Italy abounds in religious processions centred on a town’s patron saint or holy relic. San Cassiano’s Festa Triennale del SS Crocifisso (Feast of the Very Holy Crucifix) is celebrated in grand style every three years. It is a very moving festival of the religious and community spirit of the area, bringing together not only the inhabitants of the surrounding villages but also relatives who have emigrated to the Americas and northern Europe. For an anthropologist the Festa is a complete vindication of Durkheim’s concept of “collective effervescence” and the identification of God with Society.
The intermixing and fusion of the sacred and the secular can be felt throughout the three days of this wonderful occasion, both for San Cassiano and for the entire Valle di Lima.
I’ve witnessed the festa Triennale at least three times since I moved to this area in 2005. The climax of the ceremony is when the crucifix comes gently down a specially-built ramp from above the altar where it has been placed.
The descent from on high is, of course, meant to symbolise the incarnation of God in the figure of his Son Jesus Christ, who become a man.
It’s also ‘Ecce homo’, (here is the man) as Pontius Pilate, Roman governor of Judea says (in St John’ gospel) to the mass of people in front of him when he has had Jesus flagellated. Pontius thought this was good enough punishment but the high priest wanted more and Jesus was crucified.
After the recitation of the vespers there was the solemn procession beating the bounds of San Cassiano.
Two friends were responsible for decorating the lovely arch at the start of the village.
In the evening there was an excellent concert by the ‘Filarmonica Santa Cecilia di Farnocchia’ band followed by a spectacular fireworks display.
Long may these events continue for they serve both a religious and a social purpose and bring the community together whether one is a believer or not. A village without these festivities is truly a village without a soul. In three years’ time let us all trust we shall be here to celebrate another Festa Del Santissimo Crocifisso at Sn Cassiano. In the meanwhile well done to all those who participated in this great event.
What an extraordinary combination: the Ealing Symphony orchestra from the leafy west London suburb in Lucca’s magnificent baroque church of Santa Maria Corteorlandini and playing that solace-giving life-enhancing, absolutely gorgeous, Rachmaninov second symphony and Elgar too!
Thanks to the energy of Elio Antichi, tenor, impresario, all-round musician, founder and director of Lucca’s famed Baluardi choir for almost thirty years, organiser of the international orchestra season, now in its sixteenth year, and great encourager of youth music this combination flowered into an extraordinary synthesis of sound and architecture.
First, the church: Santa Maria Corteorlandini – or Santa Maria Nera as it is called by the Lucchesi because of the dark statue of the Madonna placed in a side chapel, an exact copy of the Holy House of Loreto, and to distinguish it from Santa Maria Bianca, otherwise known as Santa Maria Fuorisportam. This is my favourite of all Lucca’s hundred churches and it is close to the heart of Antichi too.
Not only is the interior spectacular but the acoustics are absolutely amazing!
The Ealing Symphony orchestra, now going for over ninety years, is one of the UK top amateur orchestras but don’t be put off by that tag ‘amateur’. Its playing is fully professional and does credit to the high standards of British orchestral performances.
As for Rachmaninov, famously described by Stravinsky as ‘six foot six of Russian gloom’, there is nothing gloomy about his second symphony. Dreamy it certainly is and energizing too. Premiered in 1908 the symphony had to be a make-or-break work after the disaster of the composer’s first symphony (largely due to the conductor Glazunov being drunk in charge of an orchestra) which cast Rachmaninov into a depression which was only alleviated by his visit to a hypnotherapist.
I don’t quite know which version of the symphony John Gibbons, the conductor of the Ealing orchestra since 1994, used: the original score was lost for many years, only found in 2004 and sold for over a million pounds. However, the performance did full justice to whatever score was used. What was most extraordinary was how the three-aisled church of Santa Maria Nera accommodated the sound of the excellent brass section of the orchestra. Indeed, the total balance was perfect and each instrumental section was distinctly heard – something often difficult in the usually over-reverberating acoustics of some Luccan churches (San Michele in Foro, in particular…).
After a slightly underwhelming start the slow third movement built up to a pinnacle of pure beauty and redemption. I felt the frescoed Saints of the church’s vaults coming alive in joy at the sound. If any one’s heart isn’t melted by this lovely music then I fear they are not human!
(Part of Rachmaninov’s Symphony no 2)
The Rachmaninov took up the second half of the concert. And what about the first half? Elgar’s passionate ‘In the south (Alassio)’ encapsulated the colours and sensations of Italy from a glorious sunrise to the tramp of Roman legions to the evening shepherd’s song and, as befits an English orchestra, the Ealing Band played it to perfection. Doreen Carwithen’s (William Alwyn’s wife who died just 14 years ago) Bishop Rock Overture was an excellent piece of characteristic 1950’s film music and reminded me that she also wrote the score for the official film of Her Majesty’s coronation.
J. S. Bach’s concerto for two violins saw a much scaled down orchestra (from over fifty to under ten players, in fact) as befits music from the Baroque era. Here was truly a sound that was closest to the architecture of Santa Maria Nera. The E.S.O. showed they could easily tackle the different aesthetics of eighteenth century music with complete conviction and with two superlative soloists (who were the leaders of the strings).
It’s not often one gets a dollop of Elgar in Lucca (Despite Colombini’s efforts) and it was most welcome. To add Bach and Rachmaninov to this dish provided a musical feast which will keep me from going hungry until….well, the next concert in this brilliant season.
For further details of the cornucopia of music events in Lucca throughout the summer (indeed, throughout the rest of the year) do look at the page I edit in English in LuccaMusica’s web page at
Apart from Elio Antichi’s untiring efforts, thanks are also due to the William Alwyn foundation, Luccan generosity and the Santa Maria Nera community for this wonderful free concert.
(The opening of Elgar’s tone poem ‘In the South (Alassio)’
PS If you want to live another day to hear concerts at this lovely church don’t linger outside the front door (usually closed anyway). There’s this notice to consider:
The Holy Shroud of Turin is one of the most mysterious objects in the world. For many Christians it’s the winding sheet in which Christ’s body was placed when it was removed from the sepulchre in which he was placed after his crucifixion. For others it’s just a fake.
The shroud, or ‘Sacra Sindone’, in Italian has even sprouted a new science called Sindology. A sindologist is a person who carries out research on this arcane object. There have been various tests carried out on the Sindone. One test involves dating the cloth which carries the impression of a tortured being with blood from a supposed crown of thorns, similar blood traces from the centre of his hands – presumably from the nails driven into him to hang him on the cross – and a spear mark between the ribs on the left side. Already here there is much discussion. A recent test dates the cloth from around 1200 AD. Other tests trace the herringbone weave pattern to a period between 500 BC and 200 AD. Other tests analyse vegetation pollen traces and place the cloth in the Middle East in terms of plant species. Then there’s the historical analysis: there’s no mention of the winding sheet before mediaeval times.
(The Sacra Sindone)
So what does the Roman Catholic church think about it all? It neither confirms the sindone’s authenticity nor does it deny it. Instead the church believes that the image of the face upon it is an aid to meditate upon the face of Christ. This is what many popes have confirmed. If the winding sheet helps in concentrating the mind on a being who has evidently suffered and been tortured in the manner of Christ himself then this is good enough.
(The Holy Face on the shroud)
However, a recent study (Casabianca, Tristan (May 2013) “The Shroud of Turin: A Historiographical Approach” – The Heythrop Journal) concludes that “that the probability of the Shroud of Turin being the real shroud of Jesus of Nazareth is very high”.
Actually it wasn’t until 1983 that the Holy Shroud became the property of the Roman Catholic Church when it was gifted to them by its previous owners, the Royal House of Savoy.
In 1997 the chapel in which the shroud was conserved was subject to a fire whose causes are still to this day unknown. Oddly, it was another fire in the Savoy Chapel of Chambéry where the shroud was kept (today the French region of Haute-Savoie once part of the kingdom of Piedmont but ceded to Frace in return for help in unifying Italy in 1861) in the sixteenth century which caused those prominent burn marks on each side of the shroud.
(The Sacra Sindone Chapel still under scaffolding last Thursday)
It has taken already twenty years for the Sacra Sindone chapel, situated behind the cathedral’s apse, to be restored. It is hoped, however, that Guarini’s masterpiece will be re-opened to the public by the end of this year. At the moment the shroud is temporarily kept in a chapel at the end of the cathedral’s left aisle where I saw its chest during my recent visit to Turin.
(Worshippers before the shroud last Thursday)
Occasionally the shroud is unravelled from this chest and ‘exposed’ to the public. This occurred in 2010 and we were keen to see this mysterious relic.
Here are some photos from our visit to see the Sindone seven years ago:
During my recent visit I had a look at the ‘Sacra Sindone’ museum in Turin which obviously does not hold the shroud but documents its history and research completed on it. There is a sculpture showing how the unknown person who many say was Jesus would have been positioned in the tomb with the winding sheet.
There’s the kind of loom the winding sheet would have been weaved on at Christ’s time:
There is the huge plate-camera used by Secondo Pia to take the first photographs of the shroud in 1898.
The museum is well-organised and draws one even further into the enigma of this mysterious object worthy of a Dan Brown thriller.
Like all devotional objects in religion, however, it’s not the object itself which is important but the power it has in making people think, or re-think, their ideas on transcendent experiences. There are so many things beyond our comprehension upon this planet and Turin’s highly shroud ranks high on that list.
If you want to know more there’s the well thought out Sindone Museum at the following site:
I first visited Turin many years ago and fell in love with a city which, in so many ways, breaks the mould of the traveller’s idea of what an Italian town is supposed to look like. Here are some photos from that distant past that I took on my ‘Brownie’ camera:
There is no tangle of mediaeval streets here, there are no steep hill-top castles and there is no outstanding renaissance church or palace. There are no special flag-twirling festivals or pageants for tourists. Instead, the visitor is presented with a city that is essentially the creation of the age of the enlightenment. The wonderfully restrained eighteenth century houses, the miles of porticoes to protect one not only from the rain but from the often scorching summer sun, the glamour of its fine baroque churches, not run wild like they are in Rome but built according to highly rational principles by such great architects as Guarini and Juvarra (who also designed Lucca’s own town hall in Piazza Napoleone) – and all set in a grid street system ranging in width from narrow streets to tree-lined boulevards wider and finer than even those that grace Paris – are seductive and makes one want to live here.
This is what greeted me on my way from the station to my hotel room (it was actually a flat..).
My flat was situated in an attractive little street (Sant’Agostino) minutes from Turin’s great sights like the Royal Palace, Palazzo Madama (the Lady’s palace) and the cathedral. It dated from the seventeenth century and like the majority of apartments in Turin had a sweet little inner courtyard adorned with greenery.
The food and drink in this city are superlative: Turin is the birthplace of the ubiquitous aperitivo, the inventor of the Gianduiotto chocolate, the maker of some of the best ice-creams in Italy, the home of amaretti and Savoyard biscuits, grissini, those long bread-sticks now even gracing the shelves of UK supermarkets, marrons glacé, and zabaglione. As for main courses who could depart from Turin without tasting its fritto misto alla piedmontese which is an amazing combination of a variety of meats, offal, fruit and sweets cooked in olive oil?
Since making Italy my home I’ve been to Turin three times, all for largely religious reasons. For Turin, besides, being a major centre of enlightened philosophy and political thought, (after all it was from Turin that the idea of a unified Italy first took flight), is also a focus of nineteenth century pietism and especially of ‘social saints.’ These are saints who are famous not just for their miracles but for having a mission of improving the living conditions of people in an age when welfare, hospitals and rehabilitation centres were rarely encountered.
Among these saints the most noted are:
Saint Giuseppe Benedetto Cottolengo (1786 – 1842) founder of the ‘Piccola casa Della Divina Provvidenza’, for the terminally ill and which, still today relies entirely on voluntary contributions.
Saint Giovanni Bosco (1815 – 1888) founder of the Salesian order which is dedicated to the education and work-placement of young people.
The ideas of these ‘modern’ saints have spread wide and far. For example, at the college I used to work in London I had a colleague who was particularly involved in voluntary activities with the Salesians.
The concept of a social saint has, of course, continued to this day. Mother of Teresa of Calcutta, who was made a saint, last year, is a prime example of this. These people made others rethink their universe of ideas, were truly charismatic in the positive sense of the word and rightly left their area of the world a better place.
In 2010 we visited Turin to view the ‘Sacra Sindone’ or holy shroud which was unravelled from its chest and placed on view for all faithful (or faithless) to view.
(Worshippers at the Holy Shroud in the cathedral yesterday)
In 2011 we returned to see probably the world’s finest Egyptian museum with its new displays. Since ancient Egypt was centrered on the cult of Isis and Osiris, which several people say has become transmuted into Christianity, that visit could also be said to be religious.
The most recent visit, which was spread over the past couple of days, was definitely for a religious occasion. It was, in fact, the funeral of an acquired cousin, Paolo Osiride Ferrero, the son of the brother of my Italian grandmother. (Note the amalgam of Christian and Egyptian names and the surname Ferrero also given to the manufacturer of some of the most exquisite chocolates in the world. Who hasn’t tasted a Ferrero-Rocher?)
I remember my great uncle (who was a Ferrero sales representative) praising his son to one of his clients: the son’s intelligence, musical qualities, firm Christian convictions, generosity and personality. ‘Why hasn’t Paolo found a wife then?’ asked the client. ‘There is just one snag’, replied the great uncle. ‘He was struck down by polio while still in the cradle and can only move around with callipers and crutches.’ ‘Ah well’, replied the client, ‘that makes all the difference, doesn’t it?’
For Paolo there was no difference. Or if there was it was in the eye of the beholder. Italy at that time had very few provisions for disabled people or, as is better put, people in difficulties. Persons like Paolo were brought up in special institutions, made to feel as if they were somehow separate from others, almost made to feel guilty for their difference. Accessibility or, as the Italians like to phrase, ‘architecture without barriers’, was not even considered in the design of new buildings. Paolo changed all that. He did not merely campaign for greater ease of access for all the inhabitants of Turin, no matter whether they had difficulties in walking, seeing or any other of the impedimenta which we all, of the human race, suffer from in varying degrees. He changed people’s minds about the whole area of human difficulties. As we are all, metaphorically for some, religiously for others, ‘sons of God’, such prejudices as racism, and sexism once used to spread to disability. The key word here is integration and where I worked in the UK I too helped to integrate ‘special needs’ students within the wider social framework of a college of further education.
Although the work is far from being completed in Italy many visitors to this country will have noticed such features as newer trains and buses with platform level opening doors (here, too, I have a friend, John Wagstaff, who has been instrumental in improving disabled access to London’s public transport), special tactile paving for those whose sight is poor or doesn’t even exist, lifts wide enough to take wheel chairs and generally better accessibility to the wonders of Italy (often difficult because so many of its buildings are historic and have particular conservation rules to follow) and many other examples of breaking down architectural barriers. Indeed, one of the things our last mayor, Massimo Betti, did in this area was to provide access for all to Bagni di Lucca’s town hall. (See my post on that at https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2017/03/12/bagni-di-luccas-town-hall-is-now-open-to-all/ )
Apart from being a forthright and tough campaigner for equal rights in accessibility to all Paolo was a gifted musician on the piano and the accordion. He was a fine tenor and part of RAI Turin’s choir for many years and also taught music in the city’s secondary schools. As for his physical disability, that did not stop him from marrying a lovely lady and becoming father and grandfather to a growing family.
As befitted the funeral service in celebration of the life of Paolo, Turin’s cathedral (the only renaissance building in the city, incidentally) was packed with family, friends and representatives from the voluntary organisations, in particular the red-cross service the city mayor and presiding over the ceremony all the archbishop of Turin, Cesare Nosiglia.
A group of musicians playing flute, viola, cello, guitar and keyboard and with a gorgeous soprano provided some melting music, Paolo’s great love:
Rete sette TV station was also there. You can see their feature on the funeral at
Truly Paolo was one of the same league as Turin’s social saints as his brother stated in his farewell speech. It was a very dignified send-off from an energetic campaigner for equal rights and I was glad to have made it there to meet up with relatives I’d either not met for a long time or never met at all. And all this in a most beautiful city with so much to offer in the way of elegance, hospitality and culture.
After the service I took the opportunity to climb to the top of the Duomo’s bell tower completed largely by Juvarra in the 1720’s.
It was truly worth climbing up the two hundred odd rather steep and rather vertigo-inducing steps to enjoy the wonderful views of this magnificent Turin cradled between the snowy alps, the hills of Asti and traversed by that longest of Italian rivers, the Po.
We arrived to this seemingly modern-looking but actually astoundingly heritage-rich city by train. I am old enough to remember the construction of the ‘Pirellone’, that marvellously elegant skyscraper one sees when stepping out from Milan’s Stazione Centrale into Piazza Duca d’Aosta. First projected in 1950 it was built between 1956 and 1961. The great modernist architects Gio Ponte and Pier Luigi Nervi were among the group that designed this pioneering structure which from 1958 to 1966 held the record for being the tallest building in the European Union at a height of 417 feet and 32 stories. In Milan the Pirellone held the record for even longer since there was a complete lull in skyscraper building there until this millennium.
‘Pirellone’ means ‘big Pirelli’ and the skyscraper was built by the rubber manufacturing company, founded in 1872 by Giovanni Battista Pirelli, for its headquarters. Indeed, around the building the pavements are all made of rubber. In 1978, however, Pirelli sold its Pirellone to the Lombardy regional council. The regional council occupied this building until quite recently when it moved across to another skyscraper, the Palazzo Lombardia which is even higher at 528 feet.
(Palazzo Lombardia)
This meant that the Pirellone was put up for sale. Only yesterday I read in the papers that the European Medicines Agency, formerly in London, is to move into it as a result of the insecurity caused by the Brexit disaster. The EMA is responsible for the evaluation of medicinal products and for producing a common European code for such item. This means that whatever medicinal product one purchases in any European Union pharmacy will have been tested according to agreed criteria. I don’t know what’s going to happen to medicine evaluation and control in the UK. Probably a UK equivalent duplicating all the work done by the EMA at extra cost to the taxpayer. Another agency, the European Banking authority, is also moving out of the UK and searching for a new base for its operations. Probably Frankfurt, already Europe’s second greatest financial centre, will be its new home and I wouldn’t be surprised if it soon swops place with the City of London as Europe’s number one banking hub.
This is all very sad, especially for those persons losing their jobs (although I’m sure that relocation deals will be generous). But, as the slogans went, Britain wants to ‘regain control’ and will undoubtedly play into the hands of American free-trade deals meaning that everyone in the UK will no longer have the surety of knowing exactly what they are eating or what they are injecting or what the pound will be worth the next day.
On a brighter note I should add that my wife was a top-ranking employee of Pirelli as an interpreter (she is fluent in five languages) with her own secretary. Regrettably the deal with a major UK tyre manufacturer was unsuccessful and Pirelli relocated from London. Today, as so often is happening with other companies, Pirelli is owned by the Chinese ChemChina which also holds the Bridgestone, Michelin, Continental and Goodyear tyre companies.
PS In case you might have wondered, my wife did not appear on any of the iconic Pirelli calendars (although she certainly deserves to have been featured). So as not to disappoint you completely, however here’s one page from the 1974 edition.
After our catastrophic accident (see my post at https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2017/05/08/about-guardian-angels/) in which (luckily) our poor little Cinquina (FIAT 500 1967 vintage) fared worse that us, we decided upon a ‘new’ car. We opted for the best car available for steep mountainous terrain like ours around Bagni di Lucca: a FIAT Panda.
The Fiat Panda may be described in two ways. First it’s the little S (sports) U (utility) V (vehicle). Second, it’s the ‘naughty’ car. For when the great Italian designer Giorgetto Giugiaro first unveiled it in 1980 in the presence of Italian’s most popular president ever, Sandro Pertini, he described it as a rural vehicle for the youth of Italy. In fact, due to its easily convertible interior to a double bed, the FIAT Panda has been the only ‘get-away hotel for many a courting Italian couple besieged by parents, prying eyes and country gossip.
In case you hadn’t heard of the great car designer Giugiaro he was also responsible for the De Lorean seagull-winged vehicle which (apart from its Northern Ireland scandals) appeared in that iconic film ‘Back to the Future’.
There have been three series of Pandas so far. Ours is the classic version, hardly changed since 1980, apart from a few minor restylings. The first series is particularly favoured for its introduction of four-wheel drive (otherwise front wheel drive only) and its high wheel-base which is exceedingly useful in this rocky part of the world.
We shall always shed a little tear in memory of our lovely Cinquina which took us to the remotest roads of Corsica and Sardinia but we do appreciate our Panda. It’s somehow more part of the landscape than any other vehicle in Italy’s Apennine mountains.
Yesterday we did the classic circular ride which goes from Bagni di Lucca through Montefegatesi, Orrido di Botri and down the Val Fegana. We also included a walk around the lovely Prato Fiorito Mountain. Here are a few photos of that lovely drive-about or ‘scampagnata’ as they say here. It was a great off-road drive and the Panda really proved its worth:
The Lima is the name of the river that flows through Bagni di Lucca. It’s unusual in that it can be called both ‘Il’ Lima (masculine definite article) and ‘La’ Lima (feminine definite article. Indeed, the river is characterised by both stereotypically masculine features, like its often tempestuous course through rugged rocky canyons, and feminine ones (like its transit through gentler flood plains).
The source of the river is at the Abetone pass by the mountain of ‘Tre Potenze’. Lower down it’s fed by its tributary the Sestaione. The Lima (more useful to use the English article perhaps…) then goes through its most spectacular stage which are the gorges between the towns of La Lima and Bagni di Lucca, known as ‘I stretti di Cocciglia’. At Fornoli, after a thirty five mile course, the Lima joins up with the Serchio which leads into the sea near Migliarino.
The most precious feature of the Lima is that, between winter snows and summer storms, it never runs dry and can often be alarmingly full. This has led to a conflict between those wishing to exploit the river’s water power to generate electricity (as in the hydro-electric station and artificial lake above La Lima) and those who regard (like me) the river as a precious natural feature of the Italian landscape and wish to protect it from any form of exploitation.
Already the comune of Bagni di Lucca has fought successfully to prevent any further hydro-electric stations within its boundaries, arguing that the incredibly beautiful landscape of the river would generate a higher income from tourism than from any electricity generation.
The Lima provides a fabulous retreat from the often torrid summer heat of this part of the world. There’s no better swimming pool than its cool, limpid waters framed by wild rocks and deep forests. Well away from the crowded beaches of Versilia and the traffic choked roads leading to that popular seaside area, spending time by this river is truly a great way to pass a day. Toscana’s beaches may not be enchanting as those found in many other parts of the world but its fiume Lima magic is truly unique.
Here is a selection of photographs of the places we’ve spent by the river in recent days. I’m not saying exactly where these places are. Those familiar to the area will know anyway. For each one of us must find their ideal spot by the river’s side.
Last Thursday, as part of the Shelley, festival there was a lovely event in front of the house the Shelleys stayed in when they first arrived in Italy – the villa Chiappa in the old part of Bagni di Lucca. A group of local Bagni di Lucca poets, comprising Rossana Federighi, Maura Bertolozzi, Francis Pettitt, Roberto Ragghianti and Valerio Ceccarelli, met to celebrate Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Luca PB Guidi, of Shelley House bookshop in Bagni di Lucca, was the presenter and each of the poets read a classic poem plus two from their own collections. My classic poem was Shakespeare’s first sonnet which was later read in an Italian translation by Valerio Ceccarelli.
There was a very full house in the balmy summer evening and some of the audience had to sit on the wall behind the rows of chairs.
It’s interesting to note that poetry has come back in a big way, thanks also to the leader of the opposition in the UK government, Jeremy Corbyn. He, like so many others, senses the significance from Shelley’s ‘A defence of Poetry’ that ‘Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.’
What this means is that poets can express concepts and feelings which cannot be properly articulated in any other discipline, whether it be philosophy, history, psychology or science. Poets in a sense are seers: they can somehow look into the future. Ultimately, however, poetry is, as Wordsworth famously said, emotion recollected in tranquillity.
Certainly we all left the pleasant poetry evening feeling both refreshed and recharged.
For more information about other events in the Shelley Festival see the facebook page at:
The Italian revue at Roberto Ragghianti’s page at ‘Righe d’inchiostro’ (the title of his recently published book) was also very positive:
‘Ieri sera la magia della Poesia ha trasformato una normale serata d’estate, in un momento carico di Emozioni, di brividi sulla pelle, di Amicizia e spiritualità. Le parole di Shelley, (sotto casa sua), le parole di Dante, di Shakespeare, del Petrarca hanno risuonato nella notte e hanno trapassato e colpito al centro del cuore tutti coloro che insieme a noi hanno condiviso questo momento. Poi abbiamo osato leggere anche le nostre di Poesie, nell’emozione di Valerio che mi ha fatto sospirare, nella dolcezza di Maura, nella determinazione di Rossana, nella bravura stratosferica di Francis. La regia di tutto questo è stata di Luca e di Rebecca della Shelley House due ragazzi straordinari, due Amici Veri. Grazie di cuore a tutti.’
Bagni di Lucca is truly the town of poets and poetry . Indeed how could it not be when there are such great poets as Mario Lena living here!
Isn’t it often the instance that places on a familiar stretch of road still reveal new sights even after many years in the area?
Such is the case with the ‘fontanina dell’amore’, or little fountain of love, which is near the big new roundabout with the anchor at the northern exit to Fornaci di Barga. (For information about the anchor on the roundabout see my post at https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2014/09/25/anchors-away/ ).
Surrounded by lush woods the fountain pours out deliciously cool water, so welcome in the heat we continue to experience this summer.
The fountain and surrounding area were being restored by three workers who were having a barbie lunch when we arrived.
On the fountain wall is a delightful poem by Geri di Gavinana dedicated to the source. Geri di Gavinana was a local worker and poet who died in 1975. He has been described as the ‘poet of little things’. The general gist of the poem is that the fountain is a traditional tryst for lovers seeking a secluded spot away from prying eyes. The fountain is then asked, like a fly on the wall, what secret rendezvous it has been witness to.
Fornaci di Barga, home of part of the manufacturing process of the Euro, is not an especially distinguished place. However, it does have its unknown corners and we were glad to come across the ‘fontanina dell’amore’, the little fountain of love, yesterday. It truly made our otherwise humdrum morning.
Here is a video (with thanks to ‘Il Giornale di Barga’) showing the re-dedication of the fountain’ with schoolchildren reciting and singing poems by Geri di Gavinana last year.
Italy is on fire. This year has been particularly bad for forest fires and the sad thing is that most of them have been started deliberately. Why should anyone want to destroy the wonderful arboreal heritage of Italy? There are various reasons related to illegal land use. Many of the reasons are just to get rid of illegal fly-tipping.
The vilest methods have been used by mafia-inspired pyromaniacs to spread fires. Perhaps the most shocking is the finding by the forestry guards of cat carcasses burnt by the flames on Mount Vesuvius. Here’s a typical headline which doesn’t need much knowledge of Italian to translate.
ORRORE SUL VESUVIO: ANIMALI VIVI USATI PER ESTENDERE LE FIAMME
Our area is certainly not exempt from forest fires. Luckily although there are traces everywhere of fires they have so far been extinguished before they spread too far. Often it’s the lazy smoker-motorist who throws his/her cigarette out of the car window. Why else do so many of these fires start by the road side?
(A local fire at Balbano put out in time)
In spite of all this we enjoyed our time at the seaside yesterday in temperatures above thirty centigrade by the Tyrhennian Sea.
Let’s hope that some rain falls soon because this dryness not only encourages forest fires: it destroys crops, to say nothing of wildlife and air pollution.
