Stories and News

Stories and News No. 1159   Indulge me. Yes please. Treat me as one of those frail and vulnerable people, who more or less consciously require condescension from others. On the other hand, the utopian hope of both, storyteller or simply creature with the a seriously compromised sense of reality, is the same: that the journey, or its conclusion, is worth of your time, if not the ticket’s price. The starting point from which the following dream was born is a fact, like the true news where I usually draw inspiration writing a story, and it precisely concerns the possible diffusion of the latter as a literary work. In this regard, as many know, sooner or later the author's right to his own creation will end. From that moment, the story, the words that compose it, the following moral and the characters which contribute to it, become instantly public. Suddenly, everything belongs to everyone. Insist to indulge me, then. Even if at this point you knew where I’m willing...

Stories and News No. 1158    On February 18, 2019 George Mendonsa , or Mendonça, died . He was ninety-five years old and became famous for a photo, but above all for a kiss. A stolen one, literally. According to the chronicles of the time, on August 14, 1945 George was in New York and he was watching a movie at the well-known Radio City Music Hall. He was with Rita, the woman who would later become his wife, when some people entered the hall and began shouting words that everyone in the world was waiting with anxiety and hope. The war is over. A marvelous phrase, a forbidden dream for entire generations struck by a bitter destiny and whispered to the utmost almost every day by those who are obliged by History to consider peace only a coveted horizon, instead of the natural condition. Besides there are conflicts and battles of all kinds, in this world, whose soundtrack is not necessarily composed of mortar shots and machine guns’ bursts. Anyway, George ran out wit...

Stories and News No. 1157    Once upon a time. Everything starts like this, from fairy tales to our own life. Which in the early days is wonderfully slow, with small hands and eyes made wide by curiosity for everything, regardless of the flowing time, at least until it comes to knock on our door demanding an early growth. Sometimes it’s an obligation that tastes of pain and unbridgeable voids. Often, it’s just the need to take the responsibilities that someone else have guiltily left us as inheritance. Nonetheless, from your official entry into the world of the so-called adults, the haste becomes master of your life. There is no time, there is no more, it never was, until you are convinced that it has always been like that, from the very beginning. Nevertheless, as an adult you are formally invited to be aware of what’s happening beyond your nose. Well, where do adults find information about the things of the world? Long ago there was only the TV News, as a sol...

Stories and News No. 1156   So, let's start from here. Imagine that Giuseppe Conte was a great statesman, he was the Prime Minister elected for his skills and merits, that he authoritatively leaded a two-colored government formed by Luigi Di Maio’s Five Star Movement and Matteo Salvini’s League, who respected the man and relied on his competent and wise leadership. Thanks to the three, Italy was living a brilliant phase of its economic, cultural and social growth . Well... if you think so, stop here, I understand. I mean, no, I don’t really have any idea of what whirls in your mind, but I don’t think you'll easily agree with the following. From this point on, then, let's say that Guy Verhofstadt , leader of the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe at the European Parliament, is right about what he recently said about Italian premier and the current government. Let’s consider his accusations reasonable, that Conte is a puppet in the hands ...

Do you need anything? A short story by Alessandro Ghebreigziabiher We dream. We often forget we did, but sometimes something survives in the morning. Frequently it’s the most terrible nightmares to see the daylight, but even some beautiful dreams cross the threshold of consciousness and are the most vivid ones, despite improbable, with hints of reality that often is more tangible than what we actually touch every day with bare hands. The same happens with some stories and at the end of the day you don’t know if you've dreamed, or just read a strange tale. This is what occurred to Sam, eleven years and a rather vulnerable imagination before the castles in the air that surround us every day. That Sunday he had spent most of the afternoon in the hospital to visit his grandmother, ninety years old and a destiny now marked by the usual, unforgiving tumor. The good thing was that all her children, and most of the relatives, were close to her, to accompany her in the last ...

Stories and News No. 1155    There is a hell. It’s here on earth. Sometimes you could find it in the mind of some. Often in the emptiness of the latter of a few, who are doing their utmost to make life difficult for many. In this hell, placed in plain sight on the surface of the most maltreated planet of the solar system, there is a particular infernal circle, eccentric, to say the least. Indeed, it’s literally so. In fact, there is a strange kind of damned persons living in it indefinitely. These creatures are so devoid of intelligence that the small brain left has avenged the heart for its loneliness, wounding it to death where it proverbially suffers. That is, where the eye obsessively looks at what doesn’t exist except in a madman’s delirium. In the aforementioned circle there have been assembled the crazies who have dedicated their very existence to the construction of walls even more insane than them. So, follow me, as an improvised Virgil, and you, as ...

Stories and News No. 1154    The joke : Listen to this. There is a palace, right? A strange building in the shape of a boot, you know? But it stands up, despite everything it's standing and people try to live better. Anyway, listen, because it didn’t end up here. There are 60 people in the building, okay? There are those living on the ground floor, those at half height, and who obviously is at the attic. That’s typical. What you don’t know is that among the 60 people, 55 have the same citizenship, the building’s one, okay? Imagine that the building is like a nation, right? Well, therefore, you can call the 5 remaining as foreigners . But they still live in the building, you know? But for most of the 55, they are “the 5 foreigners on the building”. Yes, I know, it’s funny, but I haven’t finished yet, wait. You must also know that in this palace people continue to decline year after year. They’re always less, do you understand? Consider that the “inhabita...

Stories and News No. 1153    Let’s talk about freedom. What a powerful invention it is. In the hands of those who grant it and especially those who tell stories about it. In this regard, I give you an excerpt from Freedom House 's recent, customary annual report on the conditions of freedom in the world: punitive approaches to immigration are resulting in human rights abuses by democracies - such as Australia’s indefinite confinement of seaborne migrants in squalid camps on the remote island of Nauru, the separation of migrant children from their detained parents by the United States, or the detention of migrants by Libyan militias at the behest of Italy - that in turn offer excuses for more aggressive policies towards migrants and refugees elsewhere in the world. Populist politicians’ appeals to “unique” or “traditional” national values in democracies threaten the protection of individual rights as a universal value, which allows authoritarian states to justify mu...

The dreams boat By Alessandro Ghebreigziabiher Once upon a time there was a land. It looks like an island, but it is not, really, it definitely is not. Despite today's rulers do everything to make it seems so. I mean, isolated from the world, from the seas and other lands, but also from irrepressible hopes, which you can simply call dreams. This is what we live for, everywhere. Nonetheless, there was once a land where someone needed to erase them. So, where memory becomes more vulnerable, where the medications applied over time to heal wounds and deep lesions were rushed and superficial, imagine to delete the key fragments. Read them as well as the story steps that explain you better when and why you were wrong then. As if we removed the scene where the witch from Snow White's fairy tale tries to give her the poisoned apple. How many women have learned from that to distinguish between a deadly fruit and a loving gift? As if we obscured in the Iliad the momen...

Stories and News No. 1152   Take a side , they say. Indeed, no, they demand it. Because it’s a duty to do it, otherwise you are an accomplice. Even at a far distance. They say: don’t you see the others? United States first, of course, they’re always first, if it’s necessary, but also Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain and France have publicly clarified which side they are on. Come on, take a stand between the “grim dictator” Nicolás Maduro and the nascent democratically elected star, that is, Juan Guaidó . It’s the world that asks for it, because the fate of the latter depends on who is with whom. It’s urgent to face the Venezuelan question, the invitation cannot be ignored. On the other hand, they will certainly have asked you to do the same with Erdogan's Turkey, whose regime tramples daily on the human rights of its citizens. Take a side, you will have certainly heard it, take a side on North Korea and its dictator Kim Jong-un. Of course, you have alread...