A Romantic Chunk of Wax Dinner

Candles are meant to be burned.   When it's not dark there's no need for them because according to several dictionary definitions (and me) candles are burned to give light.  During the day they're on deck waiting to shine later.

An unburned candle is just a piece of wax.  And if you have no intention of burning it, why not buy a little sculpture of a frog that doesn't have a wick coming out of it's head or a colored vase for flowers that might reflect in the sunlight instead of a cylindrical piece of wax?  

I have a friend that had the same two tapers in her candlesticks for more than a year.  In the summer they got so hot from the sun shining through the window that they melted.  I liked them better that way.  It seemed like they'd been burned a little.
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The three candles I gave an Italian friend as a hostess gift were still sitting on her shelf several weeks later in the same way they'd been presented---a small glass with a blue handmade candle in it and two red tapers tied to the side with twine, all worth about 75 cents.  When I asked why she hadn't burned them she said she wants to keep them as a gift.  This is the mom of an 8-year old girl that comes for English lessons and at the end of every lesson we toast marshmallows on candles at my kitchen table.  I thought my gift might inspire the same activity at home, but apparently at her house candles aren't meant to be burned.

Things that are shapes and figures shouldn't be candles.  I received a gold, glittery Christmas tree candle this year which I lit right away.  After a few minutes it was a tree with a big hole in the top and gold glitter oozing down its sides, but I enjoyed the temporary glow a lot more than a gold tree with an unlit wick where the star should have been.  My red, white and blue stars for the 4th of July didn't have a point (no pun intended) after the first few minutes.  I've had fish that turned into jellyfish, an Easter bunny that went deaf and mini-apples that became applesauce.  All of these little disasters make me think the dictionary definitions are right.

Collins:   a candle is a stick of hard wax with a piece of string called a wick through the middle.
You light the wick in order to give a steady flame that provides light.
MacMillan:  a stick of wax with a string in it that you burn to give light.
Oxford:  a cylinder block of wax with a central wick which is lit to produce light as it burns.
Dictionary.com:  a long, usually slender piece of tallow or wax with an embedded wick that is burned to give light.

These are chunks of wax that I don't consider candles.
They're the leftover applesauce, bunny legs and fish lips
that didn't burn.  They're waiting to be melted, molded and
wicked to shine again one day.

But then there's Merriam-Webster:  a usually molded or dipped mass of wax or tallow containing a wick that MAY BE burned (as to give light, heat or scent for celebration o votive purposes).

So according to Webster it MAY BE burned but it doesn't have to be.  Fortunately, my favorite dictionaries have always been Oxford.  Candles have a purpose and if you take away their purpose they just sit there doing nothing.  Isn't it better to shine and live a little than just sit there doing nothing?

Stick People Families on the Move

Stick people families have just started moving to Italy.  They look just like the American families, but their names all end with vowels.  A lot of them ride around in SUVs, just like in America. I guess I should mention that SUVs haven't been around all that long either.  Ten years ago the biggest cars in Italy were station wagons.  And now that Americans are finally wising up and getting Smart cars, Italians are buying SUVs.

A lot of Americans think of Italy as a place of fashion and style and firsts.  That might be true in Milan, but does anyone (in America or Italy) really wear the clothes from Milan runways?  As for my little town in northern Italy I find it far from fashion forward.  For example, finding an interesting pair of shoes means a trip to Paris or Serbia or Berlin. One day I was googling my favorite brand and discovered that they were sold in my town, so I ran (in my running shoes) to the store.  They only had a few styles and it was the end of winter, so I asked when they'd be getting the spring line.  They said they wouldn't be carrying them anymore because the styles are too avant-garde for people in Bassano.  Imagine!  German shoes that I bought in Brussels in 2008 are too avant-garde in Veneto in 2017.

Speaking of shoes, I'd like to address the stereotype about Americans and their sneakers.  I think even guidebooks used to say that if you didn't want to stick out like a real tourist in Italy you shouldn't bring your tennis shoes.  I'm not sure if they've edited that page, but it's no longer true.  The only thing I don't see around here are white aerobics shoes, but anything else that falls under the heading of gym shoes exists.  They even have some dress shoes hidden in a sneaker design that cost 300euro.

So who's following who?

Fixed gear bikes.  I'm not sure that's what they're called or what it means, but I remember this new trend in Chicago nearly ten years ago.  Now it's here.

Gray, brown, black and stainless interior design.  It looks just the same here in 2017 that it did there in 2010.

Wedding invitations with raffia and rice paper.  Nothing new.

How much longer do I have to wait for the good stuff to start showing up?  Stuff like free refills, an aisle of salad dressing, hardware stores open on Saturday afternoon and Sunday (isn't that when we really need them?), travel mugs, heat in cafes, over-the-counter cold medicine and frequent flyer miles?
 
I wonder why the stick people have decided to move here and if they'll miss that stuff as much as I do.  Maybe they're coming to Italy to get away from Trump.  It's a shame no one told them about Berlusconi---one of the few things Italy had first.