A neapolitan Braveheart: Davide Imberbe

Davide Imberbe, 35 years old, is our Braveheart who has decided to struggle "O' Sistema" (name of the criminal organization in Naples, a.k.a. camorra) by rebelling to the racket.
Davide and his family, currently, live under the Italian police protection because they have been threated of death many times, nonetheless Davide keeps on speaking out about O' sistema both at TV programs (LE IENE) and in square.
He revealed how the criminal organization headed by Vollaro family forced him to pay an extortion, if you own a shop with ten rolling shutter, you must pay 10.000€ for three times (Christmas, Easter and mid-August holiday) a year without arguing! the poor bosses need money for their holiday and gifts!
Davide lost his old friends and now the guards who protect him are his best friends, Imberbe's life has dramatically changed, but he still fights.
He remarks that Italian government helps who denounces the racket and invite other business men to join him in order to defeat O' sistema definitely, if we are tens, then hundreds, then thousands; who can kill us? Davide says earnestly.
I hope other people will follow Davide Imberbe's suit and all together will beat O'sistema, because they can...

Good luck, Davide

Thanks to Selma for her corrections

The Carnevale day

On 5Th February, in Italy we celebrate Carnevale.

On this day every child masks themselves with a costume, and makes tricks to the people, indeed a famous byword says "E' carnevale ogni scherzo vale" (It's Carnevale day every trick is valid).

Some masks worn this day belong to our ancient tradition and symbolize a specific city, for example in Naples we have the funny and poor Pulcinella, in Bologna there is the fat and rich Balanzone and so on.

Just a few words about Pulcinella; he is the symbol of the poor side of Naples the tale tells that he is a negligent worker, always angry and looking for someone to cheat by selling his fake swills, but he is also kind and sensitive.
For some aspects, Pulcinella represents what Neapolitans are.

Going on
To celebrate this day we also make some sweets: the crispy chiacchiere, the cold sanguinaccio and the round castagnole these are their name here, but in other cities they could be named differently, for example in Liguria the chiacchiere are also known as "bugie".

Chiacchiere's recipe needs few ingredients: eggs, butter, flour, lemon skin
flakes. After making the dough, roll-out it and cut into narrow strips, then fry them. In the end, dust them with icing sugar.



Castagnole require the same ingredients of chiacchiere but you have to add rum for cooking too, make the dough and shape it in little balls which will be fried.
Like for chiacchiere dust them with icing sugar.

Finally the sanguinaccio, in the past, lots of years ago, it was made with pig's blood, but today we no longer use the it (disgusting...how could they eat it? madness).
To prepare it you need: milk, sugar, flour, cocoa, cinnamon.

Put them into a pot, keep the fire low and mix the cream slowly for a while.
Let it get cool and then take some chiacchiere to dip into it... what do you think I'm doing now :)

I was going to forget migliaccio ! which is the one I like the most....
take some sugar, milk, butter, seed corn, eggs, ricotta.
Place the sugar, milk and butter in a saucepan over low heat, when it stars boiling add ricotta and seed corn, stir them for a while then let it get cool.



Since I'm really busy with my exams I can't help my mother and sister in making them thus I play the tiring role of taster :)

Thanks to Zsofia for correcting me

Bye

A storm on Italy

Italy has facing a really hard time, day by day the situation gets worse and soon or later it'll fall down!
What's on?
Let's proceed with order, first the rubbish crisis in Campania is still unsolved, people keep on refusing incinerators or dump sin their backyards, at the moment Naples is being cleaned up but we haven't found any final solution yet.
We are sending our rubbish to other Italian regions and German, the incinerator in Acerra is still under construction and our unqualified politicians are arguing which the best solution is.
It seems they want to reopen some old and dismissed dumps in Campania but the local people don't want, because they are responsible for a number of cancer cases.

Secondly Mastella family is under the fire, first only Clemente Mastella (Minister of justice) was at the centre of "why not" investigation by De Magistris, but the smart minister saved his skin by making De Magisitris snatched away.
Then it has been the turn of Mastella 's relatives, both his wife and brother in law who have been arrested, at the moment, no one knows anything about the accusations laid against them however Clemente Mastella decided to resign because he said I have to stay near my family in this nasty and sad moment.


Consequence of Mastella's decision, Romano Prodi our prime minister has been forced to resign and we have an interim government whose goal is to reform electoral rules and then will vote again.

Listening to the songs

I think there are many exercises in order to practice your English listening skills, just one of them is to listen to songs and try to guess the words of their lyrics, surfing on Internet I found a helpful web site, where there are some well known lyrics with some missing words which you should catch when you're listening to the song and fill in the gaps.
http://www.esl-galaxy.com/music.htm

Circle only has one side

Today I listened to a song, many times, which makes me reflect. I found this song on my desktop by chance, its name is "Side" by Travis, do you know them?

The song has a pleasant rhythm and some verses are awesome, I report some of them, which impressed me very much:

..." We all live under the same sky
We all will live, we all will die
There is no wrong, there is no right
The circle only has one side"....

I was thinking how many times we state what is normal, right for us and regrettably sometimes we make sentences like a judge or we put some life styles down, but we don't see when our behaviour isn't very correct or weird, in the end if someone acts in a strange way or an unconventional manner it couldn't be a problem if they aren't doing something which could be dangerous for themselves or for the society, what right do we have ?!
Who can say which is the right side, maybe the left side ?
it's truth the "circle only has one side"
Human being is tough, and every one has the right to be what they wish.
Of course in front of some horrible and crazy facts, like young boys who kill other teenagers or pedophilia we have the duty and the brave to charge the authors of some nasty acts because they don't mean to be "strange" or searching our street in a very exclusive way.

The lyrics say "We all live under the same sky" and it is tremendously true and my mind goes thinking about Oscar Pistorius the Paralympic champion runner, I don't share the final decision of leaving him out from the next Olympic because it's really hard to understand the reason: he takes advantage with his artificial legs.
Can you say this to someone who hasn't got their both legs since they were a child !
It was better to say something like: oscar Pistorious keeps our awareness, we need new
rules, we are not prepared and we hope to write them just right for the next Chinese Olympic, it will be our commitment!

The life is sometimes dramatical weird....the circle only has one side and we aren't circles.

What do you think about?

Thank to Zsofia for her corrections