In Love with France, At Home In Italy

(I've been writing about a different kind of shots in the context of J's medical situation, but when I heard two loud bangs this morning, this next post is what came out.) Yesterday our Italian valley was totally tranquil. Today's gunshots tell a different story:it's the first day the hunters have license to shoot birds. That means it's no day for a walk in the woods. My slender brother, Leigh, who last September at 63 died suddenly of a heart attack, loved birds. As kids, we used to watch excitedly what appeared to be the same sparrow family nesting atop a pillar on our front porch. Leigh never outgrew that  passion, continuing to feed birds from wherever he lived. Now he lives in the Sons of Jacob Cemetery in Minnesota. I still love birds, but less loyally than he. On the other hand, at our 44th anniversary lunch which coincided with the ceremony for the unveiling of Leigh's headstone, something made me decline the offer of the guinea fo...

I'm almost finished with Tim Parks' "Italian Neighbors or A Lapsed Anglo-Saxon in Verona," which describes, among other fascinating things, the way things work in Italian cemeteries. "After 30 years, a coffin can, if more space is required, be lifted up, the bones removed, and a new coffin with a fresh corpse introduced in its place."  There are even more disturbing details about how people are typically buried on top of each other in trenches. "When all the coffins have been down there for ten years or more, they are then dug up together and the bones removed, and the space is once again available for the freshly dead."  Rest in peace? Not so much!  I guess I had these morbid thoughts on the brain because a favorite aunt just died last week, and yesterday we stopped to look at the local cemetery, which has a beautiful view of the city. We did notice the mixture of very old graves amid the new, so having just read about the Italian modus ope...