THE GIRLS’ FACTORY

THE GIRLS’ FACTORY

Apr 26, 2025 | BOOKS

The Girls’ Factory by Ilaria Rossetti published by Bompiani: take note of this title, I recommend it.

I am again grateful to Monica: I read it thanks to her and I enjoyed it very much.

The Girls’ Factory stems from the author’s research into work-related deaths, but it is much more.

It is a historical fact that has literally been erased, it is the description of places that I recognise as familiar, and it also is a proof for the theory of the six degrees of separation.

But above all, it is a very well-written book.

My compliments to Ilaria Rossetti.

The Girls’ Factory was established in Bollate, during the First World War, to meet the need for weapons, bombs and munition to supply the front.

That is why ‘the girls:’ the only remaining workforce, particularly suited for their small hands.

You know I don’t like to reveal too much, but I would like to emphasise the importance of spreading the story of people who were used and then wiped out because the war machine could not stop, then and now.

It even goes so far as to raze it to the ground, leaving only furrows in the earth and in the hearts of those who lived, waiting for the memory to die out along with the lives of those who knew the facts.

That is why it is so important that we keep going on telling this and all equally uncomfortable stories.

The first was a storyteller of excellence: none other than Ernest Hemingway, whom fate brought from America to Castellazzo di Bollate in the wake of the factory explosion, recounted in the famous The first forty-nine stories. 

All that remains on the site, completely overgrown by trees, is an electrical cabin with a very impressive mural. 

La Fabbrica delle Ragazze

Other characters in the book take the reader to Milan, following the route of the Seveso river, painting a journey through nature and time.

Have you ever heard stories of grandparents  your own or ‘acquired’?
Grandparents can become everybody’s grannies after all, am I wrong?

Is there a story to be handed down even in the place where you live?

THE TASTERS

THE TASTERS

Apr 6, 2025 | MOVIES, MOVIES

The tasters Le assaggiatrici is the film directed by Silvio Soldini released in cinemas last week.

I went to the cinema with Monica and this is one of the times I see the film before reading the book.

Cristina Comencini and Ilaria Macchia, who I am always curious to discover, among others, collaborated on the screenplay.

The tasters Le assaggiatrici is based on the novel written by Rosella Pastorino, inspired by the story of Margot Wölk who only at the age of 95 revealed that she was the only survivor of a group of women selected to check that their food was not poisoned.

Tony’s blog published a list of ten distressing films, there and then I had no idea, but now I can definitely mention The tasters: an hour and I don’t know how many minutes of distress.

 

 

To emphasise even more the sense of ineluctability, at times the images are interspersed with cuts in black.

The soundtrack music looms just as effectively.

The director chose to work with German actors, precisely in order to remain as faithful as possible to every single detail.

But what emerges is that people, of whatever nationality, of whatever colour, of whatever origin, suffer during the war.

I know I have written a platitude, yet it seems that everything that happened in the Second World War, as well as in all the other wars in the history of mankind, has served no purpose.

We have learnt nothing.

And we feed on the venom of the powerful.

MY SOUL IS WHEREVER YOU ARE

MY SOUL IS WHEREVER YOU ARE

Dec 24, 2023 | BOOKS

My soul is wherever you are is a striking phrase.

These words, uttered by a character in the story told, give the title to the book written by Aldo Cazzullo published by Mondadori.

More precisely, the full title is: My soul is wherever you are. A crime, a treasure, a war, a love.

A crime … as you know very well by now, I love reading books about crimes and once again I thank Monica for this read.

But if at the beginning the chapters chase each other along two parallel lines: time and investigation, soon the murder itself loses relevance compared to the story which, from a blurred background position, page after page becomes the protagonist.

A crime, a treasure, a war, a love.

War, as we know, is total destruction, and even in this case it annihilates humanity by provoking behaviour that nothing and no one will ever be able to erase.

So can my soul is wherever you are become a damnation?

While waiting for you to tell me your interpretation, I want to add that although the setting is Piedmont, I found myself reading a story that is the same story I heard as a child and that has always stuck with me: greed has the power to bring together people with completely different ideals.

Here then is the purpose of the treasure. 

Can you tell me of a treasure that has enriched you in a positive sense instead?

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?

IN LOMELLINA FIELDS

IN LOMELLINA FIELDS

Jun 11, 2021 | ENVIRONMENT, ITALY

Poppies are nice, they are simple, they are spontaneous, they are impressionists laughing they are light, they are cheerful, they are summer, they are color, they are warmth.

But they also become sad, when they represent the symbol that John Mc Crae chose to remember the victims of war.

At the beginning of the First World War, John McCrae was asked to join 1st Brigade, Canadian Field Artillery as the Medical Officer. In May 1915 during the heaviest fighting of Second Battle of Ypres, McCrae and his dressing station were within site of the Essex Field cemetery. After 17 exhausting days and the death of a comrade, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, her wrote his immortal poem “In Flanders Fields.”

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Here recited by Leonard Cohen

 

This made me think of Lomellina, its poppies and its victims of a silent massacre, which is not even a war, because basically nobody or almost no one cares.

I have already spoken of silent deaths, of herbicides, of glyphosate, of PM 2.5 and of liveability that are open wounds for me.

So we should not be surprised if once in a while some newspaper launches a news that is a little more taken up, but which in the meantime has already been forgotten in favor of other arguments, including aliens.

And we should not be surprised if an interception only confirms what we already know, that is, that unscrupulous people do not care in the least about the damage caused by the poisons that spill into our territories in the form of “sludge” in order to earn, indeed, they joke about it. .

It is not true that “hurting the environment and the territory is equivalent to not having hurt any physical person.”

Many people will get sick and will have to fight with all their might.

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