One Week Southwest Tour – Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Antelope Canyon, Zion and Death Valley

Overview | Itinerary | What Stood Out | Tips for Next Time | Brochures and Maps

Left: View of Monument Valley early morning. Center left: Inside Lower Antelope Canyon. Center right: View of Badwater Basin. Right: Southwest tour itinerary for the week.

Overview

The Italians are coming! The Italians are coming!

That's what kept playing in our heads for months before this trip. It's payback time we thought. For two years, our Italian cousins have treated us to holiday dinners, sight-seeing trips, and much more. Now it was time to return the hospitality in the USA, on our “turf”. We would be four Italians, two Americans, and the open road.

We were eager to return the hospitality, but worried about being good hosts. What would our cousins think of the USA’s wild open iconic spaces? Would we find interesting places to eat? Would we be able to provide context and explain what we would be seeing? Would the western landscape line up with their perceptions from TV and film? Would we be speaking Italian or English?

A tricky part of planning the trip was that our cousins wanted to see iconic American places that were a first for us too; we had no experience to draw from. Furthermore, the must-see sights were spread out. While we hate to do a series of one-night stays if we can help it, there was no other choice to be able to hit all the requested sights. That said, our whirlwind road trip worked out fine. We clocked in over 1500 miles. That's Paris to Palermo by car, just to put it in context.

Our trip had a rhythm such that every day we woke up at the location of interest, toured, ate a late lunch, and then hit the road for the next destination. It typically meant that we either ate a light dinner or skipped altogether.

And, we spoke Italian the whole time.

Itinerary

Day 1 – Las Vegas

• Breakfast: The Coffee Cup in Boulder City – Bloody Mary's with a slice of bacon.
• Activities
• Visit Hoover Dam in the morning.
• Walk the Strip and explore some casinos (not all).
• Take in a show. We went to the Cirque du Soleil Mystère Show @ Treasure Island and really enjoyed it.
• Stroll the Fremont Experience late night.
• Lodging: Railroad Pass. This choice was driven by cost, proximity to Henderson where family is, and the number of people and room options we needed. Next time we would try the Boulder Dam Hotel. There are numerous choices in Vegas, so finding a room shouldn't be a problem.

Day 2: Route 66

• Breakfast: The Little Grille Café in Boulder City
• Activities:
• Drive to Grand Canyon Tusayan (via Peach Springs) along Route 66 historic route; 4.5 hr / 271 mi - 436 km with stops at:
• Hackberry General Store: for refreshments and photos.
• Grand Canyon Caverns tour
• Williams: stop to explore the historic downtown.
• Evening: IMAX movie on National Parks
• Lunch: Road Kill Café, Seligman
• Lodging: Red Feather Lodge, Tusayan

Day 3: Grand Canyon

• Breakfast: Plaza Bonita, Tusayan
• Activities
• Early morning IMAX movie about the Grand Canyon.
• Drive remaining distance to Grand Canyon South Visitor Center.
• Walk west toward Mather Point, then backtrack and walk east toward Kaibab trailhead.
• Return by bus from Kaibab trailhead to visitor center parking lot and drive to Grand Canyon Village.
• Walk to see Lookout Studio and Kolb Studio and Bright Angel trailhead.
• Lunch: El Tovar Lodge
• Last view of Grand Canyon at the Desert View WatchTower.
• Drive 2.5 hr / 152 mi - 245 km from Desert View Tower to Monument Valley.
• Dinner: Goulding's Landing – quite possibly the worse meal we had on the trip. Bring your own provisions?
• Lodging: Goulding's Apartments, Oljato-Monument Valley

Day 4: Monument Valley

• Breakfast: View Lodge
• Activities
• Explore around Monument Valley early in the morning; hike Wildcat Trail (3.7 mi - 6 km)
• Drive 27 km of Monument Valley loop, stopping at different points
• Drive to Page, 2.00 hr / 124 mi - 200 km
• Visit Horseshoe Bend (of the Colorado River)
• Wahweap Overlook (of Lake Powell). We ended our day here with sweeping views of the lake.
• Lunch: Alibertos Mexican Restaurant, Page. Our Italian cousins fell in love with horchata.
• Lodging: Best Western at Lake Powell, Page

Day 5: Page Arizona

• Breakfast: At Best Western buffet
• Activities
• Antelope Canyon Lower Tour at 9:30 am.
• Get permit at Navajo Tribal Park in LeChee - see below for details.
• Hike Waterholes Canyon
• Drive 2.25 hr / 120 mi - 193 km from Page, Arizona to Mt. Carmel Junction
• Stop at Kanab dinosaur tracks (location)
• Lunch: Big John's Texas BBQ, Page
• Dinner: Thunderbird Lodge – home of the Ho-made pies!
• Lodging: Best Western East Zion Thunderbird Lodge, Mount Carmel Junction.

Day 6: Zion

• Breakfast: Thunderbird Lodge
• Activities
• Drive to Zion Visitors Center, park and take shuttle up Floor of the Valley Road to Lodge (stop #5)
• Hike Emerald Pools Trail, Kayenta Trail, Riverside Walk
• Drive 4.00 hr / 270 mi - 434 km from Zion to Death Valley Junction
• Lunch: Castle Dome Café (Zion Lodge) - average food, not bad for something quick.
• Dinner: El Valle Restaurant (between Amargosa Valley and Death Valley Junction)
• Lodging: Amargosa Opera House, Death Valley Junction

Day 7: Death Valley

• Breakfast: Amargosa Café. Very good! Surprising find in the middle of nowhere.
• Activities
• Tour of Amargosa Opera House. Around 9:00 am. Be sure to let them know you are interested in the tour the night before or earlier in the morning.
• Drive through Death Valley and see the following sights:
• Zabriskie Point
• Dante’s View – was closed. Always check the park’s web site for closures.
• Badwater Basin
• Devil's Golf Course
• Artist's Palette
• Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes
• Ballarat (Ghost Town), Ballarat Road, Trona, California – Long live Rock and his moonshine whiskey. We hit Ballarat after lunch on our way out of Death Valley.
• Drive 3.50 hr / 172 mi - 277 km from Death Valley - Furnace Creek to Mojave
• Lunch: Date Grove Diner, Furnace Creek
• Lodging: Best Western Desert Winds, Mojave
• Dinner: Denny's (Mojave) – yes, a bit uninspired cuisine-wise, but Denny's is part of American dining culture, tracing its origin back to the 1950s so that counts for something, right?

Day 8: Venice Beach

• Breakfast: Coffee at Menotti's Coffee Stop (Venice Beach)
• Activities
• Drive 1.50 hr / 94 mi - 152 km from Mojave to Santa Monica.
• Walk from Santa Monica pier to Venice Beach and back, 9 km round-trip.
• Visit the Venice canals.
• Drive .50 hr/ 15 mi - 24 km from Santa Monica to LAX.
• Lunch: Mariasol, Mexican Restaurant on the Santa Monica Pier.

Notes on the Itinerary

1. The itinerary above runs roughly counter-clockwise from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. We considered a clockwise route also ending in Los Angeles but ultimately rejected it because we didn't want to drive Interstate 10 from Phoenix to LA.
2. We took this trip between April 8 - 15 and had great weather. We didn't see a drop of rain and temperatures were pleasant during the day to where we could be in short sleeves. At night, we had a light jacket. It was hotter in Death Valley. We were probably just lucky. To be prepared, take layers, sun protection, and water and wind protection. Most of our walking / hiking - I would say it was pretty light - we did in a  normal pair of outdoor walking shoes or sneakers.
3. The itinerary described above is a slight modification of our actual schedule because we spent more days in Vegas with family and our activities there were spread out over several days rather than one (Day 1) as shown.
4. This itinerary is for 7 nights. The 8th day was a flying day in which we managed to squeeze in a morning in at Venice Beach.
5. Why did we start in Las Vegas and finish in Los Angeles? The routing was such that our Italian relatives flew in and out of LAX and got a ride to Vegas. We flew into Vegas to meet them, and then flew out with them from LAX. We rented the car in Vegas and dropped it at LAX. You could follow the itinerary below starting and ending at LAX, but then you should factor in a 5-hour drive to get to Vegas. This would work if you land early in the first day. If not, add a night.

What Stood Out

For the three national parks we visited, it cost 30 USD per vehicle to enter. We purchased an annual pass for 80 USD saving a little money. We bought the pass entering our first park, Grand Canyon Park.

Here are a few things that stood out for us on this trip:

Boulder City

Las Vegas is a special place for sure, but we always end up spending a lot of our time in Henderson and the Boulder City area. We find these areas to be more interesting and "authentic". Besides, you gotta love Boulder City because gambling is – refreshingly – not allowed there. On this trip, we ate three breakfasts in Boulder City – at the Boulder Dam Hotel, Coffee Cup, and Little City Grille – and all three spots didn't disappoint us with their healthy choices or our Italian cousins who were looking to eat some good American breakfast fare: waffles, bacon, and eggs.

Lower Antelope Canyon

This was more spectacular than we expected. Growing up American, the iconic images of these slot canyons are imprinted in our minds and it was great to finally see the real thing. Our tour of the lower canyon was in a large group slotted (pun intended) for 9:30 am. They broke up the larger group into smaller groups of a dozen or so people with a tour guide. You simply can't take a bad picture in Lower Antelope Canyon. It was windy while we were in the canyon and sand blew down on us. If you don't like sand in your hair or clothes, maybe bring a hat and a windbreaker. Some folks wore improvised masks of scarves or bandannas.

We visited the lower canyons in the morning. This is the part of the canyon that you walk right into them from the parking-reception area descending down stairs. We were scheduled to visit the upper canyons in the afternoon – where you first take a jeep to reach the entrance – but decided instead to tackle the Waterholes Canyon on our own.

Upper or Lower Antelope Canyon? We asked ourselves this question a lot before going. You can’t go wrong with either one probably. Do both if you can. And, in case you are wondering about the naming: Lower Antelope Canyon is north of Upper Antelope Canyon. You need to think of their canyon names in terms of where they are relative to how water – when it comes, and it does fiercely our guide told us – drains to Lake Powell, which is to the north. Speaking of Lake Powell, if we had an extra day we would consider a boat ride into the Lower Antelope Canyon to experience the canyon from the water.

Left: Page Arizona and Horseshoe Bend. Center left and right: Views inside Lower Antelope Canyon. Right: Inside Waterholes Canyon (east).

Waterholes Canyon Hike

Walking this slot canyon by ourselves was fun because we saw just a handful of people and it was spectacular in its own way (but not like Lower Antelope Canyon or I’m guessing Upper Antelope Canyon). The most complicated part of hiking Waterholes was finding where to buy the pass we needed to legally be hiking the canyon. The permit can be obtained in a trailer in LaChee, Arizona just south of Page (location). The trailer is the office of the Navajo Nation LeChee Chapter. Call first to verify the location and make sure it’s open. It cost 6 dollars per person.

There is a lot of information on the internet about hiking the Waterholes Canyon toward the Colorado River (i.e., west). We did the opposite and walked away from the river (i.e., east). In fact, when we got our hiking pass, the staff person advised against hiking toward the river.

Amargosa Opera House and Hotel 

The story of Marta Becket is special and the hotel is a slice of something peculiar and wonderful. For sure, it's not for everyone, story or accommodation-wise. However, our group of six all loved the Amargosa Opera House and Hotel; our cousins from Italy found the location very evocative. As well, we had a very good and healthy breakfast at the Amargosa Café, attached to the hotel. The Café would not be out of place in Seattle with its cappuccinos and interesting menu with locally sourced food.

Left: Amargosa Opera House Theater entrance. Center left: Amargosa Opera House outdoor corridor. Center: Amargosa Opera House Hotel Room 22, Red Skelton's room. Center right: Mask design on the doors of Amargosa Opera House Theater. Right: Amargosa Opera House Theater inside.

Wildcat Trail in Monument Valley 

The big attraction of Monument Valley is the famous 17 mi – 27 km “Valley Drive”. The route’s opening hours vary by season; in the winter season (includes April) the drive opens at 8:00 am. (There is a gate at the entrance/exit of the drive.) We arrived at the route around 6:00 am and to kill time, we decided to walk Wildcat Trail as the sun rose. The trail is a relatively easy hike at 3.3 m - 5.3 km, which we walked leisurely in about two hours. The Wildcat Trail takes around the West Mitten Butte. Walking the trail was an unexpected highlight for us.

By the way, the Monument “Valley Drive” can be easily done in most cars. We did it in a Nissan Qwest Minivan. There is a part at the start and end of the route (it’s a loop) that is steep. We saw a few people get stuck when they went too slow. They made it out eventually after a few tries.

Left: Monument Valley from Valley Drive. Center Left: View from Wildcat Trail at sunrise, Monument Valley. Center: An invented Italian swear word written in the dust on the back of our van on the Valley Drive in Monument Valley. Center Right: Zion National Park - North Folk Virgin River. Right: Hackberry General Store on Route 66.


Death Valley National Park 

For the most part, we visited the southern part of the park and we were happy with our route. We stayed in Death Valley Junction (Amargosa Hotel) and entered the park from the east along route 190 to Furnace Creek where we went south to Badwater. From Badwater, we backtracked north to Furnace Creek, picking up 190 again to exit the park toward Panamint Springs. Along the way we saw all the typical sights listed above. We spent the most time at Badwater basin, walking ½ mile out from the parking lot and back. It was about 94 degrees when we visited. Don’t forget to bring hat and sunscreen! An umbrella to block the sun isn’t a bad idea either.

It’s worth a stop at the Furnace Creek ranger station and get maps and information.

The most northern feature of the park we saw was Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes. Therefore, we didn’t see any of the northern parts of the park including the Racetrack (moving rocks), Scotty’s Castle (it was closed for repairs), or Ubehebe Crater.

Left: Death Valley - Badwater Basin. Center: Death Valley - Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes. Right: Death Valley - Ballarat Ghost Town.

Grand Canyon South Rim

Exploring the south rim is possible in a day with easy walking options east or west from Mather Point. We parked and then explored on foot and by park bus. We didn’t think about renting bikes, but that would have been an interesting way to go because there are trails along the rim and slightly inland that would be fun to ride along.

Specifically, we parked at Grand Canyon Visitor Center. Walked around Mather Point and then east towards South Kaibab Trail. We took the bus back to the visitor center and then drove to Grand Canyon Village to explore some more on foot and eat at late lunch at El Tovar. We probably should have just left the car in one spot and made more use of the Grand Canyon bus system – it would have been easier.

Note: Grand Canyon Skywalk – the suspended glass bridge – is much farther west than Grand Canyon Village, what is generally called the South Rim. The skywalk is located on Hualapai Tribe reservation and is only 120 miles from Las Vegas. Therefore, it’s an easy day trip from Las Vegas. Grand Canyon Village on the other hand is 270 miles from Las Vegas, representing more of an investment in time to reach. We struggled with the decision to stop and see the skywalk or not. In the end, we decided that the thrill of walking over the glass-floored bridge wasn’t that much of a draw for us and so we skipped it.

From left to right: View of Yaki Point from the Grand Canyon South Rim Trail; View from Desert View Watchtower, Grand Canyon; Inside the Desert View Watchtower; Inside Grand Canyon Caverns; Dinosaur footprint north of Kanab; The Thunderbird Lodge Sign - Home of Ho-made Pies (The name came about because there wasn't enough space on the sign to fit all the letters way before the current meaning of "ho".)

The Open Road 

In 7th grade I painted a scene of a desert with a road winding through it. I had never been to the desert, but it represented a magical place, a place of escape and freedom. And that still seems to be the case because on this trip, I found the road stretching out before us endlessly fascinating. Our routing took us through different types of desert, each with its own subtle differences.

"Get your motor runnin'
Head out on the highway
Lookin' for adventure
And whatever comes our way"  Born to Be Wild

Shots of the open road, except the last image which is of a Venice Beach canal.
Top row, left to right: On Route 66 Near Grand Canyon Caverns; Outside of Tuba City; Approaching Monument Valley at Dusk; Route 89 West of Lake Powell; Entering Zion National Park from the East; Amargosa Valley looking south along route 373; Death Valley Route 190 heading toward Zabriskie Point; Artist Dr Death Valley.
Bottom row, left to right: Artists Rd Beginning - Death Valley; Artists Rd End - Death Valley; Badwater Rd Heading North Toward Furnace Creek; Trona Wildrose Road Looking South; Ballarat Rd Heading Northeast; South near San Fernando, heading into the metropolis of Los Angeles; Venice Beach Canal

Next Time

There is always a next time when it comes to travel. Is there travel without regrets? Maybe, but we haven’t found it yet. Most of our regrets stem from not having enough time to properly explore.

Stay in Boulder City

To be close to family, we stayed at Railroad Pass. Next time, we would try the Boulder City Hotel. There is no gambling in Boulder City, the main street a fun stroll, and there are good dining options.

More Time in Zion

Visiting Zion in a day was simply not enough. Even if you are not going to hike or you are just going to do a few simple walks – as we did – you can’t do it all in one day and see all the interesting parts including museums. There is a frequent and easy-to-use bus that takes you into the main "park" drive. We did not do the famous Angel's Landing Trail and would have liked to tackle part of that, at least up to Walter’s Wiggles but time-wise we couldn’t. Also, on the way to Zion from the east we saw signs for Coral Pink Sand Dunes National Park that piqued our curiosity.

One More Day in Page Arizona

We had originally planned to spend two nights in Page and skip Monument Valley altogether, partly as a break from the string of one-nighters and partly because there was a lot to do in Page. In the end, we did Monument Valley and just one night in Page. If we had had a few extra days in our itinerary, I would add one more night to Page.

Death Valley

We didn’t make it north to visit the crater or the moving rocks. In addition, an extra day in the area would have given us more time for some light hiking, e.g., walking into Artist’s Palette and Golden Canyon Interpretive Trail rather than just looking at them from the road or an observation point.

Searles Valley 

After driving around and through Death Valley, our hotel for the night was in Mojave, California. On our way there, we passed through Searles Valley at dusk. I don’t know, maybe it was the light but the town seemed interesting. I wanted to stop and find out more about all the industry and piping over the dried lake bed. Not until much later did I have an opportunity to read about it and learn about its fascinating history. There is a roadside plaque here that you can stop and take a break at. Nearby are the Trona Pinnacles named after the mineral of the same name, trona, a non-marine evaporite and the backdrop of a number of sci-fi movies.

Brochures and Maps

Here is a small sampling of the brochures, maps, and other items we picked up during the trip. You all know I'm a pack-rat tourist.


Death Valley National Park Brochure and Map



Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park Brochure with Map of Valley Drive


Left to Right: Tusayan Arizona Business Map; Southern Utah Area Park Map; Page Area Map Showing Driving Route from Navajo Nation LeChee Chapter to Waterholes Trailhead; Waterholes Canyon Hike Map; Example of Navajo Nation Backcountry Use Permit


Left and Center Left: Grand Canyon National Park Overview Maps.  Center Right and Right: Grand Canyon Pocket Map.


Left and Center Left: Hiking into Grand Canyon Brochure. Center Right and Right: Zion National Park Information Sheet.

An Orphan's Legacy: Maria's Secret

Caterina | Maria | Looking for Clues | To the Cemetery | Back to Ceva |

Andrea and the Note | First Contact | A Piece Found, A Piece Lost

Left: Caterina and Lucille. Center Left: Andrea. Center Right: Marcellina and Filippo. Right: Giacomo and Maria.

~~~Caterina~~~

The start of 2008 brought a lot of snow to Ceva, a small town tucked in the Langhe hills of Piedmont in northwest Italy.  Catterina, 76 years old, waited for a break in the weather so she could resume her weekly visits to pay respects to her husband, parents, and grandparents. Good weather finally arrived on February 7th. Caterina drove the two miles to the cemetery in her little green vintage 1950s green AutoBianchi, "a coffee pot of a car" as her brother Andrea liked to say.

Caterina is of slight build, a 5' 2'' sparrow with a fair complexion, unkempt white hair, and dark, distant eyes. She is warm and gracious in person, but when the cameras come out, she adopts a curiously expressionless and stiff pose, gazing anywhere but at the camera. The result is that photos of her look dour and sad, which couldn't be farther from the truth. In fact, Caterina is very welcoming and is at home when her guests are at home. This being Italy, this means feeding them. As trains rattle by, only a stone's throw from the kitchen window of her 2nd story apartment, Caterina serves ravioli with ragu to guests while regaling them with stories of everyday life. In particular, she lights up when she talks about the summer months she passes in the old farmhouse she still has in the hills just outside town where she grows and cans vegetables and bottles Dolcetto wine.

As she enters the cemetery that February morning, Caterina nods to the caretaker and goes on her rounds. She removes snow and debris from the family tombs and niches, cleans photos and plaques, and straightens flowers. When she reaches her grandparents’ niche, she finds in the vase of fake violets attached to the tomb, a rolled-up green Post-it note. Her first instinct is to throw it away, but curiosity wins and she reads the note. Written in Italian, it refers to people and places that make no sense to her. She puts the note in her purse and finishes up her cleaning.  Later that day, when Andrea arrives for their usual dinner together, she shares the note with him. He can’t believe his eyes.

~~~Maria~~~

A few weeks earlier, in January 2008, Mark and I were in Piedmont visiting family and doing genealogical research. We were living in Florence at the time so we rented a car to drive the few hours from Tuscany through Liguria and into Piedmont. In the last hour of our journey we passed from the warm Ligurian coast, up over the Ligurian Alps to descend into the snow-covered Langhe hills.

The Langhe is located within the province of Cuneo, the southernmost province of the Piedmont region of Italy. The region is famous for its Barolo and Barbaresco wines, toma and taleggio cheeses, thin breadsticks called grissini, bagna càuda – a hot, garlic-infused dipping sauce, hazelnuts and their creamy incarnation as nutella, truffles, and a traditional breed of cattle called fassone which has a gene mutation that leads to abnormally large growth. As well as being the birthplace of the Italian reunification, Piedmont's largest city Turin acted as the capital of a newly unified Italy between 1861 and 1865, and was the birthplace of its first king, Victor Emmanuel II.

Over eight days, we ate and drank with family, visited old haunts, and collected genealogical information for Mark's Italian citizenship. We knew that his citizenship would come through a great grandfather on his mom's side of the family. And while we focused mainly on that branch of his family, curiosity drove us to collect everything we could about all his relatives, if only to complete his family tree.  My citizenship quest would unfold months later in Palermo, and eventually both Mark and I would get Italian citizenship.

We were also searching for a lost puzzle piece in Mark's family history. Mark's maternal great grandmother, Maria, was an orphan. Maria emigrated to America from Piedmont in 1921 and never said much of her life in Italy, not even to her only daughter, Lucille, Mark’s grandmother.  Lucille would say: "Momma never wanted to talk about it. I couldn't understand why." Maria was born in Ceva where she eventually married Giacomo, Lucille’s father, but that's all that was really known.

Maria died in 1967, but the question lingered in Lucille's mind. When Lucille visited Ceva with her dad Giacomo in the 1970s, they tried to make connections with the family still there to perhaps fill in some of the gaps in Maria’s past, but found nothing. For the 85-year-old Lucille, a widow living outside of Las Vegas, her mother's past remained a mystery.

In the first decades of the 20th century many immigrants from Piedmont settled in the La Puente region of Los Angeles, as Maria and Giacomo did in 1921. Soon after arriving, Lucille was born and Maria and Giacomo were busy running a 10-acre walnut orchard. Maria would ride out every day in a horse and buggy to bring lunch to her husband and the other workers. Maria had gray eyes and brown, wavy hair which she usually wore short. She was a stocky 5' 2". Lucille recalls that her mom Maria dressed in simple print dresses and plain shoes, and was a fantastic cook. Almost all of Mark’s family recipes are passed down from Maria. There was one other tidbit Mark’s grandmother told us: for years Maria sent money to an orphanage in Ceva.

While we were in Piedmont, we decided to see if we could find anything new about Maria. We felt a little like detectives picking up an old case that had gone cold, and not really expecting to find much. Mark didn’t need more information about Maria to satisfy his citizenship’s jus sanguinis requirements because his citizenship would come through another branch of his family. Yet we wanted to return something for Lucille’s sake, to give her peace of mind about her mother.

~~~Looking for Clues~~~

In Italian cemeteries, especially in small towns, the history of generations of families is written in stone and photographs. Italians use photos attached to tombs to commemorate and personalize tombs, more so than in the USA. In the past, we have sometimes found ourselves in cemeteries perusing these photos and lazily imagining the possible life stories behind them. This time, we had a mission, and were scrutinizing the faces and names more carefully. If those thousands of eyes were gazing at us as we strolled among their tombs, we were staring back as well.

In those eight days in January 2008, we visited a half-dozen cemeteries where we thought we might uncover genealogical clues about Mark's family. The process went like this: we searched first for niches (loculi) with a family name we were looking for, then checked the birth and death dates if given. If the dates made sense, we examined nearby niches for other relationships that might help confirm or invalidate the match. It's like trying to fit pieces of a jigsaw puzzle into part of a puzzle you've already assembled but aren’t really confident is correct. We spent hours upon hours in cemeteries scrutinizing these vague traces of lives past. It was Maria's story in particular for which we kept hoping for a break. By day 4 of our 8 days in Piedmont, we had found nothing promising.

Mark’s grandmother had given us an old photo that had belonged to her mother Maria. We assumed it might have been of her adoptive parents but that was only a guess as there was no written or oral information about the photo. In the sepia-colored photo, a woman and a man circa late 1800s sit dressed in their finest. Both are stern-faced, and the woman has a noticeable frown. They adopt a pose not unlike Caterina’s.


Views of the Ceva cemetery. Tomb niches (loculi), building, and close-up of photo on tomb.

~~~To the Cemetery~~~

On January 24th, we spend the day exploring the narrow streets and porticoes of Ceva. The Tanaro and Cevetta rivers encircle the historical center making for a compact old town. The surrounding countryside rises from all directions giving Ceva a dark, sunken aspect. We wanted to like Ceva, but it just didn’t have the immediate appeal of other villages we knew in the region, such as Cherasco, the birthplace of Maria's husband, Giacomo. Cherasco has pizazz as the self-proclaimed snail capital of Italy. The town sits on a small plateau overlooking the Lange hills and vineyards around it, you can find a great meal and buy bags of delicious baci di Cherasco - hazelnut pieces enrobed in dark chocolate. Ceva and Cherasco are both off the tourist track, but Ceva’s charms would be harder to crack.

We knew Maria was born and raised in Ceva.  She and Giacomo were married in Ceva. So, whether we liked the town or not, we wanted to find out something – anything – we could about her. Maybe by walking the cobblestone lanes we might conjure her ghost or some hidden clue would reveal itself in some dark, forgotten corner.

However, after a half day of inquiry, we had uncovered nothing new on Maria so decided to head back to our hotel. It was 3 pm on a sunny, crisp winter afternoon and as we drove out of town we decided to stop at the cemetery one last time.

Ceva’s cemetery sits just south of town perched high above the Tanaro River, three acres surrounded by a 15-foot tall perimeter wall. Within the cemetery, the wall encompasses the biggest part of an outdoor mausoleum with thousands of burial niches, honoring the majority of Ceva’s former citizens. The mausoleums have the feel of a cloister: airy, but protected. Families with more money have free-standing chapel-cum-tombs in the center of the cemetery, some saccharine and gaudy, others serene and touching.

A typical Italian burial niche is marked by a rectangular panel on a wall roughly 24 by 18 inches and running about 10 feet deep. When someone dies, the body may spend some time in the common, open section of the cemetery, and later be moved to their family niche. The remains in the niche of whoever was interned before are pushed backward to make room, falling into a common pile of bones and dust underground. We walked slowly and methodically through the porticoes of the mausoleum, endlessly scanning names and photos, proxies for the bones and dusty remains of all those who came before.

And then it happened. In the slanting light of the late afternoon sun, we caught a glimpse of the two unmistakable, stern faces we had been carrying in our pocket. We couldn't believe our eyes. We pulled out the photos and yes, these were in fact of the same image, perhaps the only photograph the couple had ever taken. The dates on the man's niche placed him about 50 years older than Maria but there weren't any dates on the woman's niche. It was promising: to match a photo in a sea of images surely meant something.

Their names were Marcellina Bottero and Filippo Bottero. Bottero is a common name of the region and a name that Maria had sometimes used on documents; the other name Maria used was Iuvara. Could this be the tomb of Maria's adopted parents? We weren't sure. 

The cemetery was closing. We were tired and excited, and unsure what to do. We decided to leave a note. A green Post-it. In the best Italian he could muster, Mark described who he was, who Maria was, when she was born and when she emigrated to the USA, as well as an email address to contact us.  We rolled up the Post-it note and tucked it into the vase of fake violets mounted on the tomb of Marcellina and Filippo and then departed. It was already dark.

~~~Back to Ceva~~~

We decided to return to Ceva the next day, buoyed by our find at the cemetery, to continue looking for clues about Maria. 

In Italy, vital records such as birth, marriage, and death certificates are maintained at the municipal level; every town has its anagrafe (vital records) office.  When we know what we are looking for, this is our first stop.  When we aren’t sure what we are looking for, we head to the cemeteries. After the previous day’s discovery at the cemetery, we now had some names matched to faces, so we headed to the anagrafe.

We explained what we knew about Maria and the two surnames she used: Bottero and Iuvara. They made us official copies of Maria's birth and marriage certificates - handcrafting official-looking certificates from the data they looked up in large massive record books. We learned that orphaned children were often given a surname very different from the names of families in the area. That explained the Iuvara name - a name not common in this part of Italy.

An employee of the anagrafe pointed across the piazza saying that the newborn Maria was likely left at mayor's doorstep by a desperate mother and from there she would have gone to the nearby orphanage. He advised us to inquire at the parochial church office for information about her time in the orphanage. We left our email and a cell phone number at the anagrafe and walked over to the church.

We spent an hour or so in the parochial office speaking with two kind nuns who braved our excited explanations in broken Italian. They consulted their dusty record books, searching for our Maria, but she wasn’t there. The orphanage had closed several years before and the records that we needed were still in storage. It wasn't clear when they would ever be accessible. As all things in Italy, we took a deep breath, smiled, and said va bene, grazie.

We were hoping that the parochial records would provide information about Maria’s date of adoption and possibly who had adopted her. But Ceva wasn’t giving up its secrets that easily. At least we had the satisfaction of imagining that this very orphanage might have been where Maria had been sending money for so many years, helping other orphans.

Back on the streets of Ceva, we walked aimlessly. The story of Mark’s great-grandmother Maria was starting to consume us. At this point, we were confident that Marcellina and Filippo Bottero (the stern ones) must have adopted Maria and that's why she used that name. But how to find anybody still living connected to them?  Filippo Bottero died in 1925.  We thought of calling Botteros in the phone book, but there were too many. By chance, we stopped in a clothing store with Bottero in its name. They listened to our story but could offer no help. The name was simply too common.  The Post-it note seemed to be our only chance, but how often does anyone visit the cemetery, and in particular to visit relatives who had passed away over 70 years before?

~~~Andrea and the Note~~~

On the evening of February 7th, 2008 when Caterina showed the note to Andrea, there was a loud howl in Caterina's apartment. Andrea was excited, at first cursing his sister for almost throwing the note away, and then cursing the world in general. Andrea, two years older than Caterina, was easily excitable. He never married and in some ways his relationship with Caterina was that of an old bickering couple. Caterina, the more cool-headed of the two was used to his excitement. She listened attentively as she cleaned up the dishes from dinner, tortellini in brodo.

Andrea looked similar to his sister, slight in build, and a few inches taller with a fair complexion and engaging dark eyes. He was always neatly dressed in a shirt, tie, sweater and sport coat. His white hair neatly combed and reading glasses suspended around his neck. Andrea was a respected science and math teacher. Of his siblings, Catterina and brother Eugenio, he was the most curious about the world. He had studied English in London and also lived briefly in New Mexico. He was also the family historian and realized immediately that the Post-It could answer a question he had been wondering about for years: a mysterious aunt who had emigrated to America before he was born.

On February 8th, Andrea sent an email to the address we left in the green Post-it note. It was cordially written in both Italian and English and started as:

        Io sono Bottero Andrea residente in Ceva  (Italy).

          I am Bottero Andrea living in Ceva (Italy).

        Ieri mia sorella Catterina è andata al cimitero e ha trovato il tuo biglietto.

          Yesterday my sister Catterina went to the cemetery and found your note.

We received the email and were shocked that someone had already found our note. We replied cautiously that we were happy and would write back in more detail shortly because we were in the middle of a two-week tour in Greece. Even as we were exchanging emails with Andrea, he was raising hell in Ceva, in particular, at the anagrafe. When he had found out that there were two strangers, two Americans nonetheless, asking about the Botteros -- his family -- and nobody had bothered to contact him, he went livid. He managed to cudgel our cell phone number from the anagrafe, and unsatisfied with just an email, he called us shortly after sending the email.

We are driving in the Peloponnese peninsula, when we receive Andrea's call. He politely restates in English the story of finding our note and urges us several times that we must come visit. We promise we will. We still don’t know for sure if we have found a connection to Maria, but an Italian invitation to visit is not to be taken lightly so we know we will go and then, hopefully, we will find out a little more about Maria.

~~~First Contact~~~

We first meet Caterina and Andrea on March 7th, 2008. When we pull into the parking area of their apartment building in Ceva, we see an elegantly-dressed man pacing out front. It's Andrea and he has been waiting for us. And as we would learn later, Caterina was watching from her dining room window on the second story.

Andrea greets us with a big smile. He is amused to find two middle-aged men in front of him. It's obvious that Mark is his relative, being fair-skinned and northern Italian in appearance. My shorter stature, hair and skin color testifies to my family's southern Italian origins.  That said, we’re both embraced as family, a feeling of belonging which would only grow from that moment.

After a few minutes of introductions and questions about where we are living in Italy and what we are doing, he guides us inside. We climb the wide marble staircase to meet the person that has made this moment possible: Caterina. Apartment door ajar, she is waiting, apron on.

We exchange the traditional Italian kiss on both cheeks as though we were old friends and are promptly shuttled to the dining room table to eat.  First things first in Italy: let’s eat!

The backbone of Caterina’s apartment is a long hallway with a small living room and formal dining room on the left; a kitchen and informal dining room on the right; and a single bedroom and bathroom at the end of the hall. The floors are marble and the walls sparsely decorated: a needlepoint proverb in Piedmontese, a map of old Ceva, and a pair of wooden praying hands. We would spend most of our day, as in all our subsequent visits, in her informal dining room and kitchen, which is the heart of her home.

During that first encounter, as trains rumble by, we begin to reconstruct the details of how Mark is connected to Andrea and Caterina. Andrea sometimes speaks in English, proud to show off his ability. Caterina could care less. She speaks in a mix of Piedmontese and Italian.

After several hours, we arrive at the following: Mark's great grandmother, Maria, was indeed adopted by Marcellina and Filippo Bottero sometime around 1906. The couple were older and already had six children. Maria was a step-sister to Andrea and Caterina's father; however, she had emigrated to America before they were born. Therefore Andrea, Caterina, and their brother Eugenio only knew Maria as the mysterious aunt who left for America.

Our bond with Caterina and Andrea grew over those few days in March that we spent with them. They wanted to know all about Maria's life in America, and all about her family.  Together we called Mark's grandmother, Maria’s daughter Lucille, who spoke with Caterina and Andrea for the first time ever, falling fluently into the Piedmontese dialect with even the same Ceva accent she had learned as a little girl from her mother Maria. Lucille was ecstatic; she talked for hours with her new-found cousins. Lucille now had a link to her mother's past.

Andrea took us to visit the old house in the hills above Ceva, the house that had belonged to his grandparents Filippo and Marcella Bottero, the house that Maria had lived in from when she was six years old until she married Giacomo and left for America. The house with its thick stone walls now in ruins, surrounded by tall grass and old fruit trees that Caterina still harvests herself. We peek in the doors and windows; the floor and parts of the tile roof now collapsed. We try to imagine it as it was in Maria’s time.

On the drive back to town, Andrea tells us stories of being harassed as a young boy by German troops during the Nazi occupation, and how he escaped. And later as a young man, studying engineering and going to London to work and learn English, of going to New Mexico, of returning to teach at a technical school, and of family stories past and present.

The serendipitous green Post-it note unlocked a family secret and reunited two long lost families, separated cross a century, two continents, and such different histories.

 
Left: View of Ceva, Italy. Center: Small square in Ceva. Right: At the anagrafe, records office.

~~~A Piece Found, A Piece Lost~~~

Here we are again in Ceva’s cemetery. It is a warm spring Sunday in May 2013. This time Mark and I are visiting with his grandmother Lucille, his mom Marianne, and dad Davis.  Andrea's passing only two months earlier in March dampens the mood. We had all been looking forward to seeing each other. Caterina meets us at the cemetery in her tiny green Autobianchi into which she has managed to squeeze Lucia (her brother Eugenio's wife) and Vincenza (a cousin).

The two American and three Italian women roam the cemetery together, sometimes solemnly arm-in-arm and sometimes laughing and holding hands. Lucille is in her element, all smiles, and even at 91 walking briskly so that her cane seems more a prop than a necessity. The women whizz around the cemetery visiting relatives and sharing stories. One story in particular is repeated often. It’s the story of how when Lucille visited Ceva in 1971. She and Mark’s grandfather Bernard were visiting the ‘old country’ with Giacomo, Maria’s husband and Lucille’s father. Maria had already passed away a few years earlier.  They had stopped at a farm that Giacomo had recognized. Perhaps the family was still there he thought. As it turns out, they met none other than Vincenza's mother who at the time knew nothing of Maria or that part of the family’s history. She invited Mark’s grandparents and great-grandfather inside for lunch anyway and they passed part of the afternoon together. This was the house of Maria’s adoptive family. These were the husband and the daughter of the mysterious aunt who had emigrated to America. But the Americans and Italians that day in 1971 never made the connection.

It amazes everyone – no one more than Andrea – that Lucille had been so close in the 1970s and that it would take a hastily scribbled Post-it note almost 40 years later to make the connection. There are no hard feelings though, just gratitude that they are all together now. Mark and I feel honored to have played a small part. Mark’s mom, Marianne, got to meet Caterina and Andrea in June 2008 when visiting us in Florence. And soon after in Fall 2008 Lucille returned with her son John to meet their new cousins. And of course, regular phone calls and cards have further strengthened our new-found connections.

We all stop before Andrea's grave. Caterina waters a rose in a pot at the head of the grave. She would later transfer the rose to her summer house in the hills above Ceva where it thrives today.

Outdoor Sofa - Happening All Over Again

We spotted this abandoned couch just east of State Route 99 (above the Fremont Troll). The sofa looks so perfectly matched for its surroundings.

Outdoor sofas can break your heart. Believe me. Here one day, gone the next. So for this little number  - who knows what its tan cushions have see and endured - I give you Lonnie Gordon's 1990s hit "Happenin' All Over Again" (video).

I've taken you back before 'cause you told me you've changed
Looked in my eyes and said
Believe me, then you
Broke my heart and deceived me, when you
Said you never could leave me
But its happening all over again (no, no, no)

Welcome Back (Couch)

Having spent a chunk of time in Italy the last few years, I can't think of once when we saw a couch out by its lonesome, alongside a thoroughfare. However, back in Seattle in less than the time it takes to say couch pillow shams sale, we caught glimpse of an abandoned couch.

But why? Do Americans, or more specifically Seattleites, have so little regard for their couches? Do they think that couches can fend for themselves outside? I believe it's relatively easy to give a couch away or donate it, so I'm not sure why people think it's okay to just leave them around. This couch in particular has been on its Fremont Ave location for several days with rain and snow. At least it has company with that mattress. Two-for-one.

You don't believe me about Seattle and abandoned couches? Ha, check it out for yourself.

Abandoned furniture always brings a song to my mind. (It doesn't for you? I'm sorry.) For me, this couch conjured up the theme song to the 1970's show Welcome Back Kotter with the lyric "welcome back, welcome back." (youtube).
 

Welcome back, your dreams were your ticket out
Welcome back, to that same old place that you laughed about
Well the names have all changed since you hung around
But those dreams have remained and they've turned around
Who'd have thought they'd lead ya
(Who'd have thought they'd lead ya)
Back here where we need ya
(Back here where we need ya)
Yeah we tease him a lot 'cause we got him on the spot
Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back, welcome back
Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back

The song was written by John Sebastian.

Mapping and Comparing the Murder Rates of Italy and the USA Using R

Overview | Code | Output

Three plots visually showing countries with a smaller and greater homicide rate than Italy and USA. Left: Map of the world depicting countries in green which have a homicide rate less than Italy. Center: Map of Europe depicting countries in green which have a homicide rate less than Italy. Right: Map of the word depicting countries in green which have a homicide rate less than the USA.

Overview

Traveling between the USA and Italy, you might be interested in crime statistics between the two countries as we were. In particular, we wanted to see if we could understand which country we were "safer". Safe is complex, multi-faceted concept, depending on where you are and what kind of things you do. To look at one facet of it, here we look at the murder rate per million people per country. These stats are published on the NationMaster site and are intentional homicides, number and rate per number and rate per million people.

The NationMaster site has a map where countries are colored light to dark based on their crime statistic. We wanted to look at the data in a slightly different way, specifically breaking the data into two: countries with a crime statistic greater than a reference country and countries with a crime statistic lower. Therefore, in a glance we could see for Italy or the USA (as the reference country) all the countries with the higher and lower values.

Code

You should be able to paste the code below directly onto the command line of your R environment. Here is the code on Github. See the notes below for more information.

require("dplyr")
require("rworldmap")
data(countryExData)

# www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Crime/Violent-crime/Murder-rate-per-million-people
data.murder <- read.csv("Murder rate per million people.csv")
colnames(data.murder)[2] <- "Rate"

# get values for Italy and USA
rate.Italy <- data.murder[data.murder$Country=="Italy","Rate"]
rate.USA <- data.murder[data.murder$Country=="United States", "Rate"]

data.murder.Italy <- data.murder
data.murder.USA <- data.murder
data.murder.Italy$RateF <- mutate(data.murder, RateF=ifelse(Rate/rate.Italy >= 1, ifelse(Rate/rate.Italy == 1.0, 1.0, 2.0),0.0))$RateF
data.murder.USA$RateF <- mutate(data.murder, RateF=ifelse(Rate/rate.USA >= 1, ifelse(Rate/rate.USA == 1.0, 1.0, 2.0),0.0))$RateF

# Plotting variables
title <- "Country homicide crimes relative to"
pal <- c("lightgreen", "lightskyblue", "mistyrose2")

# World map referenced to Italy
data.joined.Italy <- joinCountryData2Map(data.murder.Italy, joinCode="NAME", nameJoinColumn="Country")
par(mai=c(0,0,0,0),xaxs="i",yaxs="i")
mapCountryData(data.joined.Italy, nameColumnToPlot="RateF")
mapParams <- mapCountryData(data.joined.Italy, nameColumnToPlot="RateF", addLegend=FALSE, catMethod="fixedWidth", numCats=3, colourPalette=pal, mapTitle="") 
do.call( addMapLegend, c(mapParams, legendWidth=0.5, legendMar = 2, legendLabels = "none" ))
text(x=0,y=120,labels=paste(title,"Italy"), cex=1.5)
text(c(-100,0,100),-140, labels=c("Rates less than Italy","Italy","Rates greater than Italy"))

# Europe map referenced to Italy
data.joined.Italy2 <- joinCountryData2Map(data.murder.Italy, joinCode="NAME", nameJoinColumn="Country")
par(mai=c(0,0,0,0),xaxs="i",yaxs="i")
mapCountryData(data.joined.Italy2, nameColumnToPlot="RateF")
mapParams <- mapCountryData(data.joined.Italy2, nameColumnToPlot="RateF", addLegend=FALSE, catMethod="fixedWidth", numCats=3, colourPalette=pal, mapTitle="", mapRegion="europe") 
do.call( addMapLegend, c(mapParams, legendWidth=0.5, legendMar = 2, legendLabels = "none" ))
text(x=17,y=75,labels=paste(title,"Italy"), cex=1.5)
text(c(2,17,32),30, labels=c("Rates less than Italy","Italy","Rates greater than Italy"))

# World map referenced to USA
data.joined.USA <- joinCountryData2Map(data.murder.USA, joinCode="NAME", nameJoinColumn="Country")
par(mai=c(0,0,0,0),xaxs="i",yaxs="i")
mapCountryData(data.joined.USA, nameColumnToPlot="RateF" )
mapParams <- mapCountryData(data.joined.USA, nameColumnToPlot="RateF", addLegend=FALSE, catMethod="fixedWidth", numCats=3, colourPalette=pal, mapTitle="" ) 
do.call( addMapLegend, c(mapParams, legendWidth=0.5, legendMar = 2, legendLabels = "none" ))
text(x=0,y=120,labels=paste(title,"USA"), cex=1.5)
text(c(-100,0,100),-140, labels=c("Rates less than USA","USA","Rates greater than USA"))

Notes:

• On the NationMaster site, we selected all years to export. This gives the largest possible list of countries for comparison with the caveat that not all countries are compared for the same year. For this exercise of R code this wasn't a big concern. 
• If you export the NationMaster stats into a CSV file into a specific directory, then make sure you use setwd() to change to that directory or modify the read.csv() statement in the code to point to the correct location. 
• Using the rworldmap package is described here in the post Maps in R: Introduction - Drawing the map of Europe. See rworldmap package page on cran.r-project.org to get to the latest reference manual. 
• The rworldmap::mapcountryData() method will warn about quantiles as discussed in this Stack Overflow post. If you look at the help (?mapcountryData) it says "will generate unhelpful errors in data categorisation if inappropriate options are chosen, e.g. with catMethod:Quantiles if numCats too high so that unique breaks cannot be defined."

Output

The code generates three plots. Two plots are referenced for Italy and one for the USA. Each plot has three colors, green, blue and orange. Green represents countries with less homicides than the reference country and orange represents countries with more homicides than the reference. Blue represents the reference country, either Italy or the USA.

• Map 1: The world map referenced for Italy shows that there are many countries colored as orange, i.e., having more homicides. In the NationMaster data, there are only 19 countries with less homicide. Many are European and Scandinavian countries. A few countries with less homicide are in the Saudi Arabian Peninsula and others in Asia. The world map doesn't make it easy to see the smaller countries that are green.
• Map 2: Zooming into Europe makes it easier to see the countries in Europe that have less homicide than Italy, including Denmark, Spain, Germany, Slovenia, Switzerland, Austrian, Norway, and Iceland.
• Map 3: Back to the world map referenced on the USA, i.e., countries with less homicide than the USA are colored green and countries with more homicide are colored orange.

In 2010, 8.75 people per million were killed due to intentional homicide in Italy. For 2010, the number was 42.01 people per million in the USA. The UNODOC report Global Study on Homicide 2013 reports that for Italy, there were 0.9 homicides per 100,000 people with a total count for that year of 530. For the USA, the report gives 4.7 homicides per 100,000 people with a total count for that year of 14,827.

There will be discrepancy in the numbers because we are mixing years and different reporting sources, but it's still useful to do a sanity check.

• In 2012, Italy's total population was about 60 million. 8.75 people per million x 60 million = 525 people, close to the UNODOC report.
• In 2012, USA's total population was about 314 million. 42.01 people per million x 316 million = 13,275, about 10% off from UNDOC number.

The takeaway is that one is more likely to be killed by intentional homicide in the USA than in Italy. Crime in the United States Wikipedia article is a good introduction. It states that "Overall the total crime rate of the United States is higher than developed countries, specifically Europe, with South American countries and Russia being the exceptions", which is pretty much what is shown above.

An interesting side note from the UNDOC report is that "[i]n Italy, there has been a 50 per cent decline in this type of homicide since 2007, with organized crime-related rates of homicide decreasing from 0.2 to less than 0.1 per 100,000 population."

Update

2023-08-10:  This NYT article Why Is America Such a Deadly Place? references this report On gun violence, the United States is an outlier where there is this quote:  

Age-adjusted firearm homicide rates in the US are 13 times greater than they are in France, and 22 times greater than in the European Union as a whole. The US has 23 times the rate of firearm homicide seen in Australia. 

Our estimates above for Italy were about 5 times greater for Italy for the years mentioned above. Just an estimate.

Using R to View the 2016 Italian Referendum Results

Overview | Code | Output

Three maps showing the elections of the 2016 Italian Referendum results. Left: Choropleth map. Center:  Bubble plot. Right: Worldwide bubble plot.

Overview

We are currently working our way through the edX.org Microsoft Professional Program in Data Science. There has been a lot of opportunity to work with the R programming language and software environment commonly used in statistical computing. In particular, the course Programming with R for Data Science gives students the opportunity to experiment with combining static maps (e.g. Google Maps) and data overlay overlays. In honor of the upcoming election in Italy, we thought it would be interesting to look at some recent Italian election statistics using R. The code plots the 2016 Italian Referendum results for inside Italy by region and worldwide. The data for this post comes from the Wikipedia article Italian constitutional referendum, 2016. Any errors transcribing the data are our own.

Code

You should be able to paste the code below directly onto the command line of your R environment. Here is the code on Github. See the notes below for more information.

require("ggplot2")
require("ggmap")
require("OpenStreetMap")
library(devtools)
install_github("quantide/mapIT")
require("mapIT")

regionsEN=c("Abruzzo", "Aosta Valley", "Apulia", "Basilicata", "Calabria",
"Campania", "Emilia-Romagna", "Friuli-Venezia Giulia", "Lazio",
"Liguria", "Lombardy", "Marche", "Molise", "Piedmont", "Sardinia",
"Sicily", "Trentino-South Tyrol", "Tuscany", "Umbria", "Veneto",
"Italy", "Europe", "'South America'", "'North America'", "Asia")

regionsIT=c("Abruzzo","Valle d\'Aosta", "Puglia", "Basilicata","Calabria",
"Campania", "Emilia-Romagna", "Friuli-Venezia Giulia", "Lazio",
"Liguria", "Lombardia", "Marche", "Molise", "Piemonte", "Sardegna",
"Sicilia", "Trentino-Alto Adige", "Toscana", "Umbria","Veneto",
"Italia", "Europa", "America meridionale", "American settentrionale e centrale",
"Africa, Asia, Oceania, Antartide")

isRegion=c(rep(TRUE,20),rep(FALSE,5))

electorate=c(1052049, 99735, 3280745, 467000, 1553741,
4566905, 3326910, 952493, 4402145,
1241618, 7480375, 1189180, 256600, 3396378, 1375845,
4031871, 792503, 2854162, 675610, 3725399,
46720943, 2166037, 1291065, 374987, 220252)

percentNo=c(64.4, 56.8, 67.2, 65.9, 67.0,
68.5, 49.6, 61.0, 63.3,
60.1, 55.5, 55.0, 60.8, 56.5, 72.2,
71.6, 46.1, 47.5, 51.2, 61.9,
60.0, 37.6, 28.1, 37.8, 40.3)

referendum=c(rep("No",6),"Yes",rep("No",9),"Yes", "Yes", rep("No", 3), rep("Yes", 4))
my.data <- data.frame(regionsEN, regionsIT, electorate, referendum, isRegion, percentNo)
my.data$regionsEN <- as.character(my.data$regionsEN)
latlon <- geocode(my.data$regionsEN)
my.data<-cbind(my.data,latlon)
my.data.Italy<-subset(my.data,isRegion==TRUE)
my.data.World<-subset(my.data,isRegion==FALSE)
title <- "Referendum 2016 Results"
circle_scale<-0.000004

# generate Italy map
p <- ggmap(get_map(location="Italy",zoom=6), extent="panel")
p <- p + geom_point(aes(x=lon, y=lat),data=my.data.Italy, 
colour=ifelse(my.data.Italy$referendum == "No",'red','green'),
alpha=0.4, size=my.data.Italy$electorate*circle_scale)
p <- p + labs(title=paste(title, "by Region"))
p

# general Italy choropleth map
gp <- list(guide.label="Percent\nNo\nVote", title="2016 Referendum Results by Region", 
low="green", high="red")
mapIT(percentNo, regionsIT, my.data.Italy,  graphPar=gp)

# generate world map
q <- openproj(openmap(c(70,-145), c(-70,145), zoom=1)) 
q <- autoplot(q) + geom_point(aes(x=lon, y=lat),data=my.data.World, 
col=ifelse(my.data.World$referendum == "No",'red','green'),
alpha=0.4, size=log(my.data.World$electorate))
q <- q + labs(x="lon", y="lat", title=paste(title,"Worldwide")) 
q

Notes

• For an  R environment, we use both Microsoft R Client and RStudio, but prefer the latter slightly.
• We made some minor tweaks to the region and constituencies (outside of Italy) to make geocoding easier and place the bubble for a given constituency in a position on the map that makes sense. In particular, we simplified 'North and Central America' to 'North America' and 'Africa, Asia, Oceania, Antarctica' to 'Asia'. 
• The get_map()function can't produce world map as described in this Stack Overflow post, so we found other ways to create a world map with the rworldmap and openstreetmap package. We use the openstreetmap to create a world view and rworldmap along with mapIT to to create a choropleth map of Italy. 
• The mapIT package is discussed in Building a choropleth map of Italy using mapIT. Note in the code above that there are two listings of the Italian regions and constituencies, regionsEN in English and regionsIT in Italian. regionsEN was used with ggmap::geocode() and regionsIT was used with mapIT. 
• You may see over-query-limit warnings as described in the Stack Overflow post. We saw this in happen in the course of running the code multiple times.

Output

The code generates three plots as show at the head of this post.

The referendum was soundly defeated. Inside Italy, 60% voted against it. Only three regions approved it: Emilia-Romagna, Trentino-Alto Adige and Tuscany. The bubble plot shows the size of of the electorate (size of bubble) and their final vote (red for no and green for yes). The choropleth plot shows more clearly that the strongest no vote was more prevalent in the south of Italy.

About 10% of Italians are live outside of Italy and are broken into for constituencies: Europe, South America, North and Central America, and Africa / Asia / Oceania / Antarctica. Each of these constituencies voted for the referendum as can be seen in the worldwide bubble plot. In the worldwide plot, the logarithm of the number of votes is plotted. It's not a particularly compelling visualization because the size of the green bubbles (all constituencies outside of Italy) and the red bubble (Italy) could lead a viewer to incorrectly conclude the referendum passed overall.

For more on voting in Italy, in particular how overseas voting works, see The Italian March 2018 Election for Overseas Italians – Observations and Vocabulary Lesson.

The Italian March 2018 Election for Overseas Italians – Observations and Vocabulary Lesson

Overview | Observations| Vocabulary and Grammar | Update

Overview

Italy is holding a general election on March 4, 2018. How and why this has come to be is better left to those more able to explain the situation than I: see, for example, Italian general election, 2018, Italy dissolves parliament for March election, and Paolo Gentiloni to succeed Matteo Renzi as Italian prime minister to see why the government was dissolved. Up for grabs in this election are 315 seats in the Italian Senate (Senato) and 630 seats in the Chamber of Deputies (Camera dei deputati), which is pretty much everything. So much for easing in change.


Fun with the 2018 Italian political party symbols (insignia). Represented here are about 40 symbols.

Observations

Origins of the election aside, there are several confusing aspects we'd like to mention as seen by folks "outside" the system.

The first confusing aspect is the sheer number of parties in this election.

I lost track after counting over 30 parties registered. Wired.it reports 98 parties. Even though not all parties may be on the ballot (la scheda elettorale) for a given citizen in a given location, the choices are nonetheless overwhelming. At least, I think so. And, boy do Italians, err, I mean political parties love their symbols. It took me a couple of hours to line up all the round colorful symbols (insignia) and understand who and what ideas were behind each one. More on symbols is discussed below.

The second confusing aspect of this election is the process for voting.

This election is the first test of a new electoral law passed in 2017 called Rosatellum bis. In this law, 36% of the seats of both the Senate and Chamber of Deputies are allocated to candidates who receive the most votes, or winner takes all (collegi uninominali). The remaining 64% of the seats in both bodies are awarded proportionally to parties (collegi plurinominali) based on the votes received by each party. On the ballot, winner takes all and proportional system are combined in such a way that there are a couple of ways you can vote. As explained in the Wikipedia article on this election, you can:

I. Select a candidate representing a constituency AND select a party that supports him (there may be multiple because the candidate may be in coalition with different parties). Therefore, you make two X marks on your ballot. 

II. Select just a party. In this case, your vote extends to a candidate in coalition with the party. 

III. Select just a candidate representing a constituency. In this case, your vote is proportionally extended to those parties supporting the candidate.

Diagrams of how this looks on ballots is shown here in Today.it; though written in Italian, the link's images get the point across about the different choices and their implications. Some commentators are warning that voting as described in I. above is the only way to ensure your vote goes to who you intended.

Our ballots (shown below) are simpler than you'd find in Italy because they do not contain coalitions (coalizioni), and as far as we can tell, we just write our candidate's names next to the party they are associated with as well as draw an X on the party. You can find the list of candidates for overseas voters online at the Dipartimento per gli Affari Interni e Territoriali - Elezioni trasparenti site, under Circoscrizioni Estero. For Italians in North and Central American, the We the Italians site gives a nice overview of the choices of candidates and parties.

Finally, the third confusing aspect, yet also interesting, is the existence of parties and platforms focused on concerns specific to Italians living outside the country.

We are not used to thinking about the voting block outside of a country. Let's back up for a second and review the Italian voting system. Italians residing overseas (all'estero) are part of a "territory" (circoscrizione estero) that is in turn broken into four subdivisions (quattro ripartizioni): Europe, including the Asian territories of the Russian Federation and Turkey; South America; North and Central America; and Africa, Asia, Australia and Antarctic. Each subdivision has different parties and candidates on the ballot.  Of the seats in this general election, 6 of 315 seats of the Senate and 12 of the 630 Chamber seats will be elected by Italians abroad.

In the North and Central America ripartizione, we have – at time of writing this - two parties  which from their names are obviously focused on the concerns of Italians living abroad: Associative Movement Italians Abroad (MAIE) and the Free Flights to Italy (see Update below). Two of the items on MAIE's platform are, for example:

• Eliminating the IMU (Imposta Municipale Unica). From the MAIE site: " Italians living abroad, today pay the IMU tax on their home in Italy, due to the fact that it is not considered 'first home', an unjust discrimination that must be revoked."
• Extending healthcare to residents abroad. Again from the MAIE site: "Provide medical care to Italian residents abroad when they return temporarily to Italy. Italian citizens must have free access to the health care system in the country even if their residence is abroad."

The Free Flights to Italy (see Update below) platform seems to be all about culture with the "... specific target for the benefit of Italian citizens living abroad: building bridges between communities through free flights to and from Italy." Sign me up for those.

However, we also took a close look at all the candidates running under the Salvini-Berluconi-Meloni coalition - voting suggestions for mom not for us, I swear - and it was interesting to note that many of the candidates' platforms also made mention of IMU and healthcare as did MAIE. Many of the candidates representing voting blocks outside of Italy are tuned into their constituents. What a concept.

Perhaps the focus on overseas voters is less surprising when we look at the numbers. Using figures from the Italian Referendum of 2016 Numbers we can say that

- In Italy there were 46,720,943 voters. 

- Outside of Italy there were 4,052,341 voters. (This source gives a 4.3 million count of abroad voters.) 

- Together, these numbers indicate that about 9% of Italian voters live outside of Italy.

By comparison, there are about 9 million US citizens living abroad. With an estimated total USA population in 2016 of 321 million, we can estimate that about 3% of US citizens live outside the USA. Given the higher percentage of Italians abroad, it's fair to say that they represent an important voting block and, therefore, it makes some sense that there are specialized parties tailored to their concerns. But, really, free flights? Apparently no, see Update below.

Ballots for the Chamber of Deputies (red) and the Senate (blue) for Italians living in the USA.

Vocabulary and Grammar

Rather than tell you who to vote for, or who we voted for, we'll take this opportunity to highlight some of the new vocabulary and grammar we've encountered.

Plico

A plico is a group of papers or documents in a sealed envelope: a packet. In two years studying the Italian language, this was the first time I ever encountered this word. In our plico, there is a sheet with instructions that include this:

All'interno del plico troverete

• 1 certificato elettorale
• 1 o 2 liste dei candidati
• 1 o 2 schede elettorali
• 2 buste, una piccola di norma di colore bianco e una più grande già affrancata con l'indirizzo del competente ufficio Consolare
• Il foglio informative.

This translates as: "Inside the packet you will find 1 election certificate, 1 or 2 lists of candidates, 1 or 2 election ballots, 2 envelopes, one small standard one (a security envelope) and one larger one postage-paid envelope addressed to the consulate of jurisdiction, and an instruction sheet." 

Our plico contained 2 lists of candidates and 2 associated ballots, one for the Senate and one for the Chamber of Deputies. I'm not sure under what conditions a voter would receive just one list of candidates or one ballot.

The certificate (certificato elettorale) is a sheet of paper from which you tear off the bottom part and send back with your ballot as proof that your vote is valid.

Left: Instructions for the March 2018 election. Right: A mailer received from a candidate running with the coalition Salvini-Berlusconi-Meloni (sounds like a repackaged version of spumone).

Contrassegni

Contrassegni are symbols that represent each party. There are rules for the creation of an symbol, such as that the symbol can't make reference to fascist or Nazi or religious themes, and it must be a circle. I immediately started wondering if they were always circles. It's seems like a practical standardization. I looked around a bit for the history of political symbols but couldn't find much by way of standardization or  their history, though I did stumble on to the site I simboli della discordia ("the symbols of discord"), which thoroughly describes this election's political symbols (in Italian).

Some symbols contain other symbols (pulce) of parties in a sort of coalition. Examples of the ballots we received which have these are Civica Poplare or Salvini-Berlusconi-Meloni. 

The parties that Italians living in the USA can vote for in the Chamber of Deputies and Senate.

Slogans

Below are some of the slogans we could find for the parties we had on our ballot. We couldn't find a well-defined slogan for MAIE, Partito Repubblicano, or Free Flights. Though Free Flights (see Update below) does make liberal use of "Time to Say Goodbye" (Con Te Partirò) by Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli, which could sort of be counted as a slogan?

• Avanti, Insieme – "Forward, together" [Partito Democratico, PD] 
• Per i molti, non per i pochi – "For the many, not the few" [Liberi e Uguali, LeU]
• Onestà, Esperienza, Saggezza – "Honesty, Experience, Wisdom" [Forza Italia, FI]*
• Più Europa, serve all'Italia – "More Europe, Italy needs it" [Più Europa, +E]
• Il vaccino control gli incompetenti – "The vaccine against incompetents" [Civica Popolare, CP]

* This slogan requires a comment.  Experience okay, wisdom maybe, but honesty after everything that has come out about Berlusconi?

Campaign Mailers

We received five campaign mailings. One from a MAIE candidate and four from Salvini-Berlusconi-Meloni (S-B-M) candidates. For educational purposes, let's look at one from the S-B-M camp, from Senate candidate Francesca Alderisi.  She writes:

Adesso sta a te fare la TUA scelta. Scegli con la testa. Scegli con il cuore! – "Now it's up to you to choose. Choose with your head. Choose with your heart!"

Update 3/3/2018

Alas, it turns out that the Free Flights to Italy party, a choice for North and Central American voters, is a hoax. As of today, their web site has been taken down and there is no trace of those free flights. Here are two Italian articles detailing what's known: Free Flights to Italy, il mistero del partito fake ammesso alle elezioni and Questo partito è una truffa? The erstwhile party was the idea of one Giuseppe Macario. His running mate? His mom.  I guess - and if you read to this point you knew it was coming - Con Lui Partirà.