'For the vast majority of Italians and others to whom the name means anything, Matera is synonymous with abject poverty and backwardness. In fact, being the capital of its province, which occupies the lower and Eastern half of the region known today as La Basilicata, in the highlands inland between the Ionian Sea and the Adriatic, its is relatively affluent in a world where degradation is the rule. I came to this community quite by accident, penniless, and stayed to teach there for a year and a half. What I saw, what I learned, what I felt, my relations to other there and that of earth and...