HONEST

HONEST

Jul 12, 2025 | BOOKS

Honest is the new mountain breath  that I owe to Monica.

“Many people believe that climbing takes strength, but it is quite the opposite. Climbing, like living, is not about holding, it is about letting go. Everything. The fear, the uncertainty, the problems, the solutions, the past, the future, the holds. Everything. Letting go in a continuous movement that brings you closer to heaven.”

Honest, besides being the title of the book, is also the name of one of the characters of the story written by Francesco Vidotto for Edizioni Bompiani.

The story unfolds through a series of letters addressed to the Cadore peaks.

As you know, I have been a serial writer of letters, I have sent them everywhere in the world, but, to tell the truth, I have at most entrusted thoughts to the sea, and I have never written to any mountain.

Have you? Who have you written letters to?

The author grew up with his grandparents in Tai di Cadore, hearing his grandfather tell his grandmother ‘my mountains are you.’

This is also why he considers it of great importance to preserve the oral tradition just as he declares that if he were the Minister of Education he would call for a reform to have kindergartens in old people’s homes, which corrsponds to giving great value to what elders have to communicate and transmit.

Francesco Vidotto was a discovery, actually a great speaker as well as a writer, I listened very willingly to one of his presentations and I quote some of his words:

Wrinkles are the calligraphy of time

It is simplicity that gives the stature of things

Nature is like a tuning fork
if you let the note resonate in you you can receive peace in return

 

NOKIA

NOKIA

May 4, 2025 | TECHNOLOGY, TECHNOLOGY

Nokia for generation X equals phone.

By the way, may I say that I thought I was a boomer and instead my husband pointed out that we are not?

What generation are you from?

We are of the generation that grew up with the grey phones, with the dial wheel to dial the number and the short wire, attached to a socket somewhere impractical in the house.

We are of the generation that looked for tokens to call from phone boxes.

We are of the generation that when leaving the house went into a ‘no-go’ because geo-localisation was the stuff of science fiction movies.

Then came Nokia.

Actually Nokia is a Finnish city, whose name comes from the Nokianvirta river. 

Luisella you come in whenever you want 🙂

Thanks to its strategic location on the river, Nokia started to create products from the late 19th century: paper, boots televisions gas masks … up to the famous Mobira Cityman. 

1987

The same year as The Joshua Three, Dirty Dancing, the year when GIFs and The Simpsons were born, but above all the year when Ronald Reagan and Michail Gorbačëv signed the INF Treaty on nuclear missiles. 

During the next 20 years, Nokia mobile telephony evolved very fastly: in 1991, the first GSM call was made and by 1998, the vast majority of mobile phones in Europe were manufactured by the Finnish company.

Until 2007, the year of the first iPhone: the smartphone era was born, but Nokia, perhaps on the strength of its Nokia 1100, the best-selling mobile phone ever, did not understand the importance of innovating immediately.

In 2008, the Android operating system with HTC Dream dealt the second blow.

This was followed by top management reorganisations and belated agreements to try and limit losses, but the giant’s feet are now made of clay.

Have you had a Nokia?

This is a small representation:

NokiaNokiaNokia

and then there’s it: we call it the ‘muccino’ from the much dialect word which is a bit the opposite of the English meaning, in fact it means butt.

We call him little, but he is big: he has been my alarm clock for I don’t even remember how many years, but that’s a long time, and he has never missed a beat.

Nokia

Muccino testifies day after day to the quality and validity of a well-made, practically indestructible product, so the question is: it’s not enough to be good, you have to be able to ride time.

Never consider yourself ‘arrived.’

Never stop improving.

Be a visionary?

Also.

Even the Accademia della Crusca has reconsidered the negative meaning of the term. 

Federico Fellini said that the only true realist is the visionary.

In your opinion?

Is reality already a vision of the future?

However, the today we are living does not correspond to the idea of the future that most commonly populated the general imagination.

How many and which movies or books can we cite? 

I would say that unfortunately we have to revise our estimates, in the negative, and by quite a lot too.

Am I wrong?

Can you tell me something optimistic?

REBEL DAYS

REBEL DAYS

Nov 18, 2023 | BOOKS

Giorni Ribelli (Rebel Days) is the latest book by Andrea Calugi, whom I thank most sincerely along with Manuale di Mari. 

Andrea Calugi is from Tuscany and from his short biography I like to quote this sentence: he is still searching for his future, among a book to read, a page to write, a song to listen to and a glass of good wine to drink.

It is therefore easy to empathise, and as Andrea searches for his future, he offers us a vision of the future in his book.

A timeless future, a future that we cannot calculate, a future that is far away and at the same time near: all the time I had the perception of a kind of dualism.

I was reading about a future and thinking about a past, a clear representation of how everything changes but how in reality everything remains unchanged.

The days flow by and history repeats itself.

A history from which we do not learn, or do not want to learn.

A history of wars, such as the one that characterises Rebel Days, that invite reflection, that spur the search for Freedom before it is extinguished.

I loved a passage in the book in which Andrea compares the earth to a human body bleeding from the wounds of the bombs and “it hovered dust that slowly, like tears, fell back to the ground, flooding everything and everyone with its weeping.”

I wish everyone had the sensitivity to see the earth bleeding, to feel the pain of the earth, which is pain for everyone.

And I was struck by the thought of one of the characters that “the real fear was that with him would also die all those wonderful memories that should have survived him instead.”

Constantine is considered crazy for his way of thinking, what is the real fear for you?

Do you feel rebellious?

Who or what would counteract your rebel days?

SMART CITY

SMART CITY

Sep 3, 2022 | ITALY, JOURNEY FROM MUG TO MUG, TECHNOLOGY

Smart City is a definition that recurs more and more often now.

Smart City is one of the main themes of civics hours in school.

But specifically how do you experience what smart offers in your city?

In your experience, can you tell of an actual improvement in the quality of your life, or is it all still ephemeral in your neck of the woods for now?

In the image I wanted to finally “offer” you a coffee in Piazza Ducale.

But the city of Vigevano offers many other experiences, including virtual ones.

On the City’s website you can check out a Vigevano Smart City dashboard with some options among which I would like to point out the live webcam. 

And when you decide to come and visit our ducal living room, you will have at your disposal these directions that offer the possibility of more information via QR code.

In the same vein, a “digital” bench was inaugurated.

Red, as red is the symbolic color against violence against women. 

The problem is that hand in hand should also be converted the education of citizens, who too often prove to be the exact opposite of smart.

A marker mark was enough to make the QR code illegible.

This tiny stroke actually emblematically represents a great trait that sets us apart, and likewise reveals the weakness on which what should be the future rests ….

LETTERS TO THE PAST

LETTERS TO THE PAST

Dec 18, 2021 | MOVIES, WORLD, MOVIES, MUSIC, MUSIC, WHO CARES, WHO CARES, WORLD

In a week it will be Christmas, but what Christmas will it be?

This thought carries the nostalgia of memories that flow as if in slow motion.

If I could write a letter to me from 1979 I would tell myself to be overjoyed because the coming years will be an explosion of life, colors, sounds, emotions.
And I would tell myself to learn The logical song well, because one day unfortunately the meaning will appear in all its clarity.

If I could write a letter to me in 1989, I would tell myself that that was the first of thirty-two years of work that I will like but that I have to follow the desire to study and expect more for myself.
And I would tell myself to fight so that, just like in Berlin, all the walls are torn down.

If I could write a letter to me from 1999 I would tell myself that this whole idea of the 2000s is just a big soap bubble and that the upcoming future is wearing a mask that hides the regress.
And I would tell myself that there’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path. 

If I could write a letter to me from 2009 I would tell myself that the crisis is not about to end and to be prepared to experience the recession.
And I would tell myself that The Resistance  isn’t just the best rock album.

If I could write a letter to me in 2019, I would tell myself to live every single minute with the awareness of the enormous value of simple moments that, however trivial, will change.
And I would tell myself that things are about to happen that I would never have believed.

But the worst fires burn intangible realities.

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