My birthday fundraiser closed last night. This means I am now officially old. My fifty-second birthday was seven days ago, but by placing the fundraiser astride the birthday date, I gave myself the illusion of having one week more. Ah! But if I am, indeed, old, I am also quite impressed, and grateful, by the response of my followers – that in the end collected 299$ for The Ocean Cleanup. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. You are the best.
And 299 bucks’ 50% more than planned, and I really hope this small contribution helps pulling a bit of plastic out of our waters. It’s been fun, and quite satisfactory, and I think I’ll do it again next year. I’ll be older then, and I’ll try to collect more money for another worthy cause.
This is a good moment for me. I’ve got work to do, lots of it – 12 hours per day until September if I’m lucky, to cover all the contracts I signed. My stories are selling reasonably well. I even got an invitation to participate in an SF anthology with a number of other Italian writers, all of them much more popular than I am. I’m thinking about it. My Patreon is growing, slowly but steadily (thank you guys!) And there’s money in the bank. Not a fortune, but enough to give me some breathing space, say two months without panic attacks and bill anxieties.
And in exactly one week I’ll be 52. Well beyond the halfway point, sailing uncharted waters, but reasonably happy.
For this reason when the Facebook pop-up … well, popped up and suggested I do a fundraiser for my birthday, I thought, why not? I can’t donate much, but I have a lot of contacts and friends and followers. I can’t ask for money to any one of them – they already buy my books, support me on Patreon… I can’t ask.
But there’s nothing wrong with dropping a rock in the pond, and see if the ripples cause some interesting effect.
I chose this one because I am a failed oceanographer, I love sea stories and undersea mysteries, and I wrote a few stories in the past that deal with the sea. And because the pollution of our oceans is a global concern that touches a global audience – and I have friends and contacts everywhere.
So, in the next two weeks I’ll try and raise 200 euros for The Ocean Cleanup. A pretty small sum, you may say, and I agree. A drop in the ocean. But as that guy said, the ocean is made of drops, isn’t it?
I’ll keep you posted about the results. Meanwhile, if you feel like, spread the word.
While with my brother we were on the hunt for the field mice that have taken residence in the darker corners of our house, and while we were trying to ascertain if it is a hedgehog or something larger that has been raiding our trash bin, the local news informed us that the number of sheep and fallow deer attacked by wolves in our area is increasing.
Sometimes being short of money brings some interesting developments. Case in point: last week I broke my headphones. This is a minor tragedy because my 6 euro headphones with mic were indispensable for videoconferencing, and for everything else: I share the home library with my brother, and we have our PCs five feet from one another. It’s impossible to listen to some music while writing, or enjoy a movie after hours, without a pair of headphones.
Just like a good keyboard or a good screen, a good pair of headphones helps making long hours of work more comfortable. I mentioned already that I often work with a soundtrack for my stories. Add to that my online courses and the videos I use for research, and the fact that my next work-for-hire involves listening to a few hours of lecturing… breaking my headphones was a minor disaster, that delayed my schedule for the whole weekend.
On the 25th of April my country celebrates the Day of Liberation – also known as the Anniversary of the Liberation. On the 25th of April 1945, the CLN (National Liberation Committee, that represented the various partisan forces fighting in Italy) officially proclaimed the insurgency in a radio announcement. On the following day my hometown of Turin was liberated from Nazi occupying forces and their Fascist supporters.
It’s a pretty straightforward thing: there was a fascist regime that had got us involved in a disastrous war and had actively deported our own fellow citizens for extermination. Our grandfathers kicked them out, and their Nazi allies. Today we celebrate.
History is never so straightforward, of course, and it would be naive (or dishonest) to think it otherwise – but today we celebrate. We have another 364 days to discuss, study, explore, dissect the events. But today we celebrate.
Incidentally, my grandfather – my mother’s father – was one of the guys that contributed to liberating the city of Turin on that 26th of April 1945.
Less than half an hour ago, a contact on Facebook told me these celebrations should be banned, because they are basically Communist propaganda. Which simply means this day of celebration is sorely needed.
Karavansara 