What's my name?

 

I needed the receipt for a recent flight. Easy-peasy, right? It was mailed to my work account. Except it didn’t show up. OK, I’ll get a copy when I check in. Ooops. I forgot to ask outbound. My bad. No problem, I’ll get it on the return. Yeah, no. There was no staff available for that in the steamy Frankfurt airport. You can get it online, madame. 

Props to the clear web site, clicked on “get receipt.” A webform appears which wants my ticket number, which I have, and my name. Which I know. I paste in the ticket number, type my name and hit the button. Nope. Nope. “You must use the same name you booked under.” Did I mistype my name? I must have. (Thank you, Parkinson’s, typos happen more often these days.)  I tried again, no typos. Hit the button. No? No. “ You must use the same name you booked under.” 

Ok, was my name truncated by the computer system? I check my boarding pass. Yeah, no. My name is what I think it is. First and last. Do I want to chat with an agent? I do. The AI agent takes my information, suggests I try the webform that isn’t working, then offers to pass me to a human. “You are number 486 in the queue!” 

I am working, so leave the window parked in the corner and periodically check. By lunch (two hours in) I’m 276 in line. Am I still there, the AI wonders. You bet. I wait four and a half hours to get a human (who the AI confesses is helping multiple customers at the same time, so don’t worry if they are slow.) 

The human suggests the webform. I point out that hasn’t worked. Can they give me a copy? That is against policy. Well, I asked, what can I do? Silence. I can email it to you. Awesome. “Can you doublecheck the email?” Sure, sure. I type in my work email. That’s it, I’m assured. It will take 15 to 20 minutes. “Thanks again,” I chirpily type. The chat ends.

Thirty minutes pass. No email. Five hours in and I am still without a receipt. I check to see if I can retrieve it through my credit card. And that’s when the shoe drops. That receipt says the ticket was issued for FRANCL, MICHELLE PROF/DR. Oh. It thinks my first name is MICHELLE PROF/DR? It sure does. The web form cheerfully regurgitates my receipt. 

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I note the booking form asks for your first name separately from the title. 

Interestingly enough, the typing of people with Parkinson’s has a distinctive pattern, which can be used to screen for possible Parkinson’s. A bit about the development of the screen is here. I did the screen shortly after my diagnosis and correctly directed me to consult a neurologist as it was positive for potential Parkinson’s.

UPDATE: So, a funny thing happened. It’s been about a week since I had this conversation. At 6:33 am today, the receipt showed up in my email. 

If there is room in your suitcase are you really ready to leave?

I am writing this sitting on a shady terrace at a little hotel perched above the Rhein, across the river from Bingen. It’s hot and humid for Germany, nearly 90F and not yet noon. Yet the morning breeze is pleasant, there are billing doves and assorted other birds providing a soundscape. The atmosphere reminds me of summer retreats at the Jesuit retreat center at Wernersville — now sadly closed — softly encompassing, encouraging a syrupy slowness and a deep appreciation of cooling breezes. (Also the noise of leaf blowers!) Despite the vibes I am neither on retreat nor on vacation, but here to give a talk at a chemistry conference.

One plane ride over the Atlantic, two train rides, and a taxi up to the hotel and I am still too early to check in. The desk offered to hold my luggage and suggested a “chilly” walk through the forest to pass the time until my room is ready after lunch. Or if I’d rather, I could use the sauna and pool. I refrained from saying I had already had the sauna experience today, on the train platform at Frankfurt airport where it felt like an August afternoon in Washington DC. Oof. I opted instead to read my book on the terrace and embrace the breezes.

I was also thinking of those retreats at Wernersville yesterday while I was packing. I am on the road for 6 days, and took only one bag, which zipped with ease in its unexpanded form. It worried me, what might I have forgotten?? Was I really ready to leave if I didn’t have to sit on the suitcase to zip it? I usually fill every inch. Then I realized, most of my recent travels have been to cold, damp climes. Sweaters. Sweaters take up a lot of space. I definitely brought no sweaters on this trip, where it is expected to be in the 90s all week. It also reminded me of a retreat where I gave a Jesuit a ride back to the Main Line.  When he tossed his one very small bag in the back of my Mini. I recall aspiring to travel that lightly. And perhaps now I do.

Sic transit gloria mundi

I am transiting at Dulles airport, headed to South Bend. I’d never been to Dulles before. Somehow I had imagined a small airport, but it is a sprawling thing. I took the train from C to A, enjoyed the video wall art in the tunnel — ads, then a short calm video of ocean waves breaking — then walked the length of the elegant international terminal (I have two hours between flights). It was hushed, with its Dior and Chanel kiosks and sleek glass-doored lounges guarded by uniformed personnel with iPads. (The Etihad lounge was apparently full up, there was a tumble of people on the floor waiting to get in, leaning forward hopefully at every departure.) Spacious gates, a vaulted ceiling hung with flags, sunlight streaming in. From here you could fly to Paris. To Rome.

But my gate wasn’t here. I followed the signs up the escalator. Across. Down another. Down one more. The corridors grew narrower, the ceilings lower, the light more artificial. No fancy oyster bar — burgers and chicken tenders were on offer, TVs showed 5 different sports games, people spilled out into the corridor. A woman walked past dressed in a full-on cat costume, ears and all, tail twitching happily as she chatted on the phone,. Two little kids dressed in lederhosen (really, I promise) whooshed by holding hands and singing. Where, I wondered, was Maria?

I popped out in a spot where each gate has subgates — A1A, A1B…A2F— a dozen gates all squished together in the space of two in the cathedral above. The microphone system isn’t working right. It’s hard to get to the desks. “Raise your hand if you asked for a wheelchair going to Raleigh!” Finding a place to sit is a challenge. Finding a place to stand is a challenge. The building shakes when a plane takes off.  I think of Dante and descending circles.

But. But despite the chaos and crowding (because of the chaos and crowding?) there is something so warmly human about this place. It’s more than an hour to my flight, but I have no desire to return to the sterile marble heights. I score a seat, sit and listen to the man across from me wearing a gorgeous blue turban telling his grandkids he would see them in just over an hour. “Just 60 minutes!” He beams.

The world is filled with glory, fleeting, but no less intense for that.

CalMac cacophony

Math Man and I took a trip to one of the Inner Hebrides a few weeks ago. We rode a CalMac ferry from the mainland to Islay. Our ferry was running on schedule both coming and going but weather and an aging fleet means that you can’t alway count on the CalMac, see this NYT piece.  It was, as promised by Crash’s Scottish partner, an experience. The interiors reminded me of late 1970s Las Vegas casinos. There are reserved rows for pets on board, play areas for kids, famous CalMac mac and cheese and comfy seats with big windows to catch the view. It’s a lovely way to travel. At least as long as you remember to turn off your car alarm.

There are signs — which we missed. Crash texted us — but we didn’t see it until we had set sail (at which point the car decks are off limits to passengers). And we had a rental. Neither of our cars have motion sensitive alarms, so I had never given much thought to how car alarms are temporarily disabled.

The cacophony began as soon as the ramps closed with a bang. HOOT-HOOT. WHEE-AH-WHEE-AH. Soon there were a half dozen alarms going. Keys were grabbed and alarms silenced. Until the next wave. It was like a bunch of toddlers suddenly noticing their parents had left them with a sitter and wailing in surprise. I could see our car from the back deck. Suddenly its lights were flashing and it was hooting, too. I grabbed the keys and clicked. Whew. Five minutes later, I was doing it again. And again.

Math Man came out on deck and I explained the issue. “Can you show me the car?” I did. “Can we reset it from here?” “Shhh, it’ll hear you and wake up.” It did. Its side mirrors unfolded like a 2 year old begging to be picked up. And by now, I could recognize the wail of our car with the same spidey sense that I used to distinguish my baby's cry from the rest. I’d spend the rest of the voyage squelching the alarm. I gave up counting after a dozen.

On the way back we knew how to keep the baby quiet!

Bilocation: Assisi and Philly

 

I have discovered that you can have jet lag without the jet. For the past two mornings I have had one foot in Assisi, Italy (virtually) attending a seminar on proposals to open a space on the Roman liturgical calendar for a feast celebrating the Creator and the mystery of creation. The proposals emerge from the current ecumenical World Day of Prayer for Creation on September 1. Things got moving at 9 in the morning in Assisi, which, of course, is 3am here. Perforce I was up and tuned in both days. The speakers were clear (and the translators - the conference was in Italian and English with instantaneous translation) and engaging so not hard to be awake in the morning. Harder by the end of the day -- which also featured a seminar talk at Temple University's School of Parmacy and a delightful lunch with their graduate students.

As virtual meetings go, this one has been smooth. I missed the chance for the random conversations over shared meals and at breaks, but the ability to be present even in a limited way with people from all over the world was great. 

It was delightful to get to use the synodal listening approach in this more universal context. My parish has been using it regularly, so it was familiar and comfortable for me. 

Blisters, irony and mercy

It is cold and rainy in London. Yes, it is July. Yes, I brought my umbrella. And yes, I’ve been walking everywhere or taking the buses. Yesterday I wore my “conference flats“ which are great for walking many miles in city streets. My day was ending with a visit to the theater, so I thought perhaps an upgrade from my sneakers was in order. 

My trusty flats have never given me blisters. That is until yesterday. Fifteen minutes into a twenty minute walk to the Underground the back of my heel was hot. By the time I got to Russell Square for a lunch meet up, it was raw. I grabbed a bandage from my little first aid kit in my bag and patched it. By the end of lunch, I’d patched the other heel. On to my next meeting. By the time I arrived, I had another blister. You would’ve found me sitting on the (very clean) floor of the  bathroom of the very prestigious journal publisher patching up my foot. 

When I left, I hit the button on my app for navigating the city for “less walking“ and was relieved to find I could catch a bus right in front of where I was that would take me straight to dinner.

By dinner, two more blisters had blossomed on my now sopping wet feet. My feet have not been such a hot mess since I did ballet in graduate school. As we headed home from the theater, my companions pointed out the perch I could lean against in the bus stop. “Ah,” I said, “a misericord. A mercy seat.” For sure it was a mercy for me at this point, at least as much as its predecessor must’ve been for the elderly monks of old. “Not really,” responded one. “ It’s unwelcoming urban architecture. No place for someone to lay down and sleep.” I sighed. There is an irony in having  a mercy seat that doesn’t offer mercy to those most in need.

A flying visit

The last time I got on an airplane was February 2019, when I caught the last flight ahead of an impending ice storm in North Carolina. The airport was eerily empty, most of the flights had been cancelled the night before. The COVID-19 virus was already here, which I’d thought about on the flight from Philly, which included several scientists returning from a trip to China. 

Last Tuesday, I drove to PHL at 5 am to catch a flight to San Jose, then drove 150-ish miles south to my brother’s house. Surprise! I hadn’t told anyone I was coming. My sister was retiring after 21 years at her second career as a high school teacher and I hadn’t seen my sibs in more than 2 years. I thought it would be fun to just show up unannounced at her retirement party. I did and it was. 

My sister-in-law found a bed for me to sleep in (shout out to their amazing AirBnB), one brother flew (himself - he's a pilot) up from SoCal. It was grace and joy from one end to the other.

Over the course of forty-eight hours I shared five meals with (variously) four of my five sibs, three sisters-in-law, one brother-in-law, two nieces and a nephew. I ate In-N-Out burger, sushi, Joe's diner (twice), but the real feast was the time with family. 

Now I'm back, settling into the summer writing rhythm. 

I fly home, settling back into myself — Rainer Maria Rilke

Taking flight

 

As a conversation starter recently someone asked when we had taken our first airplane flight. It was 1966, I was 6 years old and headed to my uncle's wedding on Long Island. My mother and I and my baby brother (number 5 in the family order) flew from O'Hare in Chicago to JFK — perhaps on TWA and to Eero Saarinen's terminal. 

It might have looked something like this photo from 2020, complete with VW van. I was fascinated at the time by the flight attendants briskly heading to their flights, and the boards with destinations I could only imagine going to. And to a young girl who lived in a tiny town, just a few thousand people, it was a memorable adventure.  

My next flight wasn't for a decade, I was 16 and flying solo to Mexico City to meet my grandfather and spend the summer in Oaxaca where he was living. The plane was delayed, but I had no way to let my grandfather know and remember worrying the whole way whether he'd know. The whole family — all six kids — visited the following Christmas, but we went by train from Nogales. 

It would be almost another decade before I'd get on a plane again, this time to Vancouver on my honeymoon. We flew past Mt. St. Helens about a year after the major volcanic eruption, it was still smoking. 

I didn't get a passport until I was in my thirties. 

For the first third of my life, my trip were mostly confined to the ground and to at most a few hundred miles. I camped in Wisconsin, hiked in the San Gabriel mountains, rode my bike to the library and to see friends who lived on nearby farms. Yet I never felt confined, books took me to Russia (Anna Karenina) and to Venus and Pluto and beyond (Podkayne of Mars and Have Space Suit Will Travel). I haven't been on a plane since last February (the photo of JFK notwithstanding), and rarely get more than a couple of miles from home and that mostly on foot or by bike. But I'm taking flight nonetheless. To worlds too real (How to be an Antiracist) and worlds that lean over the precipice of fantasy (Mexican Gothic).  

Modern Burma Shave

It was, back in the day, prosaic poetry: Shave the modern way / No brush / No lather / No rub-in / Big tube 35 cents – Drug stores / Burma-Shave

I'm too young (really, by this measure I'm young!) to recall the Burma Shave signs along the highways, teasing out a line at a time. The signs came down in 1963, around the time I learned to read. When on a sabbatical leave in 1998 (in which we drove and camped our way across the country with a two year old and four year old in tow, in the days before video displays in cars or handheld tablets, but thankfully after recorded books) we encountered a similar set of signs for Wall Drugs on I-90 as we headed to the Badlands.  

But Burma Shave has been reimagined on the Pennsy Trail in Haverford, where pages from Sheep Take a Hike by Nancy Shaw tease you down the path and back. And if you tire midway through, there's bench and some books to take a break with.

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The camping in the Badlands was memorable. There were a whole series of thunderstorms the night we camped there. Crash woke me to tell me his sleeping bag was wet, and it was because there was a stream running through the tent. We hung stuff up to dry in the morning, drove to get breakfast at the diner near the entrance, but didn't get back until the next storm struck. We decamped in a deluging rain storm, the kids tucked up and dry in the minivan while a sopping wet Math Man and I loaded up our gear.

We stopped in the first small town we came to, and found a laundromat. Then we went to Wall Drugs. My memories of Wall Drug are misty, but I can still see the lemon yellow walls of that wonderful laundromat. Dry sleeping bags are a wonderful thing, right up there with dry socks.

The Twilight Zone

I’m flying from PHL to Greensboro, NC to give a chemistry talk. We have been flying for nearly an hour in a solid layer of clouds. My window is a grey rectangle. I keep thinking I’m in the Twilight Zone episode, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, where William Shatner looked out the window to see a gremlin on the wing. So far, no one on the wings. My flight is filled with business guys, a coterie in their slacks and button downs, all in shades of gray and blue, typing away on laptops.

Me, too, for that matter, on both counts.

Scottish tern signs

[Ed: No, the title is not misspelled.]

Math Man has spent the last three days chasing a small ball around the Scottish dunes, in the hopes of managing to put it in one of eighteen 4.25" diameter holes (or since we are, at least for the moment, in the EU, 108 mm holes). Meanwhile, I've walked many miles along the shorelines of the dunes. Yesterday, at Brora, the views and the walk were extraordinary. The day was spectacular, the beach perfect for walking, and the occasional bench perched on the dunes above the beach a perfect spot to sit and think, take in the view, or even write a bit.  All of which I did. It was a day I hope to return to in memory again and again. But what stands out almost as much as the day were the signs.

At the far end of the beach, there were signs on the dunes, warning of nesting arctic terns. Don't disturb the nests and keep your dogs under control.  I carefully avoided the fenced off dune areas. Not carefully enough, apparently, as a tern came swooping down, chirping wildly.  I moved quickly off the dunes and down to the water. Yeah, no. I am still too close. Now the tern is diving closer and closer, I can feel the air pushed down as she swoops across the back of my neck. I flash on Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.  I pull my back pack over the back of my neck to protect it and head off the beach. I run into Math Man at the top of the dunes, and while telling him about the terns, get dive bombed again. He suggests — firmly — that I should depart and take the tetchy tern with me. I finally get far enough down the beach to reassure her that I'm not going to disturb her chicks. Promise.

There were signs on the road for: deer crossing, heavy plant crossing, elderly people crossing...and otters crossing. There is a robust population of river otters in Scotland and they occasionally cross the roads (for the same reason as the chicken — to get to the other side.) I note that the heavy plant sign is not warning of weighty plants stalking cars, but an industrial plant truck exit. I love how the language shifts make my brain turn sideways. I'm with the late Toni Morrison, perhaps the tower of Babel was not a loss, but a gain. A gain of perspective, a gain of narratives, a gain of joy.

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Read (or listen) to Toni Morrison's beautiful Nobel prize address. My favorite lines: "Language can never “pin down” slavery, genocide, war. Nor should it yearn for the arrogance to be able to do so. Its force, its felicity is in its reach toward the ineffable. Be it grand or slender, burrowing, blasting, or refusing to sanctify; whether it laughs out loud or is a cry without an alphabet, the choice word, the chosen silence, unmolested language surges toward knowledge, not its destruction."

Scottish turns

Math Man and I went to Edinburgh last week, to see the Fringe Festival (Crash Kid is the stage manager for Four Woke Baes which is on at the Fringe - go see it :). Also see comedian Tiff Stevenson and Kiinalik at the International Festival...or any of the literally thousands of other performances on right now).

On Sunday morning we undertook to meet Crash for breakfast on the other side of Edinburgh, he's got limited availability around rehearsals, performances and the need to pre-cook s'mores for those performances. Having more or less mastered the Lothian buses, we checked times on Google maps and saw we were just in time for the bus a short walk away. Fabulous!

We follow Google maps directions to the bus stop. Alas, Google left us 40 feet away from the bus stop. Why alas? That would be 40 vertical feet below the bus stop. Edinburgh, the birthplace of Harry Potter, is a city of multiple levels and tiny alleys and staircases that wind between them. We found steps up and dashed up them and around the corner to just make the bus, now dripping in sweat and hearts pounding. Whew. We had a lovely breakfast with Crash and an incredible ramble through the botanical gardens. A nice ending to our time in Edinburgh, Google maps notwithstanding.

Yesterday we drove up north of Inverness. (We are in the birth country of golf, and Math Man gets a bit excited about golf, so we are planted up for a few days while he indulges in some sea side walking chasing a ball and I indulge in walking, period). Math Man played a course on a spit out into a firth, I walked down to the point to (hopefully) see dolphins. No dolphins, but some amazing lighting bolts. Math Man gives up the game after 10 holes and we get in the car to head to where we are staying about an hour away.

I fire up Google maps, and we head off down the country roads. We go through a little town, turning every 50 feet it seems. "Go left," I say firmly. Math Man turns left and say, "Ferry?" I look down at Google maps and the next direction shown is a little ferry icon. Indeed, with no warning at all, Google maps has directed us to a ferry. Which is here. Which is ready to go. We drive on and they winch up the ramp most of the way and we're off. The timing was so smooth it was like a scene from a James Bond movie, where the bad guys chasing 007 are just a fraction of a second to catch him before he flies/sails/motors away.

Turns out we are on the smallest car ferry in the UK, it holds two cars (barely, the ramp won't go up the whole way with us on board) or one van.  And despite the joke when we asked where it was going, it was going to Nidd across the bay, not Norway. And it certainly did save us time. Slàinte mhath!

Vignettes via Vignetta

There are saints on every corner here.

The weather in the Alban Hills has been pleasant (unlike the East Coast), so I've enjoyed walking around the town — as it seems others are doing as well. There is the clutch of small children who have been filling a seemingly endless supply of water balloon at the fountain at the end of the street. They have been out there every day since I arrived. They offered to deluge me one afternoon, when I appeared hot and sweaty from my in-lieu-of-riposo walk.  I opted for the regular shower.

There was the lady walking down the side walk, lab goggles on her face. The man walking a duo of dachshunds. They left a perfect emoji shaped pile of poop on the street (I'm always watching where I'm walking), then tried to harass the large cat that polices the warehouse across the street. She outweighed the pair of them, and was having none of their nonsense. She hissed once and regally walked away.  Still, I wonder if the eviscerated mouse she left on the street later is a warning to them.  And then there was the scene from the early morning bus I took to catch a train into the city: an elderly man on his balcony, stark naked, except for a towel around his neck.

And yes, I've walked to Arricia.

Long Hauls

Tray table on my last flight.
QOD: Do cloistered monks get called to jury duty?

I had jury duty today, which meant a rush hour drive to the county seat in Media.  They had 650 jurors on standby, they called 85 of them in.  I was...number 84.  But only about 60 people showed up, more women than men, more my age than younger, not very diverse even for this not so diverse county. Which made me wonder what the overall stats were.

There was a lot of waiting for a trial scheduled to start today. We got oriented. We filled out another form or two. We got an hour break. We came back. We waited for 45 minutes and then got a 2 hour lunch break. At 2:30 they warned us the cafeteria was closing, in case you wanted another snack. There was more waiting. Then we were thanked and sent on our way.

It struck me that this experience was a lot like a long haul flight in a really wide-bodied plane where the court officers were the flight attendants. We were 60 strangers packed into a tight space with limited bathroom access. The orientation videos included evacuation procedures, and a bright message from the people in charge, encouraging us to explore the features of our 747...uh courthouse.  Like flight attendants, the jury staff were attentive to what comforts they could provide, but also like flight attendants, this was not their real job. And we got regular updates from the flight deck - or rather the judge's chambers on the delay.

It was a lot like flying Southwest.  Choose your own seat. Friendly staff doing their best to get you from one end of the day to the other without anyone melting down.  Bonus: I got to watch the Mars landing — which I would have missed if I'd been teaching.

Walking in the heat

Public gardens in Albano.

The sensible thing to do when it is 96^o F out is to take a nap. Truly.  Instead I have been walking. Yesterday I walked across the bridge at the far end of town which spans the valley separating Albano from Arricia. Today I walked the gardens in Albano, just below the Specola.

The views have been spectacular, towns and small orchards spread out below like toys. But part of the joy of the walking is what I can see at this pace. The discovery of the grotto underneath the plaza where I cross the street most days to pick up a loaf of bread.  The doorknockers and door stops, lion's heads and horses' hooves. And my favorite, which reminds me of Thing in the Addams Family (the hand in the box on the table).

It's also interesting to experience these towns as they were when foot travel was the only choice. I can walk from the center of historic Albano to Castel Gandolfo in under 30 minutes. The same can be said for the walk to Ariccia. Many of my walks parallel the Appian Way, or follow it for short periods. These are well worn paths, Ariccia has been settled for almost 3000 years, Albano, in this location at least, for 2000 years.

Though the walk from Albano to Arricia is much faster now that the bridge spans the valley, before the bridge was built in the mid 19th century by Pope Pius IX...well, not with his own hands...you had to walk down and up a very steep slope The country here is steep, I think twice before walking down a street, knowing I'll have to walk up it to get back.

The bridge is not the original bridge, but was destroyed by retreating German Army at the end of World War II, was rebuilt and then collapsed abruptly in 1967 (which created such wonderful ruins that they inspired Fellini to film there). I think I was glad not to know about the collapse as I walk across the once-again-rebuilt span.

Glooo-ri-a! Gloria!

The lights in the street outside the church. The St. Rita's

Triduum at my parish definitely could learn from this event!

Not Gloria in excelsis Deo! but a cover of Laura Branigan's "Gloria!" was ringing through the square in front of the 11th century church of Santa Maria della Rotunda as I walked home through it last night.  It's part of a three day celebration in Albano Laziale to mark the deliverance of the city from a cholera epidemic in 1867. The people came to this church to pray in front of what is traditionally considered to be a very early Syrian Christian icon of the Theotokos: Mary in her role as Christ-bearer, mother of God, Dei Genetrix as it is inlaid in the wall of the church. 

The celebration includes Masses and prayer times, but also nightly concerts of secular music and pop-up restaurants in the blocked off streets nearby. There are flashing lights arching overhead. 

As I threaded my way through the crowd in the square, I thought how strange it was to be walking the streets of this ancient Italian town and seeing the streets of Pittsburgh in my mind's eye. (This morning, I still have the tune stuck in my ear).  But it turns out that the version made famous by Flashdance isn't the original, it's a late 70s pop song by Italian pop star Umberto Tozzi! (Listen here.) So definitely Italian.

This morning I went to one of the closing Masses (there are three today), enjoying the way the small congregation's responses were amplified by the round church (which is in an old Roman temple or bath).  There might have been fewer than a hundred people in there, but I have rarely felt so engulfed by the liturgy, so firmly grounded in the faith proclaimed. 

So about that second tunic...

So the trip to the Specola was — to a first order approximation — smooth.  Yes, the plane left a bit late, but clearly it usually leaves a bit late, because we were on time to Rome.  I managed to buy my ticket on the express into Roma Termini and my ticket on to Albano on the TrenItalia app.  Woot!

But.  I managed to hit the daily gap at Roma Termini where it is two hours between trains to Albano. Any other time of the day, they run every hour. It's hot and muggy, but I discover the terrace upstairs where I can get a cold drink, watch the trains and the train board and most importantly, sit for the next hour and half.  The Albano train pops up on the board, and I know from experience just how long a walk it is out to Platform 18, so I grab my luggage and go. By the time I get there I am soaked, but the train is blissfully air conditioned and ready to board.  At which point I should be enjoying the cool air and 45 minutes to recruit my strength for the walk up the hill to the apartment where I am staying.

Except. Except they are doing track work, so they are bussing from Ciampino to Albano (I knew this when I bought my ticket). Twenty minutes and we're off the train. The conductor gives me directions to where to find the bus. I haul my growing-ever-heavier bag down from the platform and back up the indicated stairs and seeing a bus ask about the bus to Albano.  Not this one, but wait right here.  I wait in the sun.  No bus.  I check the time.  It should be here in a minute or two.  No bus. Five minutes?  No bus.  I go inside and ask about the bus. Oh, that bus leaves from the other side. Next one? In an hour. Back down and up I go. I find the spot and hope that the bus will appear. A bus arrives with a spate of TrenItalia personnel in bright red polo shirts. Yes, this is your bus.  Up goes the luggage.

It is icily air conditioned, so after a bit I look for my "second tunic"...only to remember with a start that I had left my nice sweatshirt on the bench at the station. I guess I didn't need a second tunic after all.

Take One Tunic

My second tunic/sweatshirt and lots more stuff.

I'm off to Rome, or more precisely, Albano Laziale, the small town just outside of Rome where the Vatican Observatory is situated, just behind the gates to the papal gardens.  As I packed, my mind kept drifting back to the Gospel from two Sundays back. 

He instructed them to take nothing for the journey
but a walking stick—
no food, no sack, no money in their belts.
They were, however, to wear sandals
but not a second tunic.  (Mark 6:8-9)

Yes.  Well.  I have packed a snack, have a checked bag and a carry on, stashed my miscellaneous euros in my wallet.  I definitely packed a second tunic (and a third and a fourth...).  I'm not wearing sandals, though I did pack a pair.  It sounds like an all around fail, new evangelization or old, even before you consider my electronics.

It got me thinking about what the modern version of sandals and a walking stick might be?  Or that second tunic that Matthew suggests might be allowed.  Walking shoes?  A phone? What reminds me of my origin and my destination, of the source of what I have?

If I could take just one thing, and trust that the rest would be provided, what would it be?  My laptop. A virtual tunnel to almost anywhere, to information, to communications, to clothes and food. A battery for electronics.  Though  the more I think about it,  perhaps my laptop is not a sign of radical dependence, but of stubborn independence.

Briefly seated

Airline boarding areas are constrained places.  Once there, you are reluctant to leave its confines, metaphorically constrained by thoughts of missing your plane. There are the literal constraints of too few seats and electrical outlets, combined with too much luggage. Is the crowding deliberate, I wonder?  Is it a slow compression, pushed ever closer to our soon-to-be fellow passengers, getting us ready to be packed into the cabin. We eye each other. Will he be noisy? How much stuff do they have? Will she be sitting next to me?

At Burbank I was fascinated by the number of briefcases that required their own seats. Fully half the chairs in the waiting area were occupied by briefcases and coffee cups, chaperoned by hefty guys dressed in flying-on-business clothes — blue shirts, no ties, sports jackets and grey pants. Their arms were crossed, their legs splayed out. They, for the most part, stared straight ahead. Don’t tread on me.  Arrayed along the wall are bearded guys in shorts and flip-flops, chic young women, and one grey-haired professor, earphones plugged in to a podcast. #privilege

In the Phoenix waiting area there are seventeen wheelcharis lined up to board, their occupants icons of confinement.  They are boxed in on one side by a railing, on the other by seats, with barely a foot between them. Meanwhile the woman on the end of my row repeatedly does a series of core exercises, her feet raised off the floor, beating time to an unheard tune.  We all bounce with her, the connected chairs neatly delivering the impulses down the line. #physics

Eat me!

The sign at the edge of the water at the Naples Botanical Gardens read, “CAUTION: Preserved wetland systems and stormwater management lakes provide habit suitable for alligators.  The feeding, harrassing or other disturbance of alligators is strictly forbidden.” 

As we wandered along the lakeside path from the Brazil gardens toward the Florida garden, Math Man wondered if the sign was really just to cover the gardens if some alligator managed to sneak in through a storm culvert.  There are no fences, it seems as if any alligator could just wander up and snack on the visitors.  So, really, alligators? Surely there'd be a fence if there really were alligators.

There is a terrace overlooking the lake, for bird watching. There is a large heron wading in the shallows on an islet across from us. It’s bucolic.  Suddenly there is a thrashing in the water, startling the heron, followed by what looks for all the world like a log gliding through the water. Except it has eyes. It sinks into the water until just the eyes are visible, gliding through the water. At last the alligator wallows onto the shore and….sits there.  The kids are agog.  So are we. 

Look carefully on the left hand side of the photo, that log on

the grass is not a log.  The heron doesn't seem bothered.

One bloodthirsty child wonders if the heron will get eaten.  Her mother murmurs under her breath, “Not quite what we came to the botanical gardens for…”  “The circle of life…” hums her father.

Two six- or seven-year old girls in flowered dresses with matching floral headgear, settle themselves on the steps, decorously tucking their dresses under their legs. They are riveted to the scene across the way.  “Eat it!” one of them eggs on the somnolent alligator.

To no avail. The alligator seemed content to nap in the sun.

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Bonus:  Check out these man...or rather gnome... eating plants to crochet