March 14, 2020

"In Siena, the city to which I am very attached, you stay at home but sing together as if you were on the street."

41 comments:

mockturtle said...

Delightful! I suppose here it would be rap.

CStanley said...

Lovely, except the dog was off key.

cf said...

Siena!
Such a classy, classic city.
The slender towering columns in their cathedral rise in thick stripes of Black and White. so seemingly modern. I wondered if Tim Burton visited Siena when he was younger, and was forever inspired.
Sing, Siena, Sing.

paminwi said...

What a wonderful sound! Having neighbors close can he both a blessing and a curse.
There is a website called Nextdoor and people in my neighborhood are volunteering to pick up prescriptions, groceries, for people who are quarantined and dropping off a meal for seniors. There are still good people in this world.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

I love the Italians.

Wince said...

In America, our preferred medium is TV.

madAsHell said...

A little lamb's blood on the front door, and make a joyful noise unto the Lord......

Temujin said...

You gotta love the Italians.

Owen said...

"...si canta insieme come se si fosse per la strada..." What a beautiful thought, expressed in such a beautiful tongue. Makes me want to go there and sit in the square. May that day --of health and free passage-- come soon to these people.

CStanley said...

I’m not sure if I’m copying the links properly, but here are two more:

https://twitter.com/SisKathleen/status/1238832230748819456?s=20

https://twitter.com/SisKathleen/status/1238395121663643648?s=20

glenn said...

Yeah, but the Florentine’s still don’t like you.

Amexpat said...

Funny, I was just awoken from a nap here in Oslo by my Italian neighbor who is singing though an amp accompanied by his electric organ. He hasn't done it since I last complained years ago. I'll endure for a while since everything is closed and he may be entertaining his kids.

madAsHell said...

It’s still too early to open windows at latitude 47.

mockturtle said...

My daughter tells me it's π day! So happy π day, everyone!

Carol said...

LOL San Marino SD is shutting down, and canceling any online instruction too. Mainly because of the sped and ESL kids.

"If one student cannot receive instruction, then no students can receive instruction."

So my cousin's kid gets to play video games for the next month. Oh, and LAUSD is closed too.

Unreal.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Mock - Pi day!
I like big pi and I cannot lie.

*****
The Italian singing is wonderful. Sounds so polished and professional. The dog is attempting to layer his tune on top.

rhhardin said...

I1MMR in Genoa is on the air around 3am every night looking for somebody distant to talk to. 40m between 7025 and 7030

Ironclad said...

"Bring out your dead" sounds so melodic in Italian, doesn't it?

Just an old country lawyer said...

Following the funeral mass of Verdi in 1901, thousands of Milanese followed the cortege singing Va, Pensiero,the chorus of the Hebrew slaves, from his opera Nabucco.

Just an old country lawyer said...

Following the funeral mass of Verdi in 1901, thousands of Milanese followed the cortege singing Va, Pensiero,the chorus of the Hebrew slaves, from his opera Nabucco.

J. Farmer said...

My daughter tells me it's π day! So happy π day, everyone!

Happy 314. Looking forward to a happier 420.

fleg9bo said...

Off topic, but we're having the winter's biggest snowfall right now in my Portland burb. That's not saying much as it has only snowed lightly once or twice, but at least now it's accumulating a little on the grass.

James Sarver said...

"Fah who foraze! Dah who doraze!
Welcome all who's far and near!"

AllenS said...

An Italian in America --

♪ ♫ Ho finito la carta igienica, guai a me ♪ ♫

I expect everyone to look this up with a Google Italian to English

Do not disappoint me !

The Vault Dweller said...

This seems nice. Though it also makes me think that some people need to feel connected and attached to other people more than others. I mean a few weeks of no meaningful human contact doesn't sound terribly arduous to me. But, I think there are those who even a few days of no human contact is terrible. Long live the introverts I guess.

mockturtle said...

Allen, I'm sorry to hear you are out of toilet paper! ;-)

Achilles said...

fleg9bo said...
Off topic, but we're having the winter's biggest snowfall right now in my Portland burb. That's not saying much as it has only snowed lightly once or twice, but at least now it's accumulating a little on the grass.

Snow in Seattle yesterday too.

My family on the East side of the mountains got 6 inches at their house.

DrSquid said...

Mr Squid and I have made plans to go to Siena, the focal point of our tour of northern Italy. Siena is home of the Palio, a several centuries old horse race, 3 laps around the town center held annually on the feast of the Assumption. If this plague is finished by August, we will be in an apartment above the finish line of the race. If it's not over by then, then the 2019 Palio may have been the last.

n.n said...

Physical isolation, social proximity. They could also communicate through photons and electrons, but that also requires steps to remain safe. Avoid social contagions, immunize your system to prevent or mitigate malicious clumps of photons and electrons, physically isolate to limit migratory infections.

mockturtle said...

For some of us, social isolation is like giving up beets for Lent. ;-)

James Graham said...

Italians are great!

phantommut said...

Beautiful.

bbear said...

Telegraph

ITALIANS OVER 80 'WILL BE LEFT TO DIE' AS COUNTRY OVERWHELMED BY CORONAVIRUS

--Hardest-hit region drafts new proposals saying who will live and who will die

By Erica Di Blasi Turin 14 March 2020 • 4:38pm

Coronavirus victims in Italy will be denied access to intensive care if they are aged 80 or more or in poor health should pressure on beds increase, a document prepared by a crisis management unit in Turin propose.

Some patients denied intensive care will in effect be left to die, doctors fear.

The unit has drawn up a protocol, seen by The Sunday Telegraph, that will determine which patients receive treatment in intensive care and which do not if there are insufficient spaces. Intensive care capacity is running short in Italy as the coronavirus continues to spread.

The document, produced by the civil protection department of the Piedmont region, one of those hardest hit, says: "The criteria for access to intensive therapy in cases of emergency must include age of less than 80 or a score on the Charlson comorbidity Index [which indicates how many other medical conditions the patient has] of less than 5."

The ability of the patient to recover from resuscitation will also be considered.

One doctor said: "[Who lives and who dies] is decided by age and by the [patient's] health conditions. This is how it is in a war."

The document says: "The growth of the current epidemic makes it likely that a point of imbalance between the clinical needs of patients with COVID-19 and the effective availability of intensive resources will be reached.

"Should it become impossible to provide all patients with intensive care services, it will be necessary to apply criteria for access to intensive treatment, which depends on the limited resources available."

It adds: "The criteria set out guidelines if the situation becomes of such an exceptional nature as to make the therapeutic choices on the individual case dependent on the availability of resources, forcing [hospitals] to focus on those cases in which the cost/benefit ratio is more favorable for clinical treatment."

Luigi Icardi, a councilor for health in Piedmont, said: "I never wanted to see such a moment. It [the document] will be binding and will establish in the event of saturation of the wards a precedence code for access to intensive care, based on certain parameters such as potential survival."

The document is already complete and only approval from a technical-scientific committee is needed before it is sent to hospitals. The criteria are expected to apply throughout Italy, government sources said.

More than 1,000 people in Italy have now died from the virus and the number is growing every day. More than 15,000 are infected.

Italy has 5,090 intensive care beds, which for the moment exceeds the number of patients who need them. It is also working to create new bed capacity in private clinics, nursing homes and even in tents. However, the country also needs also doctors and nurses - the government wants to hire them - and equipment.

Lombardy remains the most critical region. However, the situation is also serious in neighboring Piedmont. Here, in just one day, 180 new cases were recorded, while deaths numbered 27. The trend suggests that the situation is not about to improve.

Roberto Testi, president of the coranavirus technical-scientific committee for Piedmont, told The Telegraph: "Here in Piedmont we aim to delay as long as possible the use of these criteria. At the moment there are still intensive care places available and we are working to create more.

"We want to arrive as late as possible at the point where we have to decide who lives and who dies. The criteria relate only to access to intensive care - those who do not get access to intensive care will still receive all the treatment possible. In medicine we sometimes have to make difficult choices but it's important to have a system about how to make them."

-30-

narciso said...

reminded me of this

Nancy said...

Molto legato, indeed!

cf said...

fleg9bo said...
"Off topic, but we're having the winter's biggest snowfall right now in my Portland burb."

Right here with you, what a great winter of sunshine we have had. My girlfriends are mostly isolating, me too, and we were txting the morning moments, an entertainment of nature, this lovely steady streaming of snow. in March.

2020 is surely turning out like no other year ever.

glenn said...

I’m so old I remember when Italy was positioned to have minimal casualties because of their superior socialized medicine. On the other hand recognizing that you are in a war is step one. Now start figuring out who started it and why.

Maillard Reactionary said...

Ah, mockturtle, I am humiliated to acknowledge that not only did I miss that today was pi day, I also missed the opportunity to refresh the discussion at 1600 hours (approximately).

I will try to redeem myself by not forgetting International Talk Like a Pirate Day (September 19 to you landlubbers). I'm putting it into my calendar now. Harrr.

Seconding your comment re "social distancing", which we call "daily life" around here.
It's working so far.

Maillard Reactionary said...

I've always thought that there's something good about being an Italian and living in Italy. Warm, beautiful architecture and natural landscape, nobody works too hard, friendly women, etc. OTOH I'm not Italian, and I don't live in Italy. It might not be for me on an ongoing basis. Are singing neighbors better than barking dogs, leaf blowers, and parked cars playing "hip-hop" "music"? How about singing neighbors plus those other sounds we have here? Well there's still the food, but...

Maybe one lifetime is enough.

ndspinelli said...

Siena is a beautiful city. They have annual horse races w/ each neighborhood sponsoring a horse/jockey. It's bedlam, like most Italian events.

PaoloP said...

They are singing: "Viva la nostra Siena", "Long live our Siena".

Siena, my preferred town in Tuscany:

https://tinyurl.com/sc46534

in the most beautiful place in Italy:

https://tinyurl.com/sxnozyw
https://tinyurl.com/usb32os