Italy: Death Wish & Taxes

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Italians can brew a political tempest in the tiniest espresso cup:

> When the government proposed boosting the tax on the awnings of sidewalk cafés from 60∧ a square yard to $25, café owners threatened to strike, coffee lovers raised a howl, and the Confederation of Commerce and Tourism dispatched an official delegation to the Finance Minister, a Christian Democrat. Result: the tax on shade was raised to only $2.50.

> The cemetery in the town of Albiano Magra (pop. 1,500), 60 miles southeast of Genoa, was filled to capacity, and in order to make space the town fathers ordered the construction of a large concrete wall with precut niches to fit average-length coffins. The Socialist-Communist city planners thought they solved the problem neatly, but when some coffins had to be shaved at both ends because their occupants were too long for their resting place, Christian Democrats angrily accused the Marxists of tampering with the dead "just as you trim the budget.''

> The famous pines of Rome, long the inspiration of poets and composers, have been stricken by a mysterious blight, which one newspaper attributed to a death wish on the part of the trees caused by Italy's booming capitalism. The trees, complained the paper, no longer want to live, faced with all the exhaust fumes from motorcars and "the streams of reinforced concrete that Rome, like a volcano, spews forth."