The meeting at Talla against the wind turbine depurtation of the hills around us was packed; people from all the affected villages, towns and farms were there, as well as individual firms like restaurants, bed and breakfasts and aziende agricole.
Lenna's was represented by the Avocato, who spoke to the meeting as a technical advisor as well, on legal aspects of the challenge.
The meeting began with a group accusing the organisers of representing landowner and business interest only, and failing in their responsibility to reduce global warming and encourage alternative clean power sources for the sake of their profits. Their view was met very well by the various members of the committee, a specialist on alternative energy sources (particularly bio-mass), and an account of the inappropriate siting of the wind turbines simply on the lack of wind grounds outlined by Fred, originally.
The head of the provincial Green party, who was there, offered to organise an assemblea where the irrelevance of these proposals to any Green agenda could be set out for all the ecologically minded, who are being deliberately misled by the Spanish-based multinational whose sole agenda is to farm tax and other funding sources from the European Union and member states. It is hoped this will be a travelling assemblea that will set up in the large number of population areas damaged by these proposals.
The former sindaco from here whose back garden is to be underneath one of the 90 metre high turbines was there, fit to be tied. The Avocato has a new client.
There were also representatives from comunes, including the provincial capital, who had suceeded in refusing sites for the dangerous refuse and recycling dump that is looking for a corrupt enough administration to give it a home. There were exchanges of contacts and advice taken, even though, currently, the comune here has written twice to the opposition group on the council denying any plans or negotiations of any kind with any group planning such a plant. This is a lie but people working inside the comune are on the quivive and call the opposition at once whenever activity on this front, even phone calls, starts up.
I am not aware of what next steps were decided, but the Region has had to open a formal procedure which permits all kinds of properly organised legal and other challenges, and follows a strict timetable with all deadlines properly notified; that is in good hands.
Comments,suggestions, and further information will be posted by us all as and when we can.
05/05/2007
04/05/2007
Fire and dust
Open fires are beautiful but are they worth it? All that wood carrying, and wood's passengers, who wake up to find themselves in my kitchen having gone to sleep in an oak tree 2 kilometres away. Sometimes they have wings, which are damply unfurled, dried out and then flying and zooming practice takes place - loud, scary and at best distracting. I know as I usher them out of the windows that they're going to die but I don't care. Some of them are big and bitey. Others crawl off quietly and I only guess they are there because of GooGoo's fascinated attention fixed on a crack in the stone, with an occasional claw extended to try for getting something to make a home run.
Olive wood tends to be a winter retreat for whole armies of ants, who emerge in good order from the end not in the flames but then pour like gaderene swine off the end and onto the hot metal. Yuk.
Smoke carries tiny particles of ash which arrange themselves in the graceful patterns of cobwebs that would otherwise be invisible (at least till I got round to them).
And everywhere there is dust; remove it and the fires will have it back in next to no time. So I left it. Till today. Today the camino in the big kitchen has been swept and its copper and brass bits polished; an artistic arrangement of brushed-down, clear of passengers, hibernating or otherwise, wood has been placed between the alari.
If anybody puts a match to it, there will be trouble.
Olive wood tends to be a winter retreat for whole armies of ants, who emerge in good order from the end not in the flames but then pour like gaderene swine off the end and onto the hot metal. Yuk.
Smoke carries tiny particles of ash which arrange themselves in the graceful patterns of cobwebs that would otherwise be invisible (at least till I got round to them).
And everywhere there is dust; remove it and the fires will have it back in next to no time. So I left it. Till today. Today the camino in the big kitchen has been swept and its copper and brass bits polished; an artistic arrangement of brushed-down, clear of passengers, hibernating or otherwise, wood has been placed between the alari.
If anybody puts a match to it, there will be trouble.
03/05/2007
tilting at Talla
A report on how the meeting went this evening would be interesting to everyone. When there is a moment. Then we can all say our bit and turn round.
02/05/2007
Dune
Dune is considered one of the great works of science fiction. Some may query whether any science fiction can be called great but this is great in the category. Worries first; I know I have read this book (or at least the first volume, it's a trilogy) when the library existed in Tavistock Place before the great dumbing down of municipal life struck. I can only remember feeling thirsty and revulsion at the muckiness of life on Arrakis. So it doesn't have memorable characters or story line.
However, in its way it could be thought of as prescient for today in the anti Islam mood of the moment. I do not remember being caught by its setting in desert culture at first reading.
It is said to be inspired by a Jungian approach; I know little of Jung except he was quite the nazi and died surprisingly recently. He preached the importance of dreams, signs and mystical experiences (victim of an Indian experience familiar later to many seekers after 'truth' in the sub continent). Altogether inimcal to what your Librarian might esteem.
It's on the shelves, in case the survival techniques described should come in handy in a desert, but readers might be more amused by saying the rosary.
However, in its way it could be thought of as prescient for today in the anti Islam mood of the moment. I do not remember being caught by its setting in desert culture at first reading.
It is said to be inspired by a Jungian approach; I know little of Jung except he was quite the nazi and died surprisingly recently. He preached the importance of dreams, signs and mystical experiences (victim of an Indian experience familiar later to many seekers after 'truth' in the sub continent). Altogether inimcal to what your Librarian might esteem.
It's on the shelves, in case the survival techniques described should come in handy in a desert, but readers might be more amused by saying the rosary.
cross
as in cross-posting. The maps post has also been published on the other blog, but Library users may prefer to comment here. The Librarian regrets neglecting her undertakings and will now resume service.
stanza di passo
One room has a wall hung with framed maps, some old and beautiful, hand-tinted, others engraved on ivory-paper.
There are modern maps of geological structures and primaeval seabeds, land-locked now, but in their aridity yielding Giotto’s landscapes.
Les Estats de l’Eglise et de Toscane speak of religious power ceded long ago, while Magni ducis Hetruriae status, in ditiones tres Primariis tribus, Urbibus cognomines confims the survival of ancient divides into the present day.
L’Italie, Golfe de Venise lays out Dalmacie with the Republ. de Raguse and its glittering city Ragusa (how ugly the name Dubrovnik) facing its mother state across what now is called the Adriatic.
Across from Venice itself Istria and the city of Fiume speak in the lost voice of d’ Annunzio (who, as commander of the 87th fighter squadron "La Serenissima", in aeroplanes of such beauty they take the breath away, will always be a fallen hero).
A map of Illyrium offers the scale in Roman miles of 5000 feet each - I can see more calculation of the ‘190 kilometres divided by five eighths is - what dear - oh, now I’ll have to start again’ kind, during long journeys.
One group of maps is not framed. Folded and repeatedly refolded into a military pocket or pouch sized wedge, they show where they are only by the lettering . There are sets of numbers and marks and scrawls hand-written in, to me as indecipherable as the printed cyrillic script denoting this lost terrain. These are the maps of an artilleryman. A pen and ink sketch of huge skies with rolling clouds, orderly family houses with hayricks, groves of poplars beside water, entitled ‘Tappa nella Steppa verso il Don - Luglio 1942’ is framed on the wall; it speaks volumes.
There are modern maps of geological structures and primaeval seabeds, land-locked now, but in their aridity yielding Giotto’s landscapes.
Les Estats de l’Eglise et de Toscane speak of religious power ceded long ago, while Magni ducis Hetruriae status, in ditiones tres Primariis tribus, Urbibus cognomines confims the survival of ancient divides into the present day.
L’Italie, Golfe de Venise lays out Dalmacie with the Republ. de Raguse and its glittering city Ragusa (how ugly the name Dubrovnik) facing its mother state across what now is called the Adriatic.
Across from Venice itself Istria and the city of Fiume speak in the lost voice of d’ Annunzio (who, as commander of the 87th fighter squadron "La Serenissima", in aeroplanes of such beauty they take the breath away, will always be a fallen hero).
A map of Illyrium offers the scale in Roman miles of 5000 feet each - I can see more calculation of the ‘190 kilometres divided by five eighths is - what dear - oh, now I’ll have to start again’ kind, during long journeys.
One group of maps is not framed. Folded and repeatedly refolded into a military pocket or pouch sized wedge, they show where they are only by the lettering . There are sets of numbers and marks and scrawls hand-written in, to me as indecipherable as the printed cyrillic script denoting this lost terrain. These are the maps of an artilleryman. A pen and ink sketch of huge skies with rolling clouds, orderly family houses with hayricks, groves of poplars beside water, entitled ‘Tappa nella Steppa verso il Don - Luglio 1942’ is framed on the wall; it speaks volumes.
06/04/2007
tilting at windmills
The comune has in hand a proposal from a Spanish alternative energy consortium to receive large sums of money each year in return for permitting the placing of some 29 wind turbines on the hill crest above Gello Biscardo and (just the last 2) La Castellina. They are not visible from Castellina because of an intervening crest, nor are they visible from the village house because of an intervening village, particularly palazzo Cassi.
They are visible from just about every other viewpoint between Florence and Rome (perhaps Incisa and Chiusi, but still.)
It is becoming plain that the suspicion that negotiations are more advanced and distribution of benefits more personal than the comune has vouchsafed is well founded.
At a meeting attended by Library representatives the ecological folly of all this was demonstrated. It emerged also from a sororal visit by one of the councillors of Foiano, that the comune here has entered as well into negotiation for the siting of a rubbish dump for highly toxic materials from all over Italy and, possibly, all over the European Union.
The extreme reluctance to release information, papers, and high levels of irritation in the comune at their plans being discovered raises fears for the worst possible behaviour by this utterly corrupt and rotten borough. But private and social steps have been taken to protect ourselves. As well, a dangerous rift in attitudes and tactics by the council opposition has been averted and the importance of maintaining a social and cultural opposition to these devastations of our environment, rather than embroiling ourselves in a political fight asserted.
The preset numbers of days for all kinds of legal steps have not run out and all appropriate papers have been lodged (many thanx to the legal and administrative Library team.)
Alliances among the local landowners are being built; the next step might be to make aware local property owners of the devastating drop in their house values if either of these projects goes through. Many people here have mortgages past their ears and nothing but their monthly wages, yet they have little idea what the downgrading of the zone to 'contaminated' will do to them economically.
Any Library user with suggestions, comments etc., should put them forward on this thread, which the Librarian will regularly check; accounts of similar struggles against pseudo-ecological tax harvesting ploys would be welcome particularly.
They are visible from just about every other viewpoint between Florence and Rome (perhaps Incisa and Chiusi, but still.)
It is becoming plain that the suspicion that negotiations are more advanced and distribution of benefits more personal than the comune has vouchsafed is well founded.
At a meeting attended by Library representatives the ecological folly of all this was demonstrated. It emerged also from a sororal visit by one of the councillors of Foiano, that the comune here has entered as well into negotiation for the siting of a rubbish dump for highly toxic materials from all over Italy and, possibly, all over the European Union.
The extreme reluctance to release information, papers, and high levels of irritation in the comune at their plans being discovered raises fears for the worst possible behaviour by this utterly corrupt and rotten borough. But private and social steps have been taken to protect ourselves. As well, a dangerous rift in attitudes and tactics by the council opposition has been averted and the importance of maintaining a social and cultural opposition to these devastations of our environment, rather than embroiling ourselves in a political fight asserted.
The preset numbers of days for all kinds of legal steps have not run out and all appropriate papers have been lodged (many thanx to the legal and administrative Library team.)
Alliances among the local landowners are being built; the next step might be to make aware local property owners of the devastating drop in their house values if either of these projects goes through. Many people here have mortgages past their ears and nothing but their monthly wages, yet they have little idea what the downgrading of the zone to 'contaminated' will do to them economically.
Any Library user with suggestions, comments etc., should put them forward on this thread, which the Librarian will regularly check; accounts of similar struggles against pseudo-ecological tax harvesting ploys would be welcome particularly.
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