Hard Times

In Britain, the period we are going through now, is called a recession, which means a period of temporary economic decline, during which, trade and industrial activity are reduced.
More dramatically, in Italy and France, it is referred to as la crisi, la crise. Crisis, according to the dictionary, is a time of intense difficulty or danger.
There is a lot of talk about it here, in Italy.
The greengrocer (fruttivendolo) over the road,  has displayed a "poem" by Albert Einstein about the crisis on his shop window.
Einstein witnessed, first hand, the misery and chaos of the 1930's Depression in America. He cared a lot about the fate of humanity, (although I have read somewhere, that he wasn't all that nice to his first wife and his daughter). The poem was quite long, I looked it up on the web, and it doesn't look like a poem, more like a lecture. Here are the last lines.

There's no merit without crisis.
It's in the crisis where we can show the very best in us.
Without a crisis, any wind becomes a tender touch.
To speak about a crisis is to promote it.
Not to speak about it is to exalt conformism.
Let us work hard instead.
Let us stop, once and for all, the menacing crisis that represents
the tragedy of not being willing to overcome it.
(attributed to Albert Einstein, ca. 1935)

Reading that on the window of the shop, gave a whole new slant on buying fruit and vegetables. I felt quite clever.