majrodgers

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.

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Question 1: What is Tuvalu?

Until reading the BBC website this morning, I had never heard of this word, although my first guess was that it might be the name of a town in New Zealand, or some such antipodean place. However, Wikipedia put me to rights-it is a Polynesian island nation, formerly known as the Ellice Islands, comprised of 10,470 souls dispersed over 4 reef islands and 5 atolls. It is the fourth smallest country in the world, larger only than the Vatican City, Monaco and Nauru, wherever that might be. Now that our edification has moved a quantum leap upwards, we are ready for the next question.

Question 2:

What does the now-famous Tuvalu have in common with Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica, Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Papua New Guinea, St Christopher and Nevis, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Tuvalu, Barbados, Grenada, Solomon Islands, St Lucia and the Bahamas?

Unless you are a student of the history of the far-flung British Empire, now defunct, you might be surprised to learn, as I was, that these 17 nations owe their allegiance to Queen Elizabeth II, viz., they are her 17 sovereign realms.  Nice for her, one might rejoinder, but so what?

Question 3:

What momentous decision did the prime ministers of these disparate realms, meeting in Australia, arrive at yesterday?

They voted to establish absolute cognatic primogeniture to the British Monarchy.  As from this breathless moment, the peoples of these realms can rest assured that the crown will be passed to the first child of the reigning monarch, regardless of the gender of that lucky personage.  Up to now, a woman could only inherit if she were lucky enough that  no brothers were around at the time of the death of the preceding monarch.

As one of those peoples of those 17 realms, I am delighted by this decision, as you would have guessed.  I am especially enthralled that the first child of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, one day to be enthroned themselves, will be the first offspring to receive the benefit of this ruling.  I hope that their Cantabrian subjects are equally thrilled.

Unfortunately the BBC did not reveal what other world-shaking decisions were made at this convocation in Australia, but surely they did not travel all that way just for that?  If so we might ask whether it justified all those carbon emissions…

One item that did not make the agenda for that illustrious gathering to ponder was a proposal to rescind the law that forbids a British monarch to join in holy matrimony with a member of the Roman Catholic persuasion.  Marriage to Moslems, Buddhists, southern Baptists and seven-day Adventists is apparently condoned but, alas, not to the luckless Papists.  The problem, you see, is that since the reign of the Henry the wife slayer, the monarch is titular head of the Church of England which is eternally locked in conflict with Rome. For people who care about such matters, to have to admit a papist into the inner sanctum would be anathema – it would bring rot and decay to everything that is great about Britain.

It is surely refreshing to know that even in these days where “anything goes”, Britannia continues to rule!

I imagine that you, like me, have all been distracted by the news of the last couple of days. No, not that stock prices are going through the floor, nor that Inter sacked its new manager after only five games into the new season. These are just everyday trivia compared to the new announcement that a neutrino can travel faster through Alpine bedrock than light can travel through a vacuum.  From the CERN laboratory in the suburbs of Geneva to the Gran Sasso lab near L’Aquila in Central Italy is 730 km as the neutrino flies and, according to a pre-publication (http://static.arxiv.org/pdf/1109.4897.pdf ) authored by over 200 physicists and allied trades from a host of labs around the world, the neutrino can beat the photon by some 60 nanoseconds over that distance. Of course, the neutrino is even better because the photon would not get through the lab wall, let alone through bedrock!  At near the speed of light the photon travels about 1 foot in 1 nanosecond, meaning that the neutrino gets to Gran Sasso some 60 feet ahead of the photon-not even a close race.

This is a big deal because it possibly means that Einstein got it wrong (or not exactly right) when he told us that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum flask.  Of course when light is traveling through air or water, or prosecco, it travels slower than it does in vacuo, giving rise to the refractive index of such materials. Maybe in this sense, bedrock is a Super-vacuum (you read it here first), inasmuch as particles having no charge and “negligible” mass can move through it a little bit faster than a light photon passes through empty space, thus rescuing Einstein. Or maybe they were 60 feet or so out in their measurement of the distance (did they use Google maps?). Or maybe the “ether” exists after all?

I suppose that now we can expect theorists and other weirdos to be rethinking relativity and their experimental colleagues to be remeasuring the speed of light.

Is this the new dawn (yet another) of physics?

Yes, Michael and I returned to Bowling Green as July turned into August and I am pleased to report that the corn and the beans are doing well. I am particularly well-positioned to report this fact as my morning exercise walk takes me past fields of these crops, staples in this part of Ohio.  I use the term field advisedly, since during my upbringing in northern Derbyshire (an English county), a field was a patch of land of about 3 or 4 acres in area, outlined by dense hedgerows on all sides.  In the higher-lying moorlands the outlining was by dry-stone walls.  However, here in Ohio, and probably throughout the US, a field of corn, for example, goes on as far as the eye can see, many tens of acres or more and there are no outlines.  I walk on the paved road that I share with the vehicular traffic, and between me and the corn field there is a ca six feet wide verge of wild plants and grasses, no walls or hedgerows in sight.  Speaking of vehicular traffic, at the time of my walks-about 7 AM-the traffic is largely of Bowling Greeners going to start their workday.  I am careful to walk on the left side of the road so that I can see the approaching traffic and I am prepared to leap onto the aforementioned verge, should I so need.  However on the roads in BG I am in no danger, since oncoming cars and trucks always move over into the other lane to avoid me (am I so scary?).  Should the other lane be in use by vehicles coming up behind me, the oncoming guy will either slow down, or indeed stop until the other lane is free for him or her to move over.  Contrast this with the behavior of Italian motorists during my morning walks on the roads there; they make no effort whatsoever to give the poor walker any room.  Indeed they seem to approach as closely as they can without hitting me.  It seems that I am the pawn in a game of chicken “how close do we have to approach before he leaps onto the verge?”.

Some interesting and memorable things have occurred since I returned.  Daughter Emily graduated on August 6 with a BS in Business.  Afterwards there was a party at my place for her friends and families.

The new graduate with her lucky dad.

This caused my house to be inundated by large numbers of “the nubility” (I challenge my legions of Italian, Russian, French et al. friends to decipher that neologism!).  In addition, all my family were present: Emily (of course), Jane and Sam, and Michael.  This made for a pleasant occasion for your correspondent.  As is his wont, Michael did his Michael Jackson dance for the assembled crowd.  He is quite a polished performer, and I have no idea where he gets it from, not from me, for sure.

While in England at Bridget’s home, when Michael was at the Manchester United soccer school, I bought a Slingbox.  This (as I now know) is a device that, when it is connected to a TV decoder (in this case Bridget’s Sky-box) it re-formats the incoming TV signals to an internet compatible format and launches them onto WWW.  In this way, wherever I am with an internet connection, I can watch Bridget’s Sky TV programs on my laptop and, when at home, they can be put onto a big screen TV via an HDMI cable.  My main reason for doing this is to watch Sky Sport showings, not the general Sky programming.  Bridget and I share a passion for football (the real kind) and so we can now watch games together.  Moreover Sky Sport carries live ball-by-ball following of major cricket matches (cricket is a game played with a bat and a ball by grown men).  In my childhood and youth I was a cricket fanatic, but this faded after coming to the US to live where cricket is non-existent.  Now I am regenerated, thanks to the Slingbox; This morning (EDT) the current international series of 4 games (Test matches), between England (not Britain, nor UK) and India was completed by an overwhelming win for England who thereby swept all four Tests and are now perched at the number 1 spot in international cricket.  For the uninitiated (sorry Bruce!), a Test match lasts for up to 5 days, with overnight stoppages and breaks during the daytime play for lunch and tea (of course).  This is not a pastime for those persons needing quick thrills and fast finishes.

Finally, the mid-August weather in these parts has been gorgeous-warm, clear days (occasional summer storms) and cool nights.  There are signs of autumn in the air.  At pre-sunrise  low-lying mists envelop the neighboring golf course, heavy dew lays on the lawns, and yesterday I spotted a couple of dozen Canada geese on one of the golf-course lakes.  I was uncertain whether they were on an overnight rest on their southerly migration, or whether they were local birds that had gathered to discuss their departure date, who knows?

A bientot.

Somewhat sadly, CDP is now in the past, at least for this year.  I said fond farewells to my friends and friendly acquaintances in that town, Grosseto, the Maremma, and Toscana.  My 2.5 months there were more than enjoyable; I am unbelievably fortunate to have met so many interesting fellow-travelers in life: may they forever prosper.

However, as we know, all good things must come to an end, which also means that now there is an opportunity for other good things to be enjoyed.  One such is L‘Ago nel Pagliaio (the needle in the haystack, hereinafter called ANP) the place where I spent a few days following my departure from CDP.  ANP is a marvelous bed and breakfast establishment in Guarene, a tiny picturesque village on a high hilltop overlooking Alba on the Tanaro river in Piemonte, about 65 km south of Torino www.agonelpagliaio.net .  ANP is a real treasure, having guest accommodations in the beautifully transformed stables of an old villa, in which live the Gaschino family, Vittoria, Gianni and son Alfonso.  Gianni is a successful artist who shows and sells his works, see www.giannigaschino.com.  He is also a pilot and he bills himself as The Flying Painter. I have stayed here several times in the past three years and I am pleased that we have become friends.  There are superb gardens on the property from which the Roero hills are seen, as are the French Alps on a clear day.  The Roero hills on the west of the Tanaro valley and the Langhe on the eastern side are part of the famous wine producing regions of Piemonte, tiny villages with names such as Barbaresco, Barolo, Cinzano and Alba itself that appear on the shelves of wine stores throughout the world. Wine production is definitely a lucrative business in Alba, as can be seen by the size of the automobile dealerships in the town.

Guarene boasts an XVIII^th century castle that sits solidly atop the hill and dominates the town and indeed, the whole valley below.  Driving from Asti in the north, alongside the Tanaro river you can see this monolithic structure from afar.  From its appearance it is clearly not a fortress, but it was built in a period when fortresses and the like were unnecessary.  Count Carlo Giacinto Roero himself drew the plans and had the place built, to replace a former manor house, with a residence with the same features as the other contemporary buildings. These places were deemed suitable for receiving those noble friends of the count who came to the countryside during the summer after they had spent a year enjoying the pleasures of the Savoia court in Torino.

A big recent event was that the castle was sold by the current nobles to a pair of local businessmen who had made their fortune by running worker cooperatives-the nouveau riche.  Gianni tells me that at a meeting with the citizens, the new owners were very clear with details of how they were planning to restore the house and gardens, but very vague about what they would use the place for.  He finds it hard to believe that someone would spend multiple millions of Euros on the purchase and multiple millions more on  restorations, without having a plan of use in mind for the castle.  Clearly this is an ongoing tale…

Now I am continuing my odyssey and admiring the beautiful and picturesque town of Ascona, a small Swiss town at the northern extremity of Lago Maggiore in the Ticino canton of Switzerland, of which you will read more in the coming days.  But meanwhile, here are a few pictures of some of the many memorable moments of my CDP interlude, 2011.

Opening a bottle of Prosecco and being kissed by a lovely lady-what bliss!!!

Laura and her dad and mom after lunch on the terrace at via Remota.

A flower on a caper bush growing out of a wall at via Remota.

Herta Mulazzani, her son Claudio, his friend Ouissal, and yours truly taking coffee on the street after lunch at Herta's home in Rimini.

The May 17th full moon rising over the shoulder of the Park of the Maremma. The following full moon rose in a total eclipse as viewed from Laura's balcony in Siena.

Emily and her lucky dad in front of the Siena cathedral.

This evening I spoke with Anne Gorman; she had just returned from Inverness where our boy is incarcerated.  The round trip from her house in Skye to Inverness by bus is 350 miles; a journey that she makes twice per week.  The news of Tony is good and not so good.  The good part is that his spinal tumor situation was overplayed by the doctors and, in fact, it is slow-growing, and the “weeks to live” diagnosis has been revised to indefinite.  The not-so-good news is that the medication that he has taken has affected his mind and he suffers fits of depression and aggression and as a result he is confined to a hospital in Inverness for his own safety and that of others.  The prognosis about his mental problem is not good, but then neither was the one of his spinal cancer and that has been revised.  Let us hope that the British National Health system that has kept Stephen Hawking alive until now can turn up trumps for Tony.  When I spoke to him in late March he gave me carte blanche to inform the world of his conditions, and so I do this knowing that his friends want to hear of his progress. After my earlier Tony posting Bruce Craig sent me a photo of the Manchester University Chemistry 5-a-side football team who, in about 1970, had won the inter-university cup.  I share this with you, with thanks to Bruce.  Tony is on the extreme right.

I became interested in the word “justice” whilst in Sarasota. I had a quaint notion that I knew that the word was something to do with moral rightness, but driving along Highway 41 on the way to the Ultrafast Systems world headquarters, I would pass a billboard advertising a law company that specialized in personal accidents. On the board was the photo of a man with an expression of concern, determination and aggression on his face.  You got the impression that this was the one to have at your side when in a courtroom battle with Big Insurance.  The word “JUSTICE” was writ large and a web site address was provided http://www.getmejustice.com/

I was intrigued enough to check out the web site and I include the following extract (my italics):

“We believe that the compensation we obtain for accident victims who have suffered the devastating consequences of injuries is both fair and necessary. We urge you to contact us if you believe that we can help you obtain the justice you seek”.

So my suspicions were upheld, this firm uses the word justice as a euphemism for “compensation”, otherwise known as “cash”.  America is famous for its avoidance of using the word “spade” when describing a hand tool for digging in the garden; this is simply another example to join the list that includes “restroom” and “gay”.

Then today, among the news of the killing of Osama the ‘Orrible, the title word occurs again. George (the Second) is quoted as saying “No matter how long it takes, justice will be done”, which follows up a September 2011 quote from the same source “I want him — I want justice”.  And even our current President, beloved by some, is quoted as saying “… justice has been done”.  Clearly these worthies are not referring to cash compensation, so to get some clarification I resorted to checking the on-line dictionary that I use to relieve my self-doubt.  Here you are:

justice (noun)

1. the quality of being just; righteousness, equitableness, or moral rightness

2. rightfulness or lawfulness, as of a claim or title; justness of ground or reason

3. the moral principle determining just conduct.

Having read this, it seems to me that Messrs. Bush and Obama are again using “justice” in a euphemistic manner.  Perhaps they are really meaning “Revenge” (1.to exact punishment or expiation for a wrong on behalf of, especially in a resentful or vindictive spirit. 2. to take vengeance for; inflict punishment for; avenge.).  And going one stage further we find that “Vengeance” has definitions:                                          1.infliction of injury, harm, humiliation, or the like, on a person by another who has been harmed by that person; violent revenge.  2. an act or opportunity of inflicting such trouble. 3. the desire for revenge.

The deliberate killing of the ‘Orrible One seems more like revenge to me; it has little to do with the abstract ideals of justice. Do you suppose they read him his rights before filling him full of lead?

And to toss the body overboard, how weird is that?  Presumably it had nothing to do with feeding the fishes, more likely to avoid the prying eyes and telephoto lens of the probing media, in the sense of “what you don’t know won’t hurt you”.  But it is sure to ignite a volcano of conspiracy theories.

And so it is CDP all over again.

On March 19 I drove away from Sarasota in Jane’s Mini Cooper beginning a trek during which I spent at least one night in Macon Georgia, Lexington Kentucky, Bowling Green Ohio, Chicago Illinois, JFK, LHR, and Rome before driving into Castiglione della Pescaia on 2 April. It was quite a relief to have all that traveling behind me, although a good thing about it was that I was able to spend time with Jane and Sam, Emily, and Michael; not a lot of time, but some.

My arrival in Bowling Green had a little excitement attached to it; Emily informed me that there was water in the basement! And so there was, as I found on inspection, maybe a centimeter deep in some places. I have had that house since new in 2002 and the basement has been the place where everything that is not needed anymore, or perhaps will not be needed anymore, has been deposited. Things that could be lugged down stairs, such as old carpet, old under-carpet, luggage, computers, clothes and so on; all were water-soaked and ruined.

In emergencies such as this I spring into action and pick up the phone! The first person I called was Tom Kinstle whose son Brad runs a heating and air conditioning, etc. business. Minutes thereafter one of Brad’s workers came over and inspected the situation. He told me the news that I had been expecting; I needed a new sump pump.  He had brought one with him in case, so it was promptly installed. Now that the cause of the problem had been fixed, what remained was to clean up the mess; whom to call now?  Fortunately, there is a lady that I know going by the nickname Dapper, who has a cleaning service in Bowling Green. I’ve always found her to be a very resourceful person and so it was to her that I turned in my hour of need. She came over and looked it over and asked me if there’s anything that I wanted to salvage from the basement. I responded that everything could go. So the next day she came with a pickup truck and proceeded to load it up and thence departed for the city landfill. She reported that she had taken 1000 pounds of my erstwhile beloved possessions, aka trash, to the dump. Then she dried out the basement, washed it down with some disinfectant material and dried it all out with fans. So now I have the cleanest and emptiest basement in the neighborhood, perhaps even in the USA.

The drive itself from Sarasota and been largely uneventful. One of the things that occupied my mind as I drove from the south was that I seemed to be traveling backwards in time! The Mini Cooper was, I imagined, a yellow time machine that was taking me back from spring into winter; the arrow of time was seemingly in reverse (what was this doing to the entropy of the universe?). Spring had arrived in Sarasota in the middle of February and by the 19th of March everything was in full bloom there. On coming into southern Georgia it became apparent that spring was only just beginning. The deciduous trees along the roadside had donned their new green coats, the fruit trees were in full pink and white blossom, as were the magnolias; the red buds and forsythia  and some unrecognizable plants were joining the parade. I recalled the same drive last year which I had taken in the middle of January, at which time everything was in gloomy winter garb. In the north of Georgia and in Tennessee, I 75 passes through the Appalachian Mountains where the weather was decidedly colder and the spring was not so advanced and by the time I crossed into Kentucky, and then into Ohio it was definitely winter again, as it was in Chicago about a week later. Thus in the matter of a few days I had transited from mid-spring to mid-winter, or so it seemed. That is what I should expect, I suppose, if I travel 1100 miles along a line of longitude. Anyway, arriving in Rome on April 1 found me right back in spring again and the entropy in the universe was back to normal.

The London to Rome leg of my journey from Chicago was not without incident.  The BA flight from LHR to FCO for which I had a ticket (well, we used to have tickets!) had a 7:05 AM departure. My hotel was only about a 15 minute cab ride to Terminal 5 where BA now resides, so I figured that a 5 AM alarm would give me the time I needed to prepare myself for the journey.  So I set my “Smart”phone to wake me up at 5 AM.  However, the not-so-smart owner of the Smart phone had omitted to change the time from Eastern USA time to London time. Accordingly I learned that Smart phones are only as smart as their owners and mine is definitely challenged. Comes the morning and I awake, not to the excruciating sound of my phone alarm, but presumably to some inner force.  Unfortunately, the inner force was out-of-sync with my temporal needs and I found that I had awakened at 5:45 AM, an hour that cut drastically into my time for ablution and the like. So I forewent all that stuff, threw on my clothes (note, no change of shirt from the day before), and rushed down to the lobby where the kind night clerk called a taxi for me and in it I sped off in London’s pre-dawn to T5, where I arrived just 30 minutes before flight time. At that time in a morning T5 was not so busy and the lines at security were minimal, so I arrived at the gate with enough time to buy a coffee and muffin at a nearby kiosk, ’ere boarding.  It seems that these days every airport gate represents a business opportunity for the food and drink industry.

Even with this slight hiccup caused by my tardiness, everything had gone swimmingly on my great trek from Sarasota to Rome; but at Rome (where else) the thunder struck. We all deplaned (incidentally, as I was walking from the plane, I heard the alarm from my phone in my carry-on bag!) and went through immigration to the baggage hall and proceeded to carousel 6 for our bags, as indicated on the electronic board.  There we waited for the bags to appear; and waited, and waited, and waited. There were about 6 flights indicated at number 6 so you can imagine the mass of bodies that there were, staring vainly at the carousel, which was going round and round in its desultory fashion with a couple of bags presumably from an earlier flight that nobody cared about.  If this was an April 1 joke, nobody was one little bit amused!

Eventually the grapevine that had spread throughout the crowd of people waiting reported that there was a strike of baggage handlers at the airport which would continue until 11 PM that night. This news caused a lot of dismay amongst my fellow travelers, and me too!  Fortunately (if such a word could be used in a bloody mess like this) I was staying in Rome that night and had no desperate desire to have my bag, so after two hours of waiting and wondering what to do I decided that perhaps I should just relax and let nature take its course.  After all, there was a reasonable certainty that my bag had made the flight and had been unloaded at the gate (surely they have to at least unload the bags from incoming flights so the plane can be turned around?).  So all the bags would be piled up somewhere awaiting the handlers to return to work that night and do the sorting (presumably on overtime).  So I decided to desert my checked bag and hope for Lady Luck to be on my team. Thus, with just my backpack and a small carry-on, I left the airport in my sweaty shirt and took a taxi to the hotel.

At the hotel I was welcomed in spite of my sweaty stink. I had some spare underwear in my backpack but no shirt (foolish boy) and so I decided that I would go out to buy something-anything. The hotel where I was staying was called Four Points by Sheraton and it’s in an area of Rome called Spinaceto, which is south of Rome and near to Ostia which lies on the sea.  Spinaceto is a town that seems to have been built up since World War II and is now showing signs of ill-repair.  After a quick freshener-up I went out on the search; the kind young lady at the hotel desk had pointed out that there was a cluster of little shops about 50 meters away, so I went there and I could see nothing that would look like it might sell a man’s shirt. Nevertheless, there was a shop that sold ladies apparel and I went in and asked the gentleman who seemed to be the boss if he knew where I could buy a shirt. After a few iterations of my question, on account of my stumbling Italian,  he got the idea and told me that there was a camiceria (shirt shop) on via Rastrelli and gave me some loose directions as to where this street was. Off I went in the direction that he had indicated and walked and walked and walked. It was a hot day and my already sweat-loaded shirt was having to deal with some more.  I could not find any via Rastrelli, but eventually I found another little cluster of shops where I entered a ladies shoe store and inquired from the assistant if she knew of this elusive via Rastrelli.  She replied in the affirmative and took me outside the store and pointed in the direction from which I had come.  “It is the first street on the right” she said – I must have walked by it on the way to her store. So off I trotted, retracing my steps, all the while sweating, sweating, and sweating even more.  Well, at least I was going back in the direction of my hotel which was some comfort for this stranger in this strange land.  Arriving at the first street to the right I checked the name plate – via something-or-other, but definitely not Rastrelli, so on I plod and finally, finding no more streets to the right, I arrive at the hotel where I decided to abandon the search for the camiceria.

That evening Giusi Simone, my friend in Rome, came to the hotel to join me for dinner, something that we do whenever I am in Rome and she has the opportunity; it is always a very agreeable experience. When she heard my story about the shirt search, she offered to drive me to find the camiceria in via bloody Rastrelli.  By now, having consulted Google maps (finally!), I had determined that via Rastrelli was, in fact, at the other end of the first street to the right that the shoe-store lady had indicated.  Quite possibly she had told me that it was not directly connected to the main street, but if so, it had got lost in my poor translation. Being driven by Giusi in the cool of the April 1 evening was much more pleasant than slogging through the streets under the afternoon sun. We quickly found the now-famous camiceria and went in and Giusi explained to the gentleman attendant that I was looking for a shirt.  The gentleman took one look at me and said that he didn’t have anything that would fit around my neck (is it so thick?), but he could measure me up and have one made in a couple of days. Of course that wasn’t going to work for me; I needed it now! Accordingly we went to plan B, which was to drive up to the south side of Rome to a big mall and look there for a shirt. In fact there in the IperCoop we found a couple of knitted shirts that were perfect and cheap, and so the saga of the shirt was finally over, and we could have our dinner.

Rather than return to the hotel to eat we decided to explore and drove to the seaside village of Fiumicino, formerly a sleepy fishing village that has been swamped by a huge international airport. Neither of us had any idea of eating places in Fiumicino so we drove around, keeping our eyes open for the place that was neither too starchy nor too grubby.  Eventually we happened upon Osteria del Canale at via del Canale 14; this seemed about right, so there we had our dinner and the food was excellent and the place was clean and well lit; the seafood dishes were abundant and plentiful.  If you ever have the need of a good, wholesome meal in Fiumicino, I recommend this place to you.  Thus a day that had been infuriating and exasperating had ended on a good note, and here I was in Italy again.

The next day (Saturday) I retraced my steps to the airport and after a few blind alleys I found the right person to ask; the lady at the desk took me to a room piled high with bags and suggested that I search for mine. Which I did and suddenly, there it was, large (and heavy) as life, unhappy that I had abandoned it.  But we made up and have been happy ever after.

This could be the right place to end this posting, but I would like to add a coda; my four months in Sarasota were very happy ones, the weather was good, as I have related, but beyond that I found great companionship, starting with Erika and Alex and extending to the team at Ultrafast Systems.  I would go to the office most days in the late morning and leave in the mid-afternoon (I am retired, after all), so I was hardly over-strained by the tasks that Alex found for me, but it was pleasant to be around energetic young folk again. It reminded me of the BGSU days when I was the kingpin and there was a bunch of lads and lasses grinding away at their research projects in my group in their valiant (but vain) efforts to make me famous.  I was not, of course, kingpin at Ultrafast-that is Alex!  But the gang treated me in a respectful and warm way, because of my age, I suppose. They know who they are, and I thank them heartily for their companionship.  I hope that I can repeat next year!  Meanwhile I leave you with a photo taken at the “Goodbye Mike” lunch that we had on March 18, my final day at beautiful Sarasota.

Many of you know, or know of, Tony Gorman.  Tony and I have been the greatest of friends and close collaborators since we were starter faculty at Manchester Chemistry in 1970.  As a scientist he has the most restless mind that I have known.  I have just learned that he is very sick with some form of cancer and the prognosis is dire.  He has no email but if anyone wishes to send messages, they can do so through me at rodgers@bgsu.edu. The home address of Anne and Tony is 4 Kilmuir, Portree, Isle of Skye, UK, IV519YR.  I will tell you more as I learn it.