letters Archivi - Keep Calm and Drink Coffee

ISY

Oct 22, 2023 | TROUBLES AND BLOWS

Isy probably in someone’s mind represented a way of making the word easy, which by now needs no explanation, even more pop.

Three letters then, to sum up the English pronunciation and to introduce the next word: bank.

Three letters for the name.

Three words for the slogan.

Digital

Essential

Open

It probably seemed natural in someone’s mind to shorten customer acquisition for this bank as well.

Why wasting time.

The bank is open.

Shouldn’t that be enough?

Essential.

So thousands of account holders, One none one hundred thousand … by three again, have been transferred from what is considered the largest Italian banking group to this bank.

A digital and essential bank, where digital and essential means no more possibility of having a physical counter anywhere.

But also where digital and essential apparently means alerting unsuspecting account holders through a notification on the app.

Registered mail is extinct, and no more letters either, because in some papyrus of a thousand thousand lines written in small print the customer has signed that he “doesn’t want” any more paper communications.

No more phone calls, despite the fact that it is absolutely essential to have the phone for the infamous app and despite the fact that it is absolutely mandatory to communicate the number.

No more hassle or waste of time trying to contact the customer in one of a variety of ways, including email, texting, but also a trivial campaign of any nature.

No: it is an essential bank, in someone’s mind it seemed enough to send a simple notification within the app.

A notification of the kind that those who are Boomers, and lived through the days when the same people worked in the bank for years, people who could be trusted, do not tend to consider vital.

A notification that could have been missed by anyone.

A notification that constituted the only last resort, moreover with a deadline, to express not consent, but DISSENT to being transferred to the new Isy.

Find a “small” overview of reviews here.

A parliamentary question was also asked about this forced transfer.

Do you perhaps have direct experience to testify?

Among the fanciful narratives, it would seem that the choice of the lucky drawers fell on those who did not attend their reference branch.

I would really like to be able to see the selection mechanism … and in my heart I want to hope that older people are not involved … because maybe even they haven’t gone to the branch, an operation that has long since turned out to be almost as complicated as making an appointment with Chiara Ferragni.

But the new bank is OPEN …

MADRIGAL WITHOUT SOUND

Aug 5, 2023 | BOOKS

Madrigal Without Sound is the book recommended by Monica to help me dealing with a period of history that is actually not in my league.

Published by Bollati Boringhieri, Madrigal without sound won the 2019 Campiello Prize.

About the author: Andrea Tarabbia has a WordPress blog and I was struck by the header image: a photograph of the entrance to apartment No. 50 on Sadovaja Street, Moscow, taken in the year 2000.

Actually, given the particular construction I should speak of authors because if the Madrigal is soundless, the book on the other hand has multiple voices.

Three different visions take the reader to look at the soul of Carlo Gesualdo, known as Gesualdo da Venosa, famous for being an excellent madrigalist, but also a bloody uxoricide.

Igor Stravinsky, Glenn Watkins, and Gioachino Ardytti.

Igor Stravinsky certainly needs no introduction.

Glenn Watkins is defined as the greatest expert of Gesualdo da Venosa.

Finally, I would define Gioachino Ardytti as the embodiment of the legends around the life of Carlo Gesualdo.

The exchange between Watkins and Stravinskji is epistolary, you know how much I love letters.

And it is a prelude to what will happen in Venice in 1960: Monumentum pro Gesualdo da Venosa ad CD annum.

On the other hand, Andrea Tarabbia ascribes to Gioachino a manuscript narrating the life of Carlo Gesualdo down to the dark details of evil reported in a manner as ruthless as it is functional in portraying the character perhaps with the same criterion of repentance that he intended by extruding it in the famous Pala del Perdono.

Franco Battiato also dedicated a song that invites reflection on morality and the actions of men.

The madrigals of Gesualdo, prince of Venosa
Musician murderer of the bride
What does it matter?
He strikes his note
Sweet as a rose.

Strong words indeed.

Carlo Gesualdo’s bride: Maria D’Avalos, was slaughtered at Palazzo San Severo, where they lived, and various legends have been passed down about her ever since.

Certainly Maria remains a constant presence in the narrative of Gesualdo da Venosa’s life, in a sort of seesaw between alter egos and a mixture of good and evil.

I rather like to quote you this sentence from the book:
I think that music is the bride of words, and that every word is a box where all pain, and joy, and life are contained. With sounds we can explode this box, give it more pain, more joy, more life than it already has.

I find this to be very true: music for me can amplify states of mind.

What do you think?

FOUR THIRDS PI R3

Apr 26, 2022 | BOOKS

I infinitely thank Lucia Amendola Ranesi, together with Mari’s Manual, for the opportunity to discover the book Quattro Terzi Pi Greco Erre Tre which I loved very much.

What is the volume of the sphere? Four Thirds Pi r3.

It is not the first time that I have told my interest in books on mathematics, but in this case I was immediately struck by the affinity of thought.

Starting with a formula to tell a story.

Or starting from a story to tell a formula.

Actually both.

The “formula” to which one arrives, however, is not a calculation, but a journey that leads, or rather: brings back, to the origin.

I don’t like to reveal too much, because I would like you to try the same engaging reading experience that I had, and I would like you too to come to the “full circle” with all the load of emotions that accompanied me.

I considered Quattro Terzi Pi Greco Erre Tre as the equation of a world in which to enter through a wonderful exchange of letters, precisely those handwritten letters, the letters so dear to me.

A family sphere, but also a historical sphere.

And through the life of the characters I first understood the vocation: the passion for studying and teaching, together, as in a real union that lasts for a lifetime.

But the book also teaches that fate is not always behind the things that scare us the most.

And it shows how pure and true love cannot in any way be dirtied.

I will certainly not forget a special Grandmother, whom I wish I could hug as she repeats that all soldiers are sons.

And a special woman: Maria Moreno, who I hope will be remembered for her ability to combine literary and scientific studies, delicacy and strength of mind, poetry and everyday life.

Obviously I tend to focus more on the female characters, but undoubtedly Rodolfo too, as well as two important figures who have left a mark on our history, offer very interesting reflections.

What if I told you Renato Caccioppoli? What if I told you Ettore Majorana?

In a book so close to my heart, could coffee be missing?!

Obviously not! In fact, here it is:

READ ME WRITE ME

Dec 18, 2021 | THE X-MAS CAROLS

Today for the Advent calendar it’s already party! And it’s a Christmas party very much original created by the blog Read me Write me.

Sara, the author of the blog, ironically speaking of herself, writes I grew up with payphone telephone boxes… whoever is my age understands what I mean.
And how if I understand you Sara! And I take this memories moment to rethink with nostalgia the times when letters were sent for real, handwritten, with stamps …

Sara then caught my attention by telling how she discovered her dyslexia on her own.

Very often in fact it happened to me, comparing myself with someone who had more or less the same age as mine, to consider how once there was no kind of attention on the matter.

So many compliments to Sara for how she solved it, but above all for how she then faced and told her experience so much that she wrote a book.

Among other things, it is impossible not to be impressed by the drawings on the cover and on the blog, and the great thing is that they are from her sister! As I had already written for Elena and Laura I love these forms of artistic sharing and sisterhood very much.

In Sara’s story, on the other hand, you will find another type of family relationship:

“Hi Margareth, I hope I don’t disturb you,” Mark said rhetorically as he closed the door of the small studio behind him. He took two steps forward with a little hesitation, due to the lack of lighting, but also and perhaps above all, for fear of what he had decided to do … go on here.