Stories and News

Stories and News No. 1187   We are in the kitchen of a normal apartment, sheltered by a very ordinary door, maybe next to yours. Inside there is a father and a son like many others. Or perhaps, like some very precise ones, because of an overestimated crossing of lights and electromagnetic radiation called skin colour. The two are at dinner. Mom is still at work, but she will be back soon and everything will be back in place. In the meantime, the man does what he can. "Dad?" Says the boy, ten years of curiosity and desire to go beyond the unspoken. "Yes, Ephrem." "Who are the racists?" "We've already talked about it, I remember." To be honest, the man is right, since the unavoidable topic had already been addressed some months ago. Blessed is the family that enjoys the benefit of postponing or even avoiding the most uncomfortable conversations. "No, Dad, I'm not saying the meaning of racism, the other time you talked

Stories and News No. 1186   Maybe it's because now I have more white hair in my head than just gray. Maybe it's because I prefer the surprise, the real freshness, than what I have already read and seen. Maybe because the more time passes, the more I focus my attention on the glass itself, rather than swinging between the full and the empty part. Or maybe, I just have a great desire to go beyond the actual news and observe the whole long-range story, taking advantage of the vision of the past in the precious rear-view mirror called memory, before even in my case it starts to falter. By way of example, think about so called leaders like Donald Trump, Putin or our Matteo Salvini. Right now, in the heart of the live broadcast, for many everything seems normal. Since their arrival on the public scenario they did or told so many crazy things, but each time we suddenly became used to that. In a few words, it happens, so it is normal. Like it was normal, in their time,

Stories and News No. 1185   Once upon a time the world. The one as we saw it as children, when everything we look at with our tiny eyes was already infinite, let alone what we still ignored and fantasized about. Then things changed. They say it's the age that changes us. I believe other people do, more than time. The mechanical turn of the hands has never affected our history. The human beings that flow by us unexpectedly, at times illogical and often violent, but sometimes capable of incalculable tenderness, are the ones to influence our future, second by second. One of the most decisive aspects regarding choices and thoughts, the feelings on which to focus the heart and which emotions to keep away from the intellect, it’s the screen through which we observe the world. It is not always the same and probably that’s right. Every look, in each chapter of our personal story, needs the appropriate filter. The metaphorical glasses to look at the best, here and now, are chos

Stories and News No. 1184   Once we called it the law of large numbers . Today, it is the slavery of exaggerations . It is a consequence, after all. One of the most uncomfortable contraindications of the unbridled rush to approximation of our lies. Because many of us live on lies, today. Often venial, sometimes more serious, but that’s Internet, we’re on a social media, then I could delete, right? Indeed, that’s something better: I may write another one! And so on. Moved by the illusion of really going away. And yet, at the dawn of the new year, I still like to see it as a story. The fable of small numbers, of course. Which hardly get the front page of the news and it is understandable. There are many examples: to make noise we need to be many, to be truly successful, a prize is not enough, but a lot, and to attract the gaze of the average reader you need at least thousands of pixels, otherwise he doesn’t even believe the truth. Give me the biggest number you have, th