however... i love this country, and share deeply in its aspirations.

i actually wasn't disappointed, except by the one-way nature of the conversation, if what he says is true, and i am coming round to believing it may just be crazy enough to be so, given the italian realities.

here i am trying to keep the woods from invading the rest of the land, and he was telling me to stop heating with wood, it's dirty, noisy work harvesting and splitting it, and i could do as well with a heat pump and everything running off the sun.

part of me agrees with him, as chainsawing is my least favourite activity after dentists...

but i love heating my house and water with wood, that grows right here especially.

tight cycles...

it feels mostly odd, because i've been training myself to use as little electricity as possible, and here's this knowledgeable guy, telling me the opposite.

still waiting for the silent, vibration-free laser chainsaw to be invented!

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty