Los Angeles and Italy, city and village

how we live — By Bob Riel on November 29, 2007 at 7:07 am

What’s the difference between urban life in Los Angeles and village life in Italy? I found this interesting nugget in a recent story about an LA woman who now lives part-time in her family’s ancestral village in Italy. The paragraph is an apt description of the differences between two different ways of life.

She still lives in Los Angeles — how does a day there compare to a day here?

“In Los Angeles, everything you do, you do alone and in your car, ” Ms. Paolantonio says. “Here I don’t leave the house without somebody saying, ‘Where are you going?’ I went outside the other day, a neighbor, this ancient woman dressed completely in black, comes out. She usually takes half an hour to kiss me a thousand times. I don’t understand a word she’s saying. She’s cooing at me, like a little dove, cooing.”