Via Col Vento
Or at least col aereo. After 13 days of wasting hours –and money–on renewing my passport, it arrived this morning in time to proceed with plans to fly to Munich for a ridiculously long layover…….
Tagged: Thomas Fleming
Texas Outlaws?
A friend and reader writes in to ask what is going in Texas, where Governor Abbott is trying to control the border with Mexico. Isn’t this unconstitutional, he asks, since the Federal government is responsible for maintaining the border?
Tuscan Histories III: Imperial Rule and Collapse
The immediate burdens of empire are born by the conquered subjects, but in the long run it has the people of the imperial nation that find themselves overtaxed to support the endless wars and swamped by subject peoples, allies, or just about anyone who can get to the frontier.
Joy Reid and Degrees of Idiocy
Once upon a time, when working class people had skills and practical wisdom and the educated classes actually studied subjects closer to reality than the race and gender fantasies that give college presidencies to people like Claudine Gray….
Journalists and Other Liars III: The False God of Objectivity
You could read FOX News or Tucker Carlson for the rest of your life, and while you might hear echoes of any number of conspiracy theories—Carlson sounds more like Glen Beck and Alex Jones every day—but never hint that the country’s problems cannot be reduced to the machinations of evil Democrats and weak-spined Rinos.
Tuscan Histories II: The Etruscan Legacy
If Christianity is difficult to conceive without the Old Testament, then Christendom is an impossibility without the legacy of Greeks and Romans, and the Etruscans made no small contribution to the character and culture of Rome, though very little of the Etruscan legacy is obvious.
Tuscan Histories: The Etruscans
Why go to Tuscany in the Winter, when you can go to Sicily, Crete, or Costa Rica? Everyone has read or seen Under the Tuscan Sun, but who wants to endure “Under the Tuscan Wind, Rain, and Flooding?”
Escape to Pisa, II: Mistakes, Corrections, and a bit of History
As an informal and sometimes formal travel advisor, I am forever reminding–my wife calls it bullying people–to double check everything, including passports, visas (if necessary), ticket times and dates.
Escape to Pisa, I: Getting Ready
have been traveling and taking small groups to Europe for 25 years, and, mistake by painful mistake, I have learned a few practical lessons on how and what to pack, how to plan itineraries and pick hotels, how to choose restaurants and have an enjoyable experience, how to allocate your time.
Journalists and Other Liars, II
The dishonesty of journalists is not only a modern, much less postmodern phenomenon. From the days of Daniel Defoe, spy, propagandist, journalist, British (and later American) journalists have been a breed distinguished by their low character and inveterate dishonesty.
