In Love with France, At Home In Italy

  1.ON THE RELIEF OF NOT BEING A KNOW-IT-ALL (I see that I have previously written on this topic-- DIFFERENT TEACHING STYLES AND ON BEING THE #1 CHILD-- in a post from August 2011, SOME RANDOM MUSINGS FROM MY "STAY-CATION"   I’m not sure about the significance of my returning to it just prior to heading back to yet another school year, my 30 th at this particular institution, but here goes, anyway.)   As every eldest child knows, it can be exhausting to be a know-it-all. No one got that more right than J.D. Salinger in his "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, " where #1 son, Seymour Glass's suicide remains unexplained. I'm thinking that the responsibility of being the first of these excessively wise Glass children might have gotten to be too much for him. If he had moved to middle-of-nowhere Italy, things might have turned out differently. When you move to a new country, especially at an advanced age, all the know-it-all ...

I'm still trying to figure out how to write this story. It's especially hard since I am still right in the middle of it. Maybe the place to start is with a few photos. Who knows? Perhaps you can even figure out the story from them. Here we go. In keeping with my France /Italy theme, I'm recalling a French film that I found very funny: "The Tall Blond Man With The One Black Shoe." Maybe we could do a remake and call it "The Tall Tanned Man With The One Left Shoe." #1.Check out our shoe mat. Never mind the cute little flowered garden clogs. We're talking about the two giant non-matching clodhoppers on the left. Now why would anyone have two left shoes, and even go to Rome with just one left sandal? #2.If you read the   ON BEING A PRINCIPESSA (OR IMAGINING THAT YOU ARE)... post from August 2011, you know that this Louis Ghost chair belongs in front of the dressi...

Well, the visit with dear longtime friends  D and L started out with the usual sort of fun. But the fact that L couldn't hear a thing ever since leaving the plane was definitely putting a damper on our attempts at conversation. Ditto for Jim's busted leg. So when we went to the farmacia to get Jim's post-operative medicine, L and I decided to have a little diagnostic chat with the nice pharmacy lady about how to restore L's hearing. Hilarity ensued when she brought out a primitive-looking box that pictured a smiling woman lying down with what appeared to be a flaming ice cream cone sticking out of her ear. Now we are big fans of gelato, but it never would have occurred to us to stick it in our ear and set it on fire. Despite the alarming photos on the box, the reassuring caption reads: "a natural remedy for a more healthy life."  The box, however, proclaimed this a natural and time-tested cure for L's problem. L couldn...