clipped from: www.capetimes.co.za VIGANELLA, Italy: Once upon a time there was a small village in the Italian Alps. It was a lovely little town with a lovely sounding name: Viganella.
Founded by a bishop in 1217, it lay in a steep-sided Alpine valley, not far from the Swiss border, and clung to a rock surrounded by two streams of fresh mountain water.
But Viganella had a big, big problem.
Each year, on November 11, the sun would disappear behind a 1 600-metre high mountain to the south, leaving it in near-total darkness for 84 days in a row. Flowers would die, temperatures would plummet and laundry would take forever to dry.
They would take a look at the sundial drawn on the facade of their church and sigh. They would become sleepy and SAD - the medical affliction known as "Seasonal Affective Disorder", a condition whereby the lack of sunshine reduces people's production of melatonin, a natural hormone, and makes them depressed.
The young and brave simply left town, leaving only the elderly behind. Fewer and fewer children were born, until Viganella faced the threat of extinction.
One day, however, one of its brave young men decided he'd had enough. His name was Pierfranco Midali, and he was a railwayman.
Instead of jumping on a train to seek the sun elsewhere, Midali got himself elected as mayor and came up with a shining bright idea: "I'll bring the sun to Viganella!" he proclaimed.
For seven long years, Midali worked and worked on his "bright idea" and travelled around the land, begging local authorities and private sponsors to give him the e99 990 (about R900 000) needed to put it into practice.
Finally, on a cold late November morning of 2006, a helicopter suddenly appeared on the horizon, carrying a huge mirror, eight metres wide by five metres tall.