The following post is the first in what I hope will be a series of posts by a friend and former colleague, Elena Chiocchetti.
You may remember Elena from her help with some of my Italian explorations. In addition to those more technical discussions, we exchange email about cultural differences between the U.S. and Italy, as well as about current events. Over the past several years since I moved away from Italy, I have enjoyed our exchanges, especially those on which Elena holds forth on a topic. She writes well, amusingly, and often with the intention of being provocative, so I suggested that she be a guest blogger here. After some back and forth, she agreed, with the content being edited (by me) from our email. Since we write (mostly) in Italian (I need the practice much more than she needs practice in English), I’ll give the original Italian version, and then my (computer assisted) translation into English below it.
On to the first “Conversation with Elena.” Avanti! (=Onwards!)