Two Jewds in Noto

... Speaking of the fascisti
Last weekend I boarded an autobus to Noto, and the driver was kind enough to take me to Noto. As I was walking from the station, I passed a open doorway with a sign that said it was a typographic museo- and I peeked in.
One thing about ITaly.... there's no such thing as window shopping. If you pause in front of a storefront, if you eyeball a vegetable, you are inviting a purchase... the proprietor will approach you and ask you what you want. He will explain that his sardines are the best, they are far superior to the sardines down the street and you want some. Even if you do not eat sardines, he will assure you that you do, or that the only reason you don't is because you haven't eaten his sardines.
Anyway I was ushered inside this museo by three animated scholars who asked me my name and where I was from.
"You are Judishe! Jewd!" exclaimed one
This was not the first time my name has solicited this reaction- so I'm a little less alarmed than I was the first time.
"Yes, si- I am a Jewd," I told him.
"But I am very happy! Happy to see you! I am a jewd!"
He was, in fact, not a jewd because only his father is Jewdishe... but he considers himself Jew and "sono Communismo!" Allora, I said, if he goes to New York he will meet many who so identify.
In any case, they gave me a discount on the bigletto (2 Euro) and showed me around the book/magazine museo. There were newspapers dating back to the risorgimento, and a dictionary of the sicilian dialect and a 17th century Spanish/Italian dictionary printed by a medici ("there are only two!," the museo's curator exclaimed) Nothing was under glass.
I confess I find myself drawn to the fascist era publications. The aesthetics of fascism tend to be pretty cheesy (see kanan makiya's book about fascist kitch in Iraq) - but the futurists (or most of them) supported the fascists in Italy (they were all interested in creating "a nuovo mondo" si?) And so, in Italy, fascism had a genuine artistic movement attached to it- and fascism is all about the spectacle, the uniforms, the crowd. The futurists were truly innovative painters, sculptors (I'm not crazy about their architecture) but they definitely made strides in typography, graphics, print publishing - anything that involved technology. Most of their publications are dated "Anno XV, or anno XVI because they're dating everything from 1920, when the fascists took power and reset the clock. So here are some pictures I took of some of the magazines and books at the Noto museo.
and yes, "sono Jewdiche" and mi piace the fascisti fonts.