Before expounding on my themes, I would like to report that on this day of the winter solstice the temperature at noon is 81F (24C) and the sun is shining from a clear blue sky. I address these facts mainly to my friends that live in climes where the December solstice occurs in a real winter season.  From this you can surmise that I have now relocated to my winter quarters in beautiful Sarasota, Florida.  I have been here for about one month and the weather in general has been very welcoming; just to give you a taste, here is a photo of a sunset that I took a few days ago, looking from my street over Sarasota bay towards Longboat Key.

So to the papaya tree: a few evenings ago I was getting into my car to drive to Lido Key for my sundown beach walk, when out of the corner of my eye I spotted a young man that I knew to be a resident of another apartment in my little block.  He was stretching up into a tree as if picking fruit. I waited until he had finished and was walking away before asking him what kind of tree was that?  He replied that it was a papaya and he had been trying to reach the fruit.  He asked if I liked papayas and I replied in the affirmative although I had only a hazy idea of what that fruit was.  At that I drove away and continued on my activity only to find on my return a plastic bag was on my doorstep, and in it were two large green objects, papayas, I presumed.  I marveled at the spontaneous kindness of a person to whom I had hardly spoken a word.  Anyway I went to Google and found more information than I needed to know about this semi-tropical fruit.  Since that time the papayas, which had felt hard at first and presumably not yet ripe, have been resident in a brown paper bag to encourage the ripening process.  On this solstice morning one of them seemed to be softening during palpation. Here is a photo of the now-famous papaya tree.

And then there is torture, Italian style.  Those who have followed this blog faithfully (if any) will recall that about a year ago during my sojourn in Sarasota, I had a photo-treatment of the keratinocytes on my unprotected scalp.  This treatment induced intense burning and stinging and went on for 15 minutes, or so. I likened it to torture. Now I can report that a couple of days ago I experienced another kind of torture caused not by light but by sound.  I imagine that many of you have had occasion to telephone your credit card company because of problems of one sort or another with your account.  These financial institutions provide us with the convenience of credit for our purchases, knowing that we are pathetic mortals who will at some point, and  in spite of our best intentions, run up our card to its limit and procure another one and run that up to its limit, and so on. By such time we are no longer in a position to pay off the card(s) and so we pay the minimum amount and thus our debt grows huge because of the companies’ usurious interest rates.  This technique results in enormous profits for the companies and reduces us to penury. [As an aside, when I came to live in Texas in 1976, the maximum interest rate that a bank could charge was about 8% and anything in excess was regarded as usury and punishable under the law. In those halcyon days all banks in a city were independent, branch banking was not allowed.  In this way the bankers lived in the local community and were in this way kept in check. Have we made progress?]

Back to the torture: A couple of days ago I had cause to make a ’phone call to Carta Si, my Italian credit card company. With a little help from my friends I found that this company had an 800 (aka Green) phone number so I could call them toll free from here.  I dialed the number and immediately my ear was filled with sounds that I must assume were regarded as music by some bank executive. It was probably an Italian version of soft rock, sung by an androgynous voice who bemoaned the fact that it had need of love (bisogno d’amore).  Unfortunately, all they played was a single verse, but it was played over and over and over again.  Every now and then, on top of this relentless monotony would be superimposed the voice of a gentleman, telling me in a breathless, syrupy manner of the exciting things that would happen if I got myself a Carta Si card (I already had one). And there is more; on occasions, I would hear the recorded voice of a lady who apologized for the delay but if I was patient my call would be taken by the next available agent, which sounds just as encouraging in Italian as it does in English. To be honest this would have been acceptable if somebody had picked up the call after a couple of cycles of the song, but I was on the call for 36 minutes, holding for a series of three agents as my query was passed from one office to another, and always being irritated by the excruciating cacophony.  As with the photo-treatment, I felt that if the Guantanamo warders simply dialed the 800 number and then connected the earpiece to the intercom system of the prison, the unfortunate inhabitants would be confessing to misdemeanors, real or imagined within a couple of hours.

I leave you now so that you may enjoy captivating thoughts of a New Year replete with happiness and abounding good fortune.

My own thoughts are of Tuscany and sunflowers.