ronin53's PhotoBlog

PASSION...

2009-09-19T16:19:35Z

Passion (from the Latin verb patior, meaning to suffer or to endure, also related to compatible) is an emotion applied to a very strong feeling about a person or thing. Passion is an intense emotion compelling feeling, enthusiasm, or desire for someone or something. Passion can be expressed as a feeling of unusual excitement, enthusiasm or compelling emotion towards a subject, idea, person, or object. A person is said to have a passion for someone or something when they have a strong positive affinity for it. A love for someone or something and a passion for someone or something are very similar feelings. “Passion very often makes the wisest men fools, and very often too inspires the greatest fools with wit.” François de La Rochefoucauld, Moral Maxims and Reflections, no. 7 (1665-1678)

COINCIDENCES...

2009-09-08T14:57:47Z

On September 8, 1943, during World War II, the Armistice with Italy, signed on September 3, between Italy and the Allied armed forces, who were then occupying the southern half of the country, was publicly declared entailing the capitulation of Italy. It is also referred to in Italy as the Armistizio di Cassibile (from the place in which it was signed) or the Armistizio dell'8 Settembre (more simply 8 Settembre). Today, a huge fire took place at the German War Cemetery in Pomezia (Rome): it surely is a coincidence...

SEVENTY YEARS AGO...

2009-09-01T14:42:17Z

World War II, or the Second World War, was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all of the great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. The war involved the mobilization of over 100 million military personnel, making it the most widespread war in history. In a state of "total war", the major participants placed their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities at the service of the war effort, erasing the distinction between civilian and military resources. Over seventy million people, the majority of whom were civilians, were killed, making it the deadliest conflict in human history. The start of the war is generally held to be September 1, 1939, with the German invasion of Poland and subsequent declarations of war on Germany by most of the countries in the British Empire and Commonwealth, and by France. Many countries were already at war before this date, such as Nationalist China and Japan in the Second Sino-Japanese War, and many who were not initially involved joined the war later, as a result of events such as the German invasion of the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa), and the attacks on Pearl Harbor and British and Dutch colonies in Southeast Asia.

CLOUDS...

2009-08-21T17:20:09Z

Quale allodetta che 'n aere si spazia prima cantando, e poi tace contenta de l'ultima dolcezza che la sazia, tal mi sembiò l'imago de la 'mprenta de l'etterno piacere. Like the lark that soars in the air, first singing, then silent, content with the last sweetness that satiates it, such seemed to me that image, the imprint of the Eternal Pleasure. Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy, Paradiso, Canto XX, lines 73-77

BY THE RIVER...

2009-07-27T14:38:25Z

Last week I spent few days with my mother in or family house on the mountains called The Monti Sibillini. They are a mountain group in Italy, part of the central Apennines. Situated between eastern Umbria and the Marche, they are mostly composed of limestone rocks, formed in the Mesozoic and Cenozoic (100 to 50 millions years ago) from the bottoms of an extinct sea which emerged 20 millions years ago. Most of the peaks are over 2,000 m; the highest altitude is reached at the Monte Vettore, with 2,476 m. Since 1993 the area is part of the Parco Nazionale dei Monti Sibillini (Sibillini Mounts National Park). Needless to say that some very special magic was there and I got it all...

BY THE POOL

2009-07-14T14:59:20Z

I'm back home from Vieste (a renowned marine resort in Gargano, often received Blue Flags for the purity of its waters from the Foundation for Environmental Education). Lots of pics of my wonderful daughter (I'll never post them) and few of the hotel's pool. This is the one I like most.

SERIOUS TROUBLES

2009-05-19T16:44:13Z

The UN continues to criticise Italy for applying the international treaty signed by Rome and Tripoli. According to the United Nations, the agreement infringes the rights of migrants entitled to asylum. Silvio Berlusconi rejects the charge. Interviewed at an Italy-Egypt summit meeting, the Italian premier pointed out that migrants attempting to reach the Italian coast “are only in exceptional cases fleeing from countries where they claim to have been victims of injustice. Usually, no one on these vessels has any right to asylum”. To the contrary, they “are paying a fare to organised crime for transport provided by criminal organisations”. That's the worst moment of Italian Republic since the age of Red Brigades in the 70's. Berlusconism is growing as never before and arrogance, fascism, violence took place verey easily. I'm really worried and I hope the international community is the same...

BACK TO THE BEACH...

2009-05-11T08:03:14Z

...but not yet in shape and tan

31 YEARS AGO, ON MAY 9th...

2009-05-10T14:32:16Z

Peppino Impastato was born in Cinisi in the province of Palermo, into a Mafia family. His father Luigi Impastato had been sent into internal exile during the fascist era, and was a close friend of Mafia boss Gaetano Badalamenti. His father's brother-in-law, Cesare Manzella, was an important mafia boss who was killed in car bomb attack in 1963. As an adolescent, Peppino broke off relations with his father – who kicked him out of the house – and initiated a series of political and cultural Antimafia activities. He was killed during the election campaign on the night of May 8-9, by a charge of TNT placed under his body, which had been stretched over the local railway line – a sinister twist of fate to the car-bomb that had killed his uncle and initiated Peppino's revolt against the Mafia. The same day, Christian-Democrat Prime Minister Aldo Moro's corpse (killed by Red Brigades) was discovered in via Caetani, Rome.

ALL ALONE...

2009-05-09T14:07:34Z

Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone. Octavio Paz in "The Labyrinth of Solitude"