Vivaio Letterario - In fondo al mar, a caccia di estremofili

Science, before being formulas, tools, and publications, is a stubborn way of being in the world. It is the attempt to understand what our place is within something much greater than ourselves: a living, unstable, deep, ancient planet that breathes, transforms, and predates us. Science is also a deeply human activity.

It is made up of people, emotions, ambitions, dreams, careers. And that’s how I like to tell it: it’s made of dirty hands, nights in the lab, rough seas, tools that don’t work, sudden insights, fear, wonder, failures, and comebacks. Creative stubbornness and a pinch of obsession.

And that’s why, in addition to doing science, I tell it. I narrate abysses, volcanoes, microbes, hydrogen, oceans, and expeditions because there, in extreme places, questions become more bare. What is life? Where does it begin? How far can it push? How little does it need to survive? How truly separated are we from the Earth we inhabit?

I tell because knowledge, if kept closed among specialists, loses part of its strength. And because every expedition, every sample, every microbe found in places where it seemed impossible to live reminds us of a simple and dizzying thing: we are not the center of the world but a tiny, fragile, and temporary part of it. Donato Giovannelli

Saturday at 9.30 a.m. At the Nursery, the keyword is hospitality: we welcome and cultivate people, ideas, words. Given the time, we start chatting with breakfast. Coffee, tea, all the good things that help start the day well: cookies with organic flours baked in a wood oven, yogurt and local cheeses, fruit jams from the garden, and whatever the awakening and the season inspire (for example, chiffon). 

At 12.30 p.m. light lunch, greetings, and toasts. In between, chit-chat, questions, and beautiful ideas. As much as you want.