Memory, friends, names and a push scooter

Memory is a problem and yet one of the reasons for this blog. Today I thought I had lost a precious memory: the first name of a friend that I could remember. For many years I had very clear in my mind just two elements: this name, the name that I linked to the first idea of a friend, and a push scooter. That he had and I hadn’t. But I did not recollect envy or regret. Just a push scooter.
It was a big loss, for a moment I was concerned. But then I knew that the letter T was involved and soon enough I could remember the name. I did a search and I even got a photo and a birth date, quite suitable.
Memory, names and friends, powerful ingredients in the life of a man.

S as South

I was born in the South.  As I use repeating to foreign acquaintances, exactly there where the Italian boot split in two, just in the middle, in a quite remote area.

And I worked in the South (of the world) most of my life time starting from 1992.  Sometimes from Europe and more often directly based in or visiting a country: Cambodia, Southafrica, Mozambique, Guatemala, Palestine, Chad, Togo, Botswana, Peru, Bangladesh, Ecuador, Madagascar, Indonesia, Malawi, Haiti, Ivory Coast, Congo RDC, Venezuela, Niger, Pakistan, Mali, Honduras, Guinea Bissau, Nepal, Paraguay, Sri Lanka, Ghana.

Of course South is not an exact categorization.  In some countries the North is the actual South.  Others may be geographically South but are rather (or consider themselves) North.

But everywhere there is a Southern dimension, in the wide sense.

I prefer being a Southerner, don’t have any characteristic of one from the North. 

Don’t know if by choice or by destiny.

R as reason

I have always trusted that eventually the reason will triumph.

That if there are the conditions for something to happen and engagement from somewhere to make it happen, at the end it will indeed happen.

Or that if someone is a jerk, he might go up and progress in his career faster than others but then there will be the time when he will go down. And anyway he will probably not have an happy life.

And that if someone deserves something, if he does not get discouraged, he will finally get it. The reason will triumph.

Of course, with some flexibility and common sense.

In my life this has happened. Maybe I was not expecting too much, but I arrived more or less where I wanted to be.

Renzi’s strategy

Renzi’s strategy is clear. Now that he got liberated from a (supposedly) leftist component of the party, he will go for a coalition government with Berlusconi after the next elections in order to claim what is actually his own: the forza italia electorate that now has no more obstacles in identifying Renzi as the best follower of Berlusconi (non) policies.
Of course, he will tell that he is obliged to this unnatural move by the uncertain electoral results. But we know better.
Would the Democratic party members resist to this infamous perspective? Having observed the sudden alignment behind his winning drive (???) I have very little hope.
Would the area in the left be able to regroup and present itself with a convincing political message? No need for an answer……..