Babel: The multilingual, multicultural online journal and community of arts and ideas

After traveling in Europe for two months, I was worried that I might come home to San Francisco and find it rather sad and small, and unlovely. I wondered how my homely little town–my village, really–could compare to Rome, London, Paris, or even Brussels.

And I arrived back at the end of summer, our season of fog and grey–the time of year when tourists, expecting California sunshine, wander around shivering in shorts and loud-print shirts. I feared being depressed by the grime, the relative lack of linguistic diversity–especially compared to polyglot Brussels, the lower quality food (still dreaming of Italy’s summer tomatoes and those Belgian speculoos cookies), and a dearth of fine leather goods.

And all these things are true–but San Francisco is a city with which I can’t help being in love. Like a truly multi-dimensional lover, San Francisco knows how to remind you what it was that made you fall in love in the first place: the views from Nob Hill (this morning, through a shroud of fog, I peaked down the hill and saw light shining off the Bay water, and hazed by fog the majestic rise of the Bay Bridge), the cool crisp sunlight, the lowing moan of fog horns in the night, and the people everywhere all mixed together–mixed couples, queer folks, gender-indeterminate people–different cultures and races and religions, all basically accepting one another, perhaps even delighting in each other’s difference.

I love my city full of Chinese grandmothers, Russian princesses, Italian politicians (Joe Alioto, Jr.–grandson of a former mayor, is running for City Supervisor), 4th and 5th generation San Franciscans, living in their little neighborhoods–just over the hill from one another.

And I am finding new reasons to love and be loved by my city, my village. Every day for four days I have gone out and run into at least two people I know. Today I had lunch with a 32 year old I first met when he was 11. My city is a village that grows as I grow, that lives and breathes with me.

~Wei Ming Dariotis

Following up on my previous post about William Gibson’s comments regarding Canada (circa 2008), I’ve located some of his earlier thoughts on topic. In a 1993 interview, Mike Rogers asks:

“… Born in South Carolina, grew up in Virginia, living in Canada. Do you think that that dilutes your sense of nationhood? They were keen on it.”

Yeah. Oh, well. Hmmm. That’s a … Oh well, interestingly put … I think what it’s done is it’s made me … made me a globalist in some way that’s not entirely … isn’t entirely theoretical … Yeah, I mean, naturally it’s put … it’s putting it too dramatically, but you could say it was literally true that early on in life I had the experience of, of, of … exilehood, essentially for political reasons which kind of led into a permanent expatriate existence. Canada isn’t … it isn’t a country. One doesn’t … I don’t think one comes to feel Canadian. It sort of isn’t. It’s never really been …

… It’s never been a requirement of their culture with regard to … immigrants, you know? The American metaphor is the Melting Pot for a generation and then they’ll become … When they come out of the pots … they’ll be American and that really isn’t … That hasn’t been the Canadian experience. The fashionable government metaphor during the sixties was the … the Cultural Mosaic. That’s what they consciously took to be their version of the Melting Pot. Where people would immigrate, keep their cultures intact and just, you know, fit them into the grid of the country. I mean, you can’t, you know, the concept of becoming Canadian, it doesn’t you know, it doesn’t compute. It’s not … in a sense it’s an artificial construction. Really, I mean there’s a distinctive Canadian culture but you know … you’d almost have to, I think, have to be born right into it so I’ve never felt, living in Canada for twenty years … Well now I’m truly becoming more and more Canadian. I mean, I’m still a guy from Virginia and my wife is Canadian and I’ll never … I’ll never really be … I’ll never really be Canadian.

- William Gibson, interviewed by Mike Rogers: Oct. 1, 1993: Link.

~ Karl Jones

[lang_en]

Rome: It’s beautiful and it’s not. Kinda like everything else in life.

“La prossima fermata è Roma Termini.”

I moved to Italy to live at the end of September last year. I lived in Brescia (a medium-sized city in Northern Italy) until March 1, when I moved to Siena.

(I am once again back in Brescia, but that’s a story I’m going to save for another day.)

I picked up some vocabulary during those first five months in Italy, but it wasn’t until I started attending an Italian class for immigrants in Siena that I really started learning the language.

Now, finally!, I understand much of what is being said either to me or around me. The language no longer sounds foreign or like pretty sounds flowing forth from people’s mouths. Although I’m more motivated to learn the language–because it finally seems like an achievable goal to converse fluently–the glossy veneer of the nonsensical musical sounds has dulled. I don’t know, there’s something about understanding when somebody complains about the weather (or conversely, the ease in which I can complain about it) that makes any language sound less romantic.

Shiny glossy veneers are so overrated. Don’t you think? I mean, a veneer is just a thin expensive sheet of wood (or metal) with layers upon layers of unusually toxic clear varnish. If it wasn’t for the common cheap material beneath (like pine or regular mild steel), the veneer would have nothing to attach itself to.

And I’ve always preferred the look of a dull, used or aged finish anyway…and now that I’ve exhausted my analogy I’m finished with this post.

But one more thing before I go to bed on this hot summer night: it is nice to know that you can simply listen to the conductor to know when your next stop is and not have the nervous wondering of whether you’ve missed it or have yet to arrive.

Arrivederci a dopo.

~Janelle Renée[/lang_en]

[lang_en]July 5th, 2008 Brussels

My Brussel’s host, Alvilda, through some odd connection, was invited to the US Embassy’s “U.S. Independence Day 2008” part on Friday, July 4th. The invitation read:

Sam Fox

Ambassador of the United States of America to Belgium,

and

Christopher W. Murray

Charge d’Affaires of the U.S. Mission to the European Union

invite you

to celebrate the 232nd Anniversary of the Independence

Of the United States of America

The event was held at the Hilton Hotel on Boulevard de Waterloo, just a few blocks from where Alvilda works. The theme was Route 66, and instead of a red carpet there was a carpet made to look like asphalt divided by a broken white line. A couple had leant their Harley-Davidsons for the receiving line, while another had leant two red classic Mustangs that were parked outside the Hilton, on the sidewalk, during the event. We went to meet Americans, a task we immediately realized would be much more difficult than anticipated as we saw that the majority of guests were 60+ year old men in a variety of military uniforms—but almost none of them US. While Alvilda set about testing her knowledge of international military uniforms, I went to get us drinks (they were serving wine from Washington State, which was never on Route 66).

Alvilda told me in no uncertain terms that she was determined to leave the event with at least one new American friend, so I grabbed the first “American” looking person, who turned out to be “Richard” –newly appointed to work for the US delegation to the European Union (I put his name in quotes, because neither Alvilda nor I can actually remember his name. I do recall that he said he was from Ohio, or something). “Richard” informed us that the Charge d’Affaires was an interesting guy whose last posting had been Lebanon and had been in charge of evacuating 1500 Americans during the war last year (which I know about best through the episode of “No Reservations” in which Anthony Bourdain has gotten trapped there unexpectedly—um, I suppose this says something about how I should pay more attention to international news).

While the Charge d’Affaires was doing his introduction, he, like Sam Fox, the Ambassador, meant to invoke both patriotism for the United States and respect for the EU, particularly for Belgium and France (maybe because so many Belgians are Francophones?). He talked about the great gift of the French to the US of the Statue of Liberty. So then Charge d’Affaires said, “When our company…I mean “country”…was founded…” and I thought, did he really just say that? And I turned to “Richard” and Alvilda and asked, “Did he just say-“ and they both answered, “Yes. He said “Company.” Now “Richard” seemed a nice young man, earnest about his new position, so I was trying not to be a snarky left coast liberal, but there are only two interpretations of a slip like that: 1. He meant “company” as in the US is a transnational, global capital machine, i.e. “Halliburton” or 2. He meant “The Company” as in the Cold War nickname for the CIA. Which do you think it was?

When the National Anthem plays on the 4th of July, at a celebration hosted by the US Embassy, Americans should put their right hands over their hearts, and maybe even endeavor to sing along? For some reason, almost no one in the room was doing this, as Alvilda pointed out when it was done. Even, in fact, our US delegation to the EU guy—“Richard”—had failed to do so. Were we all just caught off guard? Was it awkward because we all had drinks in one hand and in the other little plates of either deconstructed guacamole/black beans in tortilla “cups” or beef carpaccio (not exactly Route 66 fare)? Or was our failure to demonstrate our patriotism due to some other factor? Or because we were conscious of being Americans in a foreign country? Regardless of its cause, we were both strangely disappointed by this lack.

And then we met a bunch of Belgian people, including a very nice young man (yeah, can’t remember his name either—I think by this time we were on our 3rd glass of free wine) who is married to a Turkish woman. He and Alvilda had an interesting discussion about the parallels between Female Genital Mutilation (the project she heads at her NGO) and male circumcision. His wife is pregnant, and they know they are having a boy. He feels that it is not his right, as a parent, to make this kind of decision about his child’s body. It is, we agreed, a larger issue of human rights.

Which brings me to the graffiti that is spray painted around our Brussels neighborhood. I keep seeing it at odd places, unexpectedly, and it keeps bringing me up short. It is Uncle Sam, in his classic, finger-pointing pose. Even simplified into a spray-painted graphic, he is undeniably recognizable. He looks angry, like you might be shirking your duty to enlist. But instead of the message underneath that we expect to see (“I Want You! For the US Army”) there is something unexpected. It just says,

“I Love You!”

Every time I read this I feel like I might—not cry exactly, but I feel full of—what? Terror, honor, pride, fear, glory? I feel like the Brussels sky—one moment I could be like one of these pregnant clouds, slowly unleashing a downpour, and then ceasing, suddenly, the sky then to break into too-warm sunshine. It all feels like too much. For Uncle Sam to say “I Love You!” invokes the threat of war, it invokes the “send me your huddled masses” sentiment of the Statue of Liberty” (and the anti-immigrant irony of all that), it invokes—for me–the multi-cultural love fest that is the Bay Area (a bit of homesickness?). We contain multitudes, we contradictory Americans.

“I Want/Love You!”

~Wei Ming Dariotis[/lang_en]

Siena’s biggest event, Il Palio, is happening this Wednesday. The festivities have begun, and today horses were raced for contrada assignment. There are 17 contradas, or neighborhoods, in Siena that compete twice a year, every year on July 2nd and August 16, in a horse race in Piazza del Campo. Due to past scandals the contradas no longer have their own horse. Instead they are assigned a horse just shortly before the race.

So, on Wednesday I can either brave, or perhaps more accurately, stupid the heat and intense sun, or I can pop into the café close to my house and watch the events in an air-conditioned environment, like I did this morning.

Above are some tights hung out to dry. They belong to the Selva (forest) Contrada. They, of course, will lose. I live in the Torre Contrada! We will be the victors!!!!

above: The flags and elephant that represent the contrada in which I live.

—–
* “Fa caldo” is Italian for “it’s hot”. Well, it’s more than hot here. I thought the Italian phrase could use some help.

~ Janelle Renée

Alvilda was a little concerned that Ivana, her friend from her studies at Fletcher over a decade ago who now also lives in Brussels, and I might be two too many alpha females to get along well, but that worry proved unfounded. Ivana is Croatian, and like Alvilda, is interested in international social justice issues. I liked her immediately.

We spent Saturday shopping in Brussels, but mostly window shopping. After the swank shops of Avenue Louise, we wandered over towards the area of the Grand Place, first stopping to pay homage to the Mannekin Pis (Little Boy Peeing), a several hundred year old fountain, and much-beloved symbol of Brussels. We got lucky, as some kind of odd civic ceremony was taking place, lead by the Friends of Mannekin Pis. The statue was dressed up, though of course provisions are made to allow his stream to freely flow. A town from Northern Spain had sent Gigante figures and folk dancers, who were all posing for photos in front of Mannekin Pis, with much arranging and ordering around being done by grumpy older gentlemen wearing official green jackets, and the Friends’ characteristic ribbon of offocialdom, featuring a reproduction of Mannekin Pis dangling from a ribbon (remember, this is a statue of a pissing boy).

After this, Ivana wisely guided us towards a bar she remembered nearby. It had once been a theater and featured a heavenly quiet courtyard–ruled by the most magnficent black cat. I ordered my new favorite beer, Triple Karmeliet, which has complex flavors, including something that reminds me of the toasted rice flavor of hojicha. Alvilda had Chimay Blue, and Ivana a white wine.

We shared a cheese plate, all of which was cubes of gouda.

~Wei Ming Dariotis

After going out onto the kitchen deck to view the moon hanging over Lago Trasimeno, with its little star companionably lurking over its shoulder, we were greeted by firelies dancing a mating dance and twinkling at us.

This inspired a desire for star gazing, so we adjourned to the uppermost deck of the house, above the front door. The air was so perfectly perfumed and lovely it made me wonder aloud what it might be like to sleep outside there. My friend, Alvilda, said that as children she and her cousin, Noam (now the mayor of New Rochelle, NY–think “The Dick Van Dyck Show”), used to sleep out on the porch to watch the stars in every stage of the summer night.

Who would not rest peacefully after hearing this?

~Wei Ming Dariotis

The moon tonight, the night of the longest day of the year (June 21st) is the size and color of a ripe apricot. I had resisted, at first, buying the apricots here in Umbria. I had only a memory of California’s apricots that looked ripe but were hard and never ripened, or ripened into a surly pulp without ever tasting satisfyingly apricot-ish.

But I was wrong; the apricots in Umbria are gorgeous. And the moon in Umbria tonight is a heavy, succulent fruit.

One star hangs above the moon’s shoulder, keeping watch as they rise together over a hill on the edge of Lago Trasimeno.

We had apricots for dinner, and the tangy honey of their flesh still lingers on my tongue. The apricots taste like the moon. *

* I must credit my friend Reg with this line.

~Wei Ming Dariotis

I met a Brazilian friend for wine yesterday before we headed to the Festa Europea della Musica. It was a musical festival that had 15 stages set up all around Siena’s medieval center. We made it to 5 of them. It was fantastic!

The evening was warm, there were swarms of cheerful music loving people, the music was superb and diverse–opera, traditional Italian music, Brazilian and American jazz, and hip-hop blasting during an organized game of street basketball even!

The picture above is a nice little snapshot of life in Italy: International friends, good cheap wine, cell phones exhausted from too much use, bottled water, an ashtray, the bistro table, and slate roads.

The bar where we met serves wine for only €1 a glass. I’m in Tuscany afterall* so even the cheap wine tastes just fine to my rather ill-refined palate.

For the price of a glass of wine, you can also buy bottled water. The price of bottle water is much less here than in the States. At the supermarket, I can buy six 1.5 liters of water for €1.60. Europeans, and Italians in particular, have a contagious fear of tap water. However, I’ve since returned to drinking from the tap after reading this book review in the Times. The price of water is low here, but the environmental impact of the plastic that holds it is large.

Since the smoking ban for bars and restaurants took effect just a couple of years ago in Europe, people smoke with a certain proud defiance out in public places and in doorways. Their rebelliousness reeks more aromatically than their asthma-triggering cigarette smoke. There is something about a clinging to How Things Were that Italians do admirably well, even if the tradition they are clinging to is cancerous and stinky.

—-

* As I feistily wrote in my last post in my personal blog, “if inasmuch, whatnot, aforementioned, whencesoever, thereafter, and nevertheless are legit words, then I hereby proclaim “afterall” a real word, too. From thenceforth it is now such!”

—–

I’m sitting outside of my neighborhood bar (Italians call cafés “bars”, so don’t think that I’m a drunk!) and no fewer than 10 people from the neighborhood (3 senior men, 2 senior women, 2 mid-aged men, and a man and 2 women in their 30’s, like me) have joined me. They’ve arrived one-by-one and some in pairs. They are sitting loosely to 2 other tables, and I am well attached to another via my computer. I look up every now and then and a nod or smile is exchanged. After 3 months of “Buongiorno!”, “Ciao!”, “Buonasera!” and “What did you call me?” I think I’m finally accepted as a member of their community. I couldn’t be happier.

~ Janelle Renée

I live in Siena, Italy. My favorite time of the day, isn’t! It’s at night. Piazza del Campo (pictured above and below) is beautiful anytime of the day and night; it’s simply magical.

Friends ask me what it’s like living in Siena. I always reply it’s like living on the set of a fairytale. I think so, not only because of its enchanting beauty, but also because it is otherworldly.

I live in the center and don’t have a car. There are no new buildings–most, if not all, are from the Middle Ages. Few cars clutter the narrow curvy and up-and-down streets, because only residents with special permits are allowed. Siena was one of the first European cities to adopt this brilliant idea. (Imagine San Francisco, or any other major city, with a tenth of its cars!)

No modern buildings, very few cars, ancient buildings, everybody around me speaking Italian, and breathtaking views of the Tuscan countryside from my apartment … it is no wonder that I feel as if I live in a fairytale.

Two nights ago I went for a walk alone. (I have no fear wandering aimlessly and alone through Siena’s center–only this is possible in tame fairlytales and in Siena!) I live close to Piazza del Campo and walking through the square to make my way home, I heard Dylan’s Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door. Two young men were belting it out on their guitars and with their better-than-average voices. Not that a reason is needed to stop, sit, and enjoy Piazza del Campo’s atmosphere, but when you traverse the square at least 3 or 4 times a day, even the beautiful becomes ordinary. Thanks to those two men, however, I sat down and relaxed and was reminded how lucky I am to be living and to be living here.

~ Janelle Renée

(For Part 1 of this post, click here.)

The other day in the New York Times, I read an article that made me a little sad. In 1993 an at-the-time closeted, lesbian Lisa Sherman attended a diversity workshop that her company Bell Atlantic hosted. During one exercise participants were asked to write out stereotypes about different groups of people–presumably to unearth hidden prejudices, to bring them to light so that the participants can then embrace higher-minded ways of thinking about people different than themselves. For the gay group, many offensive remarks were made by people that Ms. Sherman considered to be her friends.

This spurred her to have a dynamic conversation some days later, not with her “friends”, but with her boss. It also led her to quit her job “since she could not imagine working with people who thought those things about her.”

I know that it is easy for me to sit here in judgment of this woman. Although I’ve had some experiences with sexism as a woman who has worked both in corporate America and as my own boss (in this role, two older white men come to mind with whom I had to do business business–one was in a business-to-business transaction and the other a business-client transactions), I am a straight white female. The prejudice gays and lesbians experience is at least double that of gender prejudice.

That said, I was saddened for the squandered growth opportunities. Because, in fact, the statements her colleagues made were not about her per se, the person that they’ve worked years with. The comments expressed were feelings, ideas, and impressions about a group of people (gays and lesbians) that they (the colleagues) didn’t know they could know, especially on a personal level.

A by-no-means-simple confession and clarification by Ms. Sherman like, “Hey, I’m gay. Do those words describe me?” would’ve rocked her colleagues’ world. Certainly, there would’ve been those who would’ve dived deeper into their low-road mind (fear, shame and embarrassment find infantile comfort there), but equally as certain there would’ve been those who would’ve done a double-take at their words and the person they’ve come to know.

Ms. Sherman missed a wonderful growth opportunity for herself, too. Her beliefs about “those people” were as ignorant as those her colleagues held against gays. “Those people” are capable of growth, are capable of moving out of their ignorance, are capable of changing, are capable of using new information when their higher-mind acquires it. She failed, too, to be a friend by challenging her friends and their beliefs.

I once held similar beliefs as those colleagues of Sherman about gays and lesbians. I’m from a rural bedroom community roughly 100 miles due east of San Francisco. I didn’t think that I knew gays or lesbians. Will and Grace wouldn’t be a national hit for some ten years after I graduated from high school.

In other words, the opportunity didn’t exist for me to discover first hand (or even second hand) that gays and lesbians were people who existed outside of their bedroom partner preference, that they, too, were people with hopes, dreams, fears, ambitions, families, and etc. My low-road thinking was forced to give way to my high-road mind: These are ordinary people. Just as normal, or strange, as everybody else I know; they just happen to be attracted to people of the same gender.

Of course, when I meet a gay person from the San Francisco Bay Area and my first thought is, “Oh! I wonder if he knows so-and-so” (because all gay people know each other), I am reminded that old ways of thinking die hard, if at all. So, I’m certain that I’m forever stuck with my knee-jerk patriotic possessiveness when confronted with Italian Snoopy, Italian Superman, Italian Coca Cola, and Italian soccer (!).

But, enough about what I think. Snoopy, what do you have to say about all of this?

“I gave up trying to understand people long ago. Now I just let them try to understand me!” –Snoopy

Well said, Snoop. You’re a good American dog.

~Janelle Renée

It was a dark and stormy night…

It’s a cliché statement, but it’s true: Living abroad opens your mind.

This one truth rubbed up rather roughly against my thin-skinned pride about being a liberal from the San Francisco Bay Area. I am open-minded. I know that other cultures exist, have value, are as important as my own, that people the world over are entitled to the same fair treatment, rights and laws (to protect them and for them to abide by), etc., etc., and, finally, etc. To me, all of these points–as well as a myriad of other related ones–are self-evident even if they aren’t universally embraced.

So, when I go into a café and I see Snoopy typing away on his manual typewriter the infamous line, “It was a dark stormy night…” and my half-second knee-jerk is, “Snoopy is Ours! Why is he typing in Italian?!?!” I feel shame. Snoopy, of course, belongs to everybody.

Maybe I’m simply coming up with justifications to explain my feelings of patriotic possessiveness about Snoopy, and perhaps what I’m about to write is self-evident as well (for all I don’t know, it might have even been scientifically proven to exist), but I believe that each of us has a high-mind and a low-mind. Our high-mind is what we’ve cultivated through education (that which we’ve received from our teachers, school, and self education) and has been augmented with experience.

Our low-mind, however, is a storehouse of the things of which we’ve grown accustomed, things known through our 5 physical senses as well as our other senses (emotional/energy/instinctual/what-have-you). When we encounter something foreign or novel, it activates our low-mind and annoyingly bypasses the high-mind. If we are aware enough, this moment can last very briefly, like a fraction of a second, and our high-mind can swoop down like Superman–Hey, he’s Ours, too! Oops, did it again–to save us before we make an ass out of ourselves and before our friends can roll their eyes in a do-I-know-you disbelief.

Tomorrow, Part 2.

-Janelle Renée

Ciao from Siena, Italy!

The weather here has been very strange. It’s like a San Francisco winter: chilly and wet. The natives say that this weather is not normal for Tuscany this time of the year.

No matter. I’m here to live, and a little foul weather won’t scare me away. At least not yet. A lot of foul weather? Well, I am from California. That is to say, I don’t tolerate ugly weather gracefully.

Luckily, there’s much to discover and experience here in Siena. It may be a tiny city–46 sq. mi. with roughly 55,000 inhabitants. San Francisco? 49 sq. mi. and nearly 765,000 souls–but its history is rich and long. And, then there’s the language. A lot of my time is devoted to learning Italian.

Siena offers free Italian lessons to immigrants. The classes are excellent, because the teachers are top-notch. The second best thing I like about the school is that it is truly multicultural. In my classes I’ve met two Ethiopians, a Senegalese, a Turk, some Romanians, a Brit, an Uzbek, two Russians, an Indian, and two Martians. (Martians are NOT to be trusted! If you don’t believe me, you must watch Mars Attacks! Don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

Anyway, most everybody at the school speaks English as their second language, so it is fairly easy to communicate when our Italian fails us. What sets me apart from the group, other than the fact that Italian is my second-ish language (I briefly studied French some time back), is that I’m the only person who came to Italy simply because. Everybody else came to Italy for a better life: for work, for economic stability, and/or to send money back home to the loved ones they’ve left behind.

My favorite thing about the free Italian classes? Every Wednesday and Friday I am reminded how fortunate I am to have been born in a country ripe with opportunities for education and work.

~Janelle Renée

Walking through my new home town (Siena, Italy) the other day, I found myself drawn to the various window displays with cute summertime dresses, sunglasses, sunhats, and bathing suits.

Different variations of “I want” thoughts passed through my head, sprinkled with feelings of lack: Not having a perfect body, not having enough money, and not having a great wardrobe.

As I walked past the final clothes shop before turning down the street on which I live, I caught a glimpse of my reflection. I was wearing my long black jacket that I bought in Dublin just over a year ago, a skirt that cost me only $7 at a high-end consignment shop in Oakland, California last September, simple brown pumps I bought in Brescia just a few days before my departure to Siena, and a three week old button-down white shirt that I bought at the open-air market shortly before devouring a tasty cinghiale panino (wild boar sandwich). I had to face the facts: I looked classy, pretty even, in the clothes on my body, and I already own them. At one time I desired, too, the clothes on my body. Where did the “want” for the clothes I already have, go?

It struck me as weird that the want of something new never completely goes away. “Want” is a free agent. It’s a playboy who is never satisfied with its latest conquests. “Want” only knows want and is empowered by the lies told by “Lack”.

In other news…

-I went to the medieval village of San Gimigno on Sunday. It’s small, charming, hilly, and has stunning views of the Tuscan countryside outside of its walls. San Gimigno has many towers. The rich and wealthy amused themselves by building towers back in the day. What else would you do if you were young, wealthy, and sports cars had yet to be invented? Or, conversely, if you were hitting mid-age, needed to feel young and vibrant, and sport cars had yet to be invented? Come on, admit it: building towers would be at the top of your list, too!

-Here’s a link to a free condensed e-book about living a happy life. It’s a nice read, but after I thought that it’s just a recycling of all the other self-help books out there–they make you feel good, commit to reevaluation and change, but 2 or 3 years later you are reaching for another Zen and the Art of Living book.

Perhaps the happy life isn’t behind glass on a mannequin. Chances are that you are wearing it now, but simply forgot.

by Janelle Renée

*This post is an edited version of a recent post from my personal blog.

Hello. I’m Janelle Renée. I’m Babel’s newest blogger.

What am I doing here? Who am I? Good questions! I’m still figuring out the answers to those questions, but the short answers of what I do know are:

Malcolm Lawrence, the founder/CEO and Editor-In-Chief of the non-profit organization behind this blog, found me on InterNations. (InterNations is an online social network for those of us crazy enough to live and work abroad. Misery loves company, as does insanity.) Emails and links were exchanged, including a link to my blog, Just Thoughts. He sent me an email and asked me if I’d like to be a blogger for this fine site.

And, voila!, here I am!

Before I forget, I must explain one thing. You may have noticed that this post is numbered. It’s a tradition I started with my blog. (I’m getting set to write post #774.) My motto is, if you don’t surrender to minor obsessive-compulsive impulses, you run the frightful risk of being consumed by major ones. So, I number my posts and I surrender to all chocolate impulses. Better that than, say, shouting obscurities out your window every morning. Ahem.

I think that covers, somewhat, the why of “Why am I here?” Next: the who of “Who am I?”

That’s a toughy, so I’ll start with the easy stuff: I’m a female. I’m 36 years old. Single. Straight. Tall–5′10 1/2″. I’m an American living in Siena, Italy.

Prior to moving to Italy last year, I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area where I owned a home furnishings design and fabrication business with my then-husband.

I enjoy writing, photography, yoga, meditation, people, art, languages, reading, movies, etc., etc., etc…

Well, I’ve just bored myself stiff and speechless–a good indication that I should sign off now and get ready for the little road trip I’m taking in about an hour. I’m going to San Gimignano, a small medieval city near Siena that’s famous for its towers.

Until next time!