Genzano it story

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Thursday, November 19, 2015

The fountain spiritual dream

WELCOME TO FRANK MENCHISE BLOG OF GENZANO DI LUCANIA, YOU ARE INVITED TO BROWSE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE.
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Welcome to our blog, Genzano it story
and this post, the fountain spiritual dream
-

The fountain spiritual dream

This is the fountain Cavallina, it has seven spouts if I remember right; the spout that I am talking about in my dream, is the first spout on the right

The fountain spiritual dream

Dear readers, what we have written about in our last post called, persona twilight story, was something that really happened to me and my friends, but what we are going to tell you next is only a dream that I have dreamed, but we could say that this dream that we are going to tell you may belong also to the twilight or spiritual zone, just like the story above about chasing the white rabbit belongs to the twilight zone.

So, let me tell you my dream, because what I dreamed about is very strange and perhaps interesting, if we observe the dream and the people in it; you see I was dreaming about an old person who wanted to teach me something at my native town fountain called Cavallina, which is the same fountain that we have talked about in our previous post. I know that now you are saying that this is a stupid reason just to tell you a dream and dreams are only dreams and they cannot be classified as being real, but before you judge me and my dream just read what I have to say, because it could be interesting especially if you believe that dreams sometimes have some useful meanings, or they can come from the afterlife world.

To understand this dream better I need to explain that this old person might have been the spirit my great, great, great grandma who lived not far from this fountain, and who had used this fountain during all her life, perhaps she had lived through one of this contagious disease that require washing everything properly to avoid contamination and this is what she wanted to teach me.

When I dreamed this dream I was in Australia in my late forties, but in my dream I was only a boy about ten or eleven years old, (I suppose that this difference in age in the dream wanted to show me that the old lady was a very ancient spirit compared to me), so, this very old lady was standing beside me at this fountain Cavallina, strange as it may seem I had taken some dishes and other eating utensil from the old house where my grandma lived to wash at the fountain; the old lady was telling me to wash everything under the first spout of the fountain and keep everything in the first bay very near this first spout, so that they would not be contaminated, and so I did; but as you know dreams sometime are very strange and suddenly I found that some of my dishes were in the second bay of the fountain, so I started to worry about it, but the old lady said to me not to worry about it, I was protesting to her saying that you said that the other bays are contaminated, and she said don’t worry just for this time and you will soon know why, when you wake up.

Then after the dream ended, I woke up and realised that it was only a dream, so I understood why the old lady had said do not worry about the dishes in the second bay of the fountain for this time, it was because it was only a dream and the dishes even though had been contaminated in my dream, I was not going to use them anyhow, just because they were only in my dreams, and they were thousands of miles away, in another era and in another place. I believe that the old lady was one of my forebear who popped up in my dreams to teach me a lesson about food contamination or something like that, and she did.

Well, today you might say that we all know that to avoid contamination you have to keep everything clean and that is true; we can also use some disinfectant that would kill all germs, so there is not much to learn from this dream. But you see, the old lady did this in a dream using the level of general knowledge when she was alive, which most likely was a lot lower than today standard. Anyhow that is what I dreamed and I think it is pretty cool, if we believe in these sorts of things. And now let us see what else I could tell you about my personal dreams or twilight stories.

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Strange things happen

What we have already told you are a couple of our twilight stories or dreams, I suppose that during our life we have all seen and heard many things that now we could tell the others, it is our life experiences that we like to tell. So I would like to write another story or two here, as you may know some other life stories we have already written in hub pages, therefore here under we are posting some links, so that you could read them if you like, but at the same time let me tell you another story straight away that is very similar to the stories above and could be said to be another twilight or spiritual story.

In order to understand this story it is necessary that first I describe the place where it has happened and the reasons why it has happened there and then tell you what happened.

This near spiritual or twilight story happened to me when I was a teenager I think that I could have been 17 years old in our family farm. Our family farm buildings consisted of two large rustic rooms plus other small buildings beside them, one of these buildings was used to store all the farm carts and machinery and the other was our main building that we used for the farm animals and ourselves. Now before I continue I need to say that our farm was wall to wall with other farmers next door, so I was not completely alone in the middle of nowhere, but at the same time I was alone. The reason I have said that is to explain that while I was left alone in charge of all the animals in our building at night so young, it was possible because our farm was besides this other farm building where other people were also sleeping at night, so it was safe enough from robbers and other things, as we could always call on each other, if help was really needed.

The main and larger building consisted of a rustic building about 12 meters long and 8 meters wide or there about; two third of this building was used for the large farm animals, like horses, mules, donkeys and cows who were tied to a manager at night, the other third of this building was used for ourselves, here we stored some oats and other valuable produce that we would use day to day to feed the animals and the rest of this space was for us humans, where we could cook our meals and sleep at night while we were attending the farm animals. Now before I move to tell you that part of story that we could call the spiritual or twilight story, I need to say that in this building there was also two pair of domestic pigeons that nested there and they would fly around the building during the day, at night they would stay in their nest or perched on some place in the building.

Now that we have explained that let us tell you what happen one night, this was the night when my grandpa died and this farm house was his farm house and it had been their family farm for generations, so the old man was very attached to his farm; anyhow I was alone and sleeping in the farm the nigh he died and while I was sleeping I could somehow feel that something was flying around the farm house, whatever it was it was going and stopping for a few seconds here and there as if it wanted to inspect the place, once it had done that it flew out of the small open window at the back of the farm building, and that was that.

Next day the news came that my grandpa had passed away that night, and that I had to go to town to attend his funeral. One may say that this is a strange story and perhaps I was only dreaming that night about this thing that went around all the farm building, but one should also consider that if souls really exist then my grandpa soul came to say goodbye to his earthly possessions and to me his grandchild.

That is all for the time being, but I know that I can add here another spiritual twilight story, but this story is going to be very difficult to tell, so has got to be another time, when I review these articles and posts.

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Since we have been talking in our last two hubs about the town of Genzano di Lucania, which is indeed the town that I have come from originally, when I came to Australia. I have been thinking that perhaps it would be the right thing to do; if in our next post we will be talking about a terrible happening that has happened recently. See you soon.

----------------------------------------------------
Genzano it story
The fountain spiritual dream
IS GOING TO BE CONTINUED;
Next time with, some terrible happenings
------------------------------

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Where is Genzano di Lucania in Basilicata, Italy located?

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Tuesday, November 10, 2015

The fountain Cavallina twilight story

WELCOME TO FRANK MENCHISE BLOG OF GENZANO DI LUCANIA, YOU ARE INVITED TO BROWSE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE.
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Welcome to our blog, Genzano it story
and this post, the fountain Cavallina twilight story
-
Cavallina fountain twilight story
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This is the fountain Cavallina in Genzano di Lucania as seen from above. There are a lot of stories about this fountain. In the beginning of Genzano history this might have been a fountain and an amphitheatre as well during the Roman times. Because the fountain water supply is collected nearby, there are reasons to believe that a sort of fountain has been there since the very beginning of the existence of Genzano.

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The white rabbit, it was a white rabbit like this one that we were chasing that night. Anyhow there are many stories about the white rabbit being a ghost not only in Genzano but all around the world. So that night we might have been chasing a ghost instead of a rabbit.

Fountain Cavallina twilight story

Welcome to our post of, personal twilight zone stories, this is going to be just another one of my own life stories that I am telling our readers, which together with some other life stories that we are writing in blogger form my entire personal life story, of course to these stories we are adding our personal activities during my life like building and bricklaying.

Anyhow let us start now, with our twilight zone story.

Believe it or not, this is what has happened to me and some of my friends, one night at an ancient fountain of my native town of Genzano the Lucania. Anyhow this might not be the best story to tell, but it is one of the true stories of my life, and I cannot change it, because if I do then I would not be telling the real story of my life.

So let me tell you this story that I call, Cavallina fountain twilight story;

As we all know, wherever you go in the world where there are ancient buildings or just places with a history of their own, and in Genzano di Lucania there are some old places too with a history of their own. With these old places old folks always seem to come up with ghostly stories of this place or that place being haunted, because some strange things seem to happen. So, my native town of Genzano has also these ghostly stories, because old people say that these things exist and have happened to some of them. So let us see if there are reasons to believe them, therefore, let me tell you a story that has happened to me and to some my friends and other things that seem strange enough to believe that these things really exist, here under is my story and what really happened that night and why.

Now, before I start telling you this story, we need to say that my mother grandma and other elders of the town of Genzano kept telling us not to go alone to this town fountain called Cavallina when it was dark, but as we all know young people sometimes do not believe their elders and want to find out if what they say is true, and so did I and some of my friends one night.

But before I tell you my twilight story at this fountain, let me tell you why I would like to do that, dear readers in our last few posts we have been talking about the town where I came from and its ancient fountain called Cavallina. You see, because I was talking about Genzano town and this fountain I have remembered a particular ghostly event and also a dream that I had about this fountain and other creepy happenings and ghostly stories about this fountain; so, I would like to tell you some stories that I personally was involved about this fountain, not only at the time when I was young but also later on in my life. So I hope you would like to hear them, I am also going to add some other personal view about ghostly personal events, but let us start with this fountain twilight zone.

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The fountain twilight zone

As we have said above, when I was young my mother, my grandma and other elders of the town kept telling us not to go alone to this fountain Cavallina when it was dark, because some people had seen ghostly sights; but if you had to go there not to go alone and go as early as possible after dusk, so even when we were coming back from the fields from that side of town, and we had to go past this fountain we had to be careful as soon as it was dark, if you had to water your horse or donkey or whatever animals you had to water, we tried to water them during the day or early before dusk. We have to say that there were also some other unspeakable activities that went on near this fountain before dusk, but about these activities of dumping human excrement in the old sewer system we are going to tell you later on in another article, because now we are talking about ghostly things at this fountain at night.

To cut a long story short we are going to tell you what happened to me and some of my friends. As you all know young men in their later teen are not easily scared and they start thinking that these ghostly stories are not true at all, so, we wanted to see it ourselves, therefore I and a few friends of mine were going to pay a visit to this fountain Cavallina at night; so, one late evening we went to see this fountain Cavallina and from above as we approached the fountain there was nobody to be seen, so, we said to each other, you see there is nobody here and there are no ghosts around, we really thought that we were going to see something unusual at this fountain, so we were disappointed saying to each other there are no ghosts to be seen.

So we kept going to the fountain when we saw a white rabbit in a corner and soon we gave chase as we wanted to grab this rabbit, not just for fun, but because we wanted to eat the rabbit as meat was expensive those days. There were four of us giving chase to this white rabbit, but the rabbit kept escaping us, but we kept running after it and the rabbit was taking us very close to a ravine which had a drop of over ten meter and any one that would fall down there would instantly end up dead.

Anyhow suddenly one of us said; what rabbit that is not a rabbit? Suddenly we realised that we were not chasing a rabbit at all, but we were chasing a ghost or an evil spirit that was trying to take us over the ravine to kill us if we had followed the rabbit. So, whoever of us suddenly realized that we might be running after a ghost and not a rabbit saved us from a disaster that could have happened.

You see, it is said that ghost or evil spirits that try to deceive you lose their full power when people realise that they are a supernatural apparition, so, in this case we were lucky when we realised that what we were chasing was not a rabbit at all, it was an evil spirit; well at least this is what we were made to believe then from the elders, when we told them our story.

What we have written above was a real life happening, but what I am going to tell you next is only a dream, but you can say that this dream that we are going to tell you belongs also to the twilight zone, just like my life story about chasing the white rabbit belongs to the twilight zone.

Anyhow I believe that this post is becoming too long, so I am going to tell you about my dream in our next post, the fountain twilight dream. See you soon.

--------------------------------------
Genzano it story
The fountain Cavallina twilight story
IS GOING TO BE CONTINUED;
Next time with, the fountain spiritual dream
------------------------------

Some other useful links

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Some of our hub links

Travel Videos - Fountain cavallina, Genzano, Italy - The Compulsive ...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsPrg1ucmsQ

Where is Genzano di Lucania in Basilicata, Italy located?

Most interesting photos from Genzano di Lucania, Basilicata, Italy

Friday, October 30, 2015

Old town of Southern Italy

WELCOME TO FRANK MENCHISE BLOG OF GENZANO DI LUCANIA, YOU ARE INVITED TO BROWSE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE.
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Welcome to our blog, Genzano it story
and this post, Old towns of Southern Italy
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Old towns of southern Italy

This photo shows the oldest part of Genzano town, it is situated on top of a hill between two chasms. This is a typical way of how the old towns were built in the past, it was done for safety reasons, so that the citizens could defend themselves from aggressions.
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Old towns of southern Italy

Dear readers, this is the continuation of our last post, the town I came from. So now, let us go back to our discussions about the towns of Southern Italy; in fact let us go back one more step in time; to those ancient times when some people of this region used to live in the caves, not only in Genzano the town I come from, but also in other towns of this region, as we are going to see in the following explanation

In the old continent of Europe as well as in Southern Italy, lots of medieval towns were built on a rugged hill, or something similar for reason of safety, as we all know that in ancient times and in the Middle Ages towns had to be built in such positions, in order to make it hard for the enemy to get into town, and easy for the inhabitants to defend the town from aggressions. Today some of these towns are a sight to see like this photo that I have come across on the Internet. This here under is one of the scenic towns of southern Italy; it is in the same region of Genzano and similar in the ways that the towns were built in the middle-age.

Very old town Matera

This part of the old town of Matera is one of the extreme ways of how the towns were built then. What we are seeing here in the town of Matera is an old castle, today I believe it is called palazzo, Lanfranchi, as you can see, it is a very old strange place.

This is a very old church in Matera town, the church is called, Saint Peter cavoso, as the name suggests part of it has been dug out inside the rocks, or sassi as they are called over there, but there are a lot more dug outs in Matera and this is all explained, if you read our text.

-----------------------Here under is a report that I found on the internet; And here I quote;

It seems as though everyone in this region moved into caves, which came to be known as i sassi (stones). You would think Sasso Caveoso and Sasso Barisano (which begin at Piazza V. Veneto) were just typical Italian hilltowns until you realize the "houses" are all windowless grottoes with damp walls and earthen floors, where the family's animals slept side-by-side with the humans.

Far from being uncivilized, these rock towns had intricate hydraulic systems that kept water fresh and cool year round. Eventually the caves gained façades and roofs, but the interiors remained virtually unchanged. Nearly 15,000 people were still living in them in 1952, when the government finally declared them unhealthy and outlawed their use. There are several places where you can visit a typically furnished sasso: the most indicative is probably the one at Vico Solitario 12, in Sasso Caveoso.

End Of quote:

Dear readers, we have taken the liberty of showing you another place in southern Italy, so that in a way it shows you the way that some of the people of this region used to live for a very long time, the reason for doing this is to show you that Genzano the town I have come from has a similar story, but the inhabitant of the caves left the caves a long time ago to live in the town. So let us go back to talk about Genzano again.

The old Genzano town

Here we need to say that the history of the existence of Genzano the town I come from is very ancient, as there is some evidence that the town of Genzano already existed when Christianity began in the Roman times. Some historian says that perhaps were the Romans that started Genzano town about the VI century BC when they had this ‘Pagus Gentianum settlement to control this part of their territory, there are other stories also. But in this story that we are talking about here is that very old and part of Genzano of the thirteenth century or there about that is built on a strip of land which is situated between two chasms, and these chasms are situated at the edge of a high plateau 588 meters above sea level; and the modern Genzano is a continuation of the ancient part of this town, which has kept steadily growing onto the high plateau itself up to the present days.

In the old continent of Europe as well as in Southern Italy, lots of medieval towns were built on a rugged hill for safety reasons, some of these people that went to live in these towns were people that used to live nearby, in all sorts of rugged accommodations, some of these rugged accommodation could have been caves where the terrain was right to have caves, so, some of them used to live in these caves, but they were not real cavemen, as they were just people who later on became the inhabitants of the towns. Also the town of Genzano has a similar story and a large part of its inhabitants came from these caves below the town itself. And here dear readers we would like to describe in general terms, if you don’t mind us telling you the ancient nature of these caves, the terrain where they stand, and perhaps take an educated guess why these caves were made there in the first place, who made them and why they have been made there.

In the beginning of current Era, because of the nature of the terrain of the high plateau which was sandy at one end, allowed the rainwater to erode the soil easily away, forming two chasms of considerable depth; which by memory I would consider them to be 30 meter plus in depth. So Genzano that part of the ancient town was built on the remains of the edge of an old high plateau, which the rainwater’s had slowly dug and taken away the soil downstream, leaving a high strip of land which was narrowing till the chasms met. And upon this triangular and narrow piece of high land, the inhabitant of Genzano began to build their own town.

But before they built or rebuilt their own town of Genzano, some of these people must have been living somewhere else, and they must have overgrown the place where they were living in, and this was part of the reason they started building their house in Genzano town. Now, the place that they could have been living in was in the caves in the chasm, which their forbears as the first and permanent inhabitants of this region had dug in the walls of the chasms.

The walls of the chasms being Tuffaceous and very compact, and sandy in nature with a few layers of sandstone at different levels, it had been possible for the first inhabitant to dig in the walls of the chasms and make a cave. And the caves although they are large they are reasonably safe from cave-ins; an average cave could be 6 or 7 meters wide, and 6 or 7 meters high at the entrance, and some twenty meters long becoming a bit smaller at the far end.

Now if you stop and think just for a moment, how hard it must have been to dig in the walls of the chasms in order to make caves, and then also to carry all the soil outside and away from the caves, even if they used to dump the soil at the bottom of the chasms, and then wait for a good torrential rain to take away the soil downstream, it would really be a mammoth of a job to dig those caves.

So here we can easily say and demonstrate that life is and always will be a struggle, as it was a struggle even then to dig those caves. And we believe that perhaps life then was much harder than nowadays. Because to hand excavate those caves must have been hard work indeed, and it must have taken them ages and millions of men’s hours, as there are lots of caves in the chasms, in fact it could be that there are one hundred caves in Genzano territory. Now because all this happened a very long time ago, nobody these days seems to know who they were the first inhabitant of the caves in the chasms, or where they came from, and how many of these caves they made in the beginning.

Who could they be

Who could they be?

The first inhabitant of this region might have been just a group of shepherds grazing their herds, and having found a sort of shelter in the chasm, from the cold winds or rain in winter times, they stopped there and tried to improve this natural shelter; so they started to dig these caves for themselves and for their flocks. Or they could have been people that were fleeing away from their enemies, and having found a sort of shelter in the shape of the chasms, they stopped there and made it their home. Really they could be both, and perhaps even more different groups of people.

Today one of the chasms is still called the Greek chasm from the elders of Genzano, and this means that at least sometime in the past people from Greece have lived there, or owned one of the chasms since they were living there. About the Greek people there is still another story, which is somehow different in nature from what we are trying to say at this moment, so we will have to come back to it later on, when we are ready to tell you the story of the Greek chasm and the Madonna story.

Genzano Greek chasm and Madonna story

But now we would like to tell you, about when the inhabitant of the caves build their own houses on this strip of land at the top of the chasms; which later on would become the town of Genzano, and which was named very likely after one of their leaders, or perhaps it is indeed an ancient name, as there is a legend about two lovers (Yens and San, since even today in the local dialect this name of Genzano is pronounced Yensan) or was it this Roman name of Pagus Gentianum that slowly changed to Genzano, we can only guess, therefore the name of the town and the time when Genzano came into existence as a town for the first time nobody knows but in another hub that we are going to call, Genzano di Lucania history, we are going to describe what we believe happened. So, see you there.

Anyhow whatever we can say about our own native town, whether we like it or not when somebody asks me, Where you come from? I will say, Genzano is the town I came from.

That is all for this post; See you soon.

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Genzano it story
old towns of Southen Italy
IS GOING TO BE CONTINUED;
Next time with, Genzano is the town I came from
------------------------------

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