Category Archives: Health

A Public Hanging at Casabasciana

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On July 18th this summer some villagers found him around 5.30 in the morning as they were walking to the car park to go to work. A man in his mid-fifties, from the United Kingdom, had hanged himself from a tree in the square of Casabasciana, the village in the mountains surrounding Bagni di Lucca.

It was a truly desperate action on which the carabinieri, alerted by the 118 emergency number after the first rescuers had arrived on the spot, are now trying to shed some light

For the casualty, who had moved to Casabasciana around twenty years ago, however, there was nothing more to be done: the rescue was completely useless. A terrible scene unfolded in front of those who had triggered the alarm call. Unfortunately, the desperate attempt to save his life was quite useless.

Who was this man? Evidently he had once led a happy life in his new home in the delightful village of Casabasciana. Then tragedy struck. His pregnant wife not only died in childbirth but the unborn daughter died as well with her. Friends rallied round to help the man in a heartrending situation. For a while he accepted their help but increasingly he became more and more reclusive until he refused to open his house to anyone from outside. At the same time he still accepted friendship from dogs and cats.

A second tragedy ensued from this. For when the authorities and volunteers entered the man’s house they found a scene of absolute horror and degradation. It wasn’t just the fleas that attacked them and many of the homes in Casabasciana. The situation of abolute squalor that emerged in a house in the town, which required a deep disinfestation by our refuse services BASE S.r.l, also involved some pet animals, which were found in poor condition and have since been looked after by the volunteers of the Arca della valle association.

“When our association was alerted to a situation of extreme difficulty” – explain the volunteers – “a terrible scenario appeared before our eyes. About twenty skinny, hairless cats full of fleas and utterly terrified were carried out by us from the house in question. Together with the cats on the street we also found billions of hungry fleas that attacked us as soon as we arrived”.

“The house” – the account continues –“was  full of carcasses of dead animals (at the moment the estimate is about twenty corpses including cats and dogs) and dirty beyond belief. It is now being subjected to serious disinfestation and cleaning while the cats wander terrified and hungry inside the village unable to be caught because  of their feral nature. Volunteers Monia, Patrizia, Vanessa and Fabrizia managed to catch eleven cats that will be subjected to all the necessary treatments and will be sterilized. The situation will continue to be monitored.”

For days now, the hygiene problem in this already difficult situation arising from the Covid-19 pandemic has continued to hit Casabasciana. Mayor Michelini visited the village to check up on the progress of the cleaning and sanitizing intervention. Accompanying him was also the environmental councillor to see how the flea infestation could be controlled.

“We are now at the end of the work to remove the accumulated waste” – said Mayor Michelini – “and on the first morning of Thursday BASE, our refuse collection company will provide for the complete disinfestation of the streets affected by the phenomenon. I hope that the long-standing hygiene problem will be definitively eliminated forever “.

“I want to thank” – continued the mayor – “all the inhabitants of Casabasciana and the visitors to the village for their patience and endurance shown in this hygiene emergency which, regrettably, also had such  a tragic end. I thank the BASE company that has handled the problem with commitment and professionalism bringing it to completion, and the municipal officers and the local police for the support and assistance they have given me “.

However, the Arca della Valle said that they were disappointed the mayor didn’t mention them.

The president of the Arca Della Valle Association, Francesco Purini, replied to the statements of Bagni di Lucca mayor Paolo Michelini, regarding the inspection of the municipality pending the health emergency in Casabasciana.

“After the timely intervention of our girls from Arca della Valle – he says -, we are saddened by the fact that the mayor Michelini has not in the least mentioned the work performed flawlessly by our volunteers, highlighting this intervention which we believe has arrived with some delay. As president I would like to thank the volunteers of the Ark of the Valley, in particular Monia, Vanessa, Patrizia and Fabrizia for the excellent work they have done in Casabasciana especially with the removal of over twenty dog and cat decomposing carcasses and the help given to malnourished cats that had been locked up in the abandoned house. The Arca della Valle volunteers has also been able to capture and sterilize some cats in very bad conditions.”

I have discussed this both tragic and horrific story with various people in the know. The most obvious question I asked was why this situation was not discovered earlier. Why did the man, who clearly had psychological problems, developed after the awful death of his wife and daughter, fail to receive any meaningful help?. The answer to this one is that at the start he did get assistance from friends, relative and social services but then gradually excluded them to the extent that he barred the door of his house against anyone who tried to gain admittance. In that case why was not a court order issued by the health authorities for his house to be searched?

If the scenes of decomposition and decay were so ghastly then there would have been evidence of this in the stench arising from the unfortunate man’s house. Surely there would have been complaints arising from neighbours?

And how did the man get his provisions? Surely he would have gone to the shop, (Casabasciana has its own local shop). Socially, people would have asked him questions out of curiosity. How were the cats fed, for example?

Mystery upon mystery accrues. One thing is certain, however. It doesn’t matter whether one lives in a tower block on a failing inner city housing estate or if one lives in a house in a tiny mountain village of less than two hundred inhabitants; it is still possible to be entirely neglected by people and die in abject conditions of dreadfulness. We hear stories of dead bodies found in council flats months after death. At least in this particular case the body was found a few hours later hanging from a tree in the village’s main square. There again one requires a certain amount of effort to hang oneself and there will be some inevitable noise and commotion during the night: getting the rope to sling correctly over a branch of the tree, confirming that the noose slips easily round the neck and is positioned to correctly break one’s back bone, ensuring that the death will not be protracted and agonised by cries of pain.

This whole episode has greatly shocked and saddened us and all those people who have been told about it. Why did it happen? Indifference? Unwillingness to interfere in other people’s business? Fear of reprisals or attacks?

I just don’t know. Can humans be that indifferent?

This is, however, the fourth time than the image of a hanged person has returned to haunt me.

The first is that of the preserved tree trunk in nearby Montefegatesi where a partisan was strung up by the Nazi authorities during World War 2.  Then there was the pizzeria owner by the Ponte delle Catene where we regularly ate. Another was that of Sergio Fini, one of my students and a friend. He was a poet and an artist who loved to draw trees and write poems about them. He hung himself on a beam in his house at Fornaci di Barga. And the fourth was this Englishman who had clearly come to Italy full of happiness and hope with his beloved in the wish to start a new life in this beautiful country but who so tragically and pointlessly finished up by stringing a noose round his neck and ending in utter squalor not only his life but the lives of those innocent animals who had trusted him.

The black dog is truly a fearsome beast to face as my post at https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2015/10/28/the-black-dog/ has pointed out!

Photographing Life under Covid-19

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A  photographic exhibition documenting local life under Covid-19 and organised by the L’Ora Blu’ (the blue hour), continues near the Borghesi restaurant in Bagni di Lucca Villa’s high street, Viale Umberto.

The ‘Blue hour’ is a phrase used in photography to indicate those particular moments just before dawn and twilight which allow particular contrast effects not otherwise obtainable as light is here characterized by a colder temperature and lower energy level, resulting in subjects with numerous shadows, and de-saturated colours.

The L’Ora Blu photographic group, which is curated by Marco Barsanti, was born after the first photography course organized by the Michel De Montaigne Foundation of Bagni di Lucca. Sharing a common passion has stimulated meetings to talk about photography and improve technique and composition.

We now live in a masked, socially distanced society. It’s surely gone on too long (like a Wagner opera, as one wit proclaimed), and the pictures taken by a group of local photographers amply illustrate this fact:  the especially vulnerable elderly who after a life that has experienced the ravages of war and deprivation have now to face another trial:

And the park benches neatly laid out with socially distancing X’s telling people not to sit there as if they were musical chairs :

With several other photographs the exhibition develops the contemporary theme, that strange refrain of our time which few of us would have foreseen, accustomed as we have been to other threats like global warming and Islamism terrorism.

Now the danger comes from an invisible enemy about which little is known but which can affect anyone of any age, of any status and of any provenance with equal force.

In the midst of this pandemic there remain several people I know who place the real danger in the fear of catching the virus rather than the virus itself. True, as Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously said “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. However, we all know what happened to those heads of state who shrugged off the fear, underestimating it and advised the nation to ‘take it on the chin’, while shaking hands with Covid-19 infected patients.

The fact is that it is easy to hypothesise that the pandemic is merely an increasingly totalitarian government’s ploy to place all its citizens under their control. There appears to be not too much difference between Orwellian thought-crime and the supposed conspiracy theorists.

So again another ideology steps in to divide us from erstwhile friends. Those who have not yet been lost to the brexitian cult are now in danger of being swept up in yet another dubious theory: that relating to Covid-19. No, of course, they will say all the figures are incorrect. This person did not die from the virus but from something else; the scenes in hospital intensive care departments have been greatly exaggerated, and if people actually believe that the virus exists then it must have been produced artificially by a frankensteinian laboratory, a certain person’s ‘chinese virus’. Meanwhile, the second wave lurks like a winter tsunami

However, I too, have been now touched by the death of a friend or relative victim of the horror: a school-mate, fellow scout and musician lost to the imperceptible menace. At least I have the memory of his stay with us in Longoio, the time we spent in each other’s company and the places we visited (including the re-opening of Puccini’s birth-house in Lucca) to treasure. How many more memories must we gather prematurely before this thing is finally defeated?

Like the Black Death, the Great Plague of Italy of 1630, London’s of 1665, and the cholera epidemics of the nineteenth century something positive may come out of all this. Perhaps will it be a book like Boccaccio’s ‘Decameron’, an immortal collection of stories related to each other by a group of young noble Florentines quarantined in a country villa away from the plague afflicting their home town at the time. Perhaps it will be like Albert Camus’ ‘The Plague’ based on similar experiences when living in Algeria. Or perhaps it may reflect those terrifying pages in one of Italy’s greatest writers, Alessandro Manzoni’s, novel ‘I Promessi Sposi’, (The betrothed) when describing the great plague that afflicted Milan and northern Italy in much the same way as the present peril is still continuing to menace.

On Italian television statistics relating to the ‘crisi corona’ are spewed out on a daily basis much like the weather forecast. New regulations are introduced to control the spikes. When will we ever return to normalcy I wonder?  At least the British Museum will shortly re-open thanks in large part to the sterling cleaning efforts of its Italian heritage preventative conservator and dust expert Fabiana Portoni. Now there’s some hope!

Meanwhile the ‘Ora Blu’ photographic course, which should have started in September, has had to be postponed because of the health emergency. For further details about when it will start please email

gruppofotografico.lorablu@gmail.com

or contact Isabella on 339 2982359.

The Best Place to be in during a Pandemic?

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In normal times I do a fair bit of commuting between two countries, the UK where I was born and Italy where, because of my parents’ mixed marriage and my own, I have residence, relatives and friends.

One question I ask myself is, finding myself constricted in the UK for the duration of the health crisis, would I have preferred to be in the same situation in Italy? The answer is a very difficult one. In practical terms, regarding the severity of the implementation of government Covid-19 regulations, I think it’s better for me here. In theoretical terms, however, how the government is acting in the crisis then I think Italy would have been the better option.

The Italian government has clearly dealt much more promptly and severely with the crisis than the UK. For example, I hear from friends in Florence and Rome that every step outside one’s house has to be justified and accompanied by a self-certification form detailing one’s personal details and the reason for making the journey. They have told me of the frequent presence of surveillance helicopters (c.f. Orwell’s ‘1984’ Thought Police helicopters flying past peoples’ windows) and the use of drones. Every day one is likely to hear warnings from police car loudhailers to ‘stare a casa’ (stay at home). Moreover, the ‘necessary’ journeys have to be made within one’s own commune or borough. A friend from Bagni di Lucca on his way to a well-known discount store was stopped and warned as the store was located in the adjacent commune of Borgo a Mozzano. He was informed that the next time he tried to do the same journey he would be fined. (Sometimes these fines can approach well over a thousand Euros). Of course, one must always wear a commune-supplied sanitary mask when exiting from one’s house. Failure to wear one will attract yet another fine.

At least one of our Italian relatives has been penalized heavily for not having the required self-certification form on them and engaging in ‘unnecessary’ journeys. i.e. journeys that are not directed to the nearest food store or pharmacy. More shop categories are now, however, beginning to open up. In particular, children’s clothing (after all children do grow!) and bookshops (absolutely necessary to avoid total boredom. BTW, how are you progressing with your reading of the complete works of Dostoevsky?).

What is particularly sad about the Italian situation is that if you are a city dweller the chances are that, like the majority of those in cities, you are living in a flat with, at the most, a balcony which might catch that Mediterranean sun at odd spots during the day. It’s only the luckier people that can afford anything like a separate house and garden. However, if you live in the country, in a small town or village then you may be much better off. In Bagni di Lucca many dwellings have an accessible garden, even a small one.  If you live in one of the villages surrounding Bagni then you are even luckier and may have your house surrounded by a garden or orto (allotment) and, in many cases, an ample stretch of orchard and meadow.

Of course, having a house surrounded by land means that time can be spent gardening and, for men if there is a shed, seek refuge from the rest of the household and engage in one’s own activities and hobbies.

(Where I’m at: the British ‘semi’ provides a life-line for many of the inhabitants of these islands). 

In the UK to-date there has not been implementation of such strict rules. Here we have no helicopters snooping on people’s activities, drones have been criticized and discouraged and there are no police cars circulating the streets with vociferous warnings hailing from megaphones. Indeed, entry into parks (for daily exercise only) has been conclusively sanctioned, not that admission to all parks was prohibited previously (see my post at https://longoio3.com/2020/04/20/a-walk-along-the-brent-river/). I’m reliably informed that Regent’s park was full of sunbathers last week-end in the spate of the lovely weather the capital continues to have. We are not restricted to shopping for food and medicines in Brent but can freely access food stores in Hillingdon, Barnet or any other London borough. Bus services are certainly reduced and the part of the bus nearest to the driver is (inconsistently, it must be said) cordoned off but there is no prohibition in using public transport for any journey. It’s certainly more free and easy in the capital. The absence of police is startling. Perhaps it’s because we are all supposed to be responsible citizens and able to impose lockdown and social distancing by ourselves without a hitch or incurring an arrest.

In terms of the effectiveness of the government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic then clearly Italy is the safer place to be in; the response of the UK government to the health crisis has been somewhat delayed. The recent article in the authoritative UK newspaper ‘Sunday Times’ gives it to us straight:

“Britain was in a poor state of readiness for a pandemic. Emergency stockpiles of PPE had severely dwindled and gone out of date after becoming a low priority in the years of austerity cuts. The training to prepare key workers for a pandemic had been put on hold for two years while contingency planning was diverted to deal with a possible no-deal Brexit.’

The UK has apparently sleep-walked into disaster. I cannot disagree with this view and was aware of it at least from the time of my post at

https://longoio3.com/2020/03/23/delayed-by-curfew/

Indeed, prime minister Signor Conte, who is firmly handling the crisis in Italy, did warn the UK prime minister of what would happen to the ex ‘Regina dei mari’ (queen of the seas) if strong measures did not replace dithering ‘government advice’. Our PM, meanwhile,  was too busy shaking hands with corona virus patients at the time.

So to sum up:

Practically, I’m better off in the UK where I’m staying in semi-detached, can go to any food store I like and access public parks and public transport.

Theoretically, I’m better off in Italy where a government has handled the situation with determination and strictness and has, at last, flattened the curve, something which has yet to happen in Brexitland.

Atishoo Atishoo We all Fall Down

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One of the most extensive pandemics in Italy’s past, the Great Plague of 1630 harvested its maximum number of victims in northern Italy. Milan lost over a quarter of its inhabitants to ‘la peste’. Verona was the worst affected with over half of its citizens dying in horrible agony. The pandemic started with French and Austrian soldiers marching into Italy as mercenary garrisons for the main towns of the Po valley. Another factor was the extreme poverty of the population reduced by years of austerity under governments who failed to provide basic services in food production and medical facilities. Over a million perished in the great plague: around a quarter of the population.

The pandemic spread to other parts of Europe and may have been instrumental in causing the Great Plague of London in 1665.

The ‘Peste’ was graphically written about by Italy’s great writer Alessandro Manzoni in his novel ‘I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed).

Like many other plagues its origin was eastern and may have been related to the Mongol invasion which almost conquered the Hapsburg empire. Special wear was developed to enable improved survival rates. Here are some examples.

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The beak-like mask enabled lavender pomanders to be inserted to protect the wearer from infection and combat stench from decomposing corpses.


With the medical knowledge of the age it was impossible to halt its progress although isolation centres known as Lazzaretti (the church of the Milan lazzaretto was recently restored) were set up. A certain Doctor Giuseppe Daciano did write an interesting treatise, however, on the pandemic and the methods of not catching it or curing it:

Fiochetto,_Trattato_della_peste_1631

What is most disturbing is the fate allocated to Lucca described in the prophecies of Nostradamus. In one of his quatrains he  mentions a “great plague” and the Italian city of Lucca.

(Century III, Quatrain 19) “In Lucca it will come to rain blood and milk”.

It would be a simple matter to quarantine many of the inhabitants of Lucca since they live in a city surrounded by massive walls should the prophecy ever come to be realised.

1200px-Lucca.city_walls01

On the bright side the great plague of northern Italy of the seventeenth century claimed many fewer victims than the 15th century pestilence known as the Black Death. That was one of the most devastating pandemics in history and  killed off an  estimated 75 to 200 million people in Europe and Asia.

(Any similarity between 1630 and 2020 are now not purely coincidental. Indeed, all inhabitants of Lucca, as all inhabitants of Italy, are under quarantine with all non-essential journeys banned.

PS Many of you may know that the nursery rhyme quote which titles this post alludes to the Great Plague of London in 1665.)

Tour de Barga?

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For the next few weeks physio has been laid on for me at Barga hospital’s excellent department. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays it’s exercise bike time and on Tuesdays and Thursdays it’s gym.

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The exercises are very carefully graded and we are electronically monitored and have our blood pressure regularly taken during the one –hour session.

On the wall is a diagram showing the categories of exercise in ascending order of difficulty. I dread reaching the final stage!

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In the afternoon I take a walk in the area surrounding our house. Gradually I feel my strength coming back and I am reliably informed that I shall feel better than ever before once the thirty sessions will have completed. I’m utterly sure it’s going to be fine.
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