Spring will come

After the glimmers of peace, it will be a year of chills… serene. The bestial war desired by Putin, albeit with the slowness of the retreat that really recalls Mario Rigoni Stern's Sergeant in the Snow, will leave the battered land of Ukraine which will not be enough for 600 billion euros to regain the heat. The pandemic, after a show of ingenuity between variations and infections, is destined to leave our homes and enter the history books like malaria. The crisis that has exploded all the contradictions of the most unbridled consumerism and the inequalities of a society with too many rich and too many poor with the disarming fragility of a Europe, a giant with feet of clay, will see ways out. The Meloni government, wanted by a large majority, opposed by an equally fierce group, will find Nuto Revelli's La strada del davai.

Pandemic
The weeks go by and, despite the lack of attention and prevention of infections, the disease that has caused everyone, in three stormy years, the nightmares of ambulance sirens, the fear of seeing nurses and doctors arrive "covered" up to teeth, the dead we greeted from afar without seeing them anymore, is running out. In order not to miss anything, in the past few days she has been accompanied by a wave of flu that has never been so virulent. But, fortunately, only in a few cases, has it filled the corridors of emergency rooms and intensive care units with stretchers. Do we remember the hospitals set up in a hurry in China and here in Milan? We are left with great exhaustion. Adding to the fatigue of every day are other fears, old and new fears, fewer and fewer doctors, such as nurses, age-old waiting lists, urgent visits postponed.
Let's not forget, however, that we have all gone through the times of operating theaters closed for weeks to ordinary preventive interventions.
Yes, hell has passed and the panorama looks more like that of purgatory. With a little patience we will be able to find Il Paradiso and not only that of Dante.

War
We have all seen Pope Francis cry, recalling the suffering of a people violated and massacred like the Jews of the Holocaust. With the unusual but inevitable gradualness of diplomacy something is moving. The situation is complex and it is not easy to find "Ariadne's thread". It is not easy and it is understood by looking at the blackmail, the buildings that look more and more like the rubble of our second post-war period, the frost, the darkness of nights that seem to never end. However, peace is built like this: with compromises and endless expectations despite the regurgitation of bombs, missiles and ferocity.

Crisis
We feared spending the winter in the cold.
This time politics avoided him and began to redraw the new world atlas. So the gas (even with all the compromises and temporary blocks) is there; the grain has not been lacking for now; raw materials have slowed down their mad rush of prices ignited, as historically happens, also by international speculators without any scruples.
There are still factories that didn't make it, others that are reviewing industrial plans and strategies, but the strong fabric of the work network holds. We are left with lashings of lowered shutters not only in the city, but also in the villages and, unfortunately, there is no effective strategy to stop desertification.

Government
It has been moving for a few months. He may like it or not, but he has made choices: some forced, some intelligent, some useless which perhaps will be changed. Around the new executive there is a lot of expectation and also a lot of prejudice.
It will be a creepy year: we all hope that these chills will bring serenity. Now he is suspended, like a tightrope walker, on a steel wire, high, very high in the sky. There, is our future.

Anger
We have seen, especially on social networks, but also in the squares, much, too much anger. Threats and violence have returned. Attention! Under those few hot coals, which now fortunately cause rare gusts of hell, there are the roots of a new terrorism: the "years of lead" of the red brigades must never return. Never!

Gian Mario Ricciardi
NP January 2023