Nothing happens here in February (an agricultural cycle dominates the calendar despite the gold factories), so I go to London, where the cold doesn't matter.
It would be inappropriate to detail the ins and outs of the Bloomsbury corridor, the replacing of Russell Square in its proper urban context in relation to the other Bloomsbury Squares, and give the latest on our school south of the Euston Road campaign, but it's not that there has been lazing about.
Accounts of primavera will arrive after the weekend, when I have finished unloading some poorly pounds into the empty shops. In John Lewis' kitchen department an assistant actually offered to help me with choosing work surfaces - not a lot of people about, but I hadn't realised the recession is so deep.
Tuesday 26 February 2008
Saturday 16 February 2008
The General Election
A caretaker government leaves Monculi undisturbed. It is a lesson in what the European Union means. Subsidiarity has lowered all everyday life decisions to the lowest effective level, so there is far greater interest in town, province, and regional decision-taking.
Gold trading and manufacturing ties the Monculi into a high level of sophistication and interest in financial movements - local women's group outings to Dubai aren't just about the shopping; there's business transacted in gold products.
But mostly people would like a clean-up of the grosser corruption in banking, which has long been underway since the disgracing of Bank of Italy Governor Fazio, with his nasty links into the underbelly of the Church, and the bracing review of sub prime exposure of silly, former communist regional financial authorities that was carried out by Bank Governor Draghi early last year. (Why is it that always, former socialist and communists administrations fall for financial scams and get rich quick? The Federal German Government has had to do similar discreet bailing-out operations on former communist east German banks and financial entities; not to speak of rubbish Northern Rock and its farce of a Foundation).
The Monculi are keen on any party that gets the tax rate down and provides lots of jobs for newly-qualified arts graduate offspring too; but aren't we all? Deep in our hearts we know that is not a good way to go. So what is wanted from central government is discreet backing for major industry, and investment in tertiary level education in hard line subjects. Interestingly all of the faculties of non arts are imposing extra entrance examinations and limiting their entry numbers.
The Right is unhappy about Berlusconi as leader. They would prefer someone younger, more of this century, less criminal, less oriented to an ad hominem agenda. But there isn't time to organize that. Berlusconi, very like his Labour counterpart in England, cannot see his kind of politics is bent and repellent, much like his diehard electorate but not the more decent, less tribal voters.
Fini, the man who should have led the centre right, cannot lose his fascist label, though he is far less of a fascist, authoritarian statist than any New Labour politician. So the Right is splintered and the centre left, organised by Prodi, but now led by Veltroni, is up for the fight.
Prodi is a Conservative in English terms, leading an ex communist and socialist rabble that is at last pulling itself together into the 21st century. And Prodi is an incredibly competent and honest political economist with the highest quality advisorial group of politicians and financiers But then, Prodi is returning to European politics.
The Democratic Party has asked if one of the ground floor rooms in the village house can be used as their headquarters. In return for their provision of the manpower to shift the boxes of books into another room, which has been readied and freshly painted, with wall to wall empty bookshelves, and a proper contract listing all expenditures in cash and in kind, I have said Yes.
The very thought of a Monculi Electoral Commission sends bureaucratic shudders down the spine.
Gold trading and manufacturing ties the Monculi into a high level of sophistication and interest in financial movements - local women's group outings to Dubai aren't just about the shopping; there's business transacted in gold products.
But mostly people would like a clean-up of the grosser corruption in banking, which has long been underway since the disgracing of Bank of Italy Governor Fazio, with his nasty links into the underbelly of the Church, and the bracing review of sub prime exposure of silly, former communist regional financial authorities that was carried out by Bank Governor Draghi early last year. (Why is it that always, former socialist and communists administrations fall for financial scams and get rich quick? The Federal German Government has had to do similar discreet bailing-out operations on former communist east German banks and financial entities; not to speak of rubbish Northern Rock and its farce of a Foundation).
The Monculi are keen on any party that gets the tax rate down and provides lots of jobs for newly-qualified arts graduate offspring too; but aren't we all? Deep in our hearts we know that is not a good way to go. So what is wanted from central government is discreet backing for major industry, and investment in tertiary level education in hard line subjects. Interestingly all of the faculties of non arts are imposing extra entrance examinations and limiting their entry numbers.
The Right is unhappy about Berlusconi as leader. They would prefer someone younger, more of this century, less criminal, less oriented to an ad hominem agenda. But there isn't time to organize that. Berlusconi, very like his Labour counterpart in England, cannot see his kind of politics is bent and repellent, much like his diehard electorate but not the more decent, less tribal voters.
Fini, the man who should have led the centre right, cannot lose his fascist label, though he is far less of a fascist, authoritarian statist than any New Labour politician. So the Right is splintered and the centre left, organised by Prodi, but now led by Veltroni, is up for the fight.
Prodi is a Conservative in English terms, leading an ex communist and socialist rabble that is at last pulling itself together into the 21st century. And Prodi is an incredibly competent and honest political economist with the highest quality advisorial group of politicians and financiers But then, Prodi is returning to European politics.
The Democratic Party has asked if one of the ground floor rooms in the village house can be used as their headquarters. In return for their provision of the manpower to shift the boxes of books into another room, which has been readied and freshly painted, with wall to wall empty bookshelves, and a proper contract listing all expenditures in cash and in kind, I have said Yes.
The very thought of a Monculi Electoral Commission sends bureaucratic shudders down the spine.
Monday 11 February 2008
Education, Education, Education.
Monculi's school is new, surrounded by open space, sports fields, and equipped with a primary and secondary department. The Nursery and Infants is run by the nuns in the former primary school and needs separate consideration.
The pupils are not from other villages; neighbouring villages have schools of their own, and the schools are much of a muchness. Which is no criticism because the muchness extends across Italy. From the ages of 6 to 11 pupils study reading, writing - both hand and style, mathematics, science, Italian grammar, language and literature, Italian history, geography (in the wider sense of physical and economic and social geography) and English language (that is International English, not the high English no longer offered in UK schools). This programme runs in 3 year cycles; once the children can read and write etc., they begin the first study of the rest of the material when they are 8. Completing what can best be thought of as a road map of what they will study again in more complexity after 11, the examination to proceed into the secondary school is a serious business; the examination to be allowed up into the next class with all your friends at the end of each year is a serious business too. Muck about enough and you stay down until you learn.
Secondary school repeats the subjects in detail and with heightened analysis; this is an excellent way to work as the students know where they are going and what is involved.
After the obligatory school end examination, all who pass may enroll in their specialised school of choice. Those who have had enough can take work within their extended families and connections in the local community; those whose parents might never have thought have the chance to see their offspring studying the sciences, the classics, or the feeder courses for surveying, teaching, agricultural management and best practice, etc., (to mention the more popular specialisms in a Monculi ethos).
And yes, the teaching could be better, and yes there is violence in some schools, particularly in the large, mixed population centres, and yes, there are problems of favouritism and class clusters around very good schools.
But most children go to their local school, most children are taught (and some are hauled) through to where they wanted to go, some of them discovering their destination on the way, and best of all, none of them are in any doubt that they are Italians with a staggering cultural heritage (if some very iffy bits), and identity; whatever their country of origin, or their parents' class.
They also wear navy blue overalls over their normal clothes so there's none of that appalling school uniform in viscose and plastic, with ties, rubbish either.
The pupils are not from other villages; neighbouring villages have schools of their own, and the schools are much of a muchness. Which is no criticism because the muchness extends across Italy. From the ages of 6 to 11 pupils study reading, writing - both hand and style, mathematics, science, Italian grammar, language and literature, Italian history, geography (in the wider sense of physical and economic and social geography) and English language (that is International English, not the high English no longer offered in UK schools). This programme runs in 3 year cycles; once the children can read and write etc., they begin the first study of the rest of the material when they are 8. Completing what can best be thought of as a road map of what they will study again in more complexity after 11, the examination to proceed into the secondary school is a serious business; the examination to be allowed up into the next class with all your friends at the end of each year is a serious business too. Muck about enough and you stay down until you learn.
Secondary school repeats the subjects in detail and with heightened analysis; this is an excellent way to work as the students know where they are going and what is involved.
After the obligatory school end examination, all who pass may enroll in their specialised school of choice. Those who have had enough can take work within their extended families and connections in the local community; those whose parents might never have thought have the chance to see their offspring studying the sciences, the classics, or the feeder courses for surveying, teaching, agricultural management and best practice, etc., (to mention the more popular specialisms in a Monculi ethos).
And yes, the teaching could be better, and yes there is violence in some schools, particularly in the large, mixed population centres, and yes, there are problems of favouritism and class clusters around very good schools.
But most children go to their local school, most children are taught (and some are hauled) through to where they wanted to go, some of them discovering their destination on the way, and best of all, none of them are in any doubt that they are Italians with a staggering cultural heritage (if some very iffy bits), and identity; whatever their country of origin, or their parents' class.
They also wear navy blue overalls over their normal clothes so there's none of that appalling school uniform in viscose and plastic, with ties, rubbish either.
Saturday 9 February 2008
The Priest and His Practices
Don Adriano is a worker-priest, at least he leans in that direction, unlike his predecessor but one, the Arch Priest of whom my stepmother-in-law once remarked that he was considerably more arch and too little priest for her taste. The immediate predecessor was Don Benito, which sums him up really.
Possessed of a fine, light baritone, Don Adriano takes pleasure, and sinful pride for which he will pay, in using it on his ritual duties. Which left his congregation standing, in the musical stakes, until the reinstatement of the Tridentine Mass. No longer is there a ragged, if willing chorus of little known hymns and hopeful expectation of the rousing rendition of the leaving church hymn, in which even the Communists standing outside in the church square can join.
Kyrie, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei are back with a full-throated vengeance;so he's got himself a microphone and an acolyte carries the loudspeakers when he's out and about processing, and the church is all wired up for indoor coverage.
What his cousinship with the longstanding Mayor, second cousinship with the grocer, and descent from one of the Families of the 600 is doing for the sacrament of Confession, he's not saying.
Possessed of a fine, light baritone, Don Adriano takes pleasure, and sinful pride for which he will pay, in using it on his ritual duties. Which left his congregation standing, in the musical stakes, until the reinstatement of the Tridentine Mass. No longer is there a ragged, if willing chorus of little known hymns and hopeful expectation of the rousing rendition of the leaving church hymn, in which even the Communists standing outside in the church square can join.
Kyrie, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei are back with a full-throated vengeance;so he's got himself a microphone and an acolyte carries the loudspeakers when he's out and about processing, and the church is all wired up for indoor coverage.
What his cousinship with the longstanding Mayor, second cousinship with the grocer, and descent from one of the Families of the 600 is doing for the sacrament of Confession, he's not saying.
Friday 8 February 2008
Movable Feast
Fixing Easter's date has caused controversy in Christendom over the years.
The First Council of Nicaea's exact words are not preserved from 325 but (gleaned from various sources) the Council ruled:
* that Easter must be celebrated by all throughout the world on the same Sunday;
* that this Sunday must follow the fourteenth day of the paschal moon;
* that the moon was to be accounted the paschal moon whose fourteenth day followed the spring equinox;
* that some provision should be made, probably by the Church of Alexandria as best skilled in astronomical calculations, for determining the proper date of Easter and communicating it to the rest of the world.
Easter, the first Sunday after the first full moon of the Spring Equinox, is preceded by the 40 days of Lent, and as a send off before penance and denial, there is Carnival.
Except in Monculi di Sopra. Owing to inclement weather before Ash Wednesday, this year Carnival will be next Sunday.
Whether they are shortening Lent or moving Easter is still unclear, but Nicaea's writ doesn't run here.
Their take on the Nicene Creed is yet to be put to the test.
The First Council of Nicaea's exact words are not preserved from 325 but (gleaned from various sources) the Council ruled:
* that Easter must be celebrated by all throughout the world on the same Sunday;
* that this Sunday must follow the fourteenth day of the paschal moon;
* that the moon was to be accounted the paschal moon whose fourteenth day followed the spring equinox;
* that some provision should be made, probably by the Church of Alexandria as best skilled in astronomical calculations, for determining the proper date of Easter and communicating it to the rest of the world.
Easter, the first Sunday after the first full moon of the Spring Equinox, is preceded by the 40 days of Lent, and as a send off before penance and denial, there is Carnival.
Except in Monculi di Sopra. Owing to inclement weather before Ash Wednesday, this year Carnival will be next Sunday.
Whether they are shortening Lent or moving Easter is still unclear, but Nicaea's writ doesn't run here.
Their take on the Nicene Creed is yet to be put to the test.
Thursday 7 February 2008
Orientation
Monculi di Sopra can be found within the magic triangle Florence - Siena - Arezzo. Here every hill top is fortified, every valley lined with poplars, and the in between is marching lines of cypresses, silver-green olive groves, and eye-watering numbers of industrial estates.
Monculi has one of the highest per capita incomes in the whole of Italy; it has gold factories and Prada (farming doesn't count, that is merely the nature of being). A resident population of rather more than 2000 and jobs for twice that number helps too.
Monculi is rare in red Tuscany for its steadfast political commitment to the Right. Here beats the heart of Christian Democracy (whatever it is being called these days) and the Church has an unvarying and 99% adhesion. Monculi di Sopra is magnificently self-interested and self-forgiving.
The heart of unreconstructed Communism beats here too. Christian Authoritarianism stands shoulder to shoulder with Christian Democracy when it comes to it.
1200 voters are organized into extended families whose interests and loyalties crisscross ideological belief.
And every last resident knows every last thing about everyone and everything - and never hesitates to tell me why and how I am not doing it (whatever I am doing) right.
Monculi has one of the highest per capita incomes in the whole of Italy; it has gold factories and Prada (farming doesn't count, that is merely the nature of being). A resident population of rather more than 2000 and jobs for twice that number helps too.
Monculi is rare in red Tuscany for its steadfast political commitment to the Right. Here beats the heart of Christian Democracy (whatever it is being called these days) and the Church has an unvarying and 99% adhesion. Monculi di Sopra is magnificently self-interested and self-forgiving.
The heart of unreconstructed Communism beats here too. Christian Authoritarianism stands shoulder to shoulder with Christian Democracy when it comes to it.
1200 voters are organized into extended families whose interests and loyalties crisscross ideological belief.
And every last resident knows every last thing about everyone and everything - and never hesitates to tell me why and how I am not doing it (whatever I am doing) right.
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