Feb 11, 2002

Dear friends,

Here I am again! Sorry if we were absconding for a while but we had been engaged in many other activities. Firstly, we mounted the photograph exhibition I told you about in my last “newsletter”: Towards the encounter: Cercemaggiore between yesterday and tomorrow. It was very nice but unfortunately we had so much snow during Christmas time! I’ve never seen such amount of snow in my life in Cerce; in fact old people said it wasn’t snowing that much since they were young! Maybe someone in Greensburg remember how cold was here when they were young. But, snow aside, I would like to talk about the Greensburg project again



GREENSBURG PROJECT

We were forced to postpone our trip to US because of the Twin Tower attack first and later by our personal undertakings but now… it seems that things can go on! I know many of you will be happy to cooperate, please do it! We need you to make this project come true! It would be wonderful to involve the largest number of people possible. We would like to get in touch with the whole community of cercese people in Greensburg in order to create a real, not virtual, international community. Please help us to do it. This is the real aim of our project.

Who is coming:

We decided that three of us will travel to US: probably, me, Laura and Michelangelo.

What we are doing:

- Exhibition: We are preparing and enriching the exhibition in order to bring it to Greensburg: it would be nice if you could provide other photos for the Greensburg exhibition as we have very few from Greensburg. I am sure older people have photos at the docks, when they first landed in U.S, or marriages, ceremonies. It would great to have them in the exhibition.

- Cooking: we are preparing a recipe book (but I cannot promise that it will be published on the time due). We will bring over local products and we would like to make a cooking exhibition there. Possibly with the help of Rizzos who has already offered his support.

What we would need:

- Magazine : we mean to write the magazine completely in Greensburg. It is meant to be a specular version of the cercese issue. Even if we mean to write something there, most of the articles could be prepared beforehand by you. In fact we would like you to contribute with your writings. Please, write something about your experience. It would be nice to involve also the priest of the church.

This is just a rough plan of the issue: < BR>
• The cercese community in Greensburg: anthropological, economical and historical outlines (how we contributed to local economy, integration, illustrious cercese people)

• The devotion to the Madonna della Libera.

• Birth of Hilltop.

• An interview with the oldest member of the community.

• An interview with the mayor of Greensburg

• An interview with Rizzos

• Cooking tradition (American version of cerce’s recipe)

• Dictionary (odd cercese-american words), lullabies , sayings etc, anything your grandparents brought from Italy)

• Youth: what they think

• Cerce in the public awareness.



Please send your comments and suggestion!

- Lodge and office: as our budget is very low we would need to know if it is possible to be hosted somewhere.

- Advertising: personally, except people I have already been in touch with, I do not know anybody else, please if you can get us in touch with associations, clubs etc please do it.

- Printing: We heard that printing is very expensive in US. How much could it be?

Thank you very much, for now and I hope to hear from you very soon. I am sure it will be an extraordinary experience.

Giovanna