In which I tell you about murder

I have my presentation at two, which is three hours from now. I'm a little nervous, since it's such a big part of my grade, but I think I'll do okay.

My topic is the vendetta against Giuseppa di Sano in 1896. She was this shop keeper in Sicily, and her husband worked as a handyman in a nearby warehouse. Well, it turns out the mafia was using that warehouse to produce counterfeit money. The police found out somehow, burst in, and arrested some of the mafiosi. One of the cousins of an arrested mafioso decided that she had told the police, and had broken omertà, the unwritten rule of silence. This was an offense punishable by death, and probably still is today.

All this strange stuff started happening. The women in the town would gossip about Giuseppa and her family behind her back. Sometimes she was accused of affiliating with mafiosi, sometimes she was accused of being a police spy. Either way, people wanted nothing to do with her. This is a mafia technique used to make sure that the people who get killed aren't missed by anyone. Then she noticed a hole in the wall across from her store- directly across. And finally, a strange man came in and made some very thinly veiled comments about death.

And this whole thing was all very public. Betrayal by someone outside the mafia is an external affair, and needs to be dealt with publicly, to send a message to others. Not to mention that at the time, the relationship between two local mafia families was very strained, and if order was not kept, then one of them might try to take the territory of the other, and things could get bloody pretty quick.

Finally, two weeks after her presumed offense, Guiseppa was shot in the arm as she stood in her store. Her 18 year old daughter, Emanuela, rushed to help her, and was shot in the head. Emanuela died, but Giuseppa did not. She would later become the key witness in a report against the mafia.

Meanwhile, there was all this drama in the mafia. This one mafioso, Buscemi, got arrested, and pointed the finger at the shooter, Vincenzo D'Alba. Everyone was super shocked because that's not cool bro. D'Alba's cousin, Antonio D'Alba, brought Buscemi up to the family as breaking the code of honor. Buscemi claimed that he was going to change his story later, to confuse the police and divert attention away from the family. Weirdly, the family said "alright, yeah, sounds good."

But Buscemi's godfather, Tommaso D'Aleo, thought that Antonio D'Alba was trying to cut into his protection racket, so he had him brought up to the family for accusing Buscemi. This time the family decided, in private, that D'Alba had to go.

So they killed D'Alba and stuffed him into a pit with three other bodies, which were later found and blown up into a huge inquiry.

But that's as far as my presentation is going to go. Yeah. Look at all that. It was a mess, by the way. The other families were not impressed by the shooting of Giuseppa- I mean, did she even do anything? And they didn't even kill her! These tensions would later lead to a bloody territory war.

And now some updates about my life, now that I've got your attention with murder.

I found out that I did actually buy hot chocolate powder! It's just that in Europe, they don't always add in the sugar to the mix. You're supposed to do it yourself. "Do you buy everything pre-made in America?" my German friend asked. Well, yeah, kinda.

I'm going to go to a chocolate festival this weekend. I mean, I may not have a Valentine, but I'm eating chocolate in Europe, so who's really winning here? We also may take a day trip out to a smaller town in the countryside, since Rome is sort of a metropolis.

Last weekend I was so drained that I just didn't go out at all. But I'm feeling a lot more rejuvenated this weekend. I've already decided that if we don't go out tonight, I'm going to spend the night doing a deep clean of my face and fixing up my nails. Both desperately need it.