Sunday, February 28, 2010

Chetana Mysore Mallige

A shameful history

The first days of March 1971 began the demolition work at Palazzo Cappello





is always the same old story.
An old palace, an unhealthy district, a disused factory, and someone who wants to pull them down to build something new. Les Halles, the Navigli, Wembley Stadium, Borgo Novo, the Art Nouveau villas of Palermo: a story that repeats itself everywhere and always the same in Rome as in Milan, Paris or London, as in Palermo in Molfetta in his small, with its Palazzo Cappello, with biscuit Pansini & Gallo, with the orchestra of the Villa Comunale thrown down, with the Cenobio St. Martin's drowning among industrial warehouses, and then the stacks Gallo and small buildings with lofts on the facades around that house the factories, the plant Maldarelli, and so to continue.
Ruins unhealthy for someone precious memories for others. Cement against stone walls, anti-corrosion against chianche, asphalt pavements against De Lillo.
No, not always of the new knights, the bishops of this publicized, alleged hairy and modernity, those who dig craters in history that have won. But their victories are final. When you win are the others, those who want to preserve the memory of places, it is still a palpable sense of suspended irreducible uncertainty: for today is gone, but tomorrow?
And when he arrives, ultimately, defeat, in those empty spaces, in the awe of space, in that absence of volumes already preceded by the sleep of memory against which you can never do enough, and before a new semantics urban permanently erase everything, it can last up to stage protests such as Marco Ferreri's disguised evicted from bulldozers, human waste, among the Indians in the land of ancient earthworks of wholesale markets in the French capital.
is an asymmetrical war that is fought between those who see this in the future to build and those who see in this crumble il passato.

Se facessimo un sondaggio fra i molfettesi chiedendo loro quanti ritengono che sia stato giusto buttare giù palazzo Cappelluti, sono sicuro che pochi, non foss’altro per pudore, avrebbero il coraggio di dire di sì. È allora perché ne restano solo foto sbiadite?
I molfettesi di fronte alle vecchie foto sanno struggersi e rimpiangere la città che non c’è più, e non v’è dubbio che siano in questo sinceri. Ma allora perché non sono riusciti ad impedire quelle demolizioni?
Se si vanno a rispolverare i giornali dell’epoca, ci si sorprende nel constatare quanto inadeguata, flebile se non totalmente inesistente sia stata l’opposizione a quelli che oggi, late, call havoc.
The arguments in favor of conservation always declined to take too lightly taken.
the contrary those who wanted to make room for new or remained silent and did talk about the facts or if he talked, looked like a determined, mocking announcer in the history that goes back into motion.
few years later, when the city came out of the torpor and the news proved to be far less beautiful ad, laments the loss started to become common sense.
and primary schools are taught how beautiful the city was no longer there. The adults listened, nodded, tried to apologize: we were young, we did not know, we did not understand ...
Then history repeats itself, The boys explained that they had to tear down the palace chapel was silly obscene, today they are now masters imbolsiti maybe bald and with drooping eyelids that before the demolition of the office building of the shipyard Tattoli applauded happily imagining new parking lots with views of the sunset dream and now. They dream of skyscrapers soaring into the sky where there were no knives, olive groves and warehouses, where there were tents, asphalt and concrete where there were shrines and stone walls. Dreaming, perhaps, of Electric Sheep.
(The photo at the top of the post is to cover di "Palazzo Cappelluti. Una vicenda oscura" di Nicola Morgese, ed. Edirespa)

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Can Dogs Get Impetigo

First Cause

In tutte le cause ordinate, l'effetto dipende più dalla causa prima che dalla causa seconda, perché la causa seconda non agisce se non in virtù della causa prima.
Tommaso d'Aquino, Summa Theologica, II, 1, q.9, a.4

Poniamo dunque che, mosso a pietà per un ragno casualmente (?) finito nel mio soggiorno, invece di schiacciarlo lo raccolga delicatamente e lo ponga in salvo sul balcone. Poniamo anche che di lì a poco una mosca che passasse per caso (?) ne fosse spaventata e compiendo un rapido scarto finisse nel becco di un passerotto accidentalmente (?) For passage. And let's say that the bird chooses refreshed and satisfied to rest on my laundry to dry, after sharing a bit 'without fail to evacuate as a result of the stimulus resulting from the meal.
I could blame everything else but those who gave me the gift of a soul so sensitive?