One of the joys of traveling abroad these days is being able to convince yourself that you are more or less beyond the reach of Trumpism. Or at least that’s what I had been thinking over the past couple of months as Bonnie and I settled in Spain, France and now Italy. Of course, I wear my Trump button with his name crossed out and daily get high-fives from Europeans as a consequence. Also, some times we get a table in a restaurant that is “full up.” And I see bits and pieces of the news. Still, I feel quite removed from the U.S. and Trump and what he represents. But yesterday day Trump’s ignorant and evil little hands reached across thousands of miles and touched me at a surprising moment. I was riding down in the funicular from the mountain top where the Italian town of Montecatini is located. One of my friends and house guests, Sadie Jones, the English novelist, was standing beside me as we both road open-air at the front of the funicular. Standing next to us were two elderly Continue Reading
MOUNTAIN HIGH
Our house in Italy is high in the Apennines Mountains. We’ve written of its WWII history before on this blog. What I want to explain to our friends here now is the special sound and effect of the mountain wind through a forest; taking place all around me now, as I sit in our front yard about one mile high. I love the sound of the ocean; it’s crashing waves, the expanse and the forever nature of its sound. But the wind in the trees in the mountains is something else. And I have come to love it, too. It’s different in sound and effect from the crashing ocean waves. It has a power to it like the crashing waves; but it also has an insistence about it that is at once both alarming and reassuring. Its as though at any minute a tornado could strike, or a hurricane, even though you know that’s not what the wind portends. And yet still somehow reassuring in its refusal to stop. Really a treat for a “city boy!” Love, Jim Continue Reading
ALL THE GERMANS HAVE LEFT THE BUILDING – WITH ONE EXCEPTION
Close friends know I’m not Irish, but 100% German. And as a child of the Second World War, I’ve always been fascinated with everything connected to that war. So I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the house Bonnie and I are renting for the next month was once a WWII German lookout. The house, known as “Sasso” or “rock,”sits thousands of feet up in the Apennines Mountains outside of Pistoia, from where we can see as far off as Florence some 50 miles away, and the ocean, equally distant. And the layers upon layers of lush green mountain ranges surround us and can be seen as far away as the eye can see. The house still has the trench (now re-enforced with stone walls) that the Germans crawled though when the Allies’ artillery found its range. They crawled though this trench into a “bomb shelter” still in place under the house. The property was also once home to a very large German cannon that did terrible damage to Allied troops, until the tide of the war changed and the Continue Reading
FRENCH CEMETERIES
French cemeteries, at least those in the countryside of France where we are, are surprisingly colorful places. Each is surrounded by a wall about 4 feet high. Inside are a wide assortment of structures housing the remains of those buried there. What makes them so colorful are not the structures, although many of them are quite grand, but what adorns them. They are not only surrounded by flowers, many plastic, but placed on top of the gravesite structures are a variety of personal affects, apparently of the person buried there. Items such as medals and trophies won; framed photos of family members; and photos of memorable events in the life of the deceased. I find myself wondering about the intention behind these displays. Are they meant, in the religious minds of the survivors, to remind the spirit of the deceased of the good things that took place during their lives? Yet, since the photos are invariably facing towards the foot of the grave site, they would seem, more likely, to be Continue Reading