PIERO AT THE CROSSROADS

This is Piero. He and his family -- wife, three grown children and his mother -- occupy two of the three apartments in the old monastery. He is a plumber by trade and is about to retire. Today he was out in the fog spreading nets for his olive trees while I was out taking pics of the devastation.

He is late with the nets because the storms have blown down masses of olives. I asked if I could take his picture and he agreed, remained still for two shots but was on the move again by the third. His mother, by the way, had a triple coronary bypass at the age of 83. Two weeks later she was out raking leaves and building fires. She is quite the pyromaniac and is still doing it at 89.

He is a good neighbour but I think of him as the man who denied me the bliss of having a decent road. From the localita' (hamlet) up, the road is private. The original one was built over 40 years ago by a man who bought the priest's house at the monastery. Nobody else lived up here then. He had to build the road or buy a donkey and cart.

By now, there are 16 people who use the road. I had the brilliant idea of a co-operative effort wherein we all chipped in to build a new one. The cost at the time was 7,000 euros. Divided by households, the cost would not have been enormous. Everybody agreed, including Piero but -- he wanted to wait until all of the electricity cables were put under ground. In this country this is like n-e-v-e-r.

The road gets worse and worse. I'm sure my kidneys have been shaken loose and are floating. The cost of a new road would be higher now. The financial crisis has hit all of us. If not, I would become la signora generosa and pay for the blasted road myself just to spare my bones and innards.

I threw this pic into black and white initially and it looked much more "important," but I just couldn't go through with it.

The fog has closed in, the two dogs have got an eerie howling duet going, which quite chills the blood, and it's another day in sunny hah-hah Tuscany.

Piero spreading nets.

I made prints of the pics for Piero and he was enormously pleased. He has no idea what else I did with them, however. :-) I suspect very much he would be even more pleased.