquale eked out a living owning and driving the only taxi in the area, a Balilla*, a pre-war sedan noted for its relative size if not its beauty. “He could sit seven or eight people inside and then about 14 hanging to the top of the car. It was like one of those films from India,” recalls Sam Ciccolini.
This may be an exaggeration of a childhood memory. The Balilla was the nickname for a Fiat 508 and even the four-door version was relatively small by today’s standards, though it dwarfed most tiny Italian cars. It was big enough to carry goats and sheep on occasion, and in 1956, driven by an uncle who had taken over the taxi business, carried four members of the Ciccolini family the 140 kilometres from their village to the Port of Naples.
*Balilla" was the nickname of Giovan Battista Perasso, a boy from Genoa who, in 1746, threw stones at an Austrian officer in protest over the Austrian military occupation, starting a revolt.
The Frosinone province in the Lazio region was one of the poorest in Italy. Pasquale’s father died before Sam was born and his mother ran a tiny bar in the middle of the village of Pescosolido.
Sam’s branch of the Ciccolini family fared better than most since they owned some land. Filomena’s father had spent a decade working in Detroit, Michigan, and returned from the United States a relatively rich man. He bought farmland in Pescosolido; Sam and his brother Max estimate it would have been as much as 50 hectares, about 120 acres. Some of it was deeded to Filomena, even though her father objected to her marriage to the poor Pasquale. His objections were so strong he refused to attend their wedding. Pasquale was a quiet handsome man and Filomena loved him; the marriage took place without her father’s approval.
Sam, his brothers, and his parents lived in a house squeezed between the homes of his grandfather and an uncle. There were animals downstairs; some cows, a donkey, and a few pigs. Every Christmas two of the pigs would be slaughtered in the barnyard, providing meat for the year. There was corn and wheat in the fields, but the valuable wheat was sold to earn cash and the family ate corn bread.
“We lived quite modestly to poor. We never went without food but everything else was rationed, as it was for everyone else in the village,” says Sam. The Ciccolini boys were also well dressed as Filomena was an accomplished seamstress. Like most rural Italian women of her generation she only went to school until grade three, but she was a clever and ambitious woman, the matriarch of the family and the driving force behind the future success of her sons.
Primary school in rural Italy ran from early morning until one in the afternoon. Then the children would go home to help their parents-- in Sam Ciccolini’s case, helping to tend the fields and animals. Though they were poor – Sam never wore new shoes, always hand-me-downs, until he came to Canada – there was a warm family life. That warmth can be seen in the character of Sam Ciccolini and his brothers to this day.
Sam grew up in a close-knit family and he makes a point of going back to Pescosolido every year to visit them and re-affirm his belief in family unity.
“There are a number of uncles, aunts and cousins who are like brothers and sisters to me,” says Sam, as he remembers their names.” I have a great rapport with them and an abundance of love for them all: Francesco, Rosina, Mario, Antonietta, Giulio, who is deceased, Anna, Zia Maria, Lella, Donato, Francesco, also deceased, Terry, Rosanna, Mariella, Aurelio, Paola, Palma, Osvaldo, Renzo and Rita.”
His love for those family members and their children still in Italy are the reason he returns every year to the village where he was born, making a point to see them all.
Chapter 2
The Seminary
Italy is still a Catholic country but in the 1950s it was even more fervent, harbouring a faith of such intensity that was matched in just a few other places in the Christian world, perhaps in Poland, Ireland, and Quebec.
As the second youngest of six sons Sam Ciccolini was chosen for the priesthood. In 1952, at the age of nine, he was sent from his village of Pescosolido down the hill to a seminary in the cathedral town of Sora, six long kilometres from his home. Putting a nine-year-old in a seminary may seem startling to some people, but no more than a young boy being sent to boarding school on a scholarship.
“In our area there was a lot of poverty so if you were picked as one of the ones who were a little brighter, you were sent to the seminary, because your parents couldn’t afford to send you to further higher education,” says Sam. “One of the reasons I went was we have a history of priests in our family. The rector at the seminary, just before I entered, was one of my father’s cousins and the priest in the town, Don Lino Ciccolini, was a second cousin. He’s still a priest and he’s 92 years old.”
Sam Ciccolini remembers his three years in the seminary with fondness. It was perhaps the most intense period of learning in his life, and certainly much more rigorous than what he would later face at Clinton Street Public School or Harbord Collegiate Institute in Toronto. At the age of 11 he could speak and write Latin, something few, if any, high-school Latin teachers could match.
There were about 20 boys in Sam’s class at the seminary. Days started at 6:30. The boys would rise, wash and bathe in cold water--there was only one bathtub, no showers--then they would put on their long cassock that had many buttons from the neck to the ankles. The boys would also wear a biretta, a black square clerical hat. They were dressed like little priests, as they expected to be dressed for the rest of their lives.
Mass was at 7 a.m. without having had breakfast since they would have to fast before taking communion. Then at 7:30 came the first meal of the day, almost always a brioche and coffee, though Sam says that as a young boy he didn’t like coffee.
Class would start at eight o’clock. The study was rigorous. The teachers, all priests, ruled with strict discipline though there was little if any physical punishment; the novices knew their place and that obedience was their lot in life. It was not a totally cloistered life: they were allowed walks in the street, they could talk with each other, and there were long periods of play, extended recesses where boys could be boys.
“The priests believed in physical activity and health,” said Sam, who was athletic as a boy and an adult. “The one thing that the seminary taught you was discipline. It’s a great trait because then you’re not scared of anything. It gives you a lot of self-confidence and I think you’re better off than someone who is timid.”
The young seminarian was certainly not timid; his personality was already fully formed and young Sam Ciccolini exhibited the self-confidence and exuberance that sometimes got him into a bit of trouble.
“Sam was in the seminary in Sora and he was always being reprimanded because he always wanted to do everything and sometimes he would even get into problems,” remembered his mother, Filomena, in an interview in 2003 for a video tribute to Sam.
Sam left the seminary on November 5, 1956, and within a week was sailing to his new life in Canada. But the lessons he learned there stayed with him for life. It may even account for his self-confidence and ability to speak with ease in front of large crowds. It certainly implanted a solid value system.
“I think my life, my faith, and the way we comport ourselves even when we lost our daughter comes from my upbringing in the seminary and it (his Catholic faith) is a bit of a soft spot in my heart,” says Sam.
Chapter 3
Preparing the Way
Pasquale Ciccolini sold his taxi to his brother and came to Canada in 1948. Post-war Italy was a shambles. The country was in a perpetual recession as it had to repay $360 million in war reparations; infrastructure was being rebuilt after being destroyed in the long war fought on Italian soil, and there was political turmoil as the Communists tried to take over.
The Marshall Plan, the American program to rebuild Europe and save many from starvation, was only starting, but from1948 to 1949 Italy received $594 million of the $5 billion the U.S. spent that year, more than any other country in continental Europe, except France.
None of that money seemed to trickle down to Pescosolido. The southern and central part of Italy where the Ciccolinis lived was hit particularly hard; most of the fighting had taken place there and there was little industry, poor agriculture, and no jobs. If there was any work it was in the industrial north.
Canada beckoned, even if Italians were classified as enemy aliens after the war. Toronto was already a magnet for Italian immigrants and Pasquale found work in the construction industry through connections he had from his home village. He made 50 cents an hour, with part of his paycheque going to re-pay the $250 to finance his move to Canada, money put up by his Canadian sponsor, Giuseppe (Joe) Macciocchi, who also provided him with work.
Every two years Pasquale would return to Italy for a month to live with his family. In 1951 he took his eldest son Frank back to Toronto and two years later his second eldest son Mario returned with him to Canada as well. All three men lived together in a crowded boarding house at 595 Euclid Avenue in the heart of what was then Toronto’s Little Italy. All along he planned to reunite his family and bring them to Canada. It was a complex process that demanded time, hard work and, above all, patience.
In Toronto Pasquale was a truck driver in the construction business. He was a steady, reliable employee and only drove for two companies for his entire working life in Canada: Macciocchi Construction and Valentine Enterprises, the company he stayed with until he retired.
“The usual thing was that whoever was in Canada would work and just pile up the money and come back to Italy,” says Sam’s brother Max. “My dad came back in 1955. We were still in our small hometown of about one thousand people and he wanted to see if we could move to a place like Rome and get an apartment there. But it didn’t work out so after he came back, he decided that in the next year he was going to bring everybody to Canada, my mother and my brothers. So during 1956 we went to Rome three times for our visas and every time we went, they asked my mother questions and we all had to pass the physicals twice.”
Filomena Ciccolini chose the precise moment to book passage on the ship to New York. It was a tumultuous period; 1956 was perhaps the most dramatic year since the end of the war in 1945. There was the Suez Crisis, the Hungarian Revolution, the sinking of the liner Andrea Doria, and a tuberculosis epidemic raging in Europe, perhaps the reason the Ciccolinis were given such rigorous physical examinations before leaving Italy.
They made their trip to the ship in the old Balilla that Pasquale had sold to his brother.
“Our uncle drove the four of us to Naples where we boarded the ship and set sail for l’America,” says Max, the youngest of the three boys making the trip.
The patriarch of the Ciccolini family was a quiet man, devoted to making sure his family had a better life in Canada than he had in Italy. In that he was more than successful, but in his working life he never made much more than the minimum wage paid in the construction business.
“If you could have a million people in a room my father would be the last one you would notice,” said Sam. “His demeanour was very low-key and very seldom did he say anything.”
This modest, hard-working man’s goals were more than met in his lifetime. By the time Pasquale Ciccolini died in 1991 he had lived to see his family established in Canada and his sons vaulted from the poverty of rural Italy to positions of comfort and respect in their adopted country. He had truly prepared the way.
If you want to read more on this family or others I write about, let me know. I figure I have more than a million words on this computer from books and articles I have written so I shouldn’t run out of material.