In Assisi, “Solidarity IS Music”….

…….….as the black T-shirts of the Florentine jazz musicians, Funk Off, proclaim. And on an early October Sunday, their trumpets, saxophones, clarinets, drums and cymbals blared out the message through Assisi’s medieval alleyways, just In case you’d missed it. The appeal shouted out? To share in three days of music and solidarity sponsored by Umbria…

Amatrice, Amatriciana, Assisi: Local Solidarity

All over Italy now, groups of friends and families are gathering together for pasta alla amatriciana dinners in solidarity with the ”new homeless”: the people of Amatrice and the nearby towns of Accumoli, Arquata del Tronto, all devastated by the August 24th earthquake. Many restaurants all over Italy are offering first courses of spaghetti all’amatriciana…

Amatrice, Amatriciana, Assisi: a “Triple A” Dinner

Wasn’t Triple A an insurance company? AAA? Three “A’s” linked in early September at our farmhouse when nineteen of us gathered for a spaghetti alla amatriciana dinner as an earthquake fund-raiser. Main dish: pasta alla amatriciana. Origin? Amatrice (near the epicenter of the August 24, 2016 earthquake). Where was dinner? At our farmhouse near Assisi.…