We are having very romantic winter weather these days -- rough seas and skies like the inside of an oyster shell. But even though the wind is clear and cold and often fierce, hellebore and white daffodils are nevertheless blooming in sheltered little corners all over our garden.

Jonathan is slowly on the mend from his operation and can speak and eat regular food now, but still no word from the doctor about the biopsy results, so we worry. Next weekend is the Festa di San Biagio -- the patron saint of Pietrasanta and also of throats. So there is a Luna Park set up in a usually vacant field at the edge of town and next Monday there will be a Blessing of the Throats in the Duomo. Jonathan snorts dismissively, but I think this is too good an opportunity to pass up and intend to take him and his throat down to town to be blessed. This will doubtless involve some amount of trickery on my part. Or possibly crying.

And we are still working away on our video podcast project -- the second episode dropped today and we already have the third ready to go. Jonathan knows that this is all just procrastination because I am supposed to be working on a new book. So putting together a 50-episode video podcast series to keep from writing one paragraph seems quite reasonable.

We had lunch at the pub on Sunday, sitting at the Tavolo di Marmo with Ugo and Nonno and Alice's mother, Marzia. The secret of Alice's pregnancy is out now and everyone is so happy. Daniele is gently jovial and Alice is serene and beautiful. Marzia is busy encouraging Alice to eat more, while Alice glows happily.

One thing I miss about winter in Colorado Springs is the way the sky turns orange at night in the snow. But I look down on the jeweled plain below us and I am not too sad.

 This seems very unreal to me. But in a nice way. 

The winner will be announced in March.

 

It's been quite a week for us. Monday we released the first episode of our new vodcast, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: The Theory and Practice of Resistance. It is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xELKX54aKI

We feel like we can't just sit here silently on our hillside while the great wave of fascism swallows the US whole. We only have tiny voices, but we will use them anyway, as best we can. The vodcast is kinda wonky and very homemade, but we hope that what we lack in flash, we make up for in sincerity. And fresh vegetables.

And then Tuesday, we spent ten hours in the hospital while Jonathan had a polyp removed from his vocal cord. We are certainly using the hell out of the fabulous free Italian health care system. Now we wait for the results of the biopsy to come back. So the terrible word "biopsy" hangs in the air here and we stay very close together all the time, as if we are protecting each other from something.

But the good news is that we have discovered the perfect way to make French toast by using leftover pan d'oro from the holidays. Sliced horizontally, it is shaped like a star and it is impossible to be glum while eating stars.

 

It is cold here tonight in Capriglia -- not below freezing, but almost. Nonno was wearing a blue cap knit for him by his mother 40 years ago. We ate pizza together and drank wine and, the whole time, I was aware of his blue knit cap and how I hope that some day long after I am gone, something that I made for them keeps my children warm on a winter night.

 

With the looming tidal wave of fascism all around the world, but especially in the US, we've been feeling pretty low, even here in our forgotten little Eden. So about three weeks ago, I had an idea -- Jonathan and I should put together a video podcast combining our expertise in social movements, collective action, protest, and resistance. I have three decades worth of thinking and teaching about this under my belt. I would have three decades worth of class notes about it except that after paying $30,000 to transport my notes all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, I immediately recycled them once they got here. That was about 48 hours before I had my idea and they suddenly became relevant again. Oh, well.

In any case, we are working away very hard on the episodes -- we have three of them finished now and are working on the next two and putting together a website, etc. The first episode will drop the day of the US presidential inauguration -- for obvious reasons. Then we plan to release one a week for 50 weeks. We are very earnest about this. I emphasize our earnestness and sincerity because our on-camera personalities are sock puppets and that may make us seem un-serious, which we are not. The puppets are named Juanita and Rodney.

Emma Goldman said, "If I can't dance, it's not my revolution." She said it right before they deported her.

 

Jonathan and I have (at last!) won a prize in one of the numerous raffles we have entered in support of various organizations and charities over the past two and a half years. We won second prize (a two-liter jug of German beer) in the pre-Christmas raffle at the pub. I suspect that these raffles are fixed, given the never-failing appropriateness of the winners. It is always suspiciously the exact person who should win who does win -- as if by magic.

So Jonathan and I may not seem to be the right people to win a giant flask of beer given that Jonathan doesn't really drink at all and I much prefer wine to beer. But we were the right people, in fact, because we did exactly what should have been done with the beer, which was to ask that it be put somewhere to get cool and then go down on a quiet winter evening, when the crowds and the noise had subsided, when only about a dozen of the regular habitues were there -- four playing cards at a table in the corner and the rest sitting together and the big table near the wood-burning stove, keeping warm and talking -- to open the flask and share it all around. These are my favorite nights. The big news of the day was that Nonno had convinced Daniele and Alice to re-arrange the shelves with jams and pickles so that similar items were grouped together for easier sale. We admired it orderliness while we drank the beer.

Then today, we went to the big grocery store on the edge of town and our groceries were free. We didn't exactly understand why -- something about points expiring on our membership card. We didn't know that we earned points or that they translated into free groceries, but, in any case, we didn't have to pay for our laundry detergent and breakfast yogurt. Then I asked about the bollini (we are collecting them to win a big nonstick frying pan), but the cashier explained that we didn't get bollini today because of the points expiring on the membership card. "Oh," I said, not having any clue what was going on. "But, here," she said, "have them anyway" and gave us twice as many as we actually would have gotten if everything had been as usual.

On the drive home, we figured out the whole chain of events (in the moment we had no idea) leading to free groceries and double bollini. "Well," I said Jonathan, "that was nice of her." "Yes," he said, "it's sort of like Italy is a continuous bewildering Christmas -- we have no idea what is going on or how or why or what we should do, but people just give us gifts anyway."

So maybe the raffles aren't rigged after all. Maybe we just live in a land of abundant gifts.