Rockport reflections

Rockport, MA (Sept 5, 2005)

After almost 10 years since I moved to the US, my parents are visiting from Italy. They never traveled much in their life, so it was quite an effort to make them take a transatlantic flight to Boston from Italy. They will stay here for two weeks, and we are showing them around New England. Today we went to the North Shore. This crooked old lamp was in Rockport. Once a fishermen town, now a nice quaint New England touristic destination.

It is interesting to see through the eyes of somebody what by now has become so familiar to me. After so much time spent here, I forgot the many things that caused me surprise when I first arrived in the US. It is refreshing to be reminded that the world can be different. Things that I complain about all the time, are seen as done right compared to the way they are done in Italy. Things that I am totally accustomed to, are instead cause of bewilderment. All this does not refer only to the local architecture, but also to the way people live.

And one point that has caused a lot of surprise and astonishment in my parents, and I suspect in the people living in many parts of the world, is the way the grave crisis in New Orleans was mis-handled by the federal authorities. Abroad, there is this image of the US as a country with exceptional capabilities, an invincible superpower whose might conquers nature and enemies with superior efficiency and organization. Seeing poor people stranded on the roofs of a submerged New Orleans, crying for desperate help and getting none for more than five days, has totally shattered this image, and the way the US are seen from the rest of the world.