Djali,
the gypsy

Curious and pleasant this Diario di una chiromante - Diary of a fortune teller (pagg. 118, €12,00, Nerosubianco edizioni, Cuneo 2010. Nerosubianco edizioni, via Torino 29 bis, 12100 Cuneo, info@nerosubianco-cn.com) by Leda Rafanelli said Djali (Pistoia 1880-Genova 1971), written late in life and that reconstructs from memory the "inner parts" of dissatisfied women, love, possessive, lost, crazy, and sutured to reassemble, to reconstruct the original identikit character of each person who it appeared to her fortune-teller-born-(as the same is declared Rafael since childhood) to obtain, through the magic of the occult sciences sensory intuition, the reassuring answers to their existential anxieties or trivial intrigues to unravel relational relegated to the minimalism of living daily, with related reckless and clairvoyance about the future.
These meetings "chosen" between the stock and praised dated a human bazaar varied and unpredictable, making it a good service to the pleasure of reading here that runs nice, smooth, rhythmic, thanks to a writing light, transparent, measured.
And it is precisely in the way of reporting requirements, hopes and anxieties of the clients, that Rafanelli reveals her ethics report - if it can be defined - based on a balance, in a lucid detachment, a subtle irony, a compassionate humanity now in friendly tones, now sad, but always tolerant and respectful of other people's misery, even if sometimes resulting from unhealthy and questionable interpretation of life.
Sure, it's a book written in ages now pacified, to be enjoyed as pure divertissment.
It is hoped that one day be republished its most important and rare books, documents and content of greater significance. Many historians of the anarchist movement in Italy, are well aware of Leda Rafanelli and his tumultuous life marked by unbridled inner freedom, a spasmodic rom syndrome, and some choices sometimes contradicting each other to traumatize any firm on the principles of anarchist which shall not, at first sight, conflict with themselves. For example, how to live Anarchism and Islam, when the author decided to become Muslim, but revisit the entire existence of this bizarre personality, always ready to throw off, is not simple and this is not the appropriate occasion.
The curator of the text, Milva Maria Cappellini, succeeds very well who, with passionate enthusiasm, she launches into a historiographical excursus full of acute critical comments, which represent the figure of the anarchist Rafanelli and her re-enactment, while struggling at times, as we have just said, in a thorny bush and stinging where transplants could lead to ideological rejection of genetic incompatibility, but these steps are just fraught with difficulties of interpretation to allow the curator to move in depth and clarifying certain aspects of seemingly incomprehensible.
Therefore, we will quote some passages of this route so carefully drawn, to give but a faint idea of what was the intense life of a woman "against", in times when the figure was not another female social space to exist, if domestic not in the bosom of her family, forcibly relegated to traditional roles and subservient to the man seen as his father-master.
Little girl, she gets a job in a print shop where her companion, a friend of Gaetano Bresci, inculcates the anarchist idea that immediately attracts and to which she will always be faithful, in daily practice, active in militancy, and in her numerous writings. At 14, already dedicated to the dissemination of propaganda. The printer is also the site of another special passion: the printed word, the world of books. In 1897, with her brother Metello Brunone, published a book of poems titled "Thoughts." At the age of twenty, drawn from the East, she moved to Egypt where she converts to Islam, without scratching its libertarian-utopian faith, and at the same time meets the Florentine anarchist bookseller, Luigi Polli whom she married in 1902. The two founded the publishing house Rafanelli-Polli for which Leda publish the following titles: "Tragedy", "To our mind," "anti-clericalism," Valid arms: propaganda leaflet against the construction of new prisons. Since 1903 worked in numerous political text, "Peace" by Ezio Bartalini, "Tomorrow" in Cairo, "Thought" by Pietro Gori and Luigi Fabbri, "The cry of the crowd" by Nella Giacomelli and Ettore Molinari, "The human Protest" Giacomelli-Molinari, "Direct Action", "the social question", "La Blouse", "Demolition", "The Anarchist Novatore", "The Barricade", "The Libertarian Women," "Freedom ".
Publish popular novels of social and anti-clerical as "The Bastard of the prince," Mother and mother crowned plebeian," "To the Italian Mothers," " Memoirs of a priest." Continuing to write relentlessly liberal and pacifist pamphlets, is denounced for inciting to the antimilitarism. In 1907 she wrote "Against School" and another love enters her life: Giuseppe Monanni.
Goes to live with him in Milan and founded the Società Editoriale Milanese, publishing, among others, Kropotkin, Malatesta, Stirner. The vibrant relationship with Carrà will form in the book "A woman and an artist not yet known," published in 2005 under the title "Leda Rafanelli-Carlo Carrà, a novel."
In 1913 Leda meets Benito Mussolini - at the time director of the 'Avanti' during a commemoration of the Commune, an overall report to the inevitable end. In 1915 he wrote to a friend who is now the enemy of Mussolini. This story will be transfigured in the novel "Enchanted." Then in 1948, Rizzoli will publish "A woman and Mussolini" a collection of letters that escaped fascist searches. Since the thirties, Leda lives secluded and writes children's books. In 1944 her only son Marsilio dies and she moved to Genoa until her death September 13, 1971.

The historical acquittal of
Ferlinghetti/Ginsberg

If you learn the words, if the words shake the conscience, if words have the power to carve, if the words defend the values of freedom then we must carefully listen to the final ruling of the court judge in the movie "Scream" by Rob Epstein and Jefrey Friedman. You can not really forget. "Life can not be contained in one scheme in which all act the same way - harangue the court - No two people feel the same way, the mold from which they come may be the same, but there are variables in each person ... freedom of thought and speech is inherent in every person and this freedom should be silent if we want our country to be free. "
The verdict of the judge is the one who carries out the criminal act of obscenity in 1957 pages of the poem "Howl" (just scream) for which its author is not under investigation, Allen Ginsberg, but the publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Light in San Francisco. On that prophetic poem published in 1955 and written by one of the fathers of the Beat Generation, the pair of filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jefrey Friedman - remember their "Common Threads (1989), one of the first and most successful documentaries on AIDS, and "The Celluloid Closet" (1995), an interesting and suffered document on homosexuality taken from an essay by Vito Russo - have made a beautiful film (now on DVD for Fandango) and James Franco really convincing in the role of a twenty-nine Ginsberg .
Taken from court documents and interviews with Allan Ginsberg (1926-1997), the film follows the main stage of the process that will go down in history, the clash between the prosecution and defense, between those who support the view that the book is obscene and who carries calls to fan the flames of ignorance and not to win the freedom of expression and the light of intelligence that allows people to see things that, although noticeable, remain unclear.
But the construction of the plot of Epstein and Friedman also leads intermittently to read some pages of the book assembled with computer-generated images and the same Ginsberg not regular life. The prophet and ambassador of the international psychedelic bard who sowed a message of peace around the world come into play, the discovery of homosexuality, love (which broke his heart) to Neal Cassady, and Peter Orlovsky, poetry as the articulation of feelings , writing as a meditative exercise, and subjective fact that can involve the body and soul, the sense of the social value of life, the devastation of the best minds of a generation.
Epstein and Friedman's film follows a direction, a story has passed into literary history accompanying a truth: that the contents of a book may contain a prophecy. Ginsberg understanding that a prophecy (one of the modern Job) "to understand and hear something ahead of time that we understand and feel better after many years."
"Scream" was presented last year at the Berlin Film Festival and Sundance Film Festival.

Mimmo Mastrangelo

Farewell to
growth

The time has come, indeed it is already too late. We are experiencing the sixth mass extinction of species and compared to the Fifth (the dinosaurs), the pace is a thousand to thirty thousand times faster. The time of decrease (Segre Latouche and Didier Harpages, The time of decline, the introduction of Marco Aime, Eleuthera, Milano 2011, pp. 112, € 10.00) to choose is now Serge Latouche said. In a little there will be nothing to choose from but only rationing of resources and famine.
These are the basic considerations of a text that encourages reflection and activation of a process of change. And beyond the need, Marco Aime noted in the preface, the founding myth of the development has created an imaginary dominant that can not see the unease generated by the capitalist model. Change is possible only starting from the decolonization of our imagination, "Exit mercantile ideology and rethink the relationship we have with space and time," writes Aime, recovering what Ivan Illich called conviviality. And this goes back when Latouche also explains what is meant to decrease: no surrender, no sacrifice, no misery but virtuous sobriety and relational goods.
It is not hateful to a reduction in consumption in the name of a life of hardship and suffering but it is noted that a large part of the pattern of our lives is based on the waste and on the belief that this is the only way to satisfy their needs (without speak of dreams, now approved for a single standard facing hyper-consumption).
This is linked to the other meaning of time, implicit in the title. "Of course, we live longer (on average), but without ever having the time to live." The clock counts the time of our every action and mechanization that was once tied to the lunar and solar cycles. Everything becomes (and must become) calculable, quantifiable and is compared to money, productivity. The transport from one place to another is thus perceived as a waste of time that connects two points in space: "Time lost between these two, between where you are and where you go," writes Yves Cochet, quoted in the book.
The speed is transformed into myth and efficiency of such machines becomes a model to emulate. But according to Latouche "We've gone too far in this process of rationalization and dehumanizing it is time to turn the page.

Serge Latouche

Here again the proposal is part of the decline, a "strategy" to spread from self and others, to create a new society to come back to rely on the gift, exchange of expertise and time devoted to us. "Restoring a healthy relationship with the mean time, quite simply, to learn again to live in the world, and thus free themselves from dependence on the work to find the slow, the rediscovery of life related to the territories, and the proximity to the next."
Not so much an invitation to return to a mythical past but rather to establish a renewed tradition.
An interesting speech, carried on to the sound data, examples, experiences and virtuous done using a simple and effective language. The last part of the lexicon book also turns out to be a useful guide through the concepts and terms to which you refer.
Our slogan is rather this: "Work less to live better!" Better to promote the otium of the people than opium in the media.

E.V.

translation Enrico Massetti: enricomassetti@msn.com