Twenty-Five Dispatches Later
Stories about Spies, Saints, Police, Popes, Molise, and the Mona Lisa
Do you know Bob?
I stepped into a small alimentari in Ferrazzano, a hilltop town in Molise, to buy a few things so my friends and I could make panini. The clerk noticed my accent and asked if I was American. I nodded.
“Allora,” he said, “sei un amico di Bob?”
Was I a friend of Bob’s? Did this guy have any idea how many people are the U.S.?
“No, I don’t know Bob,” I told him in my shaky Italian, spreading my hands wide. “America is enormous. More than 300 million people live there.”
He smiled politely and handed me my groceries.
Later, after lunch, we stopped for a coffee in the main piazza. The barista took my order and then leaned in. “Conosci Bob?” she asked. I gave the same answer.
When the man at the pastry shop asked the question that afternoon, I decided to change tactics.
“Yes, of course I know Bob,” I said, deadpan. “We’re very close.”
The man’s eyes lit up. He turned to his wife working on the other side of the shop. “Amore!” he called, voice quivering. “This man is a friend of Bob De Niro!”
The Ferrazzano File
It’s not as random as it sounds.
Turns out the grandparents of Robert De Niro, the acting great -- Giovanni Di Niro and Angelina Mercurio -- were born in Ferrazzano. They emigrated to New York in 1887 and were married there a few years later. De Niro has visited the town, locals say, and over the years he’s been generous to its residents.
Ferrazzano made him an honorary citizen in 2004, two years before he was granted full Italian citizenship.
That day still makes me smile, but not just because of the misunderstanding. It also reminds me that stories are what connect us.
Anniversary edition
I’m writing about that connection on an anniversary of sorts: this is the 25th edition of The Italian Dispatch.
My goal from the start has been to tell stories that reveal a version of Italy that goes beyond the clichés and broad platitudes so common elsewhere. I find meaning in Italy’s contradictions: the country’s beauty and its bureaucracy, its warmth and its weariness. And I wanted to examine those contradictions, not to smooth them over.
Some things have gone as expected, but not everything. My biggest worry at the start was that I might run out of interesting ideas for posts. To prepare, I didn’t start until I had a list of ten strong story topics I could turn to if inspiration ever dried up.
But something happens when you write about Italy every week: you start seeing stories everywhere. Of those ten early ideas, I’ve used eight so far. But my list of potential stories has ballooned to more than 70 one- or two-line entries. I even added a new one while writing this post. At this rate, I’m covered at least through the summer of 2027
Ten Stories
In one early essay I mocked the trend of publishing definitive lists of anything (in that case, it was the purported list of the world’s 50 greatest restaurants). Yet here I am with a list of my own: ten stories that have stayed with me, drawn from the Dispatch archives. But the list isn’t meant to be definitive, and there’s plenty more where these came from.
• I asked Franco why he closed his furniture repair workshop for weeks in August and December and for a few hours every afternoon. Didn’t he want to be more “competitive”? He shrugged. “I’m not trying to be wealthy,” he said. “I’m trying to have a nice life.” Then he described his plans for lunch break: pasta, espresso, and making love to his wife.
• I never tire of learning more about Vincenzo Peruggia, the hapless Italian decorator who stole the Mona Lisa in 1911and then became a folk hero. His name keeps resurfacing, after another major heist from the Louvre last week, and again when I found him staring back at me while strolling through a portrait collection by artist Salvatore Catalano.
• Few lives contain as many fascinating stories as that of Freck Vreeland, the “diplomat, sometimes spy, and man about Rome” I discussed in an essay about Italy as an international espionage hotbed. At 98, Vreeland’s working on a memoir, Call Me Freck, where, based on an excerpt I read, the stories land one after the other.
• I’m fascinated that both U.S.-born Pope Leo XIV and U.S. Vice-President JD Vance draw inspiration from fourth- and fifth-century bishop and theologian St. Augustine of Hippo. Beyond Augustine and their Midwestern roots they don’t have much in common: Leo condemns the kind of “political nationalism” Vance champions.
• Roma Sacra, e Moderna (“Rome Sacred, and Modern”), a 300-year-old guidebook I found, is about the era’s version of “slow travel” -- a dramatic departure from modern one-city-per-day tours. Take three days for the Colosseum, two for Piazza Navona, and 28 for the Vatican, but only if you bring a letter of introduction from your bishop and a valet.
• There wasn’t much good about the pandemic, but one exception was the brief return of wildlife to areas where they once thrived: rabbits on the Palatine Hill and in Villa Pamphili, ducks in fountains, foxes in urban parks, and hedgehogs and boars on city streets. For me, it’s a metaphor for Italy’s long history of producing genius despite difficult circumstances.
• The moving story of Joshua, the Ghanaian migrant worker I met in Mali and then again three difficult years later in Rome, is about the dignity and resilience of the human spirit. He changes phone numbers often, so he still doesn’t know I wrote about him. But when we reconnect, I’ll post an update.
• I now look back with mixed feelings on my writing illicit terms papers for fellow university students. But it paid for travel and taught me a little about a lot of different topics. One of them was renegade theologian Hans Küng, who I had a rewarding correspondence with many years later (I never told him how I discovered his work).
• Stopped after running a red light, I was ready to be fined. But the cop wasn’t angry that I broke the law, only that I did it right in front of him: “Questo è una mancanza di rispetto!” he said -- “This is a lack of respect!” Luckily, I convinced him that I thought his car was a taxi (and so, no disrespect intended), and he let me go with a dismissive wave of his hand.
📌 And another thing
Starting next week, The Italian Dispatch will start a new schedule.
We all need a little room to breathe -- I do, I think readers do, and I know stories do. I’ll still publish every week, but I’ll start alternating between the big, long-form features I’ve done up to now and shorter “field dispatches.”
The shorter pieces will be snapshots: places, traditions, curiosities, or reflections. They’ll be lighter and easier to read (and to write), but they’ll still aim to show a version of Italy that goes beyond the cliché.
The first field dispatch lands next week. See you then.
So warm, funny, sweet, engaging. Every article that Eric writes reminds me of the charm of living in Italy. And brings back memories. I don't know Bob, but I might know...Michael. I had a hilarious Pugliese friend with noble parentage. When in Lecce visiting with him and other friends, he introduced me to noble heritage acquaintances as the sister of Michael Bublè (I am Canadian and sung in piano bars, but the connections ends there). We continued the joke all week. And even a year later, back in Puglia, we ran into some of these people, who then introduced me to their friends as Michael's sister. Since then, I know Fly me to the Moon by heart. (In Puglia, it's all heart.)
Interesting details in the word cloud: old is bigger than modern and France is bigger than Germany and grappa is bigger than wine!! They could do a psycological profile based on this stuff!!