Contributed by Mark Leslie
"Travel and Food Experiences in Italy~ their influences on my American life, plus photos and recipes, too!" by Mark Leslie, author "Beyond the Pasta: Recipes, Language & Life with an Italian Family"
Disastro~
There are many Italian words whose meanings are obvious to us all. Their spellings are very similar to their English counterparts, which at times makes one believe that learning Italian could be an easy task. Trust me, it's not: however, I will say that it should never stop anyone from trying to learn the language, or any foreign language for that matter. It certainly hasn't stopped me.
“Disastro” means exactly what you think it does—disaster. My Italian-English dictionary (http://www.amazon.com/Bantam-College-Italian-English-Dictionary/dp/0553279475/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256403736&sr=1-1 ) defines it as “disaster, calamity, wreck.” And nothing could be farther from the truth.
In Viterbo, Nonna used that word all the time. We would be standing in the kitchen over the pasta board and she would say, “Marco, disastro!” when I had made a mess of something. Not that I had ruined it, or set the house on fire, or killed innocent culinary by-standers—it was not that kind of disastro. Mine were usually of the “wreck” variety. Soon we used that word to describe anything that didn’t seem right to us—a poor fashion choice, the search for misplaced car keys, or an opened package of bread crumbs that accidentally got dumped onto the floor.
Now, back home in America, it continues to be a word that is used around the house all the time. I love it because it is one of those words where the very sound of the word itself describes what it is. The word has a good “mouth-feel” about it.
Its uses in conversation:
“Did you see that new building?” “Disastro!”
“Why did he say that in the meeting?” “Disastro!”
“Look at these brown bananas—Disastro!”
“Can you believe she wore that to the party?” “Disastro!”
With Halloween quickly approaching and with the weather taking a turn from summer to fall, I thought a picture of an Italian garden-man frieze from northern Lazio ( http://www.parcodeimostri.com/eng/entra.asp ) would be appropriate for this day’s entry. Of course, in Hilton Head the temperature has gone from the 60s earlier in the week back up into the 80s today—“DISASTRO!”
Ciao e a presto~
Mark
Contributed by Mark Leslie
Mark Leslie works in professional theatre as a stage manager and is a member of Actors’ Equity Association. Currently he is busy working with Gemelli Press on his first book "Beyond the Pasta: Recipes, Language & Life with an Italian Family." http://beyondthepasta.com
Every year, Mark vacations in Italy and lives to eat his way through every plate of pasta and cone of gelato placed before him. In 2005, he had the good fortune to live for a month in Viterbo, Italy with the Stefani family. There he took cooking lessons from Nonna, the grandmother of the family, and Italian language lessons from Alessandra, the mother. That experience is the basis of his first book "Beyond the Pasta: Recipes, Language, & Life with an Italian Family." SEE DETAILS ABOUT THE BOOK: http://mark-leslie.net/we-have-a-publisher
THEATRICAL CREDITS:
Mark is in Winona, MN working on GRSF's production of COMEDY OF ERRORS. Recently, he wrapped up LE NOZZE DI FIGARO and AIDA for Opera Birmingham in Alabama. Last September, he stage managed CABARET at the Arts Center of Coastal Carolina in Hilton Head, SC. He also worked at the Arts Center in 2005 on its production of Evita. This past summer, he worked in Minnesota on Great River Shakespeare Festival’s production of Love’s Labour’s Lost. Over the past 22 years, Mark’s regional theatre credits include: Denver Center Theatre Company (White Christmas, Noises Off, and a reading of a new adaption of The Unsinkable Molly Brown directed by Kathleen Marshall and authored by Dick Scanlon), Alabama Shakespeare Festival (resident stage manager on over 65 productions), Actors’ Theatre of Louisville’s Humana Festival (D. Boone by Marsha Norman), Arizona Theatre Company (Amadeus, Loot, and Ain’t Misbehavin’ directed by Arthur Faria), and Maine State Music Theatre (Phantom, South Pacific, Jesus Christ Superstar, La Cages Aux Folles, and the world premiere of Chamberlain).
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