Remembering and Forgetting: The Valmaggesionthe Verge of New Worlds

We live in an era of displacement, in an era of our forgotten roots. Few of our fore parents would have chosen to leave the alpine valleys of Ticino in Switzerland without the serious reasons that frequently compelled them to do so. From the comforts of the Twenty-first Century we have the leisure to visit the places of our origins at a safe distance like the historical tourists we are. Sometimes we use our visits to re-assure ourselves that we are the lucky beneficiaries of our ancestors' struggles of loss and subsequent assimilation of foreign cultures and lands. But what really lies behind the loss of ancients cultures, and the acquisition of new ones, based on a set of new and untried values in the making?