SMALL VICTORIES: The Calabrian town of Amendolara is tackling underdevelopment
The world got a pungent whiff of how Italy's public life has decayed when the southern city of Naples was buried under block-long piles of trash last December. But here's another image from the south of Italy: two men in a three-wheeled mini Piaggio garbage truck puttering along the narrow cobblestone streets in the small coastal town of Amendolara, picking up neatly placed bags of refuse for recycling. While the Neapolitans were fuming over the corruption and political spinelessness that elevated their trash woes to iconic significance, a door-to-door pickup scheme was successfully encouraging the good citizens of Amendolara to separate...