Il Secolo Fragile di Robert Kaplan

 

Ogni libro di Kaplan è un tour de force. Tanti sono gli argomenti che ha enumerato in questo libro di manco duecento pagine pubblicato da Marsilio: Il Secolo Fragile

. 

Partiamo da un presupposto: se i moti per la libertà del 1848 avessero avuto successo, non ci sarebbe stata la prima guerra mondiale e manco Hitler. Vi pare poco?

La storia in effetti è una serie di concatenazioni logiche, dopotutto, che ci fanno essere dove siamo al momento. 
Che tipo di mondo è il nostro? Claustrofobico, contratto. Non ce ne rendiamo conto ma siamo imprigionati da testate missilistiche in tutto il mondo. In più, questo, è un secolo fragile, iperconnesso ma non per questo migliore dei tempi passati, anzi! Quandos coppia un conflitto ha un potere deflagrante molto maggiore che non in passato. Kaplan ipotizza addirittura che se scoppiasse una guerra in Asia, probabilmente le ripercussioni d'ogni ordine e grade sarebbero vissute a livello planetario con un forte shock.

Qual'è il maggior problema con cui il mondo dovrà confrontarsi anche nel XXI secolo? La Russia senz'altro. Quello che è infatti successo nel 1917 ha fatto sprofondare un Paese in un isolazionismo che è perdurato per più di 80 anni. Il crollo del comunismo in realtà non ha risolto tutti i problemi, anzi! ed ha creato un clima per cui ci ritroviamo una guerra in casa si può dire.

Come sarà poi, la Russia del domani? Kaplan non vede democrazia nemmeno quando Putin, non ci sarà più. Intanto dovrà restare al potere finché campa. Forse, anzi, ipotizza Kaplan, potrebbe esserci una maggior instabilità dopo la sua morte. 
Il paragone che fa è con la Cina, che, viceversa a poco a poco sta sottraendo forza alla Russia. È lei il vero gigante con cui la Russia dovrà confrontarsi. 
In Cina c'è una successione molto snella, cosa che viene a mancare in Russia, dove possono esserci vuoti di potere che sarebbe meglio evitare, visto il peso che questo Paese ha nel mondo.

In realtà una volta crollato l'ordine creato dopo la seconda guerra mondiale,  non è stato possibile ricostruirne un altro così solido da poter permettere di mantenere un mondo stabile e sereno. La globalizzazione, semmai, ha portato ulteriore caos.

La NATO è arrivata a possedere tanti Paesi dell'ex sfera comunista. Questo non aiuterà l'Europa per come l'abbiamo all'inizio pensata e voluta, e forse scrive Kaplan, in un futuro non molto lontano potremmo ritrovarci con Ucraina e Paesi dell'area balcanica sempre sull'attenti e timorosi di attacchi russi, così come i Paesi del Nord Europa.
Non è un mondo che appare troppo rassicurante, vero?

I greci, scrive Kaplan detestavano la parola caos. Sapevano che ciclicamente il caos sarebbe tornato ma dovevano scansarlo il più possibile. Sapevano che la calma, la disciplina, la solidità erano le sole armi per fronteggiare situazioni estreme. 

Scivoliamo nel secolo scorso.
Repubblica di Weimar: da un punto di vista artistico tanto ha dato. Quando l'esperimento fallì, il Paese cadde nel caos e venne affidato a Hitler che ne divenne cancelliere nel 1933.Dopo appena pochi mesi, ogni traccia di democrazia era scomparsa. 

Il mondo, adesso, sta vivendo una nuova Weimar. Crollate quasi tutte le monarchie, che erano una grande rassicurazione perché rappresentavano la stabilità, il mondo, in particolare dopo la seconda guerra mondiale, e in America, dopo la morte di Kennedy non è più tornato quello di una volta. Negli USA in particolare la fiducia che c'era per la politica è andata via via scemando sino ad arrivare ai giorni nostri, a persone che decidono di giustiziare sconosciuti, fare stragi. Viviamo in una situazione abbastanza anarchica, afferma Kaplan senza mezzi termini. Il liberalismo ha portato tante libertà, ma questa è solo una pallida impressione perché in realtà, le prigioni e il soffocamento che ha creato questa società è a multi-livello.  Se pretendiamo di creare il mondo perfetto per le persone, dandogli una serie di norme da seguire,  tante ed oppressive, non dovrebbe poi essere così difficile capire che i cittadini possano alla fine sclerare e di fatto, passare alle maniere brute. 
Purtroppo i social media non aiutano, ma anzi! peggiorano di molto la situazione fomentando odi, costruendo personaggi capaci di attrarre masse ignare che cominciano poi a seguirli con conseguente lavaggio del cervello. Cosa che, scrive Kaplan, capita anche a persone erudite. La cosa coinvolge tutti. Grazie agli algoritmi le società di social media sanno quel che piace agli utenti così da incollarli agli schermi.

Una società appiattita la nostra e il mondo iper-connesso ci permette di essere sempre «sul pezzo». A tal proposito, appare più che chiaro che non corra buon sangue tra Kaplan e quelli del New York Times. Questo infatti, è il quotidiano più letto nel mondo, ma anche quello in grado di influenzare da una parte o dall'altra, molteplici menti.

Kaplan punta il dito sull'omologazione di pensiero che è trasversale ed attraversa anche la nostra profesisone con ripercussioni sulla qualità degli articoli prodotti laddove sia richiesta omologazione di pensiero.

Tra un secolo o due potremmo arrivare ad essere 11 miliardi sulla Terra. L'Africa vedrà una crescita tremenda durante questo secolo. Però, sebbene questo possa confortare, c'è da rimarcare che la maggior parte di queste persone nasceranno in luoghi estremamente poveri.

Le città la faranno ancora da leoni e sarà soprattutto in questi grandi agglomerati urbani, dove si svilupperanno pensieri più o meno pericolosi o sensati. L'impatto delle società più rurali resta minore eccezion fatta per il lavoro svolto da Solzenicyn che, rintanatosi in un luogo speduto del Vermont, produsse i libri che conosciamo oggi. 

Come vede il futuro Kaplan? Non ottimisticamente Pensa che l'Occidente si spegnerà, il pensiero occidentale possa spegnersi.

L'intelligenza artificiale resta un grande problema. Il nostro è un secolo di sfide: rimarcare che siamo uomini pensanti, e che tali vogliamo restare, dovrebbe essere una priorità per tutti. Certamente altro caos potrebbe derivare dall'utilizzo di computer, robot e tecnologie informatiche. Questo potrebbe mettere in subbuglio il lavoro di tanti, scatenando agitazioni. 

Moltissimi citazioni e storie di autori e pensatori che hanno fatto e stanno facendo la storia con le loro visionarie aspettative sul mondo e le previsioni, ahimè, tante volte azzeccate. 
Da leggere assolutamente! Meraviglioso! Di ampissimo respiro. 

Anna Maria Polidori 

Postcards The Rise and Fall of the World’s First Social Network by Lydia Pyne

 Postcards

The Rise and Fall of the World’s First Social Network by Lydia Pyne that will be released this next Nov 21 is an immersion in a popular, culturally colored world and in the most undiscreet first social media, as underlined by the author, of our modern times: postcards, ladies and gentlemen. 

No sure you, I am a postcards addicted and collector! Not anymore as in the past because in our country shipping costs are prohibitives, but I do sure am a member of Postcrossing and I have friends, as Maria, from Moscow, that when sends me postcards from the places she visits (she travels a lot, lucky girl) enchants me with her observations of places, cities, restaurants and views. 

Why do we send postcards? We send them mainly because we are affectionated to the sender, and we want to transmit something of special: our joy, sharing observations, some facts of the places where we are in; someone can just write a succint: 

Ciao from Venice! Love... 

No sure you, I do that all the times! being also a postcards's collector  I request the postcard to my friend tourist.

You musn't never think that the final message of a postcard is what written on the back. The cover, its "face" is extremely important, like also stamps, because messages that postcards vehicolate are the most diversified ones and thanks to stamps you also learn the cultural touch of a different country. Being creativity the motion engine of postcards, most of them will be so beauty that  we will add them all in special places of our home, for being showed by everyone, remaining in our memories forever.

A postcard is also important because as it does the Postcrossing for example, you can start to learn every little or big place in the world and it is a powerful method this one: the creation of a lot of connections in the most diversified places in the world.

The first two decades of the XX century people sent something like 200 billion of postcards.

Postcards became famous and largely used just before the First World War.

The physicality of the postcard is immediate, and mostly joyous.

What can you find in a postcard? An universe that must just be discovered!

I can tell you I received maps of several states of the USA; but also monuments, seascapes, landscapes, cartoons and much more.

The most beloved ones remains the ones of the Holidays!

There are countries like Iceland where sending postcards for Christmas means a real big big work for the post offices.

We speak of postcards sometimes leaving apart the work that there is behind every postcard sent. Rapidity of the post offices are indispensibles for a good connection.

The author writes: "Postcards have been printed, sold, mailed, and received on a scale that makes them, historically, the largest class of artifacts that humankind has ever exchanged."

Postcards are collected as I wrote before, and Lydia tells the example of his grand-father. He collected hundreds and hundreds of postcard since the beginning of the XX century to the 1920, the so-called Golden Age of Postcards.

Reading the postcards of someone, sent to someone else is like to enter in the existence of that two unkown people. You don't know them but you try to understand, where possible, their existences.

Lydia, for studying better the topic, asked to her family members of sending her the postcards received and she will accompany her observations in the book using them.

A billion postcards passed through Germany in 1903. Personally I can tell you that Germany, has kept stamps pretty cheap: Germany is one of the most important members of the Postcrossing where not the strongest partner; another way for keeping a business going on with success.

When the biggest crisis affected postcards? Again the guilty is the internet, with the advent of electronic postcards (that, anyway expires after a while) because people saved a lot of money.

The United States Post Office was in crisis in 1909 but, surprise! had a surplus of a great amount of money thanks to postcards: it is, after all, what it is doing Germany at the moment with the possibility for every person of cultivating a good hobby, remembering people also thanks to this method; vice-versa Italy is doing all the opposite; it is seriously too expensive sending many postcards from our country.

Postcards were also a powerful vehicles for sending to beloved ones other items with them. Some people for example shared also journals, with news, items, postcards and facts; these journals were sent to all the family members that lived in different States of the USA and each of them added news, postcards, pressed flowers, stickers for being seen by the other participants.

The Washington Post in an article by Frederic Haskin wrote in 1910  that "The post card business is very profitable to the Post Office."

An impressive portrait is the one of rural areas, seen as abandoned places without any right and neglected by post offices: situation changed when government understood the importance of giving coverage also at these places and so postcards became, also in these parts of the USA, where streets and roads were less excessibles, something romantic, painting a society suggestive and plenty of good values. 

In 1874 thanks to the Treaty of Bern several countries decided the legislation for sending postcards in other countries.

In the while in six decades Curt Teich & Co. produced a billion of postcards! The production in mass of postcards began!

Curt Otto Teich arrived from Europe and his family was involved in printing. It was simple to start also the production of postcards, because, natural, it was a new business.

There was also who created propaganda in the most different ways using postcards.

George Eastman, Kodak, created picture postcards. Which was the difference? In this case there is more reality, and the picture is taken for vehicoling a precise message.

The movement of suffragists used  picture postcards for spreading the message of their cause.

Picture postcards could be personalized by the sender, because they captured a moment of interest in his existence.

Postcards served also tourism, of course. In 1990 the Klein Postcard Service of Boston decided to publish a series of postcards as a protagonist their beloved and yummy! delicious lobsters. This, for intending that everyone in Boston was at home.

The Grand Tour of the last century was reason for sending postcards, letters apart and during the past century people started to travel abroad more massively than not in other periods.

An important chapter will involve the places disappeared with the time because of political reasons mainly.

The final chapter is about the...life of a postcard when received.

Postcards remains a big instrument of communication for discovering new places, people, customs, traditions of distant and unknown land.

If you love postcards, if you collect them, if you treasure them, if you, simply love to send or receive them, this book is for you!

Highly recommended.

I thank Reaktion for the copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori

 

The Covid-19 Catastrophe What's Gone Wrong and How to Stop it Happening Again Second Edition Expanded and Updated by Richard Horton

 The Covid-19 

Catastrophe What's Gone Wrong and How to Stop it Happening Again Second Edition Expanded and Updated by Richard Horton is the best book on Covid that you can find around. Written by the editor of Lancet, with competence but also with highly fruibility, this reading will reach every citizen of this world and every reader. You won't find too many specialistic terms that will frustrate you; the narration is absolutely captivating, let me use this term.

When on january 2020 the news of a severe weird, uncommon unresponsive to the common therapies, pneumonia interested in that first dramatic outbreak the city of Wuhan, in the province of Hubei, China, I immediately understood that this one would have been our pandemic. I couldn't believe that it would have stayed isolated in China or other close asian countries. 

The echo of Spanish Flu, the echoes of past pestilences became strong also if we hadn't directly lived them. 

A city with 11-12 million, didn't leave chance for a different scenario.

My readings on this topic were pretty fresh: months before the outbreak of Wuhan I read the book by Laura Spinney: Pale Rider. The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World and just ten days before the discovery of the chinese outbreak I posted my review on Viral Modernism by Elizabeth Outka. 

I recognized the danger and till then I tried to communicate the importance of knowledge, sharing good informations for staying vigilant, and alert.

We can avoid this pestilence with proper behaviors and isolation. The price is big, but it would be better not catch this virus.

Said this, Horton opens the book with a consideration: we avoided a pandemic with the direct "cousin" of this horrible virus: Sars-Cov-1, SARS on 2002-2003. There were many deaths but the illness remained confined in certain countries of the world. It was a lesson well learned by China, this time quick in the response wth the international organisms.

Coronavirus are pretty known viruses because they are good friends with various mammals, man included, and in general they cause cold. The commistion of this virus with another animal created this "jump" of quality and the first mutation in something else: a pestilence.

First of all: COVID will remain? And: is it just a pandemic? A pandemic flu arrives, kill and then slowly disappears. The virus of the Spanish flu circulated till 1923, but killed 50-100 million of people during the first year of its existence. 

No: the COVID-19 is not a common pandemic writes Horton. 

Why this? 

From the book: 

"The reality is that two categories of disease are interacting together and within specific populations: infection with a coronavirus is causing particular harm among those who are older and those who are living with chronic disease, such as obesity, diabetes and hypertension. Worse, these interactions are clustering within particular social group according to patterns of inequality deeply embedded within our societes." 

Horton classifies COVID-19 a syndemic, or said differently: a syntehsis of epidemics. 

"A much more nuance approach is needed if we are to protect the health of our communities" writes Horton.

Reducing chronic illnesses is a first step for arresting the prepotent aggressivity of COVID in our society.

Every pandemic is similar or different to the other ones experienced in the past: in this sense Horton takes in consideration  the book by Daniel Defoe: A Journal of the Plague Year: it describes the behavior of the population: what happened in 2020 is similar: there was the initial enthusiasm of people confined at home; later this confinement was lived, when a second, third wave arrived with powerful intolerance; this lack of freedom meant and means the desire to return to the normality. 

Feelings that we are proving are normals. But this one is not a normal phase of our existence:  this one is an exceptional moment: I heard people saying that these ones are stolen years for youngs and adults.

No one is stealing years; they are just different years because of the exceptionality of the moment. It's important to understand this.

But...Which was the answer of the several countries and continents in the world when they firstly approached COVID-19?

China understood that this one was a powerful treat for the world and offered immediately all the possible knowledge for describing this terrible illness.

Our Western countries, Europe and America have completely failed the approach against COVID-19 not understanding the risk that every country would have potentially experienced in a few months.

In China scientists sequenced the virus's genome, and spread the news in the entire world: they immediately let know to WHO that there was a great problem in Wuhan and possibly for the world; WHO, later communicated to all the countries of the world this serious danger. It was necessary to stay alert because there was a serious problem in China but this problem could interest also the rest of the world. 

No one understood or took in serious consideration what WHO was saying. Maybe it was just necessary to call some  doctors in China, as suggests Horton for trying to understand what it was going on; but no one did it.

Time passed by. China adopted a severe lockdown, like many other Asian countries and most of them didn't lose a lot of citizens. 

New Zealand was incredibly lucky! as it was also during the Spanish Flu, when the second wave didn't invest the country because they closed every communication with the outside world.

Europe was seeing as a horror movie what was going on in China. 

UK with Boris Johnson lived tragic moments, because Johnson didn't believe at the arrival of a pandemic: he thought that it wasn't a risk for the population. He wanted to keep the country completely opened permitting the so-called herd immunity. Then he fell ill, understood the lesson and, too late, took all the possible measures for containing what it was more than a wave: the most tragic event experienced in recent decades by UK.

In Europe countries were not prepared by the arrival of a pandemic: there weren't sufficient intensive care unit beds for these special patients (they are infected and they can't stay with common patients, exactly like is infected a corpse of a man or woman dead because of COVID-19)  and what was noticed was also the absence of any kind of personal protection: 

Italy was the first country heavily touched by the first wave. A case, Mattia Maestri was discovered in february 20-21 in the little town of Codogno, Lombardia and three towns, more or less immediately ten, were closed: Lombardia became a red zone, entering in lockdown. But soon the dramatic discovery: the first dead of Sars-Cov-2, was in Vò Euganeo, Veneto. Adriano Trevisan was a man of 77 years  in love for bars and friends. To the hospital  for a pneumonia, he didn't answer well at any kind of treatment. After ten days, the test and the discovery of the positivity. The hospital was completely in shock: they knew what it would have meant...

The country was put in a general lockdown by our premier Giuseppe Conte at the beginning of march and stayed closed till at the beginning of may. It was clear in fact, that the virus didn't just enter with prepotence in Northern Italy, but that was circulating in the entire italian territory. 

Le Marche, a region in the center of Italy never too mentioned in this drama lost more than 1000 people in the only city of Pesaro during the first wave.

Spain and France followed the same example seen in the rest of Europe; other countries, the ones of North of Europe choose of not impose a lockdown; they just alerted, highly warming their populations that maybe it was better to staying at home, considering what was happening in the rest of the world. 

USA lived an hallucinated moment: Donald Trump was the President at that time and didn't believe at all at the arrival of a pestilence, so he strongly suggested to everyone of not wearing masks, not cleaning hands and not keeping social distancing; he also suggested to people of drinking, well, substances pretty dangerous. Some people following the President's advice, lost their existences.

Other ones, fanatics of Trumps, organized big luncheons with their entire families, falling sick; some of them died. Trump insisted all the rest of his presidency with this behavior. He was in contrast with Anthony Fauci, he rejected WHO, removing the USA from this important international organism with strong stress for the world as well. He catched the virus, but continued to play the role of the strong man. Most people at the White House fell sick because social distances not respected and most of that people did not wear masks! 

The new President Biden, air is changed! has vaccinated more than 100 million Americans. The USA are trying to stop, under many ways, this virus and its demoniac variants, but their losses are immense in terms of human beings dead because of COVID-19 and the only economy that it is going on well is the chinese one.

Bolzonaro the leader of Brazil is another populist. He doesn't believe at this virus, he hasn't adopted any kind of measure for stopping COVID and Brazil has been one of the countries more devastated by COVID-19.

The same situation has been lived in UK  with more than 130.000 dead, Italy with more than 102.000.

Why all these numbers? In countries where there are democracies, in countries where there is after all richness and possibility of good answers?

A study, apart political choices made, established that maybe our populations are more susceptible to infections than other parts of the world. 

Vaccines: they are indispensibles and 15 billion of doses will be necessary for covering the entire world and population.

Till at that moment, distant, in which all the world will be immunized, it will be indispensible wearing masks, keeping social distancing and cleaning hands wherever you go, whaterver you touch. We must remember that this first COVID, the one from Wuhan, China, changed with the time and not for better: there are aggressive variants, the British one, the Brazilian; they both responds well to the vaccine; then we have the Nigerian one, and many more variants; some of these ones can't be traced by common tests.

The story of the Biontech told by Horton the society that, in partnership with Pfizer created the first mRNA vaccine is beautiful; this  turkish couple developed anti-cancers viruses till at the advent of Covid.They decided of invest money in researchers for trying to find a good vaccine for the humanity. Four vaccines were developed, then they proceeded with the most secure one.

A little fragment, sequence of protein spike, an acid, the Mrna, is used in this vaccine for the creation of anti-bodies. 

When you see a coronavirus you notice that  kind of "crown." That ones are the keys, suckers! used by COVID for enter in our cells and damaging our body. 

Covid-19 is not an influenza and because our world is different, the impact of this pestilence hasn't been so dramatic as it was in 1918 with the Spanish one. That flu killed 100 million of people. 

There weren't medicines, there wasn't anything; no intensive care unites, not a possibility of a chance for the patients; just the luck of their immunitary system; not all the people touched heavily by the Spanish flu died; no antibiotics, no paracetamol; no one knew exactly what caused Spanish Flu. At first people thought that it could be a bacterium because viruses couldn't be seen.

With the time our world became a better place where to live in, speaking about medicine and of course vaccinations. Science has defeated important illnesses. I personally received when little the smallpox vaccine and I am ready when my turn of being vaccinated against this other pestilence! 

But...the impact of COVID-19 "will be profound and long lasting" writes Hornton.

These past decades after all have seen a lot of inequalities, loss of decent jobs, environmental destruction, and much more; democracies entered in crisis. People started to reject the common elite of politicians that were around preferring the populistic ones in grade to reach the heart of people. With the consequences that we have anyway seen in all that countries where there were or still are populistic leaders.

This world will be drastically different when this pandemic experience will be over. 

Not only: Horton writes: "There were preventible deaths. And as the second and third waves surged, lessons were not learned. The system failed. When the cycles of suppression and rebound have finally been broken by a vaccine, when life returns to some measure of normality, difficult questions will have to be asked and answered. Because we can't afford to fail again. We may not have a second chance."

Highly recommended.

I thank Polity and Wiley for the physical copy of Covid-19 Catastrophe.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Martin Sheen: tickets available at the Gubbio!

The Gubbio Project is ready for celebrating with  Martin Sheen the first 10 years of anniversary of the project this next march 27th at the  Kelly Cullen Community,  220 Golden Gate, SF

6:15 PM Hors d'oeuvres & Wine  7 PM Program

Tickets for the meeting with actor Martin Sheen for another speaking events are ready at the cost of 100 dollars each. Discounts on group purchases.  

Martin Sheen will team up with the Gubbio Project co-founder Shelly Roder (that we had interviewed in 2005) and Fr.Louie Vitale will introduce Martin Sheen. 

Martin Sheen, Shelly Roder and Louie Vitale will focus on these topics: the "Sacred Sleep" in St Boniface Church for all the homeless living in the Tenderloin, the first anniversary of Pope Francis and the changes this Bishop of Rome is bringing to the world and of course Martin Sheen with the occasion will introduce to the people his latest movie: Trash.

Anna Maria Polidori

Actor Martin Sheen returns to Gubbio Project for the first 10th year Anniversary!

Martin Sheen and his special connection with the Gubbio Project

Match 27th: a special date for the Gubbio Project

It's with great excitment that the team and staff of the Gubbio Project, located in the church of Saint Boniface,  San Francisco, California, Usa, is announcing that, for the first 10th Anniversary Feast of The Gubbio Project, this next march 27th (inspired as maybe all of you will know to our city and the legend of Saint Francis and the wolf), actor and activist Martin Sheen will return for a speaking event. Ten years, such a time! that the "Scred Sleep" in St.Boniface church is active giving hope and rest, and some good quality time to all that people, the last of tis world, the homeless, abandoned from the rest of the society.

The staff wants to celebrate with all the population surrounding the area and so they add: "
"Please reserve the evening on your calendars for what will be a fantastic event featuring Mr. Sheen". There is such enthusiasm and details will be spreaded next days. Tickets are not yet available, but they will be very soon.

 We will keep you updated for sure!

Great Gubbio Project. Proud of you for sure! 

Anna Maria Polidori

..."My wedding-day when I invited all the homeless..."

Michelle Roder ex Gubbio Project's coordinator: "The Kingdom of God a great “wedding feast” where everyone is welcome and participates in the big meals and festivities of life.

Michelle Roder was the first Gubbio Project's coordinator, located in San Francisco, California, USA.
She started a new experience somewhere else now and when she worked for The Gubbio Project she was the lady we interviewed about this project.

The project was just started 

The first article appeared in the free press Gubbio7

and this one is a precious interview because you can recognize  the first steps of a great adventure continued with great success at the moment by Laura Slattery and all the other wonderful volunteers and people involved in helping the last ones of the world keeping them in good condition and donating to them dignity and some rest and peace during the night and the day.

You will find the interview I am sure very interesting.

Enjoy it!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Michelle can you tell me something more about you?


    I was born in Iowa, in a farming town called Remsen, the “little Luxembourg of Iowa” as our ancestors hailed from Luxembourg mostly. 

I was raised in a very Catholic family, where I had to write a report on a saint in order to get my birthday presents from my godfather!

 That started my fascination with the saints and the church and then my interest in studying theology in college.

 As I studied theology, I began to be inspired by “modern day saints”, people who have worked for justice and peace, like Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin (who started the Catholic Worker Movement here in the US), Martin Luther King, Jr. , Andre Trocme and the people of Le Chambon, France that resisted Nazi policies during WW II, etc, so I concentrated my theology studies on the study of justice and peace — mostly on Catholic Social teaching, which tells us to make an option for the poor — that Christians should follow Jesus by serving the poor and working for justice.




When did you start to work for the social? And why? And when did you discover the church of San Boniface?


My college degree required me to participate in “service learning”, which is where students go and volunteer doing some kind of social service work (tutoring, working in a soup kitchen, etc) and then reflect on the experience in the light of our faith teachings.

  I was lucky enough to do my service learning during a semester-long immersion trip to the Dominican Republic, where I worked in a community of people who live in a slum and work in the zona franca (free trade zone, essentially sweatshops).

 This changed my world view dramatically!  I went to that experience wanting to go on to graduate school so that eventually I could be a professor and teach at a university.

 I left there not knowing WHAT I wanted to do with my life, except that I knew I needed to work for the benefit of people who are poor in some way.

So, I started by volunteering at a community center, then worked with a volunteer program, and eventually started working at St. Boniface Neighborhood Center in San Francisco.

I had been a parishioner at St. Boniface before working for the Neighborhood Center. I started going to church there because I had friends that did and I loved the pastor — this peace activist priest who really lives the gospel, Louie Vitale.

He’s actually currently serving time in jail for having protested at a US military school called the School of the Americas in November.  He was really the force behind the programs that serve the homeless at St. Boniface in many ways...the Franciscans here have always been known for serving the poor of San Francisco, and in fact, they started the St. Anthony Foundation more than 50 years ago to respond to people being hungry — 50+ years later they still serve more than 2500 meals a day. 




When was exactly born the Gubbio Project and why was it called Gubbio ;-)?

Fr. Louie got some people together back in the winter of 2004 because as was tradition, the doors of St. Boniface Church were open during the day and what had happened was that the homeless of San Francisco who cannot find a safe place to sleep inside at night, and  who end up wandering around the streets so they won’t get hurt would go to St. Boniface and sleep in the pews because the doors were open to them and it was warm and quiet and safe inside.

Fr.Louie with a homeless 

 


But, as the numbers of people sleeping in the pews grew bigger, and the bathrooms in the back of church became rowdier, some folks at the church would complain to Fr. Louie that the homeless people were making the church too dangerous and that no one wanted to pray there anymore.

Well, Fr. Louie didn’t want to just close the doors to the people who needed the church for rest, and he didn’t want to just provide security personnel who might be harsh or punitive.

So he gathered some of us together to figure out what to do and we came up with the idea of providing staff in the church who could welcome all people — those coming to pray and those coming to sleep  - into the church and ensure everyone’s safety.  This staff would keep the place safe, reach out to people who needed help, and generally just keep the church open and welcoming for all.

We decided to call it the Gubbio Project  in honor of your town and the story about St. Francis and the wolf of Gubbio because that story was about peacemaking between a group of people who felt threatened by the wolf.  Francis knew that if the town people looked out for and fed the wolf, that he in turn would protect them instead of hurt them.

So, he brokered a deal and the wolf became a beloved  member of the community.  We wanted to do the same with the community of “prayers” and “sleepers”.  So, in the spirit of peacemaking, we started the project in April of 2004.  I actually stepped back from my administrative work at that time in order to staff the project and get it off the ground.


What kind of reality are you meeting? Who are the poors and the homelesses you meet everyday at the San Boniface? And what kind of assistance you give to them?


Well, in San Francisco, there are about 12-15,000 homeless people and only 2000 shelter beds where people without a home can sleep at night. 

So that leaves a great deal who are left outside on the street at night.

These are the people that come to sleep in our pews during the day.  Many are unemployed, or have disabilities that do not allow them to work.  Many have addictions to drugs and/or alcohol.

Many do not have good relationships with family and so they are left to deal with the problems they face on their own.

We try to become family and to become home for these people who do not have family or home.

This is the most important thing we do, I think.

By being as compassionate as possible (depending on the day, of course!) we really try to see the good in each person that comes to us, regardless of how dirty or smelly or grouchy they can be.

We try to get them to trust us, so that we then might work with them to help them get government benefits like welfare, shelter beds, or subsidized housing. 


 
Some of them are able to find a job and re-start a new life after the contact with you and the Franciscans?



Yes, some are.  It takes a lot for people to overcome the many challenges they face.

 Even if a person gets minimum wage at a job in SF, he or she would have to work roughly 75 hours a week just to afford the rent on an average studio apartment!

The housing prices are just so high and the wages people earn just don’t cut it. Some people do make it, but really it takes a lot of luck to get to the resources that exist and patience to deal with all the “red tape” one must get through in order to get the resources!

 
Can you describe us the reality of San Francisco that surely is quiet different from our reality?

 As far as I know, Gubbio Italy is a farming town, like the place where I grew up.

In small communities, people seem to look out for each other in a way that you just don’t find too much in bigger cities.

I think in smaller communities it’s easier for people to remember that we belong to each other — you know, it’s more obvious.

In bigger cities, it’s easy to think of everyone you see on the street as a stranger and forget that they are someone’s sister or brother, uncle or aunt, son or daughter. 

How many people work at the Gubbio project?


Well, it started out with just one person per day, working with the 40 or so people that came in to sleep.

Now we have 2-4 people working each day for the 100+ that come every day.  Michele Thorsen is a woman from Canada that has taken over coordinating the project, she’s a Buddhist and has BOUNDLESS compassion for our guests.

She oversees John Weeks, Luis Hernandez, Sandra Sanchez, Paul Fullilove, Angel Silva, and a whole array of volunteers.

Can I ask to you something about the homeless? What do they represent to you?

Well, in this season of Christmas, I’m reminded that Jesus was himself, born homeless in a manger.

During his life, too, it’s said that “the Son of Man had no where to lay his head”.

I guess I do my best to see God, to see Jesus, inside each person I encounter. And I have to say that I’ve had some amazing experiences seeing the poorest people I know give absolutely everything they own away in order to help someone in need.  That to me is God working in the world today. 


I myself have five brothers and one sister, so I am very practiced and relating to people like a sister — I’m not a nun, obviously since I’m married :) - but I like the way that religious people in the church are referred to as “brothers” and “sisters”.  I think that’s a very admirable way to try to live — being a brother or a sister to everyone you encounter.


What other projects the San Boniface's is involved in?


Well, St. Boniface Neighborhood Center also has a traditional night-time shelter for 80 men, this is where I started working when I came to St. Boniface.

SBNC also provides workshops in collaboration with Capacitar International (capacitar.org) to teach people holistic healing practices that can transform the effects of stress and trauma. 

SBNC also does some community building work — trying to get our neighborhood to become smaller so to speak by getting people together to celebrate and get to know each other.

St. Boniface Church has four different communities — a Vietnamese community, a Filipino Community, a Latino community and an “English-speaking” community.

St. Boniface has traditionally been a place for immigrants, as it was settled by the German immigrants of the late 19th century who were living in this neighborhood at the time.

There are various ministries to these different communities from St. Boniface Church, mostly that give people the opportunity to worship in ways that preserve their unique cultures.

We just celebrated Our Lady of Guadalupe with the Latino community, complete with Aztec dancing and mariachi bands.


I read in the article wrote by Judy Horan, the day of your wedding you had also invited all the homelesses of the Saint Boniface. This is beautiful.


Well my husband Joe is from Ohio but we met here in SF and he works at St. Boniface Church as the business manager.

So, anyway, it didn’t feel right to have our wedding anywhere else but at St. Boniface, because the people here have nurtured our relationship since the beginning.

Fr. Louie likes to preach about the kingdom of God as the great “wedding feast” where everyone is welcome and participates in the big meal and festivities.

Shelly Roder the day of her wedding with the homeless. Invited

 

We really liked this image, so we did our best to try to keep our wedding true to that spirit — mingling our families from small town Iowa and small city Ohio with people of different cultures and with people of the streets.

It was a really joyous event — we felt so blessed to have the support and love of ALL the people in our lives that have nurtured us to now, our families of birth and our family “of choice”.

Everyone should be so lucky to have a crowd like that (as diverse and fun) at their parties!  Maybe in the next life we’ll experience an even bigger version of that!

Shelly Roder in another moment of their wedding

Thank you very much Michelle! 

Anna Maria Polidori