Yesterday, Saturday the 29th of June, a great lady died in Trieste, Italy.

I felt an enormous admiration for her and, as it always happens when a special person passes away, I have today the feeling that our little world is a somehow poorer.

She was called Margherita Hack and she was an astrophysicist who explained her research on the stars in plain language for the public and who championed civil rights in her native Italy.

She was 91 years old.

 Margherita Hack headed the observatory in Trieste, the first woman to hold that post, from 1964 to 1987, and was a popular and frequent commentator in media about discoveries in astronomy and physics.

An atheist who decried Vatican influence on Italian politicians, Hack helped fight a successful battle to legalize abortion in Italy. She unsuccessfully lobbied for the right to euthanasia and also championed gay rights. 

Hack, an optimist with a cheerful disposition, studied the heavens in the firm belief there was no after-life.

“I have no fear of death,” Hack once said in a TV interview. “While we are here, death isn’t with us.”

“When there is death, I won’t be here,” she said.

Among the many comments about her passing was one from an admirer who wrote that Hack was “so great and nice that God will pretend not to exist so as not to upset her,”

She liked to joke that the “first and last” time she was in a church was for her marriage to fellow native Florentine Aldo De Rosa, in 1944. She agreed to a church ceremony only because the groom’s parents were very religious. Hack dressed simply in life, including for her own wedding, when she wore an overcoat-turned-inside out for a bridal gown. She and her widower, 93, had no children.

Goodbye, Margherita, lady of stars !

I wonder if my choice to speak here on my own, in this practically hidden place, doesn’t make me similar to the classic character of the « fool of the village »,  you know what I mean, one of those children of a lesser god who are lost in their private dimension and roam about  mumbling something  all by themselves. I’m aware that nearly none arrives until this secret land and it would be a tragedy, if my main purpose were an ephemeral but blatant illusion of visibility. Fortunately it’s not the case. There are Twitter and Facebook to nourish this virtual illusion to be constantly connected with a crowd of strangers who are supposed to pay attention to us, in all the most banal displays of our daily activities. But for me it’s not the case. On the opposite I have started cherishing this secluded corner of the immense virtual space, where I have built up a nearly invisible stall. I tell myself that if someone might arrive until here by chance, then would be like  meeting an explorer looking for the source of Niles, who ,  by mistake, arrived to a domestic, even though unknown little stream. I offer what I have, without showing off.

I wrote a book.

A lot of people write books, the majority of them are less than average and also mine belongs to this group, I suppose. This is not the point. I didn’t write my book for any purpose. The purpose was my book itself. I had fun writing it, I practised my knowledge of English, I created my own characters and I let them suggest me what to do.

My book is set in Ireland and it’s a kind of detective story, with a certain attention for local characters and maybe it’s also a little entertaining.

Since I like real books, concrete books made of paper, I mean, I decided that my book deserved to have its own concreteness. So I got it printed. It’s easy and it’s not that expensive either.

Nowadays we can print whatever we like. A great percentage of amateur photographer prints their books of pictures and it’s a good idea, of course, to keeps one’s own visual memories or to offer a present to one’s elderly mum (mothers are probably the only people who really enjoy receiving an unrequested photographic book made by an amateur photographer, of course if the amateur photographer is their son or daughter.

There is nothing less than right in that, but things become a little funnier when the person who printed his/her own photographic book  personally  presents it proudly as “ printed work”, as if it was a recognition of quality and importance.

Let’s try to be serious, it’s not like that. It simply means that we printed something by ourselves and we paid for it, a personal satisfaction, maybe, but nothing which adds any specific value to what we have done.

I wrote my book, I didn’t put it on sale. I don’t know if it’s good, I think it’s average, but I did my best and I printed it for my own pleasure and for respect of the time I have dedicated to it. It doesn’t make a writer of me.

I offered on PBase a free copy of my book to the first people who would have asked me for that. Incredible but true some people accepted my proposal and asked me for the book and of course I‘ll send it to them as promised.

A few years ago, always on PBase, there was a gentleman, an amateur photographer, whom I have exchanged a few comments with.

Once he wrote me a message to ask me if I would have liked receiving one of his photography books…Oh what a naïve souls I was then. I thanked him for his kindness. I wondered why he wanted to offer me a gift, but I thought it was a kind attention.

The book arrived; well it was   a normal photographic book, not too huge either. The funny thing was that the guy had included a bill. He charged me something like 60 US$ for his unrequested book I had mistaken for a gift. I paid, of course, considering it a kind of tax on my naivety. Then it’s always right to pay for a good lesson!

I have learnt and I don’t want to repeat the same mistake. My book is not on sale and if anyone wants to have a copy, they have only to ask, when I have no copies anymore, I’ll let them know.

But I’m sure that the voluntaries will be in limited number, so all of them will see their request satisfied.