We were accused of writing fairy tales this week, which was the basis of a hearty laugh, for "Fairy tales tell the truth" as Italo Calvino reminds us in his 1967 essay "Cibernetica e Fantasmi." Their narrative construction and plot weaving are "the irreducible essence of all epistemological activity and therefore the ground for whatever truth may be available to man. Fairy tales 'tell the truth'" (Lucia Re, Calvino and the Age of Neorealism: Fables of Estrangement, 1990).