From North to South, from Lombardy to Sicily. From East to West, from Sardinia to Venice.
We got together yesterday at 6 pm and now today at noon. A national flash mob distributed across our balconies and at our windows up and down and across the peninsula. We sang songs and applauded the brave medical professionals of Italy. Church bells also rang, families beat pots and pans, others waved flags.
“It’s going to be all right,” is the attitude. ‘We will make it.’
Underneath we’re panicked and afraid. We’re not showing it though; we’re putting on a brave front. Brave fronts are contagious. (So are panicked ones.)
Listen to a Milanese musician play O Mia Bela Madunina on his trumpet yesterday–an ode to Milan’s golden Madonnina statue atop our cathedral.
The BBC reports on our Flash Mob and includes a clip of an opera singer in Turin treating her neighbors to an aria.
What front are you putting on?
Postcards from Italy---Natalia Sarkissian 
Amazing! Italians sing and play music from their balconiesr while Americans fight over toilet paper!
That happened here two/three weeks ago. We’re looking down the barrel of a gun and now toilet paper isn’t so important anymore. (Plus, it’s also back on the shelves–which helps.)
It’s a learning curve.
Saw videos a couple weeks back of the balcony music concerts in Italy and it was a huge mood-uplifter. There was (and still is) a lot of chaos in the world but it’s nice to have a glimmer of hope (even if it is in the context of a distraction) during these times.
You’re right! It was a mood uplifter. At the present time though, as this pandemic drags on, we need more than songs. Our vaccines are late in coming. The news states they’re being sold overseas to those paying more for what’s produced in our borders.\