Word: visciano
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Between the cherry crop in June and the hazelnut harvest in October, the villagers of Visciano, high in the Samnite Hills of southern Italy, have plenty of time to think. So they take it. The plainsmen down in Nola choose to think the Samnite hill people are slow-witted. "Do you come from Visciano?" they ask anyone who is particularly slow of speech...
Most of the Viscianesi do not seem to mind, but it bothered the mayor of Visciano to be chief of a community so regarded. He badgered the government in Rome into replacing the mountain mule track with a real road down to Nola and arranged for a rickety bus to make the run once a day. But the people of Visciano thought he was slightly mad to wish them onto such a terrifying machine, and they stuck to their mules...
...mayor went to his friend the priest. "What is the good of trying to do anything for Visciano?" he despaired. Don Arturo, the priest, decided to try in his own way. In Piedmont he had seen Venerable Don Bosco's famed institutes for abandoned children, and he had noted that the Waldensians drew Protestant youth from all over Europe and America to build a summer camp in the Alps. "Are you going to let it be said that Protestants build better things than you?" he cried to the Viscianesi. "You have a reputation for never protesting. Are you going...
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