4/13/24

Local photographer Joseph Di Lello invited me to come with him to photograph a local farmer.
Joseph’s daughter Alicia joined us with her camera; with three photographers, it became a minor media event.
Fernando Costantini is a multigenerational farmer, one of the few independents in the area who raise livestock. It used to be more common for people here to raise their own food, but the pressures of modern society and the expectations people have, rarely allow the time and labor required to live such a life.
As we drove back to town, we talked about contemporary society’s definition of “quality of life”, how it rarely includes the kind of landed presence that Fernando embodies. And how the powerful computers that we cary in our pockets ask so little of us. In his seventies, Fernando is vibrant and kind and full of stories. He is as alive and present as a person can be.
I think of my father whose stress filled life barely made the mid seventies; a double bypass at the age of fifty-three really slowed him down. He was from the same hearty stock, a lineage from Abruzzo, but his choices betrayed him.
It’s a daily struggle to live in the now, embrace what technology offers and embody a connected life. Each night that I sit in the Colledimezzo town square, with everyone laughing and telling stories, appreciating family and community, I wonder why it is that American
culture pressures us to constantly acquire. And why it was thought that the quality of life that this creates is a quality of life to be desired.