INGRID writes:

Thanks for publishing Josaphine’s story the other day. I have often thought about writing my own story, of how liberalism almost ruined my life, as a way to warn others. I was lucky – I had a few “eye-opening” events when I was still young enough to change course without any long-term damage or problems, although like anyone else, I suffer the consequences of some of my past mistakes. I had already radically changed the course of my life when I discovered your blog, but I have been reading it since you started writing and it has been one of several important influences on me. I have reconsidered the importance of family vs. career and have also started a gradual return to the Church. (Or, maybe I should say, arrival, since I was never very religious.) I have family members and friends who have destroyed their lives by living in strict accordance with the tenets of liberalism.

I have always enjoyed your posts about pizza, as I live in southern Italy and eat pizza at least once a week! I have been meaning to comment for awhile. I live in a small town where many houses still have outdoor wood-burning ovens for baking bread and pizza. Its very common in the summer for people to invite friends and relatives over and to make pizzas in the outdoor oven – we celebrated the birthday of one of my friends in this way a few weeks ago. My fiancé and I are starting to fix up a house now, and I’m going to have a wood oven built and placed somewhere in the yard. Pizza is my favourite food to eat in a restaurant – it is inexpensive, filling and delicious! (Well, usually delicious!) This time of year, one of my favourite pizzas is available, with something that is called “fior di zucca” in Italian. (I can’t remember what it is called in English – probably squash flower or zucchini flower.) These flowers aren’t available year-round – you can only find them in early summer. If any of your readers have gardens or can buy these flowers at the store, I would suggest that they try preparing this pizza at home. You can make pizza with dough and zucchini flowers only, or mozzarella and zucchini flowers, or any combination of ingredients that you like. One of my favourites is zucchini flowers, mozzarella, shrimp and shreds of parmesan. I also like pizza with roasted potatoes and rosemary – with or without mozzarella. However, I think that the best pizza is a Margherita, preferably prepared in and eaten in Naples: tomato, basil and mozzarella! I seem to be able to eat an entire pizza only in Naples – the dough is “lighter” there, and less filling. Pizza, like all Italian food, varies quite a bit from region to region, or city to city, rather. I imagine that this is the case with all real indigenous, “local” cusine, anywhere in the world.

Christine’s comment about cutting pizza with scissors made me smile. Here, everyone cuts pizza with scissors at home – it really is much easier. I’ve never seen this in a restaurant, though. I’ve traveled a bit, up in Tuscanny, but I’ve never tried pizza there.

I was traveling in the US with my fiancé a little over a year ago, and one afternoon we drove past a Pizza Hut restaurant. He told me that he was hungry and wanted to stop there. “You won’t like it,” I told him, “It isn’t anything like the pizza in Italy. Let’s eat somewhere else.”

He insisted that he wanted to try it, so we stopped there, sat down and ordered a pizza. “You won’t eat anything,” I warned him, “then you’ll still be hungry and we’ll have to stop somewhere else.” To my surprise, he absolutely loved the pizza! He liked the pan crust – in our part of Italy, pizza crust is usually fairly thin. He loved the “cheese” and tomatoes. “It isn’t like the mozzarella that we buy at home,” I told him, “it is just a mixture of additives and chemicals.” “You’re just saying that because you don’t like American food,” he replied. He loved the pepperoni. He also loved the free refills on sodas, and the free glasses of water with ice and lemon. (Nothing is free in restaurants in Europe!!) He loved everything about Pizza Hut and their pizza!

                                 — Comments —

Aaron writes:

My great-grandparents, who came over from southern Italy during WW II, generally hated eating out. The only two places they ever liked to eat out were Pizza Hut and this cheap, crummy, greasy Chinese buffet in town. None of the rest of us in the family understood — with so much good home-made food, and other better restaurants, they really adored Pizza Hut.

Caroline writes:

Ingrid’s comments were interesting, but I have some comments. She says she’s rethinking things about career & family, and that she is inspired by you, but mentions building a house w/her fiancé. Uh, isn’t that something one should do with a husband? Also travelling with one’s fiancé generally means than one is engaging in marital relations w/said fiance—esp. today, of course. 

It seems to me Ingrid is very blithe about this, but as a Traditionalist, I know that the core of our one civilized society was sexual restraint and the sanctity of marriage. This should also be the core of conservatism. Or maybe it is, and Conservatives themselves often don’t live by the morals of old. 

Immorality has become so mundane in our society today that we almost don’t have a vocabulary to describe it: ask 20 people on the street if they know what fornication is. 

The dry rot under the decay of Western Civilization is sexual immorality. I believe this the true reason we have no backbone as a country. Perhaps Ingrid is a victim and participant of the decadence that is unremarkably normal today.

Diana writes:

I laughed at the letter from Ingrid, in which she related her Italian boyfriend’s appreciation of Pizza Hut. Isn’t it true that so often, we appreciate America more after seeing it through the eyes of a
foreigner to our bountiful shores? I began to notice the sheer volume of free stuff – and it’s surprisingly high quality – after it was pointed out by the late British writer Anthony Burgess.

I wrote you once about Amy Chua, the famous (is she still?) Chinese “Tiger Mother.” One of the things she related in her book was that she insisted her piano-playing daughter practice the instrument every day, including vacation days. She mentioned that this was a problem in Europe. Pianos are everywhere in America, but according to Chua, not so in Europe. And when they were found in hotels in Europe, they were under lock and key and difficult to get to, whereas in the US, even the cheapest accommodation seemed to have a piano available and if not being used by a house musician, they’d let Chua and her daughter use it.

Chua didn’t herself note the difference between European and US attitudes, but I did. It reminded me of something Burgess would have noticed: that for all Europe’s proprietary snootiness towards its high culture, it’s in the US where you can find it available for the masses: you and me.

Isn’t it wonderful?

Happy Fourth!

Sage McLaughlin writes:

Caroline takes Ingrid to task for living immorally with her fiancé. Just to be clear, if I had twenty bucks to bet, I’d bet that Caroline is probably right for a number of reasons (the Italian connection not least among them). But let’s be fair to Ingrid. What she said was that she is fixing up a house with her fiancé, which is actually a normal and practical thing to do when you are planning to marry someone and you have the funds to outfit a home in advance. You don’t start a project like that after you get married any more than Noah would have started working on the Ark before after it started raining. And while it’s probable that a couple traveling through the country the way Ingrid described is doing so in an unchaste fashion–the times being what they are–it is most unfair simply to assume as much and berate a person without knowing the facts.

In short, I think Caroline deals harshly and presumptuously with Ingrid. As traditionalists we have to find frank but courteous ways of stating these things–perhaps something like, “I hope this does not mean that Ingrid is living with her fiancee, as it will be harmful to her marriage and will make her a much less convincing witness to the Church and to traditionalism in general. Pardon me if my guess is mistaken.” For the record, I almost never speak this way when the time calls for it, as I am a notorious scold (and a hypocrite to boot).

Caroline writes:

Sage is right that I came off as being haughty and presumptuous. Even though I was writing about Ingrid, I was attempting to express my dismay at the pervasive immorality of our times. I appreciate Sage suggesting a better way to phrase the idea when addressing a person. 

Incidentally, I was at a party last weekend, and there was a young couple (both worked for Sears and live in my town). The female half was sweet and typical of her generation, I’m sure. “We’ve been living together for a month,” she said oh-so-casually. It makes me so sad. I didn’t comment because I felt she wouldn’t have a clue. I don’t know this person, nor she me; it’s really none of my beeswax, as we used to say in grade school. Young women like her are the fruits of feminism and endless peddling of the lies of the sexual revolution that surely has been imbibed by her and probably her g’ma, too. Oy. 

Forgive me, for sometimes I just have to write things off the cuff, or I wouldn’t write anything, due to business and putting things off.

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