One of the big hangups about traveling, particularly traveling abroad is dealing with the strange customs of foreigners. It is as if just living somewhere foreign gives them permission to be strange. Go figure! Some of if is charming. Who doesn’t love the idea of gondolas and seranading gondoliers? And who can resist the romance when ordinary objects get translated into Italian.
Image via Wikipedia
Ordinary stuff becomes magical in another language. Still there are risks. you can order something uneatable, like tripe, without knowing. Europeans seem to value tripe much higher than Americans perhaps because it sounds so sexy. It is hard to remember sometimes that the people eating that tripe aren’t Americans. And tripe remains stomach no matter what language you speak.
Ah, there is the problem.
Back when I made my first trip to Europe, we were only 20 years away from Wold War II and at the beginning of the Age of America on the World scene. Europe didn’t take America seriously before the war. We were the big, brash kid that knew his place and deferred to adults otherwise know as Europeans. What the war revealed was that there weren’t any more adults on the world scene and if anybody was going to lead, it would have to be us. Those Europeans never quite adjusted.
Originally posted 2010-07-07 09:52:44. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Maybe you have seen this early Jack Nicholson movie Five Easy Pieces. I am not recommending it if you haven’t because Jack Nicholson as a concert pianist working in the oil fields of California is a bit hard to accept. Jack, in his youth, is showing the curmudgeon qualities that he perfected in his mature roles. Notice that he is not enjoying his confrontation with the surly waitress one bit. There is no joy in the battle and even though he wins in logic, not only does Jack not get his toast, he doesn’t get breakfast at all. Keep this video in mind as you anticipate the Coot Lesson for Friday, Cantankerous Old Coots are not Angry Old Farts.
Two stories grabbed my attention this week, no mean feat as we try to manage all the details of the upcoming trip. Even though it seems to be warming up in Venice, we still may have to worry about being run over by a cruise ship. Those big ships which seem to have trouble staying upright in Italian waters dock a mere five minute walk from our apartment. I’m not going to worry just now although it may be something to study after I get there. Venice has survived a great many challenges since it’s founding. It can surely last a few more weeks.
No, today, I can’t stop thinking about school lunches. I attended public schools through high school, never giving any thought to why they existed or if they made any sense. Sure, there were some private schools around dedicated, as I saw it, to Catholics and rich people because neither group wanted their kids associating with the hoi polloi. I could understand the appeal for one group. The rich kid schools had better facilities and more pretty girls. The Catholic schools had nuns and that seemed weird to me.
So I grew up and got my formative training in the peoples schools giving and taking with kids from every social class. I’m not complaining. What I never recognized was the danger for education when government runs the show. When I was a kid , we hardly noticed the government. What government there was seemed pretty benign during my childhood because it was local government – a school district that had it’s own tax base run by people I knew who ran for election every so often. There was a bit of state coordination but it was pretty much local control. This was long before the creation of the Federal Department of Education. more…
Originally posted 2010-05-28 09:21:26. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Don’t be dense!
This should be pretty obvious if you have been following our lessons. Unfortunately these days most people are pretty dense and seem unable to follow a stream of logic so we are going to be very blunt. Polite is a synonym for lie. It is just that simple. If you choose to remain oblivious to simple truths, we can’t do anything about it. Human nature is pathetic. We continually ask people to tell us things that we know are untrue. If you have to ask your husband whether a dress makes you look fat, you already know the answer. “Of course it does!” So now the poor man has two bad choices. He can say yes which will make you hate him for confirming the truth or he can say no which will make you hate him for lying. Most husbands are taught to be polite and lie through their teeth and most wives delight in making it impossible for them to be honest. No wonder marriage is in trouble these days.
Stop being a mealy mouthed liar!
We always seek to be inoffensive which of course causes us to lie. “That was a great cup of coffee, Carol. Can I have a refill.” The coffee tastes like battery acid. It is luke warm and the cream is curdled. “I’d love another piece of that delicious cake, Mrs. Smith.” The cake in questions is lumpy and tasteless. Who wins with such behavior? The answer, of course is nobody. If you don’t set these people straight, they will continue to inflict their shoddy goods on other unsuspecting victims. If they believe you they will have your encouragement to do it. If they don’t believe you, they brand you either as a fool or liar.
Be straight at work!
You may think that we are singling out women here but men are just as inclined to this foolishness as women. It just attaches to different activities. When it gets into the workplace, it is even worse because we are expected to lie as a condition of employment. Your boss may be a fool but he is unlikely to keep paying you if you tell him. Imagine the chaos if you said what you were thinking. Is the customer always right? Of course not. Could you fix their problem and get them out of your face if they would just shut up and go away. Of course. Because we think that polite is important, we waste everybody’s time and make everybody upset. It is a darn nuisance. more…
I confess that my upcoming vacation has kept me distracted. Serious vacations are new to us or at least memories from the past.
Beached
Going over our plans in my head in order to nip in the bud any potential problems, I can’t help thinking about vacations from the past. Times have changed. Today it seems that people yearn to get away from reality in some safe environment. People want to escape the harsh realities of 21st century America in make believe and indulgence. It is escapism, pure and simple. Maybe it is justified to want relief from the rat race and maybe it helps people cope with a meaningless job and a dysfunctional family. But I’m not buying it. The only benefit from two weeks on a Caribbean beach getting daily massages and drinks by the pool is a pile of debt. It doesn’t make you a better person or get you a better life. All if does is let you catch your breath. That’s not a vacation! That’s a cop out. The vacations I remember best were no walks on the beach or Mai Tais at sunset. They were serious commitments and wimps weren’t allowed.
Back in the Day…
When I was a kid, we took family vacations and what a family vacation meant to the Carlson’s was packing the whole family in the car and driving somewhere. Only rich people flew when I was a kid in the 50′s and nobody went anywhere to do nothing. Family vacations were road trips. We took a one week trip to Washington DC in ’53 which meant about two days in DC and four days on the road. Four days on the road with three boys under 10 in the backseat of a Chevy Bel Air Sports Coupe is not for the faint of heart. My parents took this all in stride because they wanted us to see our country’s capital. It was an educational experience. Somehow we took in all the National Landmarks and the Smithsonian and on the way there hit all the state capitals on our route. I remember that trip fondly and I can’t remember much about fighting with my brothers in the back seat. Now that was a vacation. Thank heaven for the Burma Shave signs,
There were some shorter vacations to the nearby Ozarks and scenic Colorado but there was nothing relaxing about our family vacations. Every social and relationship skill we had ever learned was tested and found wanting. It was always a relief to get back home to get some quite time and personal privacy. Still, those vacations are my benchmark for defining a good vacation- engagement.
So I don’t get resorts!
When I think about vacations, you don’t find me yearning for a mindless week of self-indulgent indolence. Vacations are for self improvement, adventure and testing yourself. You wouldn’t catch my parents on a cruise or lounging on the beach and I guess the apple doesn’t fall very far away from the tree. Vacations were not relaxing or self-indulgent. Nobody puts three young boys in the back seat of a 1953 Chevy Bel Air hardtop and drives for two days just for the fun of it.
It must be those self-indulgent boomers.
Campo Santa Margherita
Today, it seems that the only reason for vacations is creating the opportunity to do nothing at the highest possible cost. I blame it all on the self-indulgent baby boomers who never had to work for anything in their lives and now feel entitled to continue asking. But no matter, I’m no boomer and I’m off the Venice to hob nob with the Venetians in the side streets and Campos away from the tourist meccas. We;re going to shop at the food markets, sample the dishes at the home style oosterrias and drink Bellini s in the Campos. We don’t know much Italian but it doesn’t worry us. We will be immersed in Italian culture and testing our ability to communicate beyond the constraints of language. It’s not a road trip but somehow, I think my parents would approve.
