Frame in frame

Back in the same old hotel, back to the same old backstreet view.

(Sent by mail from my mobile)

Sunday evening

The countryside north of Saronno in these days of harvesting.

(Sent by mail from my mobile)

Ready to take off

Malpensa Airport, standing on the long escalator that leads to the boarding gates the whole crew of an intercontinental flight line up as a military platoon. Thank God I've got my "portable" cam with me.

(Sent by mail from my mobile)

An interesting toy

The new smartphone provided by my company is definitely a step ahead of the one I had before. Lots, millions of pixels; plenty of semi-automatic filtering opportunities and the ability to send anywhere a picture just made. Which is something that's puzzling me a bit. The trade off is between information and technique, message and quality, time and space. I'm swinging from one side to the other of this debate. Most certainly the right answer is, as usual, in between. This is probably why I haven't taken a decision yet. 

I'm about to leave for a business trip to Goteborg. I was thinking to bring with me all my gears, thus to make profit of this almost unique opportunity and capture the midnight light over the horizon. All the pictures I took exactly one year ago on the "archipelago" stretching outside the Gota river's mouth were stolen with my PC in July 2014. It's time to bury the dead corpse that's been tormenting me in the last year. Walking the same steps I made one year ago will certainly benefit.

Sent by mail from my mobile.

Macho Boy

It's everywhere been said and written that today's kids are growing too fast and "forge ahead", that they have too much and as soon as they ask it. Looking at my son generation I don't see so many differences with mine. They behave in the same way and make the same errors notwithstanding our constant and pervasive parental control.

This is a picture I took with my mobile after he chose his brand new eye-ware: I can't deny I had more or less the same tastes thirty years ago.

(Sent by mail from my mobile)

Follow the light

Acrobatic photography. Shots taken on my MTB while pedaling.

Don't turn back!

My son is in a age where shadow lines to cross are found almost every day. It's becoming a though moment for both him, as a young who attempts to look out there in the world, and me, as a father with plenty of doubts about him going by. So I realize that the same shadow line he's crossing are mine. I just need to remember this and try to behave accordingly. Which is not easy at all. Whatever the reason, right or wrong, I wan't call him back, neither I want him to look back to see where I stopped.

Time to crop

"The meadow lies green, the corn is unshorn,

But Bonnie George Campbell will never return."

Lunch time

Empty streets.

Sunday Morning

Sunday morning. The weather is not promising anything good. Dark clouds are all around. It's been raining the whole night and streets are soaked with mud.
Instead of taking the risk to go out for my usual MTB ride, I opt to make a run in the open fields. Wheat is already yellow as gold, the air is fresh and running is a pleasure ... if it wasn't for the approaching storm.
Passing by an "island" of poplars among corn and wheat fields, I feel the first heavy drops falling down. Within a minute my interval trainer will blow the whistle again. So I stop for few seconds, knee down on my legs and take a snapshot at ant's eye level before running for shelter.

Advices for free

Last Saturday I took my son to a small village on the hills around Varese to let him play a tournament with his volley team. This has been my main engagement for almost every weekend this year. Now, you should know I'm not the kind of parent who's able to stand all the time at the playground fence, from the initial warm up to the shower time. Before and after the game I use to make a walk around, if only to see something of the new place, reaching a local bar and taking a coffee.

So I took a walk up hill, as I wanted to reach the main square of this village, which name I won't tell you, after seeing an interesting bell tower coming out of the roofs. It took me a while before understanding which way to go. The village turned out to be a real maze, with a unique access point and a tree of many alleys, all ending up in the middle of a typical Lombardy's court-house. After a couple of turning back, I reached what only a fanciful mind could define a square. Anyhow, the space before the church was actually the largest clearing within the village boundaries.

To my surprise the church was open. Someone inside was setting up floor and benches before the evening Mass and in a lateral niche of the ancient walls I spotted a lady, whose age I could not be able to define, whispering at the priest in the confessional corner. I could not hear a single word but, in my quick understanding, it must have been a serious affair. Instead on kneeling o the side bench the lady was standing face to face with him and instead of sitting behind the grid the priest had put his head out of the door and talked with many gestures at her.

Notwithstanding I stood there a couple of minutes looking at them, none of the two seemed to be aware of my presence and this gave to me the courage to pull my mobile out of the pocket and take a single picture on them before leaving the church. Going down, back to the playground, I could not avoid thinking about the role of these people and the huge responsibility they undertake. I'm not a believer but there are time when I wish I had someone to openly talk with, before taking a though decision.

June 1946

This shot, that I took while I was riding my MTB in the valley run by river Olona, has been waiting so long in my hard disk that I nearly forgot I had taken it. I spotted this (IMHO) finely decorated concrete wall in Marnate, at the entrance of a WWII bunker (click here to read some more). I recall that I stopped, took the picture and thought "this could be fine for June 2".

Yesterday was the so called Republic Day (Festa della Repubblica), the main Italian National Holiday. Beside a military parade made in Rome and few short local celebrations made early in the morning (not to disturb the rest of the people) by civilian and military authorities together with the survival of those who lived those days between 1940 and 1946, nothing else was done to recall why we had that day off. If I asked my kids they would have answered "boh!" ("I don't know").

It must have been a well studied strategy combining the Republic Day break, the very first opportunity to reach for the seaside, with the local administration polls. Numbers of voters have been at historical low.
I wonder why those authorities still meet in front of a memorial stone.

Yellow