26 Forms . . .
26 Forms to Fill Out, if You Want to Export a Box of Pajamas!
Let’s pretend we’re entering a big and very old but still well maintained perfectly working machine that moves us through time. It has everything. Infinite height, depth and width. It has halls that stretch forth with doors flanking each side down endless corridors traipsing this way and that, sometimes straight, sometimes meandering in weird twisty ways that defy understanding. Once we enter, we know how easy it is to get lost just after one turn not to mention all the doors.
Now. With that in mind...
Neon green letters flash on and off as though electrically charged. Beaming into consciousness and sounding thunderous.
Entry-Point: March - 1985 - Hot Article in Cold Times - Write On Reader’s Digest!
Entry-Point: March - 1985 - Hot Article in Cold Times - Write on Reader’s Digest!
It repeats again and again. Has something malfunctioned? What’s going on?
We’ve wound up in some strange room where shadows dance upon one wall opposite a window where a tree branch waves outside passively greeting us along with the wind as it gusts in small bursts tapping something loose outside. No. Nothing’s loose. There’s some kind of wooden toy whirligig and now we notice, it too is playing shadows, spinning on the wall.
It’s become comfortable, the chair, the muted tones of light, but then we’re pulled as it were into a television commercial.
A guy in a plaid suit is blasting his voice into a mega-phone. What do Jeans & Pajamas have in common?
Oh, that’s easy you say, Clothes! But wait! He adds like a swift marketer for the newest gizmo and he revs on: What! Full stop. What if we throw in a shoe factory, a vineyard, leather craft, and for good measure, an artificial flower workshop?
Holy crackin’! At this point, I sure wanna know what all that has in common, but then...
It’s curtains for Mr. Swifty Plaid who was gesticulating frantically like there’s no tomorrow. Literally. Curtains! The big red velvet curtains swish and close. In seconds a tall man calmly walks on.
He is the Narrator. We’ll call him Clay More. And he says,
“Good evening. My name is Clay More.”
He appears starched and fine, washed and ironed into existence by some Spotless Cleaners on a phantom Main Street somewhere.
“There exists no K-Tel or Insta-Chop announcer here. But a deliberate watcher such as myself who hopes to impart a truth that will answer the riddle of what Jeans & Pajamas have in common, not to mention the shoe factory, vineyard, leather craft and, as our defunct broadcaster added, before he was poofed out of existence, an artificial flower workshop.
We’ll present here some of the many Italian difficulties from days gone by, and, indeed our Canadian, American (or any other country in our so-called modern world), who, seem unable to crawl out of their two-year old realm, of potty training and “It’s my toy! Mine!”.
At which point, the other announcer, plaid as ever, seemed to resurrect himself from behind the curtain screaming to high-heaven:
This is MY infomercial! Mine! Mine! All Mine!
He stamped his feet and his face turned bright red and if it were possible flames would have fired from his mouth.
Clay More was quite amused. “Didn’t you get the memo?”
“What memo?” Announcer replied.
“They cut out the rest of your part.”
“What?! I worked for days getting it just right. They can’t do that!”
“Well,” Clay More said, “If it’s any consolation, I think you put on a pretty good performance just now with all that “Mine Business.” I’m gonna recommend they keep you in. All you have to do is sit quietly down there where the audience will be on opening night and pay attention. How’z that?”
“And I’ll get paid the same?” “Absolutely.” “What you just did is integral to our story.”
“Wow. I’m integral.” He swifty stands up straight. He pads over to the side stairs where he steps neatly down to the front row and sits quietly.
Clay clears his throat and continues, Verily, verily, shall it be said:
If we are to play nice in this sandbox called earth, we’d better get our act together, and remove from office, any official-official, who can’t official their way out of a paper bag, or a basket or a crate if we’re reducing plastic bags, cardboard and mixed packaging. Who knows what to do with that? But let’s get back to:
Shoe Factory, Vineyard and all that. What do they have in common?
The answer on all of the above is the fact that their production relies on the active market called lavoro nero (“black labour”) where the work is done, unreported and untaxed.
As we look a little closer to understand something about the Italy of 1985, we’ll get into the heart of the article and the soul of a people who, against all odds, are resilient and happy, even in the face of tyranny.
Dominico Finizio, who operated a one-room shoe factory at the time said, “If everything were official, the social charges alone would add over 50 percent to every salary”.
A Tale of Two Italy's
The newsprint page #76 is eerily coloured. A real canary yellow in the background has the strange effect akin to the tape put around a Danger Zone. It is somehow disturbing to the eye, but it’s the foreground that really issues an alert that something’s screwy.
In the moment it takes for visual-brain sync to get over the yellow flash, the foreground identifies itself. It’s that familiar landmass of Italy, that old easy-to-identify, boot. But what’s not so easy to realize is the paradox of the two societies represented on this page as a fractured geographical tangle.
To unpack the riddle, of why Italy has segments of let’s just say people doing good for good’s sake and also messed-up evil that are confined to their mental prison of over-regulation.
Our author has provided us easy-to-remember monikers for the two polar opposites that are sprinkled around the economic landscape like black and white confetti.
One society, the author names: Disastria and the other, he names: Prosperitania.
The facts laid plain, these two realities come down to this:
The Former, Disastria is: A society built on over-regulation due to immorality in government, seeping downhill onto a population of collective victims who respond in turn, adopting methods to survive.
The latter, Prosperitania is: A society built from hard work and collective service of its members. Each one, fulfilling moral virtues and thus laws are not required. Neither, are Bureaucrats.
But of course, we can see how that would be bad for their dirty business of ruining people’s lives. As they ____. (Fill in the blank) Which reminds me:
How many Bureaucrats does it take to change a light-bulb?
Zero. Why? Because they will sit around in endless meetings arguing about how best to go about the whole process. It will never get done.
But let’s go back to THE ENTRY POINT. A Tale Of Two Italy's. Swimming in cheap newsprint from The Reader’s Digest of 1985 when it obviously was cutting back on its glossy pages heralding back to memories of an October version in 1959 that was full-on glossy. Every single page! That in itself tells a deep truth. Even The Reader’s Digest had to make cut-backs. While never compromising good ethics and the sharing of life on a page, they nevertheless, decided they would cut back in page-count and paper quality.
It’s remarkable though, even be it a cartoonish canary yellow page with a fractured boot in hues of green in the south, a weird brown and pink in the interior and deeper tones of green and some other unidentifiable colour of mud and grey at its south-most point, how the page speaks from the tombs of time in a grim foreboding for future generations. Somehow artists have a natural way with putting the unspeakable down with colour and form even if they’re told we’re working on the cheap. Make do. Well, here we have it!
The brackish tones of puzzle-piece Italy with its muddy painted photo attributed to: Gary Mirando, Construction: Walter Einsel (though the page credits them in small type) gives me the sense that these two men knew exactly what they were doing when their creative wizardry had the page fronting this article go pop!
Well done Gentlemen! Your work kindles the kind of joy in me that a kid gets from finding Easter candy hidden in Grandma’s washing machine out on the back porch. Yes, that actually did happen. How to get past that joy and share the dark reality hidden behind the sunny background of the page is another story because the caption reads:
On the face of it, the nation is an antipasto of chronic calamities. Yet it thrives, con brio.
The author of this snappy slice of history wrapped in a garment of burlap, I cannot locate on the vexed numerical analyzer, but his name is printed below the title: Jeff Davidson. He writes:
IN THE once-upon-a-time land of Disastria, the 44th government in 39 years is on the brink of collapse. The budget is dangerously swollen, massive government debt. Last year was the 12th consecutive year of double-digit inflation. Public services fester in a state of permanent emergency, and the morning news brings a daily litany of strikes. Ruin or revolution is just around the corner.
Sounds like our whole world in 2024, doesn’t it? But wait. It’s not all bad. Remember the Easter candy? Over here and there in little pockets all over Italy cam be found people living in the realm of Prosperitania where LIFE IS GOOD!
The question is: Why don’t people from Disastria move to Prosperitania? Our author identifies: Both lands are pieces of the baffling jigsaw puzzle known as Italy.
What I love most about this paradox is that it’s clear that people’s mindset puts them in either The Good Place or The Bad Place.
Despite the problems that entangle public life, Italians survive and thrive privately, and no people seem to have so much fun while in such deep trouble.
So when Jeff posed the question to the then Prime Minister of Italy, Amintore Fanfani, 77, at the time, the riddle was solved by the leader in plain sweet Italian:
Canta che ti passa - Sing and let it blow over.
I can imagine him grinning as he says it and goes on to describe the centuries of invasions and tyrannies that their people went through. It apparently created a kind of resourcefulness where people didn’t want to waste time with any type of formal resistance.
The meat of the story, shares examples of people’s resilience. Some building small fledgling businesses or transforming existing companies that need make-overs. Such as the case with Giorgio Lungarotti’s vineyard. He knew he needed to change with the times and did so, purchasing new equipment, and modernizing the whole operation. His wife created a Wine Museum and their daughter,Theresa, with the benefit of multilingual prowess, had worldwide public relations covered.
The most striking revelation that Giorgio makes is in his secret: Personal relations.
Who duh thunkit, right? Something so simple as “play nice”. Yet it’s something that “the state” can’t seem to figure out.
“Oh, but rule #53 of section 1-2.5, paragraph 100,063 of the law explicitly says the following...
Wait, I have it here somewhere. What? It was already redacted? I guess I’ll have to write you a temporary ticket, or permit, but I’m clueless as to which one, because I have nothing to refer to now and after-all, I am an order-taker and not used to thinking about what to do in an emergency such as this.
But Giorgio, with his secret weapon of: Good Personal Relations says this:
I’ve seen the state-subsidized co-operative vineyards waste fortunes on massive projects that a family of four could have handled more effectively.
Whether it’s wine-making, or pasta production or blue jeans, the entrepreneurial spirit of resourcefulness rose above anything Disastria wanted to impose. In the case of the blue jeans company, it was directed by a priest. A 15-person clothing workshop had been created to help against the unemployment and subsequently, the area near Urbania had become the blue-jeans center of Europe.
As a businessman operating a one-room factory producing shoes says;
If everything were official, the social charges alone would add over 50 percent to every salary. Our customers can’t afford to go through all the required billing and record-keeping procedures either, so we all end up acting like smugglers. Most importantly the Italians had proclaimed:
Tutto è proibito, tutto è possible. - Everything is forbidden, everything is possible.
The two opposing mindsets of People in Italy and in Paper Italy meant that the people knew they needed to prevail. If it meant beating the system, then beat it they would. After all, Jeff writes from history:
Paper Italy still requires 26 forms to be filled out in order to export a box of pajamas’.
And I say: That is foolish. And that, is exactly why sinister and bloated governments cannot succeed and resilient people can.
And the riddle of what all those varied businesses had in common is the ability to thrive despite the oppression.
Swifty Plaid, had a remarkable look of discovery just then.
“They cut my part because I wouldn’t fill out their stupid forms and get a license!”
“Ah yes!” said Clay. “But I, being me, and knowing a little bit of what I know, you know, will make sure you are compensated appropriately for all your time and hard work.”
“What strings you gonna pull?”
“These ones,” said Clay. And the red curtains swished back open. There on the stage was a neon green sign flashing electric: Entry Point - Undefined - Entry Point – Undefined.
Shocked and Amazed. Here we go again.
Sandra El
