Rain overnight. Warm with patchy sunshine, and rumblings of thunder early this afternoon.
To the scuola materna's festa dei palloncini. It started with a procession accompanied by marching band to the local residential hospital for the very old, to present them with artwork made by the schoolchildren and to entertain them with songs and poems. Thence to a special Pentecost/festa della Mama/festa dei palloncini mass. (Happy Mother's Day, by the way, to all the mothers who are reading this, especially mine.) The finale to the morning was a second procession to the main square to launch 100 balloons into the air carrying messages to the poor children of the world.
It was a wonderful sight : 100 pink and blue balloons taking to the air at once and 100 pairs of little eyes following them up and away, with 100 little mouths making ohs of wonder.
As I watched the balloons make a low-altitude dash for the Swiss border, I couldn't help wondering two things :
First, how was it that everything started 45 minutes behind the advertised schedule, and yet the balloons were launched exactly on the stroke of midday by the church bells?
And second, I asked myself whether it would be possible to engender the same sense of wonder in the children without littering the countryside with 100 pieces of coloured rubber, 100 2-metre lengths of bleached string and 100 messages of goodwill wrapped in 100 sheets of non-biodegradable plastic.
Am I too cynical for words?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Sunday, 11 May 2008
Festa dei palloncini
Rain overnight. Warm with patchy sunshine, and rumblings of thunder early this afternoon.
To the scuola materna's festa dei palloncini. It started with a procession accompanied by marching band to the local residential hospital for the very old, to present them with artwork made by the schoolchildren and to entertain them with songs and poems. Thence to a special Pentecost/festa della Mama/festa dei palloncini mass. (Happy Mother's Day, by the way, to all the mothers who are reading this, especially mine.) The finale to the morning was a second procession to the main square to launch 100 balloons into the air carrying messages to the poor children of the world.
It was a wonderful sight : 100 pink and blue balloons taking to the air at once and 100 pairs of little eyes following them up and away, with 100 little mouths making ohs of wonder.
As I watched the balloons make a low-altitude dash for the Swiss border, I couldn't help wondering two things :
First, how was it that everything started 45 minutes behind the advertised schedule, and yet the balloons were launched exactly on the stroke of midday by the church bells?
And second, I asked myself whether it would be possible to engender the same sense of wonder in the children without littering the countryside with 100 pieces of coloured rubber, 100 2-metre lengths of bleached string and 100 messages of goodwill wrapped in 100 sheets of non-biodegradable plastic.
Am I too cynical for words?
To the scuola materna's festa dei palloncini. It started with a procession accompanied by marching band to the local residential hospital for the very old, to present them with artwork made by the schoolchildren and to entertain them with songs and poems. Thence to a special Pentecost/festa della Mama/festa dei palloncini mass. (Happy Mother's Day, by the way, to all the mothers who are reading this, especially mine.) The finale to the morning was a second procession to the main square to launch 100 balloons into the air carrying messages to the poor children of the world.
It was a wonderful sight : 100 pink and blue balloons taking to the air at once and 100 pairs of little eyes following them up and away, with 100 little mouths making ohs of wonder.
As I watched the balloons make a low-altitude dash for the Swiss border, I couldn't help wondering two things :
First, how was it that everything started 45 minutes behind the advertised schedule, and yet the balloons were launched exactly on the stroke of midday by the church bells?
And second, I asked myself whether it would be possible to engender the same sense of wonder in the children without littering the countryside with 100 pieces of coloured rubber, 100 2-metre lengths of bleached string and 100 messages of goodwill wrapped in 100 sheets of non-biodegradable plastic.
Am I too cynical for words?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment