Setting the Windows

In America, there seem to be two basic, same-old boring positions 

for equally boring windows: *OPEN and CLOSED.

Not so here, and what I call Setting the Windows can be a throughout-the-day affair. You'll hear it when you are sitting in your apartment, 

or out wandering in the streets: that unmistakeable banging or squeaking 

of shutters (usually) being opened, closed, or re-adjusted.

Most windows open in, and those I'm familiar with are super-sized. There are two panels, left and right, and they open with a good-sized crank handle.


Once you get the windows closed or opened,
there are the shutters themselves to consider
and here's where it gets complicated.
All shutters are on the outside,
and there are all sorts of mysterious latches
for fixing them in their open, closed, and everything-in-between positions.
When you have the latches figured out,
the shutters can be: open, half open, barely open, closed;
and then tilted: out all the way, part way, not at all.
And left that way until you want to change something.


The whole thing revolves around time of day.
In mornings, if temperatures allow, open-wide 
is the preferred setting,  definitely for windows 
and often too for shutters. Italians seem (wonderfully) more into 'airing'
a room than are we air-conditioned and overly-heated Americans.


Later in the day, as the sun travels, shutters and windows are
further re-adjusted, and again, according to the season,
whether the sun is warming in winter, and therefore most welcome,
but perhaps best left behind an open shutter/closed window,
to solar heat the room, (this after an earlier airing),
or a cripplingly hot sun, banished under all circumstances; 
this best achieved by opening the window, closing the shutter.


At night, most (shutters at least) are snapped shut,
for privacy and to create a room darkening scenario come morning.
Then the process repeats the next day. It's great.


*(Not to mention the many hotel and office windows Stateside that don't open AT ALL, something that would not be accepted here, and is viewed as simply barbaric.)