A House Like A Rook

A soaring small circular tower rises from the Orti Oricellari gardens in Florence, Italy. Photo: Mado Flynn.

Seagulls in the Attic

How many seas must a white seagull sail before he lies along the edge of a terrace on the Lungarno Vespucci? Photos: Mado Flynn.

The Liturgy of the Hours

One should read at least four hours out of twenty-four when one had been watching too many trains go by.

When The Saints

The question arises spontaneously: “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”.

No Way Out But Through

Institutions in civil society no longer exist after a banana republic has sunk to its lowest point in its path of bigoted discrimination and serial abuses. So maybe “taking it slow” is wise advice in hard times.

Parallel Lines

There is nothing so spectrally deserted and mystically still as Piazza della Repubblica (Republic Square) in downtown Florence when the Palazzo delle Poste is crowded and packed with hundreds of people queueing for basics. Something must have gone terribly wrong.

Ain’t No Mountain High Enough

Viola and her Mom have finally returned from a long and arduous journey around the provinces of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, South Tyrol and Veneto in Northern Italy, hunting for Christmas street markets. “I bought only glass balls”, says Viola. “Mum, instead, stocked up on cheeses, special breads and strudel”. And certainly there was no lack of thrilling Krampuses, “who whipped Mom — it appears to be a tradition with Saint Nicholas. They are really scary, shakhing cowbells and brandishing whips. Those I photographed in Merano (Meran) carried horsehair whips, but those in Cortina who whipped Mom had a leather whip!”, she says. They also found time for a walk around San Candido (Innichen) and its Tre Cime Natural Park and finally before leaving they climbed up the popular snow-clad Dolomite peaks, such as the Sella Pass. Photos courtesy of Viola Rocchini.

The Hidden Stages of Weimar Cinema

Saturday Christmas markets and walks in Vipiteno (Sterzing) (left column), Bolzano (Bozen) (centre column), and Bressanone (Brixen) (right column). Photos courtesy of Viola Rocchini.

A Rainy Day

No Christmas crowds today, because of rain and wet stone floorings. And yet and so a rainy day has its charm and its reward.

Fall Leaves

Once upon a time, deep into an alley on 八字桥老街 (Bāzìqiáo Old Street) in 兴化 (Xīnghuà), 江苏省 (Jiāngsū province), China, there was the Chinese Chess Intercultural Centre named after four-time Women’s World Chess Champion 侯逸凡 (Hóu Yìfán) in honour of her being born here. And here’s what it looks like today — a desert of locked doors and autumn’s dead leaves. Photo: 心海慈航 (Heart Sea Cíháng).

Postscript

A dancer prepares backstage before a show at the Theatro Municipal in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The theatre reopened on October 28, 2021, 19 months after it closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Photo: André Coelho/EPA.

Science for Welfare and Warfare

After almost two years of hiatus the Sunday’s flea market in Piazza dell’Indipendenza (Independence Square) in downtown Florence was finally returned to a real scene. The merchandise for sale on the stalls was exactly the same as two years ago. If one has a good memory, then one cannot but notice that Big Government’s propagandistic war narrative, so sacred yet so drenched with rhetoric and fiction, is not the epic of the Trojan War. It was only a filthy civil war — so few smart people with a public 13-month salary a year and 365 meal vouchers, yet so many street vendors, petty shop owners, hawkers, peddlers and even beggars with a desert landscape and a sky above them.

Once Upon a Time

Elderly women attend a dance class, reopened for the first time since the pandemic, in Seoul, South Korea. Photo: Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Images.

The Great Humanity

I spent some time at my favourite Internet point, which, incidentally, is also the ideal place for one to actually share with Hikmet’s “great humanity” all the rights they do not have. And yet, paradoxically but not too paradoxically, the “first class people” are the ones who are more worried about the dangers that “third class people” may pose to their wealthy healthy life. But, as they say, if poverty is contagious prosperity is indivisible, and hence one reason for cautious optimism may be that early studies from the University of Oxford would give confidence that almost all the vaccines approved by the Western authorities should confer protection against the Indian variant of COVID-19.

Somewhere in Between

A rainy Sunday afternoon in downtown Florence, melancholy hours of solitude, and who knows where time goes. On the outskirts, however, there are long queues of people with umbrellas from all over Tuscany patiently waiting for the privilege of being vaccinated. If it had been a sunny day, there would also be long queues of people without umbrellas at shops and stalls for any kinds of food. There’s just not enough time to be everywhere.

Nebuchadnezzar

Accessibility openness ubiquity or rather maybe everything everytime everywhere.

The Hub

“Lair free all”, graffiti signed by MìLES in the Parterre gardens at Florence, Italy.

Save the Last Dance

O tempora, o mores! Yesterday, Saturday, May 8, with the blessing of city and regional authorities, the glorious Teatro SMS of the People’s House in Grassina, Metropolitan City of Florence, has been turned into a “mass vaccination hub”. Photo: la Repubblica.

Vertigo

A woman walks through the rainbow-coloured Paseo Bandera in Santiago, Chile, empty of visitors amid the pandemic. Photo: Esteban Félix/AP.

One Day

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.