inverno – winter in apriglianosunrise – 7:42, sunset – 5:14
9 hours and 32 minutes of daylight

 
I stole the image from Maria Callari’s FB photos. It all started with me commenting to Vincenzo Martire that he should add names to the various people pics he posts on the Sei di Aprigliano FB page. And naturally that resulted in a barrage of follow-up comments. My favorite was from Cinzia Fuoco who claimed that Vincenzo Martire just wants everyone to guess who people are. Maria Callari followed that with how can we know everyone. A sincere question, but one that triggered sarcasm and laughter. The conversation wasn’t mean-spirited just edgy. After all we’re Apriglianesi and nice isn’t in our gene structure. We’re not mean, but we’re certainly not nice. (My family members accuse Seane and I of being cut from the same cloth. Apparently the two of us are anything but nice. Seane and I delight in that assessment.)

I have to say, it’s great fun to comment back-and-forth in Italian. (You really do get to a point where writing and talking in Italian stops being torturous. I’ve stopped hesitating, stopped worrying that the spelling is wrong, that the verb tense is screwed up. And Google Translate is there to make sure I don’t misspell anything, because that would be very embarrassing even though Italian is no longer my primary language.)

Over the years, I’ve collected many images of winter in Aprigliano. I like snow on the medieval structures in desert-like Calabria. It’s a contrast that appeals to my sense of absurdity.