MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE for Samantha Cristoforetti

I am stranded on a tiny “island” here on planet earth the name of the island is #Codognè a town of 5300 soul nested between the Adriatic Sea and the wonderful Dolomites Mountains. Venice is just one hour away. We produce a great wine in this area known as the “king” here: Prosecco. Also Cabernet Merlot Raboso are great red wines. The food is natural and eccellent usually made from our fresh product. The name of the town comes from the Cotogna Apple, yes, that apple that seems to have been eaten by Adam and Eve (no one was there to admit the contrary).

John Kennedy once said “See what you can do for your Country not what your Country can do for you” I took the C of the word Country and made it small. So I tried to think what I could do for this small hometown where all my ancestors grew up. I thought I could tell the story of the most  interesting people I ran across during my life here. I must say that for four decades I was all over the world hopping here and there trying to find great stories worth telling. I drove a cab in Miami, I was a war photographer covering Europe and the Middle East, I washed dishes, but there was always a constant in my life: the love for writing: with the light and with the pen so I became a photojournalist.

In the age of Interweb and social communication I discovered G+ and I joined about four years ago (it seems like 50 years though). I saw that there was an astronaut, a woman, she was Italian. Her name is +Samantha Cristoforetti  and she was due to go to the #ISS for six month. She’d be the first Italian woman to do it.

I thought I’d ask her if she could join me on an interview (I was doing interviews via #Hangouts on G+ in a program I called +You Are The Star (for FIVE minutes) ).

She agreed and we had a great talk last year that lasted almost an hour. It shows how great a person +Samantha Cristoforetti  is. Who was I to her? She did not even know me but she agreed to the interview and made that a very special day for me.  On December the 6th I presented  the book I wrote about my small “island” home town; “Codognè Cuore Veneto” the cotogna apple  and QR code’s town”

Thebook is the very first in Italy to include color QR codes that take the readers to a more complex multimadial content like video interviews or photo albums I did not only in my hometown but all over the world. This way I could generate a great content while keeping the file “light” for the editor (thus reducing the cost of printing). I printed a t shirt for the event with all the #QRcodes that I put on the book. The front of the t-shirt contains the QR you see here below the +Samantha Cristoforetti  interview.  I thought I try to send her a MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE, as if I were on a island, stranded, trying to reach out for her out there in the outer space. So I wrote this post embedded here and asked my best G+ friends to spread the word and the hashtag #codognecuoreveneto so that the bottle can be seen from the #ISS and +European Space Agency, ESA  +NASA  +AstronautiNEWS  along with +Samantha Cristoforetti  and ask her if she could send a virtual hug or a simple “hello” from space. Wouldn’t that be great if she did really answer. Hoe can U help? If you are in the social networks or if you have a website, please help me make this MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE travel along the interweb so that the BOTTLE can be more visible from outer space. Thank you all