What’s the big story in America? Young parents going hysterical over a shortage of baby food. And what is the Republican response? Not that American children should grow up before having children of their own, but “We shouldn’t be sending baby food to concentration camps for illegal aliens.
The experience I’m about to relate is little different from Tom Sawyer’s in the famous episode of painting the fence. The point Mark Twain makes – that something is only fun when it isn’t a job – is far from incidental to the great American writer’s thinking, but instead runs through all his works, from his stories to his sketches and travelogues.
I know I test the gentle reader’s credulity when I say that I was among the first in the world to own a mobile phone, but it’s true. It was a Motorola flip job in matte black, and I received it as a gift from my father-in-law of the day, who in turn had received two samples of that novel contraption as a gift from the manufacturer.
After their recent holiday in Kiyv, SecDef Lloyd Austin and SecState Anthony Blinken actually told us the real reason for the war. And it isn’t to promote independence, freedom, democracy and liberty in Ukraine. The Ukrainians, dying by the tens of thousands, are just pawns in their game. So are the Russian troops also being slaughtered.
I share the gentle reader’s annoyance at the newfangled spelling of place names, and on coming across “Kyiv” or “Turkiye” it always seems to me that, like Rip Van Winkle, I had fallen asleep for many years and woke up in another world, bizarre, irrational, and just plain irksome.
Florence, over the weekend, seemed unchanged. The hordes of ill-dressed people are still shoving each other to get into see the Baptistery, cafes and restaurants are overcrowded, and prices even higher than in previous years. After our required visit to San Marco to see the Fra Angelico frescoes and breathe the spirit of Savonarola, we make our way to Fonticine, which a half dozen websites assure us is open. They lied, but who expects anything but lies from online sources (except this one, of course). Walking back by way of the Mercato Centrale, my wife spots a restaurant she remembers....
With the war not going well for the government of Ukraine, even the U.S. media is starting to inject a little realism into its over-the-top Zelensky boosterism. CNN just reported, “What happens to weapons sent to Ukraine? The U.S. doesn’t really know.”
Dr Fleming and Jim Easton continue their journey through Gulliver’s Travels.
The initial auspices for an endurable trip turned out to be justified. Most people were unmasked at O’Hare and on the plane, we left Chicago and arrived in Rome on time, and, although we arrived early at the Azeglio on Via Cavour, two blocks from Stazione Termini, the hotel had one of our rooms ready so we could stash the bags, take a walk, and eat a lunch that, while it was not offensive, was nothing to write home—or this website—about. Rome has changed in two years but the signs are not dramatic. A significant minority wear masks on the...
