Slight Metallic Taste In Mouth

L'isola Amish

For about two hundred thousand Amish in America, the world is divided broadly into two: on the one hand they are here, the Amish, they live on the other "the English ", that is, those three hundred million American citizens - of different origins, colors and religions - who have been taught that the wars of independence had been fought two centuries ago (in fact) against the British . But anyhow: as we see the Amish, those good people English English was and still is - even under the Stars and Stripes. Maybe because the "British " (ie other Americans with whom the Amish, however, maintain cordial relations dispassionately) him every now and then a big combine.

For example: when in March 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear power plant came to a whisker away from producing the Mother of All Disasters (offering an appetizer of what would then happen at Chernobyl), the reactor in agony in hell threatened to drag not only radioactive half-Pennsylvania , energy-thirsty as all America, but also a community che non aveva mai consumato nemmeno un kilowatt di elettricità: gli Amish della contea di Lancaster, che per ironia della sorte vivono a una manciata di chilometri dalla centrale elettronucleare di Three Mile Island ma si rifiutano cocciutamente di agganciarsi alla rete elettrica.

Quegli stessi Amish, pacifici e pacifisti a oltranza, che pochi giorni fa (NdR: era l'autunno 2006) , nella minuscola scuola di Nickel Mines, hanno dovuto raccogliere dieci loro figlie – cinque morte ammazzate, cinque gravemente ferite – imbottite di piombo da un lattaio improvvisamente impazzito: un “inglese” , ovviamente, perché per distribuire il latte bisogna saper guidare il furgone, e gli Amish non guidano mezzi meccanici con motore a scoppio (solo carretti trainati da cavalli, e dalle cui ruote sono banditi i pneumatici perché la gomma è un lusso che renderebbe il viaggio troppo confortevole). 

E non imbracciano un fucile, mai. E quando s’infuriano (raro) non chiamano l’avvocato per farti causa (sarebbe un atto di violenza, secondo loro). E se proprio volessero chiamarlo, dovrebbero uscire di casa, montare in calesse (niente auto, l’abbiamo detto) e raggiungere una cabina pubblica, perché hanno messo al bando i telefoni privati. 

And converse among themselves in a strange language that "English" (with the superficiality of the powerful) have rashly baptized Pennsylvania Dutch ("Pennsylvania Dutch") , improper translation of the term Deutsch heard him use the Amish - who speak German rather than Dutch, a German Germanic would sound any Arabic, but a Confederate Ostermundigen be able to partly decipher. Yes, the Amish communicate with each other in a sort of Swiss-German-Alsatian other times. Also because of Switzerland (Berne of Simmenthal, to be exact) had their founder Jacob Amman.

***

Back then in Switzerland for two bits of history home.

Zurich, Anno Domini 1525: under the guidance of a Felix Manz, a handful of Protestant radicals (today we would call them "fundamentalists", but already it seems that Martin Luther defining them "fanatics") openly opposed Zwingli: dispute the decision to entrust the State Church of the Reformation, however, consider that reform is too bland. It argued that the Church needs of believers aware: then reject infant baptism, and become "rename" from adults.

E 'early Anabaptist movement (from the greek "baptized again"). But to compare Manz and is soon regarded as a heresy, and in agreement with the costumes, the protagonists of the dispute, and their followers are harshly persecuted (by all Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists). Felix Manz will be drowned in the Limmat, making it the first Anabaptist martyr of the Church, others will eventually burned at the stake, including women, elderly and children.

The Anabaptists - also known as "simple people" because of their lifestyle marked by humility - then scatter for Europe, until one day they find the system to make it big: take control of the city of Munster, and there for more than a year we combine all the colors. While preaching non-violence and moral rigor, they let themselves go to all sorts of atrocities (including rapes), until the army lansquenet unable to regain the city.

The affair ended in a massive bloodbath, seasoned with torture, abjurations denied, and the inevitable fires. The Anabaptist movement is in disarray, his reputation destroyed.

later find himself new life under the guidance of a former priest Dutch - Menno Simons - which will take the name "Mennonite Church". Then, towards the end of 1600, the schism and the birth of the Amish at the hands of the bernese Jakob Amman.

***

Jakob Amman on the story says little. He was born in Erlenbach in the Simmental, probably in 1644, Amman was a Mennonite to practice his belief that he had to take refuge in Alsace. It is known however that Amman - in defiance of the declared Mennonite pacifism - was somewhat cantankerous character. And quite uncompromising: it was he who insisted on the need to observe with the utmost rigor the Meidung , the practice of blacklists (and therefore avoid ban) those faithful to the Anabaptist movement, for one reason or another , was excommunicated.

It is precisely this point which was consummated the schism Mennonite Amman, demanding a strict application of the rule against ostracism denied, excommunicated all the Mennonites who did not think like him (and some came to his Once excommunicated), and ended by giving birth to a movement Amish, an offshoot of the ultra-fundamentalist Anabaptist Church.

The European political climate of that time, little inclined to tolerance, and endless horizons that seemed opening of the Atlantic, then did the rest: the Amish decided it was worth groped the fate of the New World.

I first landed in Philadelphia in 1737, attracted by the promise of the Quaker William Penn was to build a tolerant and open to all faiths (Pennsylvania, in fact). The result is that today in Europe of non-Amish There is no trace, they are all in the New World, some (few) in Central America, the vast majority in the U.S., especially in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana. Where are now the object of great curiosity and are - in spite of themselves - an important tourist attraction.

***

In Holmes County (Ohio), as well as in Lancaster County (Pennsylvania) - home to the two larger communities of the Amish world - Amish farms to acknowledge them at first sight are those with no cable connected to the mains.

If you are lucky you'll also get the gig, carrying men with long beards and women to head covered at all times (if you just can not give the snapshot-memory, rather taken with discretion and far: the Amish do not like photos, TV, recorders and other gadgets like, and generally not giving interviews).

But do not look for the Amish churches: no. It seems incredible that a community so committed to live by the precepts of the Bible around the clock, has no places of worship, yet it is a choice consistent with the repudiation of any and every object, act or event that may seem "immodest" the Amish celebrate the religious ceremony on Sunday at home of community members in rotation. And only every second week, in return, the function may take up to three hours or more.

clergy there is none, apart from the so-called "Bishop", a sort of "primus inter pares "chosen by chance - by drawing lots - including some names proposed by members of the congregation. Life is made up of prayer and work in the fields if possible, by hand, with the help of the horse and the most rudimentary equipment.

A fianco, sull’asfalto della highway, rombano i possenti fuoristrada dell’americano medio, ma gli Amish non ci fanno caso: tutt’al più vendono agli “inglesi” i loro magnifici quilts , trapunte fatte a mano apprezzatissime dai turisti che invadono le contee Amish nell’illusione di trovarvi un paradiso che non c’è, che non è mai esistito, e che comunque nessuno degli “inglesi” vorrebbe abitare, perché nessun “inglese” ha veramente voglia di tornare a tracciare solchi nei campi con un aratro e due buoi. 

Eppure secondo gli Amish l’atteggiamento corretto di fronte alle cose terrene sta tutto racchiuso in una parola (tedesca, ovviamente): Gelassenheit , rozzamente traducibile con “calma, tranquillità”. 

E per i piccoli quesiti della vita quotidiana c’è Die Ordnung (“L’Ordine”), un compendio di regole aggiornato e rivisto ogni due anni che stabilisce che cosa è lecito e che cosa è vietato (per esempio: elettricità dalla rete no, batterie sì; telefono privato no, cabina pubblica sì; telefono cellulare forse, dipende the needs, travel by car, yes, but only in the role of passenger).

A small slice of the community falls outside the obligation of strict compliance of 'Ordnung : young people between the age of fourteen (end of school, highest level of training given puzzling because it hurts too much) and eighteen or twenty, when they chose whether to be baptized (and thus officially join the Amish church) or leave the family, the community, the quiet Gelassenheit Amish island and enter the world of "English" .

In questa sorta di interregno prima della grande scelta, i giovani Amish vivono il cosiddetto “Rumspringa” (alla lettera: “correre in giro”, ma col significato implicito di “folleggiare”), gli anni in cui è lecito (anche per loro) bere, ubriacarsi, guidare l’auto, ballare, tirare tardi, fare quelle cose più o meno divertenti e più o meno trasgressive che eccitano tutti gli adolescenti d’Occidente. 

Alla fine del Rumspringa si sceglie: o dentro o fuori, o Amish o novello “inglese” . It turns out that - out of conviction, appeal to God, or fear the aggressive world outside of the safe and protective bubble Amish - ninety percent of Amish youth decide to stay in the community.
Maybe What would have chosen, in a few years, the five girls just mowed the milkman "English" ?

But life goes on, say the Amish. With Gelassenheit , with calm and tranquility as soon as possible. "Maybe we will quote the event in the next issue of the newspaper," he told the Los Angeles Times Elam Lapp, direttore del settimanale Amish Die Botschaft . 

Si riferiva proprio al massacro nella scuola di Nickel Mines, ora assediata dai reporter di mezzo mondo. Ma è collaudata prassi del suo giornale, ha chiarito Lapp, non pubblicare articoli su omicidi, guerra, sesso o religione.

Tutto un altro mondo.

(© VASCO DONES; pubblicato sul settimanale svizzero AZIONE nell'autunno 2006)

Mustard As Contraceptive

Il Nobel per la pace a Barack Obama

(We tell ourselves stories in order to live.
"Ourself We Tell Stories in Order to Live" - \u200b\u200bJoan Didion)

the morning of November 4, 2008 I accompanied a black lady, Betty Kilby, the polling of Cleburne, Texas. I filmed and put down the ballot in the urn: another vote for Barack Obama.

few days earlier, in his hometown of Front Royal, Virginia, Betty had told me about his life as a black girl in the South during the years of struggle for desegregation racial. A story with a happy strokes (dad had challenged and defeated the whites of his city), at times dramatic (the last year of high school, Betty had been raped).

the evening of November 4 that I spent with Betty, her husband David (very black Baptist minister) and two of their family friends, even their color.
In the beginning ' disbelief and amazement the first results, then their joy and improvised dance of the announcement of Obama's victory Betty told me a wonderful story - which in my time I tried to tell the Swiss TV.

( "From Betty Barack" / copyright RSI - Swiss Radio - requires RealPlayer)

(Betty Kilby entrance to his old high school in Front Royal, Virginia)

On 20 January I went down to the mall Washington to attend the ceremony of inauguration of the first black American president. There was a half million people, maybe two, all to brave the cold to be able to tell one's children or grandchildren - who knows when, perhaps by the fireplace - That day "we had too."

There seemed like a good story, one that you want to bring in the moments - a lot - when you ask where is the sense of your labors, of your sorrows, your anger, your empty. You know it's a bit 'fairy tale, a bit' illusion, a bit 'light intoxication by fatigue and despair. You know that in the grand scheme of things, little or nothing will change. But you live, you hear that story, want to participate a little, want to let it get repeated. After you sleep better.

Now some gentlemen between Oslo and Stockholm have decided - as children before bed - they want a replay of that fable, a second note of the story is so beautiful. That's why Barack Obama has given to the Nobel Peace Prize.
to me is fine, I'm there. I do not want this story will end so soon.

(Washington, DC, January 20, 2009: "Inauguration Day")

Mom Son Have A Good Anal

Il minareto di via Ford

Dearborn, a city of one hundred thousand inhabitants on the outskirts of Detroit, is now the last bastion of what was once the largest American auto industry. Dearborn is home to the headquarters of Ford in fact, only one of the Big Three (as they are simply called here) able to stand on its own merits, without having to go bankrupt and be forced nationalization (General Motors) or seek the help of good Samaritans foreign (Chrysler).

(Detroit, Michigan: Obama Gas Station)

The latter is, among other things, a case that is giving headaches to many Americans informed, those who read newspapers, to be clear: they know who saved the Chrysler will be the Italian Fiat (and here they mention a lot of smiles and jokes with the latest Fiat seen in movement two decades ago, but in the absence of other things go well for the Italians and their carts funny), but then they encounter in the notes of tragicomic love affairs of Berlusconi, and hope that the Saviour of Turin are more serious and less embarrassing to their political leader.

None of this, however, for the glorious brand founded by Henry Ford, the brilliant inventor of the Ford Model T that powered America hated by the assembly line. Henry Ford in Dearborn - just - We were born, we had settled part of its industry, and we had to build his personal mansion.

course, Dearborn today is not that busy and optimistic than seventy years ago, when he could even boast an airport art, of course, named Ford, the first in the world with paved runways (in those days Ford produced even airplanes).
shadow of the headquarters of Ford, Dearborn is now a decent suburb committed to slip quietly - like most of America - from the middle and lower middle class, but not happy to share the terrible degradation of nearby Detroit.

(Detroit, Michigan: Detroit Engineering Institute)

All this is told to give what is Dearborn Dearborn, namely that despite its limited international celebrity, this neglected suburbs of Detroit a real, massive pillar of the history of the USA, a sort of Holy Land secolarissima that gave birth to a top national passions, in turn a source of enduring myths in the stars and stripes: the journey by car.
So, in short, Dearborn is as American as apple pie (as they say here).



In golden years of this strip of Michigan, the (then) three major automakers in Detroit and attracted workers from around every corner of America. Indeed, on every corner of the world. And the workers flocked in droves, from everywhere. Whites and blacks from the American deep south, some to escape the endemic poverty of countries in arrears, for those who leave behind the racism and lynchings. And then other people landed even more strange, from even more distant and exotic lands.

It 's the same old story, we know well in Switzerland: call arms, and instead you get men. And dragging their luggage below, the physical ones held together by twine, and the cultural, spiritual, gastronomic even. And so, for those strange quirk of history, nell'americanissima Dearborn began to land the Arabs, many Arabs. Before Maronite Christians from Lebanon and Syria, and then, increasingly, Arab Muslims.

Bref today is of Arab origin thirty percent of the population of Dearborn (the highest in the U.S.). And in America as a very religious shrine not denied to anyone, and the venerable First Amendment of the Constitution guarantees freedom of worship, born here as long ago as 1937 (!) Zaydi the Yemeni Dearborn Mosque, the first mosque in Michigan and one of the first of the nation.
So far, so normal.

(Dearborn, Michigan: Islamic Center of America)

More surprising, however, is that the construction of a second, large mosque - officially called Islamic Center of America - has been safely completed in 2005. That is, after Al Qaeda terrorist attack on the Pentagon and the Twin Towers.
It seems that in Dearborn, the new mosque, no one has done a pleated.


For those wishing to travel to visita, l'indirizzo è già un programma: la troverà al 19500 di Ford Road. Con elegante minareto fiancheggiato da Old Glory, la bandiera nazionale che si contorce al gelido vento del Michigan. Incastrata tra la chiesa apostolica armena (19300 Ford Road) e la chiesa ortodossa di San Clemente (19600 Ford Road).



(© VASCO DONES; 
pubblicato nell'estate 2009 sul settimanale svizzero AZIONE)

Nortel Bcm400 Programming Manual

Auction VIP spot

Auction VIP spot from Frank Malin on Vimeo . Commercials made by ShortCut

study for a downward auction site.

I edited the animation and textures with colleague John Ariutti

Spot ShortCut study carried out by the auction site on the cheap.

I edited the animation and textures with his colleague John Ariutti

Remote Car Starter Syracuse Ny

Storie dal Muro di Washington


Il Muro di Berlino. Il Muro del pianto. Il Muro della vergogna (ce ne sono tanti: l’ultimo they pulled up in Israel). The Great Wall of China ... Washington also has its wall with a capital M. And the following are some stories by the Wall in Washington.




Dan Bullock was a black child of Goldsboro, North Carolina. It is said that he was a quiet kid. At eleven he lost his mother. Dad remarried and took Dan and his sister to live up north in Brooklyn, New York, 279 Lee Avenue. At the young age Dan did not like the metropolis. Held out for a while ', then one day he falsified the date on his birth certificate and was able to enlist in the Marines. It was September 18 1968: Dan aveva poco più di quattordici anni e mezzo.

Lo sbarcarono in Vietnam il diciotto maggio del ’69, una domenica. Venti giorni più tardi, il sette giugno, il Private First Class (soldato di prima classe) Dan Bullock veniva falciato da una raffica di proiettili durante un attacco Viet Cong alla base di An Hoa, provincia di Quang Nam. Aveva quindici anni, cinque mesi e diciassette giorni: la più giovane vittima americana della guerra del Vietnam.

Oggi il suo nome sta scolpito su una lapide al cimitero di Greensboro, North Carolina. E sta scritto su un cartello stradale lungo il Lee Boulevard di Brooklyn, l’odiato domicilio da cui era fuggito per diventare un Marine: have dedicated a piece of that street. It is engraved in black granite - plate number 23W, 96th row - the monument to the fallen of Vietnam, in downtown Washington, which officially is called the Vietnam Veterans Memorial here but everyone knows simply as The Wall, The Wall .

All around Dan Bullock, on the Wall are the names of the other 58'255 U.S. soldiers died in the longest, unfortunate and tragic military campaign fought in the framework of the so-called Cold War, in the name of the Free World and interests government in Washington. That in Indochina after squandering $ 650 billion in the construction of the wall (or better: in the excavation of the Wall, but this will be clarified later) did not have to invest a single penny. That wall, at first criticized, ridiculed and opposed, later became the most famous monument of the United States, visited every year by almost four million people.





Jan Scruggs - a young man from Bowie, Maryland - had been in Vietnam, a corporal in 199esima brigade of light infantry. He had been wounded - as other three hundred thousand of his comrades - he was healed, he had also earned a medal for bravery, and had finally brought home the skin. But even though it was then immersed studies at the American University in Washington, Vietnam did not mind coming out and guts. Scruggs was convinced that his fallen comrades, however, deserved a monument, even though that war had led to the most humiliating military defeat in the history of the country.

In May of '79, since the theme of the monument, Congress was silent, Jan Scruggs threw a fundraiser for the creation of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial: the first 2,800 U.S. dollars put them there himself, out of pocket her. Nearly three hundred thousand Americans responded to his call, and soon Scruggs bunches more than eight million dollars. Now the money was, lacked only a worthy project. October 80 was announced the competition.

Maya Ying Lin was born in '59 in Athens, a university town in the deep Ohio, the daughter of a pair of Chinese fled the mainland just before the communist revolution del'49 that would bring to power " Great Helmsman "Mao Tse-Tung. His mother, poet, and his father, a potter, had found employment as teachers in the local Ohio University. Maya could instead obtain admission to the architecture faculty of the prestigious Yale University - the same attended by Bush in every generation.
During his senior year at Yale, in a seminar on funeral monuments, Maya Lin was forced to participate in the competition for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial .

Maya gave birth to a humble and revolutionary project: no classical figure that rises to the sky, nothing more or less veiled celebration or display, no exaltation of human sacrifice in the name of the country, not even a flag in the wind. Only one trench and a wall: a huge wound in the land, more or less triangular shape, sweet and bordered on one side - on both sides that plunge vertically into the ground - by a wall made of granite slabs, in turn supported a simple path along which let it slide, walk, read and touch the names of fallen soldiers etched in stone. A wall that stands but does not sink, a wall that will not divide but unite: the dead with the living.




Among the more than 1,400 sketches submitted to the competition, all submitted anonymously, the jury unanimously chose the design number 1026. Corresponding to the opening of the envelope, was the huge surprise when it was revealed the identity of the author: Maya Ying Lin, twenty, a student. Now the controversy flared up.

His name sounded too Asia: not by chance a Vietnamese? And the Memorial who claimed to sink in the grass in the damp earth at the center of Washington, did not know too much defeatism? And the absence of the glorious stars and stripes irritated, offended, desecrate the sacrifices of the fallen - supported by many. A group of veterans offered to throw everything overboard and start over. James Watt, then Secretary to the interior of the Reagan administration, refused to grant a building permit, due to lack of evidence or patriotic symbols. It was necessary to arrive at a compromise: the Wall of Maya Lin was supported, not far from a classic bronze depicting three soldiers and regular pennant with stars and stripes in the wind.

It seems that the chorus of protests have deeply grieved the young student of Chinese origin. But time is sometimes honest: in the United States today there is no public monument the most visited of the Maya Lin wall. And there are few who will also stop in front of the bronze with three soldiers and flag ...





Albert Peter Dewey is not carved on the Wall in Washington, along with the fallen in Vietnam . Yet he died in Saigon back in September of '45, and was a U.S. Army colonel, and was even part of the OSS (l’Office of Strategic Services, agenzia oggi più comunemente nota come “CIA”). E fu il primo americano ucciso in Vietnam da una pallottola comunista. Eppure…

La storia del pluridecorato maggiore Albert Peter Dewey è singolare e un po’ grottesca, e sembra volerci segnalare che le cose avrebbero forse potuto andare diversamente. Al termine della II Guerra Mondiale Dewey era stato inviato in Vietnam per prendere contatti col Viet Minh, il movimento comunista fondato nel ’41 da Ho Chi Minh per lottare contro l’occupazione giapponese e per conquistare l’indipendenza dalla Francia. In particolare, Dewey aveva il compito di coordinare il rimpatrio di circa duecento soldati americani taken prisoner by the Japanese, used as slaves in the construction of the bridge over the River Kwai (that of the famous movie) and held in Saigon.

But in the immediate post-war Saigon was the scene of a thousand intrigues: there were the Vietnamese who yearn for independence, the French eager to re-install as a colonial power, Britain aims to weave their plots, the Americans do not you know what. And Albert Peter Dewey, sent home after the former American prisoners, fell a victim of misunderstandings caused (tragic irony) from its refined education.
Told in short, went like this: his contacts with the Viet Minh - who still hoped to discard pacificamente dei francesi grazie a negoziati e con l’aiuto degli americani – lo resero sospetto agli occhi del locale comandante britannico, che ne ordinò l’espulsione da Saigon.

Sulla strada verso l’aeroporto, la jeep del maggiore Dewey incappò in un posto di blocco Viet Minh. Contrariato, Dewey – che tra l’altro aveva una laurea in storia della Francia e un passato da giornalista a Parigi – urlò qualcosa in francese all’indirizzo dei miliziani Viet Minh. Questi lo scambiarono per un soldato francese e lo crivellarono di colpi, uccidendolo all’istante.

Seguirono mille scuse e un profondo imbarazzo da parte vietnamita. Ho Chi Minh ordinò ai suoi di scovare e recuperare il cadavere, arrivando persino a offrire un’astronomica ricompensa a chi avesse riportato il corpo di Dewey. Che non fu mai rintracciato.
Ma gli USA non erano in guerra col Vietnam: ecco perché il maggiore Albert Peter Dewey, prima vittima americana di una pallottola comunista in Indocina, non sta scolpito sul Muro di Washington.

Più tardi in Vietnam tornarono i soldati francesi (quelli veri).
Poi arrivarono altri americani, inviati dal presidente Truman in aiuto ai francesi sotto l’etichetta di “assistenti e consiglieri militari”, con la precisazione che non si trattava di truppe da combattimento. Ma le distinzioni are weak, opaque boundaries, and the truth elusive. Things got complicated when the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu and the luggage did. The Americans remained. As mere "military advisors", at least in theory, at least for the first time.

And so was born the typical problem of protracted hostilities, the one fought without declaring it openly - a headache for those who must write the Great Story, but also for those who are struggling with many small individual stories behind the names Wall Washington. Because the monument to the fallen of the Vietnam War are entitled to be represented, obviously, the fallen of that conflict. But who is the victim first "official"? Quando iniziò “ufficialmente” la guerra americana in Vietnam?

Il Pentagono fissa una data: il primo gennaio 1961. Ora, deposti i fucili e spento il napalm, si può accendere la battaglia delle scartoffie.




Richard Bernard Fitzgibbon Jr. , sergente dell’aviazione USA, finì scolpito nel Muro – lastra 52E, 21esima riga - solo nel ’99, diciassette anni dopo l’inaugurazione del Vietnam Veterans Memorial. E solo dopo che il Pentagono ebbe corretto e riscritto la Storia, e spostato al 1° novembre del ‘55 l’inizio “ufficiale” dell’impegno bellico statunitense in Vietnam, facendo di Richard Bernard Fitzgibbon il primo caduto americano del conflitto – o almeno: così ha deciso la burocrazia.

E se morire in guerra, comunque la si veda, è sempre un po’ assurdo, la fine di Richard Fitzgibbon Jr. è tragicamente grottesca. Ad ammazzarlo - una sera di giugno del ’56, appena tramontato il sole di Saigon – non fu un “Charlie”, un vietnamita comunista, bensì cinque pallottole americane sparategli dopo un alterco da un suo commilitone impazzito.

E se ora qualcuno dovesse pensare che all’anima del defunto sergente Fitzgibbon in fondo non gliene fregava niente dell’iscrizione on the Wall, just a detail to make you change your mind, because on the granite Memorial Fitzgibbon dad could meet with his son Richard Fitzgibbon III , a corporal in the Marines, killed in Vietnam in September of '65 and carved in granite the 77th row of the plate 2E of the Wall in Washington.




Just as has happened to Leo Claude Hester and his son Leo Hester Jr. Claude, who shared the same name, the same body (aviation) and the same fate: both died in Vietnam in the crash of their aircraft. Before and after his father's son, fortunately.

I think Nixon's mother, a woman in Arkansas Mulberry, which I do not know the name but I guess the black despair when he went to inform the army put the death of his son Samuel Ray Nixon (killed March 21) and returned a few days later to announce the loss of a second son, William Dale Nixon (who died May 8).
In 1968, the same year that another Nixon (Richard) could get elected to the White House.
addition to Samuel and William, on the wall are written the names of other Nixon eight killed in Vietnam. Everyone knows what purpose the other hand touched the Nixon president forced to resign following the Watergate scandal, but then immediately pardoned by his successor.

For the highly decorated sergeant Dan Jacob "JJ" Dones the Vietnam War was only one chapter of history to study at school. And then during military training.
Dones was born March 5 to 84 Dimmitt, Texas. soon graduated to the local High School, had enlisted in the Army in 2002. Perhaps out of conviction, perhaps by chance or by necessity, be a father or perhaps because, at that age, era troppo difficile - J.J. Dones aveva già una figlia. Più tardi sua sorella Priscilla lo aveva imitato, ma invece dell’esercito lei aveva scelto i marines: tra i due erano nate rivalità a non finire.

Il venti ottobre del 2005 J.J. Dones è morto in Irak, colpito durante un attacco alla sua base. Se mai un giorno dovessero erigere un altro Muro anche per quest’ultima folle guerra, con sopra tutti i caduti scolpiti o in rilievo, andrei a cercare il sergente Dones: un nome ci accomuna. Per ora gli hanno dedicato l’ufficio postale di Dimmitt, Texas. Popolazione: 4'375.

(© VASCO DONES; 
published in the weekly Swiss ACTION summer 2007)

Where Are All The Dragon Papers In Poptropica

Quel ramo del lago di Como


A Modest Proposal both serious and humorous: the euro and the dollar through the roof in the cellar, why not a holiday in the U.S.? If you believe, for example, that Rome or Paris costing too much, you could plan a trip in the state of Ohio: There are six town called Rome, a New Rome, two in Paris, a New Paris, Vienna, New Vienna, two Berlin and West Berlin - all at moderate cost. Just do not expect the Colosseum or the Eiffel Tower (that, as noted, is in Las Vegas).

Northern League of possible supporters and Po is also given the opportunity dell'agognata revenge: Parma (Ohio) is the largest and most important of all of that was Rome. And for the brief moments of acute nostalgia is always Nuovaberna (that's right, everything attached: Newbern, Ohio). Now, thanks to German director Wim Wenders, most people know that Paris is in Texas - but it is also in Kentucky, Iowa, Idaho, and a dozen other states in the Union. How, moreover, Rome, Vienna and Berlin (by the United States stubbornly resist, in spite of the fall of the Berlin Wall, at least five incarnations of East Berlin, including two in one Pennsylvania - but it would obviously be wrong to read any regrets about the late Communist Germany).

(Cuba, New Mexico)

The highlight of the walk is reached, however, going in search of Lake Como, with or without branch aimed at noon. The first one discovered in Pennsylvania, but is not a lake but a village of two hundred souls drowned between green hills. A similar creature, a tiny and unlikely, is in the Deep South: Lake Como, Mississippi (no lake, two ponds to half a kilometer), together with more substantial Como, Mississippi: thousand three hundred inhabitants, one quarter and three quarters white blacks (but please call them "African Americans"). Then there is the great sea on Lake Como: Lake Como, New Jersey, a charming resort overlooking the Atlantic with fresh water pool of the same name about fifty yards from the ocean. And finally - wonderful masterpiece of understanding between Italy and Switzerland - that's tick Lake Como, Wisconsin (town and adjoining lake share the name), just half a mile from Geneva and their body of water: Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. It stings consult the spirit of the vagueness of Manzoni to hear that you think of quest'ardito combination with the city of Calvin ...

But why - dear reader, dear reader - I'll tell you all this nonsense? Obliquely to remember that America, the young daughter of your continent, you can not offer the splendor of that Old World who wanted to leave behind, reaching below the labels in the hope of rifarne content. Wonders of nature at will. But nothing Acropolis, Pompeii, Baths of Caracalla, the Loire castles, palaces of Versailles (the spread between Connecticut and Missouri, there are nine Versailles, but I fear it is better to let it go).

(Monument Valley, Arizona)

Seen from here, from the botched suburb of Washington that has your humble reporter, Europe looks like a huge and amazing museum town, a beauty almost obscene, certainly provocative - to discover, enjoy and savor every corner in the same spirit with which it is, precisely, to the museum. But the United States is quite another thing, especially for tourists. The big cities are worthy of interest, attractive, tasty and enjoyable, very few are at the bottom: New York, Boston, the center of Washington, the French Quarter of New Orleans devastated, the skyscrapers of Chicago, the incomparable San Francisco (some suggerisce d’aggiungervi Seattle). Le altre sono suppergiù tutte uguali, schematiche, prevedibili, non appagano, non gratificano l’occhio (se insisti, eccoti un paio di perle meno note: Charleston nella Carolina del sud e Savannah in Georgia). L’America, terra dal passato intenso ma brevissimo, non ha – e non può avere - le qualità museali dell’Europa, il suo sfacciato splendore, il suo fascino immediato.

(Offerle, Kansas)

L’America sfoggia un patrimonio naturale grandioso e impressionante, certo, ma la vera bellezza del paese va colta nel suo spirito, nei suoi sogni emigrati fin qui dall’Europa e più tardi da ogni angolo del pianeta, nella sua storia fatta di grandi aneliti, grandi errori, grandi conquiste, e piccole reliquie poco appariscenti. Solo così è possibile digerire, e magari persino apprezzare, le volgari arterie commerciali, i neon rutilanti, le pance obese esibite al barbecue del sabato pomeriggio, i quartieri in falso stile colonial-neo-tradizionale che sembrano usciti dall’irresistibile Truman Show. Andare a zonzo per l’America significa visitare un’idea più che un territorio; significa fare il turista in un grande progetto, un immenso e disordinato laboratorio, spesso francamente bruttino: meglio saperlo start.

But if July 4 if you had to find you impoverished and decayed in Philadelphia, city of the Declaration of Independence and the first capital of the Union, sit on the curb and watch the parade: parade before your eyes you will see representatives of all peoples of the world, united under the same flag in the name of ethnicity, religion or language, but by virtue of a project. Born on the genocide of the Native American population and marked by the terrible sin of slavery, America today is this anyway, like it or not: an idea that barely limps, repeatedly betrayed and always raise, a bit 'confused and scared, but fortunately has not yet thrown in the towel.
I hope.

(© VASCO DONES;
published in the weekly Swiss ACTION summer 2007)

(Washington, DC, January 20, 2009:
Inauguration Day)

Dishydrotic Eczema Palmar

Due passi in centro (e un caffè)

"Let's go for a walk?" I suggested a day twenty years ago to Tom, an American friend. It was a beautiful sunny day, welcomed by a pleasant breeze. Tom said: "Why?" m'è The anecdote reminded the other day, when the postman delivered me a postcard advertising "Rockville Town Square", a campaign that in a few months will give us the citizens of Rockville - Washington, DC area, Maryland - a precious commodity downtown, the city center. What will be, inform the board, "an urban environment with restaurants and cafes around the town square, but most will walkable, that is walking. In short, you can take a walk the streets and drink a coffee (opening in spring).

however, Rockville is no joke: it has 57,000 inhabitants (one hundred thousand with the surrounding clusters), is the capital of a rich county by nearly one million of souls, has several leading companies, especially in the field of biotechnology. It has a couple of metro stations of a beautiful and clean in half an hour that you download in the heart of Washington. Has the Rockville Pike, local version and the original of the Grange-Noranco but with six lanes, and with much longer many more stores. It also has a cultural gem: the tomb of the famous novelist Francis Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda. But no city center. None. The vacuum.

When I landed for the first time in Rockville, two years ago, a good European, I went to seek the center. I found - in front of a cinema of thirteen screens with adjoining parking - another huge parking lot, but empty, surrounded by a row of abandoned shops, all enclosed by wire mesh. And a good number of whimsical signs that proclaimed solemnly "Town Center". who had bombed Rockville?

Simple: in the '60s and '70s was over here (as in the other eight hundred cities in America) 's urban renewal, the "urban renewal" in the name of order, cleanliness, traffic and streamline the centrality of the car had demolished the existing buildings (such as "mixed use", as they say here: cottages in the store, over the owner's house, in the Old World something normal, an oath in the New) to make way for wider roads, abundant parking and offices in profusion. And a huge mall , a hypermarket covered.

was a disaster: the largest emporio dell'ipermercato fallì dopo sei mesi, trascinando nella rovina tutti gli altri e nell’oblio l’intero centro cittadino. Nel ’93 Doug Duncan, allora sindaco di Rockville, si sfogò sul Washington Post: “quando attraverso a piedi il centro della nostra città, mi coglie un senso di disperazione.” E propose di abbattere il complesso dell'ipermercato, che venne demolito poco tempo dopo (qui si fa così: ci provi e vedi come va; se non ti garba, radi al suolo e ricominci). Risultato: un deserto urbano nel cuore della città. Ancora oggi, a Washington, la confessione d’abitare a Rockville viene accolta da un sorrisetto ironico: “Poveraccio, che jella…”




Then it was just launched the Project of the Great Revival: three hundred fifty million dollars to spread over five acres of bars and restaurants, shops and boutiques, 650 apartments and a plaza. And Roger Lewis, one of the designers of the complex and professor of architecture at the University of Maryland, has recently jumped on the Washington Post daring analogies between the building center and the heart of Rome: "Rockville Town Square has the potential to become a destination lively and animated, a bit 'as Campo dei Fiori ", which will be announcing" a special urban space, the character more European than American (okay, okay, we count, but please forget the Urbe).

And now we are waiting all spring, take us back to the village square. Yet walkable, "walking", because in the meantime, the Americans discovered the pleasure to stretch their legs. And to drink a cup of coffee the way God intended, not served him into paper cup, but in the classic ceramic cups. Starbucks, the streets will be sufficient for explicitly ordered here, which means "to drink here," so the bartender understands that should quickly find the only two true-or two cups that came with the bar.

Meanwhile, in the meantime, I continue to walk the streets of my neighborhood, nice and warm as those of the film, with houses and 4x4 parked on driveways and lawns green and colorful autumn trees. But without a shadow of a coffee.

(© VASCO DONES;
published in the weekly Swiss ACTION in 2006)