Over the past couple weeks I’ve received two emails from Alex Caldiero announcing projects he’s involved with. The first is a Kickstarter campaign, the second a new book.
First: the Kickstarter campaign.
As a native of Sicily, Alex spent his childhood in the shadow of Mt. Etna, the largest active volcano in Europe. Using the funds to be raised by their Kickstarter campaign—titled “Living with Etna”—Alex hopes to return to Sicily as the tour guide for emerging filmmakers Laura Kisana and Isaac Caldiero (Alex’s son), who hope to document the relationship between the mountain and the people who inhabit its slopes.
When I first watched their project video and read through their proposal, I recalled the instruction God gave to Joseph Smith in March 1833 that those involved with building his kingdom ought to make it their “business and mission” to “study and learn, and become acquainted with all good books, and with languages, tongues, and people.” There are, of course, many ways to fulfill this counsel. One of them may include supporting (however we’re willing and however we can) projects like the one Alex and Co. hope to undertake with this trip and the documentary that would flow from it.
So: check out their video and their proposal, then back their project, if you feel so inclined. Their funding period ends November 6.
Second: the new book.
In late March of this year, I sat in Alex’s office at UVU where he told me that he had had a book accepted for publication. It was different than anything he’d written before, he said, a sort of memoir that took him back to Sicily, that records “the movements of [his] life in terms of sound” (ref). I’ve been anxious to get my hands on it ever since, so the second message I recently received from Alex made me excited. Here’s what it said:
Scott Abbott gives a little taste of the book in this post. I’ll share it here to whet you appetite. “The book,” he says, “begins with a dual-language ‘Proem’:
nti la terra mia amata,
libriceddu, vacci tu
nti dda casa abbannunata
e rapicci na finestra
quantu pigghia n’ariata.
—
Because I don’t hope to return again
to my beloved land,
little book, go yourself
into that forsaken house
and open a window
to let in the fresh air.
Sounds absolutely delicious!
If you’re in the Salt Lake Area this weekend, drop by the release party.