As I can see from the publishing date of the last Crate – part 74 – one year and one month have passed since then. It’s Easter Sunday, warm, the fat blackbird is back in my little yard and beeping with all its might. It’s so confident that the cat is intimidated by it and even refuses to go and sit on the windowsill as long as the blackbird is shuffling through the crumpled leaves on the ground.

Why did I stop writing Crate of Curios last year? Good question, I think deep down it was very simple – the weekly schedule had become a bit of a burden and didn’t leave me enough time to actually enjoy composing the Crates. So, when life intervened with a busy period of time, I let it go. Now, however, I feel it’s time to return with season 2. However, this season is going to have a lighter touch, a more permissive schedule (which I haven’t even decided yet) and the Crates are going to have themes this time around.

This, the 75th Crate is called “piano, piano” – not after the musical instrument, but the Italian expression that means ‘gently’, ‘softly, softly’ or ‘slowly, slowly’ – I do think that the Greek ‘σιγά-σιγά’ is quite closely related to it. In any case, it will offer some reading and watching for a calm quiet Sunday.

1. A bear hibernating under a cabin in Lake Tahoe area (in the Sierra Nevada on the border between California and Nevada). Apparently it’s quite an issue for cabin owners in that area.
2. Giorgio Morandi, the Italian magic realist and still-life painter in his own words from 1928.
3. Vilhelm Hammershøi, the taciturn Danish painter in the words of Michael Palin.
4. This incredibly smooth mashup from Pomplamoose.
5. This 26-min drive on Swedish island of Fårö.
6. Emily St. John Mandel’s “Station Eleven” (“Σταθμός Έντεκα” in Greek edition), both as book and series. The most poetic dystopia I’ve ever encountered.
7. The South Korean movie “Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring“.
8. This little comic by Grant Snider

So long and until the next Crate!