It will be interesting to see what the fallout of the Volkswagen finagling will be. One certainty, I’ll need to drive my Jetta wagon into the dirt, because I’ll never get anything for it when I sell it. Not after all of this. But frankly, I prefer to drive my cars into the dirt. And […]
Yearly Archives: 2015
Quite a Thing
Sat, 26 Sep 2015, 11:04 PM (-06:00)
“Ssssh! Ladies and gentlemen, quiet please.” Periodically in Italian and then in English, the guards would ask the gathered crowd to be quiet. It was a chapel, after all. It was one of the reasons we came. “I would like to see the Sistine Chapel,” I announced to Trudy a year ago. “They have a […]
Roman Geometry
Fri, 25 Sep 2015, 08:33 PM (-06:00)
She’s unsure about pictures like these. Skeptical. I see the roll of her eyes. Yet, I find the geometry … compelling.
Baby You’re the Best
Fri, 25 Sep 2015, 11:39 AM (-06:00)
Trudy, Boboli Gardens, Florence Nobody does it better Makes me feel sad for the rest Nobody does it half as good as you Baby, you’re the best. — Nobody Does It Better, Carly Simon
St. Paul’s
Thu, 24 Sep 2015, 09:41 PM (-06:00)
As per the schedule sketched out by the fair and industrious Trudy, we got to St. Paul’s in the morning. We stood beneath the gaze of Bernini’s statues on the balustrade of his colonnade. A long line of people already wound a quarter way around the square, and more were streaming in behind us. […]
A Good Day in Ancient Rome
Wed, 23 Sep 2015, 07:57 PM (-06:00)
As the day ended on our first day (with the sun lighting up the Colosseum), so our second day began (with the sun peering over the top). The astute reader might notice that a day doesn’t actually begin with the sun peering over the top of anything like that. It was, in fact, noon […]
Just Down the Street
Wed, 23 Sep 2015, 07:11 PM (-06:00)
Breakfast included a fried egg, that European butter for which bread is only a medium and ice coffee. The fans blew a cooling mist over us. People walked by in the street. Cars and motorbikes beeped and drove by. We rested our weary wheels. By the time we finished eating, it was late enough to […]
Arrival in Rome
Sun, 20 Sep 2015, 08:24 PM (-06:00)
We flew over Nice. Not by Nice. Not around Nice. We flew directly over Nice. I peered down at the winding roads descending out of the mountains heading towards the city on the French Riviera imagining that somewhere down there 38 years ago Paul and I were scooting around on mopeds. The plane was making […]
Not Mont Blanc
Sat, 19 Sep 2015, 09:25 PM (-06:00)
When we wanted to, we could push the button on the back of the seat in front of us and watch our flight’s progress. As we took off from Dulles, the sun was still up. But as time went on, the map showed the edge of night growing closer as the arc of our trajectory […]
Ryan
Sat, 19 Sep 2015, 06:49 PM (-06:00)
We ran into Ryan when we sat down at the gate at the airport. She had an owl, wings outspread, tatooed on her chest and an atom with swirling electrons on her cheek and a foxstronaut in a space suit on her right hand. From the moment we sat down, we knew she was something, […]