Saturday, January 22, 2005
It's all happening here. Last night Cosimo di Lauro, the son and effective leader of the Di Lauro mafia clan was arrested by the police. As he was being led out of his safe house the women of the area pelted the police with stones and water bottles. Across from Scampia where the scissionisti.. (the breakaway camorra clan) have their base, there were wild fireworks and celebrations. Of course it won't mean the end of the latest clan war, but the police have had some significant success in recent weeks. On the same day a decapitated and burnt body was found belonging to one of the two sides. Deaths so far this year 12.
Another death, this time not in Naples. The story behind this one is more hopeless. The background is that the number 53 has not been drawn in the Venice lottery for 177 weeks. Very few numbers are so 'ritardato' and people have been laying huge bets on the number coming up for weeks. Last week a woman stole 1 million euros from her bank and played it all on 53. It didn't come up. The week before another housewife from Milan, put all her family's savings on the the number. Again a no show. She threw herself off the balcony.
I play the lottery most weeks, 2 euros a time. I stand behind people with obviously very little money who play the lotto, (the local Naples lottery) the Superenalotto, (the national lottery) as well as the Totogol, the Italian pools. They routinely hand over 50 or 60 euros a time.
The system is different here. At the moment there are 9 local lotteries, Venice, Naples, ROme, FLorence, Bari... etc, the first number out of the hat for 6 of these form the numbers for the national lottery. But this year its all changing. To streamline the event, there will be only three regional lotteries, north, central and south. What has caused more consternation is a change in the televising of the same. For hundreds of years, certainly here in Naples, the lucky balls have been chosen from a mesh barrel by a blindfolded child. It's all to stop in the autumn when automatic machines will do the job. The ITalian equivalent of Guinevere will pick the lucky balls. It won't be the same. At the moment the child takes a ball, passes it to an official who opens the ball, extracts the piece of linen with a number on it and passes it to another official who opens out the material square and displays the number for a fourth person to read. I suppose its a metaphor for Italian overstaffing and its high time it went, but it wont be the same with a mere machine to make you a multi millionaire.
Another death, this time not in Naples. The story behind this one is more hopeless. The background is that the number 53 has not been drawn in the Venice lottery for 177 weeks. Very few numbers are so 'ritardato' and people have been laying huge bets on the number coming up for weeks. Last week a woman stole 1 million euros from her bank and played it all on 53. It didn't come up. The week before another housewife from Milan, put all her family's savings on the the number. Again a no show. She threw herself off the balcony.
I play the lottery most weeks, 2 euros a time. I stand behind people with obviously very little money who play the lotto, (the local Naples lottery) the Superenalotto, (the national lottery) as well as the Totogol, the Italian pools. They routinely hand over 50 or 60 euros a time.
The system is different here. At the moment there are 9 local lotteries, Venice, Naples, ROme, FLorence, Bari... etc, the first number out of the hat for 6 of these form the numbers for the national lottery. But this year its all changing. To streamline the event, there will be only three regional lotteries, north, central and south. What has caused more consternation is a change in the televising of the same. For hundreds of years, certainly here in Naples, the lucky balls have been chosen from a mesh barrel by a blindfolded child. It's all to stop in the autumn when automatic machines will do the job. The ITalian equivalent of Guinevere will pick the lucky balls. It won't be the same. At the moment the child takes a ball, passes it to an official who opens the ball, extracts the piece of linen with a number on it and passes it to another official who opens out the material square and displays the number for a fourth person to read. I suppose its a metaphor for Italian overstaffing and its high time it went, but it wont be the same with a mere machine to make you a multi millionaire.
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