(This essay was written some years ago. I'm repeating it now because I'm away on vacation, and because it's still funny, at least to me.)

I've been studying my Italian Word Each Day for 1999 Vocabulary Enrichment Calendar, Advanced Level.

So far, I've been taught the meaning of assoggetabile, amichevole, amoroso, ammortizzare, anemico and analogo, not to mention (skipping around) stupefacente, and furbo. I like furbo. In English, it means astute, sly, or cunning. Pick one. My voccabulario es-PAN-de-re, ra-pi-da-MEN-te-re.

In this calendar, Italian words for January start with the letter "A." February is "B" and so on, so by July I'll have mastered the Italian language all the way up to "G." For some reason, this reminds me of those A-Z mystery novels by Sue Grafton. "A" is for "Alibi," "B is for Burglary," down to "Z is for Zee End."

Most of the words in this Italian calendar have no earthly use for Americans who might want to speak Italian in Italy. What do I want with acclimatize, aloof, amenable, amicable, amorous -- OK, I KNOW what to do with that word -- amortize, anemic, analogous, apathy, astute, or atrocious? For whom are these words intended? Amicably amorous anemic bankers?

I need the words for "no" and "way" as in NO WAY I'm getting in that leaky old gon-DO-la.

I'm having more fun planning a trip to Italy than we could possibly have being there. Italy will be like Mendocino -- crowded with tourists all seeking the same thing -- ice cream. We plan to travel off the beaten track, to places so ugly, so dirty, so dangerous that we'll have them all to ourselves -- just us and the other 27 Americans who read about it in the same guidebook.

I have my own special way to figure out which guide book series are the most accurate. I look up Ukiah. Since most guidebooks don't mention Ukiah, I look up Mendocino. Most descriptions of my favorite home town are glib and brief. The most original one reads, "The town of Mendocino is quaint indeed and does a thriving tourist trade. But while everyone talks about how it looks 'just like' a New England fishing village, it really does not. The streets are too wide and straight, and the houses are set too far apart and don't have shutters."

So there.

In Mendocino you visit Ukiah to get away from crowds. Or walk among the stately redwoods in Montgomery Woods State Reserve on the way to Ukiah. In these places you won't see many other tourists. Especially in Ukiah.

Don't misunderstand me -- there's nothing wrong with Ukiah. It's just that Ukiah does not register in guidebooks. It just is not there. I'm hoping to find places like Ukiah in Italy. Places that, spelled backward, mean "short meaningless poem in Japanese."

I guess you could travel without all this guidance, but that would be like trying to learn Italian from a calendar. If you don't over-plan you might walk right by an important museum or miss an historic battlefield. Come to think of it, who needs another museum? And if you've seen one historic battlefield...

All the great sights of Italy are just great, according to most guidebooks. One exception is The Rough Guide to Florence which allows that "after registering these marvelous sights, it's hard to stave off a sense of disappointment, for much of Florence is a city of... dour, fortress-like houses, of unfinished buildings and characterless squares." We need more honest writing like that in our guide books.

The weight and size of guidebooks becomes a packing problem. Some people copy pages they need and leave the books at home. Others tear their books apart as they travel and burn the pages to keep warm. There goes Spain, up in flames. There goes Portugal. When you get home what you have left is the cover, the index, and a custom out-of-date guide to the places you didn't visit.

Aired Sunday December 28, 2008 at 10:55 am and Wednesday December 31, 2008 at 1:00 pm

NOTES:

First aired as "Learning Italian from a Calendar" on January 28, 1999).

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