Public Announcement: Sergie's departure.

     It is with a sense of deep reminiscence that I must now make the necessary announcement of my coming departure. It has been nearly 2 months since I had been welcomed to this beautiful place, not having known what to expect and having planned initially to stay for no longer than a week. Who could have known that so much would have happened?


     As much as I adore the occasional plunge into the universe of writing, I feel as though there are not enough words in the English language to convey the myriad of experiences which have made themselves an intricate part of my life in these fleeting 2 months. This blog has received a vast amount of well-placed time and energy, and we really did try our best to help pull you into and guide you through our reality, however words and photographs alone will never be able to convey the full story of the incredible people and their challenging work which has gone on in this home. You really have to be there to experience it, and for me that was really what setting up this blog was about: to show you that what is being created here does not have to (and indeed should not) be limited to our geographical zone. Or our age group. Or our salary figures (or lack of). Everything that has occurred here can take place where you are right now, without the need for vast tracks of land, big bank accounts, expensive machinery or like-minded people. Those elements if strategically placed to maximize their beneficially interconnected functions certainly do add a whole new level of possibilities, but before any of that there are always two things which hold the central key to achieving your dream: they are your will and dedication. Everything else comes next and indeed does fall into place if you have the will to succeed and the dedication to see your goal through to the end.


     That is not to say that the work here is done. On the contrary, we are far from finished. However, I can only look and judge by the great strides which we have all made together in these 2 months, and say that we are well on our way to the planned destination. It is only a matter of time before Casa di l'Amuri blossoms into the spectacular education center that we have envisioned. 


     As for me, my experience here has only been made possible thanks to the wonderful people who have stepped into my life and in return have welcomed me into theirs. It is of no use to even attempt writing a personal thanks for each individual, as I feel that if I were to begin such a piece of writing I should not have the chance to perform any other task in my life until I am finished. The list would include not only my new closest friends, but also the merchants, fishmongers, bakers, fellow travelers, city-dwellers, performers, lounge-lizards, artisans, farmers, musicians, bus-drivers and every human being whom I have had the immense pleasure to meet on my travels here. A deep thank you from the core of my heart goes out to you all, its been an absolute blast being here.

     It is now time for me again to pick up my bags and continue my travels. My train leaves on Sunday and I shall be around until then. It should be noted that as of now this blog will no longer be maintained by me and the uploading of new images and typing of English posts will no longer be performed by me either. Those tasks are now the responsibility of the rest of the Casa di l'Amuri crew, and I'm sure they will handle things quite smoothly. 


Thank you and goodbye.

Progress update #7: Site upgrade.

As you can see, the site has just received a few additions in order to make it more user-friendly to our international audience and to give it some new functionality.

A navigation bar has been added to the top of the page, which takes the user to the main page via the "Home" link, the "Welcome" button links to a page giving a quick overview of project and blog (logo courtesy of Riccardo Gangemi), and the "About us" link takes the user to the "What is Casa di l'Amuri" page (which has been translated into Italian by Aureliano).

Other posts have begun undergoing a process of translation into Italian, with our first two bilingual posts being the "What is Casa di l'Amuri" page and the "What has been done so far? Part 5" page. Credits for translation go to Aureliano and our good friend Grazia Sciuto. These two posts have been labeled as "Italiano" and "English" while the still untranslated posts have a label of just "English". On top of the toolbar located on the right-hand side of the page, a "Browse posts in:" title has been placed, below which users can see the "English" and
"Italiano" label links. Clicking the label link takes the users to the posts which are in the corresponding language.

Below the label widget, a collection of various flags can be seen. This is a newly-installed Google Translator widget which uses Google's translation software to instantly translate the entire site into over 50 different languages. Clicking on a flag translates the blog into the corresponding language and while the translations are no-where near perfection (some turn out to be quite hilarious indeed), this widget helps us get the general point of each post across while we work on solid Italian translations for the majority of our audience.

The last addition to the site is a Chatterbox widget, found just under the Blog Archive, which acts as a sort of open chat-room for all visitors to the site.

Event report: Baratto/Sbaratto Inauguration Party - Part 2 - The Party

Upon awakening the next day we were greeted by an unbelievably clear sky and warm coastal breezes which instilled in us a sense of relaxed confidence and assurance that this day would turn out to be very joyous indeed. Although our prepared schedule had stated that the day would begin with a group tour of the property at 10AM, we soon realized that everything progresses at a much slower rate on Sunday mornings, especially in Sicily. The slow start to the day gave us ample time to enjoy breakfast.....

.....setup the cheerful donation box which Manuela had crafted for us.....

.....provide some paper and pens so that visitors could write down their suggestions for the Casa di l'Amuri project.....

.....and talk about Aureliano's bright yellow pant suspenders:

Our first guests began to show up around 11AM:

Soon enough, more guests began to arrive at a fairly steady rate, and so a Plan B was implemented where each of the crew members began to take turns guiding new groups of arrivals around the property. Manuela took the lead.....

.... and led our first group of the day. The tours which were given to our guests throughout the day included explanations of the main areas of interest on the property, the techniques used and philosophy behind our implemented developments as well as our planned future developments for selected areas:

Meanwhile, the items recovered from the oven room began to receive some attention from our friends:

Our friends Vanila and Giuseppe arrived to display some very interesting photo-artwork on the walls of our main room.

 Vanila works professionally with Slow Food cooking, however we could see from her photographs that she also has a very strong passion for her artwork. The displayed pieces seemed to take on a 3 dimensional existence and almost jumped from the paper to reach out to the viewer.

Soon thereafter, more and more guests began to arrive:

Family of Manuela

Giacinto, Peppe Minniti and Peppe Pavone.

Our friends Titziana and Alfio together with several volunteers who work
on their property.

The whole terrace began to get pretty packed.....

.....which was just as well, since Aureliano had just finished
cooking up a grand lunch.

Sometime around late afternoon, everyone began to make their way to our main room.....

.....to view a presentation by Aureliano, which covered the progress made in the house since the inception of the Casa di l'Amuri project, as well as some stories from Aureliano's travels abroad:

Logo courtesy of Riccardo Gangemi.

The captivating and in-depth presentation gave viewers the chance to see and experience for themselves how much transformation can take place in a short amount of time when a formidable team constantly dedicates their time and energy on a single project. A portion of the presentation covered Aureliano's travels abroad, specifically his first-hand experiences with discovering Permaculture in Australia. Topics such as raised garden bed construction and compost-making were also covered in the presentation, after which some time was given to our guests to mingle amongst themselves. Later in the day, a very special guest of honor appeared on our doorstep:

Giovanni Caloria!

We met the famous Italian pianist Giovanni Caloria at a San Martino house party a few days before our event, where upon hearing of our mission he was instantly captivated and cheerfully agreed on coming to Via Grande to perform on the day of our event. Giovanni came with a vast repertoire of pieces (and a monster of a keyboard) which were happily sung along to, and he delighted us with his joyous playing style all through the night:

In the meantime, Peppe Minniti and Pavone roasted some
chestnuts on a stove which we bought earlier from a
second-hand shop to help keep us warm in the coming winter.

Both Manuela with "Storia di un Grandi Amuri" and Aurelio with his original story took to the stage to recite some rather touching and unique pieces of writing to our audience.....

.....after which the music resumed and rejoined with our songs and dances, leading the festivities on well through to the late evening.

All in all, the event was celebrated as being even more successful than we had previously thought it could be, and although our schedule of the day was not really falling into place, events unraveled in an organic fashion leading everyone in having a fantastic time. We would like to personally extend our deepest thanks and gratitude to all those who attended and helped in co-creating an upbeat and vigorous event which will linger on in our memories as a day which brought with it unprecedented joy and truly honored the spirit of Casa di l'Amuri.

 Thank you all.

Event report: Baratto/Sbaratto Inauguration Party - Part 1 - The Preparation

An inauguration party was recently held at Casa di l'Amuri to celebrate the constantly smooth progress and increasing popularity of our project and our blog. The party was held on Sunday, November 14th with huge success, and as we are not yet registered as a public association it was not publicly advertised and the invitations were spread by word-of-mouth through our friends. Nevertheless, we were pleasantly surprised and nearly overwhelmed by the large number of guests who attended. What follows is Part 1 of the coverage and describes the preparation process carried out before the event.

The idea of holding an inauguration party had been floating around in our minds ever since the inception of the Casa di l'Amuri project. However, the possibility of holding the party truly solidified several weeks ago when the crew decided it was finally time to tackle the grand task of cleaning up a large room on the ground floor of the house which held inside it an ancient wooden oven.

The oven had not been used for a very long time and the room had come to be utilized by the Garozzo family over the decades as a storage space.

 Peppe Minniti came along to assist the cleanup operation, during which we found that the majority of the stored items were comprised of books, clothes and trinkets which the Garozzo family had no further use of. For the most part, the items were found to be in an acceptable condition and it was at this moment that an idea came up: our inauguration party could be combined with a Baratto/Sbaratto event where one of the aims would be to distribute the recovered items amongst friends who have need of them. A lengthy (and heated) discussion with Aureliano's father Salvadore took place.....

Our public relations negotiator Peppe Minniti.

.....before we were given the go-ahead to start removing things from the room...

.....with a few accidents occurring on the way:

Some horrors (which probably should not be posted here) were unearthed in the process but they were vastly outnumbered by the treasures. The gold which Carmelina sometimes mentions being hidden in this room was no-where to be seen, but we did find some things which more than made up for this, such as this rather beautiful old shelf.....

.....which we quickly reconstructed and began using to store our spices and herbs:

The big spoon was traditionally used to
stir tomato sauce, apparently.

It now proudly hangs next to our door-way to the kitchen:

This was followed by some beautifully preserved ancient containers......

.....a grinder....

.....and as if it had heard us planning for the party, the oven room in response miraculously presented us with a full set of spotless cutlery.....

A small portion of all the cutlery we found, enough for
all the guests, standing next to one of the several
 awesomely medieval metal goblets which were also
recovered.

.....and all the necessary shiny cooking utensils which we were looking for:

Aureliano's nephew Dario and Manuela hanging up the utensils.

Just one of the dozens of times I have witness this happen while arriving here. Almost every salvaged/donated carpet, curtain, table, marble slab, counter and piece of furniture which stands in our house has been put in its intended place and fit within a millimeter of perfection without needing any alteration. The right things and the right people turn up at exactly the moment when we need them most and random detours lead us to places, sought-out plants and unique individuals that all hold an integral place and specific function in our mission. An excerpt from "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho, found in the library of Aureliano (our guru on all things woo-woo) reads: "When a person really desires something, all the universe conspires to help that person to realize his dream". Or perhaps it really is all part of a string of convenient coincidences. Who truly knows? 


Speaking of unique individuals, it was around this point in time that we had the grand pleasure of seeing a good friend coming all the way from France to visit us:

Marie-Annick!

Me and Aureliano first met Marie-Annick during our studies in Djanbung Garden, Australia, where she and Aureliano took part in a Permaculture Design Course. Marie-Annick promptly came to visit us in Sicily upon Aureliano's invitation, and upon her arrival I truly began to realize just how immensely deep and varied her knowledge base is. From her experience in studies of sustainable arid-climate living in Spain to her intricate understanding of Holistic Management and its application to both project management and personal development, all the way to her interests in low impact/natural building, Eco-village living and her near-future plan of living with and recording the traditional knowledge of the nomadic Nenet tribes which roam the Northern depths of my homeland Siberia, all across the board I could sense that Marie-Annick had joyously crafted her vision of the world in celebration of various lores and saw life through a kaleidoscope-like collection of knowledge, experiences and ambitions which far outweighed my own. Needless to say, I was honored to be able to glimpse at the world through her mind, even if it was for a brief period of 10 days during which she managed to successfully steer and organize our energy so that we could most effectively execute the planned event. --|||||Sergie|||||


With Marie-Annick's help we began to prepare for the event with a massive cleanup of the garden area:

It should be noted at this point in time that the entire property has been poorly maintained in recent decades, and to put it bluntly, it had slowly been transforming into a private garbage dump. Hence the ground was riddled with plastic.....

.....and large metal pieces such as door frames and portions of roofing stood about providing nothing short of a hazardous eye-sore:

We did our best to collect as much plastic off the ground as possible.....

.....and turned our attention to a large pile of freshly pruned wood that someone had attempted to burn using plastic as a fire-starter:

Though this was not the doing of the Casa di l'Amuri crew, it was deemed obvious that visitors to a future community and environmentally-ethical-living and education center should not be confronted with such a ghastly view. We decided that the best course of action was to cut the wood into small portions and collect it for drying to be used as fuel in the future.

Marie-Annick, Aureliano and our good friend Romina helping to sort out
the wood.....

.....which Aureliano and Marie-Annick had a lot of fun doing.

In the end, we decided to leave the pile half finished and put the wood to
the side in order to demonstrate to visitors how we had taken what seemed
to be waste in someone's eyes and turned it into a usable resource.

After several days of working in the garden we felt that the space radiated an acceptable level of organization and was deemed presentable. Our attention turned to the main house:

Romina helping Aureliano to clean up the front terrace.....

.....and make it look clean and presentable.

Manuela did a grand job of polishing up the bathroom.....

.....and kitchen areas.

Furniture in the main room was moved around to accommodate the guests.....

.....and Aureliano's brother generously let us use his projection system so that
we could perform a presentation on the day of the event.

Appropriate cups and glasses were arranged on the tables in the dining/office
 area for guests to pour themselves cups of tea/coffee/wine. 

Once the house had been appropriately arranged for visitation by guests, the last task which remained was to sort out the recovered items from the oven room, which there were quite a lot of:

Working well into the late evening hours, Marie-Annick and Aureliano went through each container sorting out the treasures and discovering some more horrors (most of which fell upon Marie-Annick's hands).

Eventually, the clothes were sorted from the books and hung up on the clothesline to be aired out:

An old broken down car had been standing uselessly around close to our garden area and it was decided that the car's protective nature should be utilized to house the books in case of sudden rain:

The books and trinkets were presented in the car for the taking, the clothes were on display on the clothesline, the garden was more organized than before, necessary food and beverages were purchased, all rooms in the house had been made ready, the invitations had been sent out and the stage stood ready. Anxious and excited to see our efforts culminate into a joyous gathering we retired for the night to get a good rest before the grand day of the event.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of the coverage.