“Trenta anni (thirty years)”.  That was Daniele’s answer to my question, “How long have you and Piero worked together?”  

I was stunned!  I would have guessed Daniele to be 34.  He moves brick and stone and buckets of mortar like a young man in his prime.  Wherever you find Piero – a person with some of the best manners and kindest smiles I have ever encountered – there you find Daniele.  If there are two men in the whole of Italy with a more robust, energetic, and positive disposition toward their work than Piero and Daniele, you will be hard pressed to find them.

“Yes, 30 years in January”, Daniele reflected in the ancient and modern home they are renovating for us.  “We do everything together ... spend more time together than with our wives”.

My mother had just died and her funeral was two weeks previous to my arriving in Todi in 2018. We have spent two weeks each year in Todi for the past decade. I was still grieving her loss but I was in Todi and – as I had discovered each year that we came here – a sense of peace and quiet joy settled in my heart. This year was no exception. However, this year in Umbria had yet to extend another special gift to me.

In the center of Italy lies the land-locked region of Umbria. The name derives from the Umbri, a population that colonized the area nearly three thousand years ago. Umbria is a rural region that has been called il cuore verde d’Italia, “the green heart of Italy”, with its lush countryside that lies in the exact geographic center of the country. Umbria, in its placid beauty, is overshadowed to the north by Tuscany, whose capital, Florence, has long been considered the center of Western art, and to the south by Lazio, which boasts Rome, the capital of Italy.

Claudio Peri is the founder and the inspiration for this Newsletter. A former Professor of Food Technology at the University of Milan, he is now an 85-year-old in fine physical and mental shape, and a writer, speaker and podcaster on Jacopone da Todi. Although he was born and grew up in Todi, he only really discovered Jacopone recently in – of all places –California. Here is his story.