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Motivated Magazine THE MAGAZINE THAT MOVES YOU! MOTIVATED MAGAZINE is designed with your interests at heart!

It is full of new as well as time-tested ideas, quotations from distinguished and successful people, true and true-to-life energizing short stories, and answers to frequently asked questions.

It never hurts to keep looking for sunshine.–A. A. Milne
23/10/2025

It never hurts to keep looking for sunshine.
–A. A. Milne

Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder. –E.B.White
22/10/2025

Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.
–E.B.White

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.–William Shakespeare
21/10/2025

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.
–William Shakespeare

Nature is pleased with simplicity. –Sir Isaac Newton
20/10/2025

Nature is pleased with simplicity.
–Sir Isaac Newton

Weekly StoryIn The Italian Alps, Stradivari’s Trees Live OnHeard on Weekend Edition SaturdayAntonio Stradivari, the mast...
19/10/2025

Weekly Story
In The Italian Alps, Stradivari’s Trees Live On
Heard on Weekend Edition Saturday

Antonio Stradivari, the master violin maker whose instruments sell for millions of dollars today, has been dead for nearly three centuries. Only 650 of his instruments are estimated to have survived.

But the forest where the luthier got his lumber is alive and well. And thanks to the surprising teamwork of modern instrument makers and forest rangers, Stradivari’s trees are doing better than ever.

These spruce trees have been growing for hundreds of years in the Fiemme Valley, the same corner of the Italian Alps where Renaissance luthiers such as Stradivari, Guarneri, and Amati handpicked the trees that would be turned into some of the world’s finest instruments. Thanks to a serendipitous combination of climate and altitude, these have come to be called “Il Bosco Che Suona”—The Musical Woods.

Marcello Mazzucchi, a retired forest ranger with an uncanny knack for spotting timber that’s ideal for instruments, walks among the trees, tapping on their trunks. Mazzucchi’s skill has led some to call him “The Tree Whisperer,” but he laughs off that nickname. “I’m really more of a tree listener,” he says. “I observe, I touch them, sometimes I even hug them. Look carefully and they’ll tell you their life story, their traumas, their joys, everything. Such humble creatures.”

He goes from trunk to trunk, crossing flawed candidates off his list.

“This one over here was struck by lightning,” he says. “Who knows what kind of sound its violin would make?”

Then he finds a contender: “It shoots up perfectly straight. It’s very cylindrical. No branches at the bottom. If you ask me, there’s a violin trapped inside.”

Mazzucchi takes out a manual drill called a borer and twists it like a corkscrew through the bark. He listens carefully to the knocking sound the borer makes each time it hits a new tree ring.

Pulling out a core sample shaped like a pencil, he concludes the tree is an excellent specimen. A lumberjack chops down trees like this one and carts them to a lumberyard nearby, where the spruce is milled into sections.

Local instrument maker Cecilia Piazzi examines a piece of that milled wood and declares it “magnificent.”

“We use it for making the table—that’s the beautiful part on the front of a violin or cello, with the sound holes on the surface,” Piazzi says. “Yes, this piece is the right piece. I can tell just by flicking it.”

It takes months to complete a single instrument, which can cost over $10,000—a bargain, when you consider a Stradivarius that came from the same forest can go for over $10 million.

But it’s enough to keep this community humming. The Fiemme Valley is one of Italy’s most prosperous areas, thanks in large part to these musical woods. And it’s going to stay that way because people like The Tree Whisperer take care of it.

Before a tree hits the chopping block, Mazzucchi looks around to see if there are any tiny saplings struggling to grow nearby. If so, removing an adult tree will let more sun in and actually help the babies mature.

Bruno Cosignani, the head of the local forest service, explains that light is the limiting factor on tree growth.

“As soon as a tree falls down, those who were born and suffering in the shadows can start to grow more quickly,” he says.

And centuries from now, those trees, too, might become musical instruments.

Nature is the source of all true knowledge. –Leonardo da Vinci
19/10/2025

Nature is the source of all true knowledge.
–Leonardo da Vinci

Adopt the pace of nature. Her secret is patience. –Ralph Waldo Emerson
18/10/2025

Adopt the pace of nature. Her secret is patience.
–Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature is the art of God.- Dante Alighieri
17/10/2025

Nature is the art of God.
- Dante Alighieri

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the wa...
16/10/2025

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.
–Sir John Lubbock

Some old-fashioned things like fresh air and sunshine are hard to beat. –Laura Ingalls Wilder
15/10/2025

Some old-fashioned things like fresh air and sunshine are hard to beat.
–Laura Ingalls Wilder

What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives? –E.M. Fo...
14/10/2025

What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?
–E.M. Forster

In every walk with nature, one receives far more than he seeks. –John Muir
13/10/2025

In every walk with nature, one receives far more than he seeks.
–John Muir

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