venerdì 3 dicembre 2010

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.



giovedì 2 dicembre 2010

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.

mercoledì 1 dicembre 2010

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.