Following a CNN report on houses on offer for 1 Euro in a village in Sicily, I wrote to the municipality for information, and, after a few weeks, received the following response:
COMUNE DI SAMBUCA DI SICILIA
C.so Umberto I, 226
92017 Sambuca di Sicilia (AG)
www.comune.sambucadisicilia.ag.it
case1euro@comune.sambucadisicilia.ag.it
sindaco@comune.sambucadisicilia.ag.it
Thank you for showing interest in the “1 euro case” project promoted by the Municipality of Sambuca di Sicilia.
Our town was founded by the emir Al-Zabut around the year 830 AD. and today’s urban planning still preserves the original layout. It has a population of 5,800 inhabitants and is located in the province of Agrigento. In 2016 we received the title of “the most beautiful village in Italy”. Our town has an important territorial position, just a few kilometers from the sea and from the archaeological parks of Agrigento and Selinunte. We are located around 90 km from the airports of Palermo and Trapani.
Approximately the middle of February 2019, “case 1 euro” project will publish a public announcement on the Municipality of Sambuca di Sicilia’s website www.comune.sambucadisicilia.ag.it
The buildings owned by the municipality can be viewed on the following link:
http://www.comune.sambucadisicilia.ag.it/Case%20a%201%20euro/Immobili%20a%201%20euro.htm and will be sold to those who offer a sum starting from 1 euro. The property will be awarded to the largest offer. The bidder at the time of the award must pay a deposit of 5,000 euros which will be returned on condition that the property is restored within 3 years from the award.
Our “mission”, as well as that of restoring the historic houses of Sambuca, is to attain economic development that make people the protagonists, enhances our culture and encourages the repopulation of our town. We provide the beauty of the place, the delicious food and the unique flavours of our wines, as well as the proximity to the sea and the Sicilian sun.
Recently the real estate and private agricultural land markets are developing in parallel.
We recommend a visit to our village to view the properties and admire the beauty of our territory.
Yours sincerely,
the Mayor
Leonardo Ciaccio
“Yes, @VFEmail is effectively gone,” VFEmail founder Rick Romero wrote on Twitter Tuesday morning after watching someone methodically reformat hard drives of the service he started in 2001. “It will likely not return. I never thought anyone would care about my labor of love so much that they’d want to completely and thoroughly destroy it.”
It’s a sign of the times that Vivaldi’s neat presentation of one’s browsing history and top sites seems creepy rather than helpful.
Our association director yesterday asked me to look into purchasing new non-profit sector licenses for MS Office 365. These go for only $3 a month per user, but that’s still not an inconsiderable amount for us.
I pointed out that it’s almost 20 years now since I’ve used Microsoft products and that all my work is accomplished with FOSS programs. She responded that she’s used those programs too but that in her estimation “they aren’t good enough for people lacking in computer skills”.
When we opened our office in the early 1990s, it was Bob and me, in our mid-30s, and Coral, in her late 70s, and we were all teaching ourselves to use WordPerfect under MS DOS. Then we made the transition to MS Word under Windows 3.1, so we had to learn how to use a mouse, which was especially tricky for Coral, as old people have trouble with their eye-hand coordination. But she managed quite well, and was able to continue working successfully until she had a stroke at about the age of 87. After a while she began speaking again, but permanently lost her ability to use a computer.
So I’m wondering if there has perhaps been a decline in the average intelligence of workers nowadays, or whether it’s just our expectation of what they will be able to learn?
More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, the analysis found. The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles. The total mass of insects is falling by a precipitous 2.5% a year, according to the best data available, suggesting they could vanish within a century.
