Tuesday is a testing time in Italy as the virus and the weather take a turn for the worse

 Edited BY


G P Kennedy


Ellie - Milan, Italy


What a week has the past one been. The weather has been wet and semi-dreary, as these new yard mushrooms attest, but to top it off, the pandemic numbers in Italy have been pretty dreary, too. Things are better than France, for example, but it's a little consolation when we remember what past spring was like.

 




It's also chachi season, which is actually a little bit of a bigger consolation. I've been waiting for this soft, juicy, and honest thing (I mean, you can't conserve it beyond it's picking moment) for a whole year. I was thinking that this year we might have to forgo them, as they are so tricky to grow and distribute. To have them now feels almost like luck. 

 




So the news of the week is, now that most outdoor seating in restaurants is unthinkable (rain! fog!), and with the coronavirus curve climbing, restaurants have to close at 6pm. Italians eat way after that time; let's say that 8pm is happy hour and 10pm is the beginning of peak time in restaurants. So the curfew means no dinners out just as much as it means no people mingling and creating hotspots.

 



The silo life of isolation and physical self-containment is coming back, but I am afraid we haven't learned much from it. 

 








It is also likely that I won't be able to see a friend (living in this building) whom I haven't seen in person in months.

 








So I was lucky, this last week, to be part of a public pedagogy workshop held in this historic building in Milan before physically connected life shrunk. You may never believe it, but it used to be a cemetery, in the middle of the city and is now a museum. It sounds like an omen, or a hopeful sign, as we choose. Trying to be brave as we brace for the upcoming wave.

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