It is the last day of October, but a summer’s sun shines the autumn through. Walked past many things: some have changed and some have not changed at all. And some have gone or are closed for renovation, like “Spazio Uno”, a media cultural centre which, in the late 1980s, hosted a fleeting but lively chess club that the management, however, did not deem it profitable enough. Who knows, maybe one day they will regret having evicted it just to sell happy hours to yuppies in no career. |
Walking the same streets throughout times of war and peace, before and after the end of the world, one cannot but agree that “Today, too, is April 25” (no one needs to ask of which year). |
However hard times may be for mankind, the Lorenzo de’ Medici Cooking School on first floor of Florence’s Mercato Centrale in the San Lorenzo district always offers classes to anyone who will come. Believe it or not, even on March 8, 2020, the day before the end of the world, one student was there for the last class in presence. |
Saturday afternoon in Piazza Vincenzo Fardella da Torrearsa at Campo di Marte in Florence, Italy, is anything but a holiday to “The girl in the pullover” standing alone and playing around without a rider. |
Bulldozers everywhere. Rubble trucks everywhere. Potholes and craters. Everywhere. Piazza San Marco will soon be turned into a terminus of Florence’s tramway and Via Cavour into a track. Mankind dreamed for centuries of a world with no walls or fences, but now, in times of “new normality”, the measure of liberty is the faculty to stand in line at a trendy sandwich shop. Not desperately searching, just follow the queue. |
Whether it rains or the sun shines, it is always a good time to reconnect to humanity. |
A blackbird enjoys a beautiful panorama of the city of Florence from the “Orti del Parnaso”, at the summit of the Horticulture Garden. |
They shine bright through the triumphal arch, but no triumph of water comes gushing out on the fountain of Piazza della Libertà in Florence, Italy. |
Here’s Pluie (Rain), Jean-Michel Folon’s three-meter statue which was gifted to the city of Florence in 2002 to be displayed at the centre of the roundabout between Lungarno Aldo Moro and Via Enrico De Nicola. The Rainman’s raincoat has withstood the stress of time, but his “umbrella”, which ought to be a fountain of eternal rain, is dried up, without a drop of water. Art is thirsty, alas!, life is dry. Unfortunately, because Quarter 2’s king Midas claims to be able to turn a damp, foul-smelling catacomb into a multi-sports hub only through his supernatural power, by virtue of which he is king. |
Since the Internet is a network of networks, those networks have to meet somewhere, and Prato Call is a place they meet. |
Here (downtown Florence) in Via Sant’Antonino, Chinese chefs and cooks deserve much credit for being early pioneers of the spicy 四川菜 (Sìchuān cuisine). |
This is my reply to all who sent me their very best wishes for a better New Year: “Let’s hope it will be better for everyone, or else it cannot be better for anyone”. Photos: Mado Flynn. |
You go on through a pedestrian underpass like a dot on an i, and suddenly it is an upside-down exclamation point. |
Just wandering on a half-sunny day at The Rose Garden in Florence amidst the sculptures of Jean-Michel Folon. From top to bottom, in order of appearance: Partir (2005), Chat-Oiseau (1994), Méditerranée (2001), Je Me Souviens (2003), Vivre (2002), and Chat (1996). Photos: Mado Flynn. |
As a consequence of COVID-19 pandemic, also this year most Liberation Day celebrations in Italy were moved online. Offline people, however, taking advantage of the quasi-yellow Sunday, did not forget to lay flowers at monuments and tombstones in memory of the women and men who fought to free the country from fascism. |
