Luciana and Aristo celebrate 60 years of marriage

The divorce rate in  Italy catapulted 74 percent between 1995 and 2005, according to a study by the national statistics* institute. In 1995, 158 of 1,000 married couples were separated and 80 were divorced. A decade later, the figures had jumped to 272 separations and 151 divorces. But it still had a long way to catch up on other countries, like the USA, for instance, where it is estimated that by 2008 40% of all marriages had ended in divorce.

So in an era of rising divorce and separations it is somewhat pleasing to report on an event which bucks this trend.

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This morning Aristo’s bar in Barga Vecchia  remained firmly closed and a short, almost terse,  hand written note attached to the window informed his clients that the bar would be shut for the day.

It had to be a special reason for shutting what is more or less the unofficial cultural centre of Barga on a Sunday …. and a very special reason it was too – today was the diamond wedding anniversary of Luciana and Aristodemo Casciani.

On this day 60 years ago in 1949 there were joined as man and wife in the Duomo. (Aristo recently had 85th birthday so its quite easy to work out just what his age was when he married.) This morning celebrations of their long, long marriage started with a special service for the pair at the  San Francesco church.

A plaque commemorating the event with an image of them both from 1949 as they left the Duomo was presented to a by now near tearful Aristo and his wife by Gabriele Giovannetti representing the Comune before the large group of family and friends moved onto the Pergola restaurant for the meal.

AT 4 pm Aristo and his guests were still seated in the restaurant after a gargantuan feast and just about to enjoy the final treat – the cake baked specially for the occasion when in walked the last surprise of the day – the musicians Alessandro Rizardi and Fabio Guazzelli carrying their own instruments – guitar and mandolin and a keyboard for Aristo.  Two minutes later the keyboard was plugged in and Aristo was doing his stuff for all present in the restaurant.

Congratulations to Luciana and Aristo from all the staff at barganews.

*Mark Twain popularised the phrase “‘There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics”  meaning of course that statistics can be manipulated at will but even taking that into account some times numbers do stand out