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PEARS, SKY, LUCA

April 2008

THIS MONTH's THEME:

freestyle

Adopt the pace of nature:
her secret is patience.

Ralph Waldo Emerson


Knowing before choosing

One of the reasons why I don't feel so much like writing these days, is that I do am writing so much these days...

It is because of the elections here in Italia, I have mentioned it before. They will go on next Sunday and Monday, and on Monday night we will finally know the result.

It is a very, very important election for Italy, so important I nearly faint when I think about it. As, if Berlusconi wins it Italy is finished. This country is already in half-coma, with that man back, it will be shot dead.

On the other side: the mission seems impossible, but the reward would be a giant one. That change everybody wants, and that seemed never coming to Italy.

I will try to explain more about the situation in the next days up to the election, as this is practically taking all my time (when not out with the trees of course!). I am contributing to the campaign as much as possible, writing everywhere, debugging the tons of lies the 'berluscones' spread everywhere, all the time; and trying to inform, inform, inform, as this is what lacks completely in Italy: real information.

p.s.
those are 'my' cats in the top photo :)


Some hope for the hopeless

Same as yesterday, the atmosphere has been particularly weird today though. I think everybody starts to be tired, after a long campaign.

I wouldn't call it a still stand, quite the opposite. The impression has been since long that the Democratic Party (Partito Democratico, Pd) has been reducing the huge gap it had in the polls, and getting very close to Berlusconi's party (Popolo delle Libertà, Pdl). So much that Berlusconi has thrown the mask on his face away. With clear messages to the Mafia, to the fascists, to the populist and violent population, against the Judges, the law, and all what is decency and legality. Such a violent attack can only be explained by very bad polls for him. Good news.

On the other side, the leader of the Pd, Walter Veltroni, Roma's Mayor, has been running a nearly perfect campaign, on an ecological bus visiting practically all Italy, and the enthusiasm that has welcomed him in each single place has been overwhelming.

Two months ago, the situation seemed hopeless, now at least a draw seems possible. The media are though nearly completely in the hands of one of the richest, and most cynical, men on Earth, and several times before this has proved determinant, unfortunately.


What it could be

Actually, I don't feel much like writing about Italy. Too many things to tell, too much to unveil. I am pretty sure you still don't know much about how things really are here. You won't believe, you will think I exaggerate as usual and that I am too dark-seeing.

I am rather tired of having to teach people about how to forget all the fantasies they have about Italy and look at reality. Which is horribly scaring. A devastated country in total dissolution.

The funny is: I am not as negative and pessimist as most Italians are right now: full of hopeless anger and disillusion; living day by day without any sense of the future; cropping in the family, the last refuge, as all what is outside is an enemy, unreliable, corrupted, or even not existing. I am not like that, I still believe the sane part of Italy will finally get some justice. Because what is good is really good in Italy, and even more than that, genial, unique.

So, why am I supporting so actively a political party? Will it really make a difference? I believe so, even if inevitably burdened by all the old failures, so deeply rooted in Italian politics, the Partito Democratico is really something new, trying to move out of the sands where we are.

Neither illusions nor one-sidedness motivate me, just a shared heartfelt desire for finally seeing the liberation of this potentially perfect country from all the enslaving crosses it bears.

If the miracle happens, we will start to see the Italy we all desire. Liberating its energies, finally offering some good public life to its inhabitants.


What sucks

It is unbelievable to even think someone will vote again for Berlusconi. He governed, or better misgoverned for 5 long years from 2001 to 2006, and with the biggest majority ever in Italy. And consider he is the richest man in the country, and has got the properties of all kinds of media (three major channels, the biggest books publisher Mondadori, magazines, two newspapers, the Medusa, distributing all films that are seen in cinemas, and has recently bought Endemol, the Big Brother producer), insurance companies, and a lot more.

They did practically nothing. Or better: they did a lot in the first year of their government, all the laws ad personam Berlusconi did need to escape from Justice, from all the trials against him. Just imagine he abolished parts of the laws about falsification of financial statements! So that we have come to the farce of official verdicts from the Courts saying something like: "He is guilty, but we cannot condemn him because the law doesn't exist anymore"!

It was a long torture by an amateur and corrupted and completely clueless band of politicians, well oiled by their rich chief, and all united in the mission of saving his butt, and ruining Italy at the same time.

In fact at the end of their government Italy was in an awful economic situation, with a very weak growth, the highest debt in Europe, a deficit nearly double the 3% threshold, and completely out of the Maastricht parameters.

I feel horror only thinking he could be back on Tuesday.


It would be such a shame!

On the opposite side, Walter Veltroni is doing so well. His campaign has been simply fantastic. He is fresh and inspiring, irradiating a sense of calmness and hope. He is a Stakhanovite, not stopping a second. Can hold speeches for hours and then move to the next place and do it again.

No one can grasp where he takes so much strength from. But it is so simple: he really believes in what he says.

What he speaks for, is an Italy finally free of bureaucracy, which is really strangulating, he wants to eliminate 5000 redundant laws and rewrite all the legislation. Few laws and clear. Justice has collapsed in Italy. To unite the country, so divided in hatred and factions. To promote the good, intelligent, motivated and committed energies we do have, but that are suffocated by carelessness, illegality, injustice. To support immediately common people, poor people and the middle class, so much burdened by the highest prices, the lowest wages, the shameless rents they have to put up with daily. To use sustainable energies with a plan to provide all state buildings with solar panels (consider Berlusconi only talks about introducing nuclear energy in Italy! He has no environmental policies at all. During his government nothing was done for the environment, on the contrary he directly introduced and encouraged all kinds of abuses, like illegal buildings on some coasts, hunting in public parks and the like). And an infinite list more of positive wishes and initiatives. We have proven him already, he has been Roma's Mayor in the last years, and has done a lot (for culture especially, not equally well on other aspects).

Yes, it would be such a shame if he lost this long and nearly impossible enterprise. But his slogan is the Obamians "Yes We Can", "Si può fare", and so let's hope.


Sock!!!

Well, I am back after a whole week without writing, sorry, but I have been exhausted, after so much writing during the elections.

And you know about the results...

Yes, it was a disaster, a complete defeat. It was expected, only a miracle would have overcome the huge gap in the polls. But to this extent... my goodness.

One can find some positive aspects even in this story, anyway.
I will explain why tomorrow.


No limits for the sinking down, apparently

It seems the true meaning of 'freestyle' was to play hooky nearly every day...

Last week I promised to explain why even this shocking election in Italy could lead to some positive outcome, in a longer run. Right, there were actually some good points I could have made, but today... let's forget it, as it got even worse than that, beyond any imagination.

Even Roma is lost. Today the candidate of the right won, and I will save you from my opinion about him. The city of Rome, that had been governed for 32 years by the center-left alliance, with only a pause of 8 years, long ago, will change government and return to the dark times we had nearly forgotten.

A double mocking, as the very popular Mayor Walter Veltroni quit his job, to become the leader of the new Democratic Party. He lost to Berlusconi, as we know, and now even Roma is lost.

It is too much, there is nothing more I will write for today.


Some status

Even if the day has been hard (I have felt very tired and had to slow down the work, and had one more frustrating confrontation with my father, about a lot of things, with the usual communication, like we spoke two different languages) I feel some comfort today, as many breakthroughs have been established lately.

Nearly all the garden looks very beautiful. A lot of care has been put on it, and the results are gorgeous. The soil is rich and covered with fertile humus, plants are very healthy, and the fruit trees too, promising a pretty good season soon. With the exception of the Peach trees, so heavily affected by the Leaf Curl disease, something that is terrorizing many growers. Most of them spray chemicals, and the organic farmers use mixtures of copper sulphate and lime (the white caustic earth, not the fruit!).

I don't want to, and I don't use any of those solutions, as I don't want any chemicals at all. But the Peach Leaf Curl has been a huge challenge, and nothing I have tried so far has worked.
After long and thorough researches, I finally got a hope. It is Oregano Oil, one of the most powerful antiviral substances on earth. I will tell you about the results later, when the peaches will be ripe.

Another breakthrough of the day has been finally reaching the point when all the multimedia opensource system I have been building is ready and working. It has been a very long and hard and challenging work, but it is also bearing fruits now. I am working on the first videos, with the Linux software Cinelerra, and more about this later too.


Freestyle ending

Not the most exciting blog ever, that's for sure this month.
But you can't even imagine how much I wrote in all other forums. And I have done some work in the background you will appreciate a little later.

So, what to say more, when this month is already ending?
Just that I'll probably repeat this mess next month too, as I am still in a phase of big work on a bread front, and I don't feel like I have the time and energy to write a more serious blog than this low calories Freestyle. Let's wait for tomorrow any case (actually for Monday the 5th), may be I will have found some other themes to offer.

Bye for now, happy 1rst of May!





MAY-DECEMBER 2008
FREESTYLE II (The Revenge ;)

BLOSS	OMS LUC & APPLE TREE BLOSSOMS


Two is better than one :)

Right, I decided to simply repeat the theme from last month, a big success in lazy blogging...

The reason is, the situation is still a bit too stressing here, and this freestyle way it is much less demanding than the usual themes.

As you know spring is wonderful, and also full of activities. All plants and fruit trees require a lot of attention. I have still this problem with the peaches' leaf curl, and I am snapping off all their leaves, one by one, a very time demanding cure.

Grass is growing at super-extra speed, lots of vegetables to take care of; preparing the compost for next year, and so on and so forth.

So, the sun is shining, and I already need to go out and do a lot of things. Bye for now, more slow-blogging in the next days.


If we had serious people in charge, in stead of the dictators

Just a thought today. Military juntas are not only horrible, they are also inefficient. The definitive proof, what is bad for something, is bad for everything else too.

India warned Burma 48 hours in advance about the tsunami following the cyclone hitting the country.

Probably they (the military junta in Burma) were busy denying reality, while tens of thousand of their people died of it.

Will the international community finally stop that, this time?



... October


The end

Right, this ended up being even lazier than intended.
I simply dropped writing for a whole bunch of months.

What a success, you can't deny that!

See you later, that is next year in Luca's Universal Time Scale, have a nice Autumn.