Bucket list - Italy!

Aunt Grace on her first morning in Sicily

It is rare, the occasion that one gets to check off  an item from one's bucket list. And to complete two in under four months is nearly unheard of. And that both involved a trip to Italy is fantastic luck.

The first, of greatest import.

Our Aunt Grazia (Grace) was born to newly emigrated Sicilian parents in the early 1920s. Remaining in Sicily were three first cousins and their families, corresponded with, but never seen nor touched for a veritable lifetime. The bucket list trip occurred to us on the eve of her 90^th birthday. When, if not now, would she be able to embrace her family?

A furious round of planning commenced, involving your intrepid writer, his wife, and two sisters. We studied the logistics of an international trip with an advanced octogenarian. The AAA travel folks in the South Attleboro office were fabulously effective. Domestic air travel to gather in Boston, then international to eventually land in Sicily, and a large rented van to accommodate us on our way to the final destination.

Finally, one day in October, the plan was put into effect. One sister flew directly to Providence. The other, to Texas to join Aunt Grace and to bring her to Boston. Finally, all gathered in Attleboro, we had a family dinner at the Heritage Tap in Pawtucket, a family-friendly place if ever there was one.  Next day, how to better enjoy the local cuisine than lunch at Tex Barry’s. You locals know what that means.

Then, finally, the limo ride to Terminal E at Logan Airport. Aunt Grace with her crisp, brand new passport, having never before exited the country of her birth, was ready to go.

The flight to Rome was long, but the wine and dinner service were decent and we managed to sleep a bit. At Rome’s Fiumicino Airport, we awaited our transfer to Palermo, Sicily. The cappuccinos (cappuccini) from the airport coffee bar were excellent, a prognostication of the wonderful gustatory delights to come.

After a relatively short flight, we arrived at Palermo and secured our Hertz rental van, an eleven passenger behemoth adequate for the five of us and our considerable luggage.

The first night was spent in Palermo, on the bay, in a lovely hotel with beautiful grounds and a wonderful restaurant.  To close the circle, this was the same hotel to which we had brought our parents in 1997, both since passed. It was very sentimental, but the focus was on tomorrow – the Sicilian relatives were in Agrigento, some 80 miles to the south.

Morning dawned and we checked out, only to spend nearly an hour in Palermo rush hour traffic.

But then the traffic thinned and we finally headed south, into the dry, dusty hills and mountains of central Sicily. After nearly two hours, we emerged on the southwest coast, with the Mediterranean aglow below us. This was the land of our grandparents. Arid, poor, but with a wealth of olive groves, lemon trees, irrigated vegetables, and the endless bounty of the sea.

Finally checked into our hotel, a small family-friendly, former estate, we began the phone calls and arranged meetings. Three first cousins, all octogenarians, and we met them all, with multitudinous nieces and nephews and grandkids. To see Aunt Grace embrace her kin for the first time was beyond touching. Hugs abounded, tears flowed, and the tables were never empty (yes, Italians do insist that you eat – mangia mangia). She was welcomed into the family as if her parents had never left. Their  mountain village, almost unchanged for over 500 years, celebrated her presence.

A bucket list item is often thought of as being a personal thing. ”I want to see Mount Everest. I would like to visit Tokyo.”

But this bucket list trip was different. The five of us were delighted to meet the first cousins and numerous nieces, nephews, and grandkids. There were perhaps fifty people touched by this one event. That’s the way to do a bucket list trip.

The other trip, some three months later, to ski the Italian Alps for the first time, was personal and selfish, not worth recounting here. But that it was to Italy, with the scenery and the food (the food!), made it fabulous.

No, the adventures of Aunt Grace, on the eve of her 90th birthday, on her first trip ever out of the country, to see close relatives she had never met… that’s what made this  bucket list trip magical. Most probably, never to be matched.

But always remembered.

The Winter that Would Never End

Sidewalk buried under "Mount Bronson," County Street

It has been a long, cold, dark, snowy, ruthless winter in New England. It is usually said, given such conditions, that only the skiers are happy. But this winter, even ardent skiers are yearning for spring. And the plow drivers – bless them for having not yet slipped a gear.

In Attleboro, the potholes on Thacher street below the railroad bridge are of a particularly vicious nature. Multitudinous, cavernous, sharp-edged, a recipe for bone-jarring, heart-stopping whacks which test the vehicle’s suspension and the owner’s wallet.  More experienced drivers are aware of the danger, slowing to avoid these chasms . The younger ones, perhaps, with some life lessons to learn.

Persistent winds across the Locust Valley, or in opposite direction sweeping Leach’s meadow, have squeezed Locust Street to barely a lane and a half. Witness to the ineffectiveness of lightweight trucks in achieving curb to curb clearance, and perhaps calling for that Vermont Yankee solution, the snow fence. (Snow fences are temporary structures erected after golfers have abandoned the links and dismantled before the robins return and daffodils bloom). A simple solution, perhaps too old fashioned to appeal.

Repeated plowings from both the street and parking lot sides have raised up a veritable “Mount Bronson” of snow at the Bronson building on Country Street. The “Do Not Enter” sign seems balefully directed at pedestrians, those mothers with strollers and elderly trekkers who are forced to trudge in the busy street. While the city was able to quickly clear the site of the Winter Festival, Mount Bronson has remained impervious for over four weeks. We are apparently following the North Carolina model of snow removal here – “Just wait long enough and it will melt.”

Animals, domestic and wild, are having to persevere. The deep snow pack and tall, plowed banks are channeling dogs and their walkers into hoary canyons. This has the effect of concentrating the inevitable detritus of dogs, only some of which is picked up by diligent human attendants. Ah, well, a problem to be dealt with only if the thaw ever arrives.

Squirrels have been notably absent for weeks, in semi-hibernation as food sources shrivel. Only recently have they slowly reemerged to do battle with the birds twittering about the feeders, scattered black oil sunflower seeds, their common pursuit.   

Who knows where the deer and turkeys have gone? Huddled, perhaps in a deep piney  copse or thick swamp, desperate by now for a buried acorn or tuft of dormant grass or a low-hanging cedar branch on which to nosh. The next few weeks will be tough for them, as the snow pack slowly melts enough to reveal hidden nourishment and, eventually, sustain new growth.

All in all, we should pat ourselves on our collective back. There are millions of people in our broad land who have never had to deal with such a winter. But we have done it, with some aplomb. Residents with snow blowers and plow drivers honchoing big machines have done a credible job of keeping an enormous amount of snow at bay. Roofs have been cleaned, fireplugs unburied. Exercise enthusiasts are seen jogging (mostly in the streets), and many have resorted to cross country skiing or snow shoeing as hearty alternatives.

The sun is much stronger now, we can feel it. Higher in the sky, brighter, hotter, closer it seems. Even on frigid days, the ice is beginning to melt from long-encased driveways. We will survive, with stories extolling our strength and virtue to mock our snowbird friends as they make their eventual, fainthearted return. (Although, perhaps not so secretly, we envy them).

Yes, we have been tested and have risen to the challenge. There is only one imperative thing we could have done better.

Let’s clear the sidewalks. Pedestrian lives matter.

Humans making stuff

The maker movement robustly engages kids.

To those who have come along since, it is impossible to relate the excitement, the fluorescent electric buzz of growing up in the 1950s.

It hadn't been that long since the rural poor had lived on hardscrabble farms with hand-pumped water, outhouses, and kerosene lanterns. Some still did.

But we were on the cusp of monumental change. AT&T had invented the transistor, we soon had hand-portable radios and heard tales of electronic computers projecting presidential election results. TV sets, fine as any piece of furniture, were quickly supplanting radios as the figurative family hearth.

The days of propeller-driven aircraft became numbered. Jet airliners began to leave contrails high across the blue domed sky and futuristic Air Force fighters delighted air show attendees and model builders alike.

The first artificial satellites blasted into Earth orbit to the intense excitement of kids who had been reading Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke. These great authors were serious futurists who prepared our minds for incredible advances to come, usually teaching real physics in the process.

After thousands of years of very gradual advances, it seemed that technology was exploding in waves around us, driven by a deep understanding of electromagnetic forces and a burgeoning electrical power infrastructure. This was a thrilling time to be a kid, to soak it all in.

We were inveterate tinkerers. We made go-karts from scratch using old, rebuilt lawn mower engines. We built crystal radio sets which were powered by the very radio waves they teased from the night sky. We learned to make electromagnets using large dry-cell batteries and hand-wound, iron-core coils. We learned how to repair TV and radio sets which suffered from burnt-out vacuum tubes.

And as the 50s melded into the 60s, we built more ambitious radio receivers and transmitters with sophisticated antenna systems. Our thoughts turned to computers and we learned how to build flip flops and memory devices using transistors.

We demanded coaxial cables, connectors, discrete components (resistors, capacitors, transistors) and whole kits – TV sets, short-wave radio receivers, and elementary computers – all to be assembled, soldered, tested, and put to use by the hobbyist. These parts and kits came from a thriving, growing hobbyist marketplace – Heathkit and Radio Shack served as pluperfect examples.

So it was with great regret and nostalgia when we heard the news that RadioShack had declared bankruptcy.

Started by two brothers in 1921, Radio Shack was initially located in downtown Boston. It offered a retail store and mail order catalogue operation largely to supply the rapidly growing field of amateur (“ham”) radio. Surviving over 90 years was no mean feat, but RadioShack (the final name) eventually succumbed to financial failure. Its peak success occurred in the 1970s, as it catered to the needs of citizens band (CB) radio hobbyists. Along the way, the firm tried many business models, offering proprietary Tandy Radio Shack (TRS) computers and then betting heavily on smartphones. But the do-it-yourself market was allowed to languish, and some feel this inattention was a major cause of failure.

Because the do-it-yourselfers and hobbyists and tinkerers are still out there. Today we call them “makers.” And RadioShack missed the maker movement.

Makers are a wide and varied demographic made up of kids of all ages. Students, executives, engineers, house wives, just about anyone who is a kid at heart. The only requirement is to have an intense curiosity in how things work and a desire to build stuff.

Technology has changed dramatically since the 1950s. Makers obviously don’t test and replace vacuum tubes in a failed radio, but they interact with a whole new set of technologies.

Makers write code and build computer games. Makers create automatic guidance systems for drones. Makers use 3D printers to create prosthetic hands and jewelry and  musical instruments, and openly share the computer files that define these objects. (Sharing is a fundamental attribute of the maker movement).

But makers also created squishy circuits, enabling one to build basic logic circuits from batteries and homemade dough. Or plush toy DNA molecules with magnetic strips that allow them join and assemble only into chemically correct combinations.

The modern maker movement appears to have a strong dose of STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) with an equally robust measure of art to boot. Perhaps STEAM would be more appropriate.

It’s not surprising that our do-it-yourself spirit is still strong. Humans make stuff. 

Perhaps the reconstituted RadioShack, as it emerges from bankruptcy, should look back to its roots.

Random, midwinter musings

The recent major snowfall we experienced in New England is beautiful to some, bothersome to others, and sometimes just plain deadly. The pages of this newspaper have borne the sad news of multiple recent deaths with pedestrians on the losing end. There are some obvious lessons: that drivers be more cautious and slow down, and that pedestrians likewise show great caution and don’t expose their backs to vision impaired and possibly distracted drivers. But more, perhaps we don’t prioritize the cleaning of sidewalks and pedestrian byways as we should. On a recent trip to the Italian Alps, we heard an army of snow blowers and small plows clearing the sidewalks in the predawn hours following an overnight dump. By the time that folks were out and about, they could do so safely on freshly cleaned sidewalks. Obviously, a different set of priorities.

Does anyone recall that Crimea was forcibly taken from Ukraine by Russia in 2014? Or that two provinces of Georgia were likewise forced into the Russian fold in 2008? Or that Russia is currently engaged in a raging war in eastern Ukraine for even more territory? Let’s hope that someone is keeping track of all this. “The 80’s called and want their foreign policy back” is not helpful as a strategy.

Does it seem odd that parents in liberal enclaves of California (which are hotbeds of support for anthropogenic global warming) are, in enormous numbers, opting out of having their children vaccinated? The current measles outbreaks in that state give witness to their folly. The lowest rates of immunization are clustered in Santa Monica and Beverly Hills, home to many of our media stars and moguls. This, one supposes, is due to the Jenny McCarthy effect, a reference to her highly credentialed qualifications as a trained epidemiologist (please understand this is sarcasm). And unfortunately, there is an amplifying herd effect. According to CNN, “the CDC points out that people who refuse to vaccinate usually live in the same community. When measles finds its way into these communities, outbreaks are more likely to occur, and controlling the disease becomes harder.” An unfortunate circumstance, one which we can only hope that the scientists win.

In the latest of a series of heavy handed government interventions, a Maryland couple are being investigated by that state’s child protective services for allowing their children to walk home alone from a playground. And the threat isn’t idle. CNN reports that a South Carolina mom was arrested for allowing her daughter to play in the park alone, and a Florida mother was arrested for allowing her child to walk home alone. These are decisions routinely made by parents in years past to no ill effect. And the suggestion that the parents should drive the children to and from the park reveals just how poor we humans are at processing risk information. A review of the CDC statistics for childhood mortality reveals that automobile accidents are, by far, the highest cause of childhood deaths. We don’t like to think so because there is a sense of personal control while behind the wheel. This causes us to gravely underestimate the true risks. So those government investigators who demand that the parents drive the kids to and fro are actually increasing the risk to the kids. Maybe the old ways were better.

Let’s close with something lighter. We are all celebrating the Patriot’s Super Bowl victory. The team fought hard and Tom Brady was brilliant. But it wouldn’t have been our team without some heart stopping moments of pure panic. We have come to expect nothing less.

Imagine a world without enlightenment

Three hundred seventeen years ago, a few months shy of this 21^st birthday, Thomas Aikenhead was put to death in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was the last man to be executed for blasphemy in Britain.

Aikenhead, a student at Edinburgh University, had an inquiring mind and it was his wont to read. His crime? Reading books by “Descartes, Spinoza, Thomas Hobbes and other so-called atheists” and having the temerity to discuss them with his classmates. One of them informed on him.

At that time the power of the church was absolute. After his conviction, and asked to intercede on Aikenhood’s behalf, the Church of Scotland’s General Assembly demurred, urging “vigorous execution to curb the abounding of impiety and profanity in this land.” So was Aikenhead’s fate sealed, and he was hanged on January 8, 1697.

But great upheaval was at hand as Europe entered the Age of Enlightenment, a humanist movement that was powered by philosophers, the printing press, and the increasing literacy of the citizenry. Over a  two hundred year period beginning in the 1650s, the absolute power of the church was shattered.

Voltaire, Kant, Bacon, Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, (Isaac) Newton, and Hume are just a few of the thinkers to whom we owe our physical and intellectual freedoms.  Dorinda Outram, a Professor of History at the University of Rochester, describes the Enlightenment as composed of "many different paths, varying in time and geography, to the common goals of progress, of tolerance, and the removal of abuses in Church and state.”

And the church was ultimately, rightfully, put in its place as subordinate to the civil state.

As a result, unshackled thought and unbounded creativity, free from religious dogma and constraint, led to an explosion of invention and discovery known as the Scientific Revolution.

So was born our Western civilization, with our deeply held values. The twin goals of liberty and progress in harmony and balance. Religion as choice, not as coercion or forced submission.

Where you are free to take the name of the Lord God in vain. Where you can create “art,” publicly funded, depicting a crucifix submerged in the artist’s urine. Where you can eat pork or publish satirical images of religious icons. Or burn a bible in public. Or worship any god you like, in any way you want. Where you may open mindedly support equal rights for all, men, women, straight, gay, of any race or persuasion. All without fear of reprisal.

So it was with great shock, regret, and deep disappointment in the lack of human progress to witness the execution of twelve Charlie Hebdo staffers. They were killed by two Islamic Wahhabi fanatics for the crime of blasphemy on January 7, 2015, nearly 317 years to the day that Thomas Aikenwood was hanged.

It should be immediately obvious, the central issue. The Charlie Hedbo staffers were not Muslim, yet were executed for blaspheming the Islamic prophet, Muhammad.

Imagine a sect of fundamental Episcopalians situated on the shores of Lake Huron. They believe fervently that tennis balls are blessed by God and are not to be struck. Tennis balls are placed on altars and worshiped as holy icons. Tennis courts and matches are banned in their communities, as striking the balls is blasphemous. But, not satisfied only to follow these strictures themselves, they demand that we all do so as well. They mount horrific attacks on tennis courts all over the nation, wreaking carnage and demanding that tennis be banned everywhere.

This would be absolutely crazy and we would not stand for it for a moment.

But that’s precisely what these Islamic fanatics are demanding. Not satisfied to practice their own religion, obey their own prohibitions, they demand that the world submit as well.

This cannot stand. We cannot submit. This is a battle of civilizations, and cultural or religious relativism has no standing. We are moral in this. We are right. And we must fight.

Giving up our rights in the face of evil is cowardly. Refusing to allow the voices of debate to be heard is worse. It is time to stiffen our spines and defend our free society, gained with so much blood, torment, and travail over hundreds of years. To retrench is unthinkable.

Thomas Aikenhead would agree.