MY BAR, FAMILY, HEALTH

MY BAR, FAMILY, HEALTH

Nov 30, 2024 | A COFFEE WITH, WOMEN, ITALY, ITALY, WORK, A COFFEE WITH, WOMEN, WORK

My bar, family, health … this is the recipe that Anna Possi gives us as an example of a centenarian.

Yes: tireless Anna in front of the espresso machine at the Bar Centrale in Nebbiuno on the occasion of her 100th birthday declared:

I don’t want anything, I already have everything. My bar, my family, my health, my brain is fine… What counts is being among people, loneliness hurts.

What can I say! First of all, many many good wishes also from Keep Calm & Drink Coffee and then sincere congratulations for the message that is certainly worth sharing.

Being among people. 

Do you agree with Anna?

Do you also think that being among people is what counts?

Or do you love solitude? 

My bar.

Can loving your job, or being able to turn your passion into a business, really be the essential component?

Health.

One more secret to longevity for Anna is to eat little.

I think I can say that we all agree, on the theory, of course on the practice … do you know how to moderate your meals? 

Between ‘my bar’ and ‘health’: family.

Il mio bar, la famiglia, la salute

Family:  a word that in a broad sense encompasses a universe, so varied and multifaceted that it cannot fit into a specific description.

It is no coincidence that countless quotations are striking in this regard:

I do think that families are the most beautiful things in all the world!
Louisa May Alcott

A happy family is, but an earlier heaven.
George Bernard Shaw

The family will last as long as man. It is the cradle of humanity.
Giuseppe Mazzini

Rejoice with your family in the beautiful land of life.
Albert Einstein

In family life, love is the oil that eases friction, the cement that binds closer together, and the music that brings harmony.
Friedrich Nietzsche

And in your opinion?

ABANDONED DISCOS

ABANDONED DISCOS

Apr 20, 2024 | MUSIC, MUSIC, VIDEO, VIDEO

Abandoned Discos is Max Pezzali’s new song for Warner Music. 

The title makes no secret of the subject, but what struck me was the video: a sequence of images depicting the crumbling remains of what were once places full of life and joyful moments, now inexorably abandoned.

The suggestion is made even more incisive by the succession of phrases by the Gotha of disc jockeys, see for yourself:

Have you ever been to one of these discos?

I used to like Friday nights at Celebrity: a discotheque near Novara that actually still exists, where my friend Daniela and I would literally spend the whole time dancing, and at the same time managing to chat 🙂

But it was at Vanità where I went to meet the man who later became my husband <3

The Vanità, the disco in Vigevano portrayed in the picture below the title, no longer exists: a mansion complex was built in its place.

This is also why I find that Max Pezzali succeeds in narrating by giving us the sensation of listening to words coming straight out of our own mouths.

It is definitely his trademark, as well as the secret of his success: simply being one of us.

I’ll never forget a summer evening before social media, before even mobile phones: the TV broadcasts the Castrocaro new voices competition and a Jovanotti introduced a duo.

They come in and sing Don’t bother me, I don’t understand what you want, you knew I wasn’t like you...

For me it was immediate and natural to stay in tune.

Soon the songs from the album Hanno ucciso l’uomo ragno (They Killed Spider-Man ) would be the soundtrack of holidays in Sardinia, Daniela was there too 🙂

1993: the following summer. Life has one of those difficult trials in store for my family: having to face destiny that bursts in to make it clear how from one moment to the next everything can collapse.

While I am in hospital watching my father struggle to live again after a haemorrhage, I receive a gift: the North South West East music tape.

Yes: the ‘cassette’ … Who remembers it?

The guy I went to look for at Vanità 🙂 gave me North South West East and North South West East gave us our song to sing embracing each other at the concert in the Pavia arena.

The days of the San Siro stadium were still far away, and the 883 sang at their home: Pavia, exactly, which is also a province in the broadest sense.

Their home, our home.

The days when the dream of the 883 would come true were also far away.

The characters of the Harley Davidson Pavia  staff are known to all those who followed the series Le strade di Max (Max roads), do you know it?

In case you missed it, you can have a good ride here. 

To get ‘on route’ let’s go back to 1994: when Mauro’s dream takes a different path …

On stage with Max are Paola and Chiara but also Michele Monestiroli and Daniele Moretto.

Thirty years ago.

And then?

And then life goes by and today we find ourselves in abandoned discotheques.

What did we miss?

TWELVE NOTES

TWELVE NOTES

Feb 4, 2023 | MUSIC

He says it is basically twelve notes: twelve notes that encapsulate everything.

That may be true, but without detracting from the music, it is the words that make the real difference.

So many words, a lifetime long.

Words that tell stories, words that describe emotions, words that stop moments, his, mine, ours.

Who doesn’t know the famous “outdoor café tables”!

Not to mention the guy who “carefully reads the instructions on the coffee machine” …

And again:

A hair-raising coffee
a packet of smoke
and the wind re-reading my paper
and tomorrow going out again, putting on a cheerful face
for the next carnival
a razor-cold pain
for another day that dawns
I die

Really coffee can make your hair stand on end.

A phosphorescent madonnina
and fake flowers above the dresser
looking for pantyhose distracted and indolent
and one more day in the mirror
the refrigerator snored from the kitchen
and you hummed making coffee
the long sadness of the morning

Do you hum when you make coffee?

A bustle of voices and faces the color of the streets outside
that loses some haste among the coffees and liquors
if your heart had windows I could jump in them
and have you find it all in pieces when you returned

I absolutely love the concept of “losing haste” with coffee!

And never again the chimneys
the sirens the city
the wet gates and warehouses
of mist and humidity …
and never again sit in the cafeteria
among melancholy and mashed potato
the chain the tape the days that go away
with the coffee cart ...

I could almost say it’s the Lomellina. 

Nights in the car talking
the low glass for smoking
nights of old songs still good to sing
nights as dark as an oven
sleepless nights before a great day
hard nights of illusions
long dark nights of coffee …

Old songs still good to sing … it really is.

Songs I would say more lived than old, songs to sing together, during a concert.

Twelve notes were the birthday gift from my brother.

By a curious chance the number twelve recurs, he would surely make a pun of it.

PIEDMONT: MUGS AND … BICERIN

PIEDMONT: MUGS AND … BICERIN

Apr 30, 2022 | JOURNEY FROM MUG TO MUG, JOURNEY FROM MUG TO MUG

I am delighted to receive this photo for the categhory journey from mug to mug! 

I sincerely thank Valeria: her cute mug comes from Piedmont.

I can do it, and I will, but after the coffee.

Basically a mantra printed on the mug.
Encouragement with every sip.
What to say? Perfect!

In Piedmont there is a place of the heart for me: Novara, a city that holds important moments of my life.

But Valeria sparked my interest in another place in particular.

A place where a very special drink is served in glasses without handles… bicerin, in fact.

I’m talking about the legendary Caffè al Bicerin since 1973 in Turin. 

Here is Valeria’s Bicerin!

I don’t know about you but I feel a sudden desire to taste it 🙂

Valeria told me that it should be drunk as it is served: that is, without mixing it.

The Bicerin is in fact composed of three basic ingredients: coffee, cream and chocolate … good company no doubt about it 🙂

Obviously, however, Bicerin is much more than that, and it is above all history.

The story of an eighteenth-century drink made up of three different separate glasses, almost as if for a sort of ritual, which over time has evolved into the current version that brings together n poc ‘d tut.

Story also told in the Virtual Museum of Turin. 

History of a drink that boasts illustrious admirers.

Umberto Eco tells it in The Prague Cemetery:
… I had gone as far as one of the legendary places of Turin at the time. Dressed as a Jesuit, and enjoying the amazement I aroused with malice, I went to Caffè Al Bicerin, near the Consolata, to take that glass, which smelled of milk, cocoa, coffee and other aromas. I still didn’t know that even Alexandre Dumas, one of my heroes, would have written about the bicerin a few years later, but in the course of two or three raids in that magical place I had learned all about that nectar …

Nectar gives a pretty good idea, don’t you think?

KEEP CALM AND … ROLLER SKATING!

KEEP CALM AND … ROLLER SKATING!

Apr 20, 2022 | SPORT, WHO CARES

Keep calm and… roller skating!
Yes: this time the keep calm is on wheels!

And it’s not the rusty ones I’m missing, luckily for you.

But not even the wheels of the experiments that Eleonora and I recently, by a curious coincidence, we told each other in these comments. 

Keep Calm wheels are spectacular and belong to the Victoria Alba Asd skating quartet.

Victoria Alba is an association of about 100 members, ranging from 5-year-olds to adults who are passionate about skating. They train in Alba in the province of Cuneo and participate in events and competitions at the provincial, regional and national level.

I got to know Victoria Alba after participating in the Fisr regional championship in Novara where the Keep Calm girls got fifth place in the National Division Quartets category with an exhibition inspired by the film “The greatest showman” … just to stay on the musical theme. 

Their names are Benedetta, Michela, Sara and Sophie and they are between 14 and 16 years old.

Obviously I could not contact them to ask how the choice of the name Keep Calm was born.

Here is their answer:
The choice of this name did not happen by chance, on the contrary, as we know the translation of this short construct is “stay calm.” We as a team have decided to make it personal, reminding us that we have all the skills to face our seasonal competitions head-on, without being overwhelmed by uncertainty or inner turmoil. Because after all we ourselves have decided to undertake this path which in a certain sense has helped us to mature and grow as people who are in control of themselves.

I would say that they have very clear ideas and that they deserve my sincere applause.

Come on girls! My cheering is all for you!

In case you want to follow the Keep Calm quartet, as well as the other athletes, you can find them both on the Facebook page and on the Instagram profile. 

Have you ever tried to skate?

I am sure you will tell me fantastic performances.

The roller skates with which I completely “grated” my forearm in second grade were more or less like the ones in this photo.

Don’t laugh too much though!

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