Rush Hour

As you all know, the World Cup is being played in Africa for the first time in history, and rightly so, in South Africa, given their recent history. Now, I am not won to dwell too much on the past and I certainly don’t believe that modern-day Holland is connected to apartheid however, one cannot avoid considering the history between the mainly Dutch-Afrikaner rule in South Africa and their role in slavery and apartheid in that country. Yes, of course, this is sports and the Dutch in Holland (and elsewhere) are as nice as anybody else nonetheless, the history of what their ancestors did to the black people of South Africa….I mean, I just can’t seem to be happy about their soccer victories. It’d be like supporting the Germans in the World Cup on Israel soil 20 years after the Holocaust. You know what I mean? And even though one of Holland’s players is on the Italian team I support (Wesley Sneijder), I can’t help but have mixed feelings about all of those ‘orange supporters’ roaring their happiness through the streets of South Africa. Many South Africans have gone beyond the past, however for many, the wounds are still fresh. On a brighter side, this could help create a more positive and stronger bond between the two countries, which would only enhance South Africa’s economy. In any case….

…tonight, it’s Spain against Germany. I am supporting Spain; my husband is Spanish and I worked in Madrid for four wonderful years. ¡Vamos a por ellos! However, should the final be Germany – Holland, the young, multi-racial, and exciting German team gets my total support. It is what it is.

I have been spending my days watching the World Cup (Spain passed to the semi-finals- hurrah! and Argentina and Brazil are on their way home), climbing and mountaineering, and….putzing around. Actually, I’ve been working, too. Every week I’m on the air with my radio show, RMC Unlimited, I’m preparing my new compilation (number 10), and I’m editing a lot of videos that Ezio and I have been filming in the mountains. However, what I should be doing is finding a literary agent for my first two novels and thinking about writing my third novel. I have been very lazy in that sense. Finding an agent is very tedious, no, let me correct that; what is tedious is preparing a synopsis of my work. That is the first step and I just can’t seem to get on it. Writing my new novel will be exciting, as writing always is….so why don’t I begin? Because once you start, you have to write every single day until you finish. There is no other way to write a decent novel, as far as I am concerned. You get on a roll that you can’t get off until the job is completed. I’m just waiting for the green light.

So far, the United States got beat by Ghana (again) and England got creamed by Germany (1-4). Tonight Argentina play against Mexico, which should be a good match although I believe Argentina will win. (I hope so for Maradona, even if he made the grave error of not calling Javier Zanetti to play, an error I hope he doesn’t regret.)
I’m disappointed that the Americans lost, nonetheless, I’m glad at least one African team made it to the semi-finals. I don’t think they’ll go much further but it’s an excellent result especially since this is the first World Cup on African soil. I have noticed something very interesting, exciting, and contradictory about the African people; on the one hand, many of its countries are being destroyed by civil (and tribal) wars, yet on the other, there is no continent as unified as Africa. They are Africans first, and then Nigerian, or South African, or Kenyan, or Ethiopian, etc. later. It’s an amazing and moving thing to hear the African people talk about their Africa. That kind of unity is non-existent on the other continents. (more…)

Today was a bad day for the Italian team; they were eliminated by the Slovakians in the first round. This was the worst ever result for the Italian national team. This has been a very exciting and unusual World Cup but I will talk about that in my next post. Today, I want to show you the video of a great climb I did with world-famous mountain guide, Ezio Marlier. We went to Finale Ligure, one of the most important places to rock climb in Europe and I finally climbed the great wall: Pianarella.
Take a look:

I went climbing the other day with mountain guide Ezio Marlier, and the only place with a short window of fair weather was Balme, near Cluses (about 30 km from Chamonix). The routes are very difficult but I did it! Here’s a video of the first pitch of ‘Punk Not Dead’ 5 pitches: 6a, 6b, 6b, 6a+, 6a, (6a+ obb). Afterwards the first pitch, I needed Ezio’s  undivided attention so he didn’t have a chance to film me again!

The World Cup is well underway and my husband and I have been watching as many games as possible. The group stage where teams battle it out to get into the knock-out stage is coming to an end and it has been very interesting to see how the ‘weaker’ clubs are no longer so weak. By that I mean, the Europeans have always had this football supremacy attitude, looking down from their trophy-filled pedestals at the African, Asian,  smaller South American teams (this excludes Argentina and Brazil, of course), and the United States. However, this year, more than ever, the levels seem to be evening out and this makes the matches all the more exciting. England is doing terribly at the moment, Italy is disappointing to say the least, France has been eliminated in the first round, and Spain was just plain sad. Whereas, the United States are playing really well, as are the teams from the Ivory Coast, Mexico, and Uruguay. I think this World Cup will have some interesting surprises.

Today, Italy play against New Zealand and Brazil battle the Ivory Coast. On paper, Italy and Brazil should win but….you never know. And that is the beauty of soccer.

Yesterday, the 19th Football (soccer) World Cup began in South Africa and we are all very excited about it. It is amazing the progress South Africa has made in just 20 years since it began the arduous road of becoming a democratic nation free from apartheid (the law to finally lend it came about in 1994.) It seems like yesterday that I was in my home in Milan, watching, with tears in my eyes as Nelson Mandela was freed from prison after almost 30 years.

Sports, like music, unite people and remind us of just how similar we all are. This World Cup is all the more important because of where it is taking place. There are countries participating who years ago had colonized Africa, amongst them, France, Spain, Italy, England, Germany, Portugal, and let us not forget the Netherlands. I pray for a successful World Cup for all of Africa and may the best team win! (Tonight, England versus the U.S.A. Can’t wait!)

My heart goes out to Madiba and the Mandela family for their terrible loss yesterday.

I went skiing the other day on the Toula Glacier, thinking the snow would still hold and I almost killed myself (I am joking, but I did have to remove my skis twice.) Now, I don’t often wish I were in another place when I am in the mountains, however, on this day, I kept thinking about the gorgeous Gucci sandals I had just bought two days earlier in Viareggio and praying I would have a chance to wear them….

I have obviously made it down and have since put my skis to rest until next winter. Living in the mountains teaches you many things, one of the most vital is to follow the seasons as the flora and fauna do. You can’t ski on a glacier when it’s almost summer, even if there is a lot of snow. Since then, I have done a lot climbing and I am hoping to to do some high altitude mountaineering…if the snow settles a bit. What unusual weather. It’s frightening if you think about how much it rains and snows when it’s not supposed to and then, the temperatures soar to over 90.

I’m off to Genoa today for work. I’ll be back tomorrow evening. Only one day but I’m tired even before I get in my car. I used to love traveling, whether by car or plane. Thank God for the Internet and technology! I can do most of my work from home.

I’m working on a project to send to Oprah Winfrey for OWN TV….I’ll keep you up-to-date.

Everyone is talking about the unnecessarily violent attack by the Israeli armed forces on a Turkish aid flotilla heading to Gaza to help the Palestinian people. It must be said that when the soldiers descended on the boat, they were attacked with rods (and they say they were shot at although that has yet to be proven – see videos below), however, there is no doubt in my mind that this situation could have been handled better and with no casualties (ten people lost their lives to the Israeli aggression). The boats could have been stopped without descending on them by helicopter, perhaps they could have launched harmless smoke bombs or something to make the ships turn around instead of attacking the people. Apart from being an exaggerated defense, it was politically very very stupid as now the entire world is protesting against Israel. What I say here has nothing to do with the Israeli population as I am very fond of the Israel and Jewish peoples; what I say here is directed to their government and its choice to act so violently instead of using their heads to resolve the situation in a better way.

FIVE VIDEOS BELOW, AL JAZEERA NEWS, CNN, THE EARLY SHOW, THE VIDEO RELEASED BY THE ISRAEL GOVERNMENT, AND A VIDEO BY AN ITALIAN ROCK BAND WITH AN INTRO OF AN ARABIC LOVE POEM. POIGNENTLY BEAUTIFUL. Thanks to Nico Colonna for this video.  (ENGLISH SUB-TITLES) (more…)

This has been the worst Spring I can remember (and I am not a fan of Spring even when it’s nice because it usually rains for a month, then it gets hot, the bugs come out, and the pollen starts to make my eyes itchy.). But this Spring has been very bizarre, to say the least. It has rained almost every day and it is snowing above 2000 meters. We can’t rock climb because of the rain, we can’t mountain climb because there’s too much snow. It’s frustrating. On the bright side, I’m getting a lot of work done. I should finish editing my first novel so I can send it to Amazon for on-line sales in a couple of weeks. After that, I will never read that book again. Writing is hard work, I know that but I never thought I’d have to re-read the same novel 10 times to get it right for English language publication!  (To be honest, the first three times was for Italy publication.)

I suppose I could have tried harder to find an agent, hence publisher, but I have my new novel coming out in September so I just want this one ‘outta the way’.

Back to editing…..ho hum….