Earthquake relief event in Assisi

Anne Robichaud has allowed me to share a recent event in Assisi to raise funds for the recent earthquake disaster relieve.   http://www.annesitaly.com/

You can read the entire story and enjoy the many photos at http://www.annesitaly.com/blog/in-assisi-solidarity-is-music/

In Assisi, “Solidarity IS Music”….

 

…….….as the black T-shirts of the Florentine jazz musicians, Funk Off, proclaim. And on an early October Sunday, their trumpets, saxophones, clarinets, drums and cymbals blared out the message through Assisi’s medieval alleyways, just In case you’d missed it.

The appeal shouted out? To share in three days of music and solidarity sponsored by Umbria Jazz as a benefit for those left homeless in the August 24th earthquake. Over sixty of Italy’s most renowned jazz musicians – often on center stage in Perugia each July during the Umbria Jazz festival – responded immediately to the call to come to Assisi for three days of benefit concerts on September 30, October 1 and October 2. Big names on Italy’s jazz front, all the musicians were listed in yellow lettering on the backs of the T-shirts.

Answering the call to solidarity, wineries, local farmers and grocers provided the foods for a jazz dinner on October 1st (between afternoon and evening shows at Assisi’s theater, Teatro Lyrick) – and for pasta dishes and lentils served on Sunday in Assisi’s main square. All the Umbria specialties of the festival were cooked up and served by volunteers. At the evening jazz concerts, other volunteers sold the black “Musica e e’ Solidarieta’“ T-shirts at the theater entrance. An Assisi hotel, Hotel dei Priori, hosted all the guest musicians. (An astounding show of solidarity as this is “high season” in Assisi; during the week of the Feast of St. Francis, October 4th, hotels are sold out in this town).

“Why choose Assisi for this Umbria Jazz solidarity event – and not Perugia?” I’d asked the founder of Umbria Jazz Carlo Pagnotta before the Saturday night concert of famed jazz pianist Stefano Bollani. “Because of Assisi’s links to an earthquake: that of September 1997. We sent out a call for solidarity then, too, with musicians playing as a benefit in Foligno.”

A Sardinian folk group in colorful traditional costumes joined locals and visitors in clapping to Funk Off’s final number: they’d be performing next (a prelude to the October 4th festivities). Funk Off would be heading on to Norcia to play for those living in tents now following the earthquake.

The Funk Off fans lined up in front of our medieval city hall to choose one of three dishes representing areas suffering earthquake damage: pasta all’amatriciana (for Amatrice in Latium, near the epicenter), pasta alla norcina (for Norcia, here in Umbria) or the zuppa di lenticchie, lentil soup of the famed lentils of Castelluccio (here in Umbria, also with quake damage). Smiling volunteers took payments and handed out receipts while others dished up the goodness.

Read more about this solidarity event’s link to Assisi
Read more on Assisi area solidarity
See – and hear – Enrico Rava with Stefano Bollani, two musicians here in Assisi
Feel the emotion of Paolo Fresu’s trumpet, also here for the benefit
See and hear two performers, pianist Danilo Rea playing with Paolo Fresu
Read about – and see!- Funk Off at Umbria Jazz
Click here for more on Funk Off at Umbria Jazz
Read about our amatriciana benefit dinner
Read more about the August 24, 2016 earthquake – and solidarity

Cooking vegetarian in Puglia: a small glimpse of this fall event

Italian cooking

 is more enjoyable with a local wine.  

The cooking and wine school in Puglia, Italy offers a wide assortment of custom events that make a trip to Italy more than museums and monuments.   

But it is Ylenia Sambati who will 

be the reason you return to Puglia. 

  

A lifelong vegetarian, I have asked Yle to share Italian-vegetarian recipes with me to post on Home to Italy as well as puplish with La Gazzetta Italiana newspaper.  


Now you can learn a healthy way to cook Italian dishes during a a special week of cooking (click here for details), learning and experiencing the area near Lecce.

The perfect setting for cooking lessons at the school

 Here is a small sample of a cooking lesson
with Yle

You can take cooking lessons everywhere in Italy.   But an experience with Cook in Puglia is so much more.

"Meeting Yle more than 3 years ago was one of the unplanned events that can leave a lasting impression.   
When I return to Puglia, I never feel like a tourist, but like a friend returning home."  

Certosa closing outside of Florence: 4 monks are being relocated.

Sad News!

I just read about the closing on the monastery with only 4 monks outside of Florence.

You may have read my post from the very interesting visit I made a year ago with a local expat and friend Sheila.

I am very sorry to see the closure of this amazing complex.   If I can return to Florence in November I shall take another bus trip out to visit the monks before they are relocated.   Just hope they continue the daily tours or I shall be attending a Sunday mass!

Story from the Florentine:

NEWS

The end of Certosa

From monastery to museum?

Editorial Staff

July 13, 2016 - 12:21

 

Only four monks remain at Certosa di Galluzzo and their religious order has instructed them to leave by the end of the year.
 

 
The first Cistercian monks moved into the fourteenth-century religious complex in 1958, replacing the Carthusian order. In the beginning, Certosa flourished, training the young brotherhood to become priests, but the vocation was lost gradually and no younger generation has taken over the reins.
 

The four monks, infirm and ageing, still living at Certosa are no longer able to take care of the vast religious complex by themselves. Owned by the State, the superintendency for architectural and landscape heritage of Florence is taking over the management of Certosa—the monks will leave by the end of the year.
 
In an article in local newspaper Corriere Fiorentino, Padre Luigi, one of the four monks left at Certosa, commented, “This place will change from being a monastery and become a museum, and it will lose its spiritual essence… We have done a lot here. Now it will be up to someone else not to disperse our work.”

 
In their 60 years here, the monks have worked hard to support themselves, receiving no support from the Church: preserving books and making jams, ancient-style liqueurs and ceramics, as well as offering guided tours, including the priceless frescoes of Pontormo, maintaining the monastery and holding public mass on Sunday mornings.

The story noted above in the Corriere Fiorentino is in Italian and the online translation is not great, ut I will share it with you as well


As quoted in the above newspaper and auto translated (leave a lot to be corrected)

Choc Charterhouse, the farewell of the monks

The four leave the religious complex of Galluzzo later this year: "we are too few, now nothing will make more sense

by Jacopo Starlings

by

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After nearly 60 years, the Cistercian monks at the end of the year will leave the Certosa del Galluzzo. The first arrived here in 1958, instead of the carthusians. There was the student to become priests, many monks and many vocations. Then, decade after decade, that vocation has faded gradually. The monks are aged, many have died. There was generational.

Today they remained only in four and alone cannot sustain this large monastic complex, one of the most beautiful in Italy. The facility, owned by the State, will change management. The monks will leave by the end of the year. Instead of monks, will replace the Superintendence. Father Luigi, one of 4 monks were, says: "this place will be transformed from a Museum, and will lose its spiritual essence. In any case, no regrets: ' we have done so much, now it's up to someone else not to lose our jobs. As for us, it's not the House that makes the monk. "

The saddest is Father Saleem, arrived here in 1958, when he was only 19 years old: "our order has decided so, but leaving the monastery I lose a piece of life, I won't be able to work anymore, nothing will make more sense." He lives locked up ten hours a day in his laboratory for the restoration of old books. Volumes even in the fourteenth century, arriving here in dramatic conditions and that, thanks to their experience, they come back to life. The reputation of Father Sixto took him in universities and libraries of Russia, Argentina, Egypt, Chile.

Here in the monastery sleeping in cells, wake up at 5 and then two hours of prayers. Then get to work up to 19. There is the restoration of books and the production of jams, the collection of figs and oranges, the distillery where liquor with ancient methods and the pottery workshop. Monks handyman, that self-support without receiving salary from the Church. And then the guided tours, morning and afternoon, maintenance of the monastery and the public mass on Sunday morning, in addition to the summer theatre of the chairs. "We've always done it all ourselves — says Father Luigi — but now we were too few."

Especially as one of the four monks, the eldest, the prior Roberto, is ill and no longer able to work. Then there's Father Berenè, Eritrea, also sorry to leave. The Carthusian monastery there are works of great value, such as the frescoes by Pontormo. Will remain almost everything here. But the monks fear for the future of this religious stronghold. Father Sisto looks around and sighs worried: "Let's just hope it doesn't become a hovel."

July 9, 2016 | 11:30

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