Never to suffer would never to have been blessed.
Edgar Allan Poe
(Getty image)
For whatever reason, I get daily Travel and Leisure as well as Conde Nash travel emails.
I suppose it’s because once upon a time, I most likely subscribed to something.
Yet during this time of quarantine, I have not much cared to be a virtual traveler.
I might be an armchair quarterback when watching my beloved college football
but I definitely prefer to be a real-life traveler.
And so I’ve pretty much trashed all the travel notices I’ve received these oh so many weeks,
as I’ve wondered if travel will ever be what it was.
While scrolling through emails yesterday, something interesting actually piqued my curiosity.
It was an article with 21 pictures of what a locked-down Italy looked like.
If you’ve ever been to Italy then you know it seems as if the country is comprised of
more tourists than local residents.
Tourism has gotten so overwhelming that the Italian government was having to issue hefty
fines to bring a bit of calm amongst the throngs of madness.
It is said that there are very few real Venetians or even Florentines who still remain
in their collective overrun cities.
And so I was curious as to what a mostly deserted Itlay might look like.
The images were eerily serene.
However, knowing of the death toll that Itlay has experienced and the hardship this tiny country
has endured, viewing the images was not necessarily for a cursory glance on a rainy
Sunday afternoon.
There was a poignancy found in the images.
An emptiness.
A sadness.
There was the image of a single figure, a pope, clad in white and sitting alone in a darkened and
empty St Peter’s square observing the solemnity of the Easter Vigil…
To the ruins of the Coliseum surreally quiet and alone for the first time in centuries.
The empty gondolas bobbing up and down in eerily empty canals…
Yet I think it was the image (seen above) of the small church in Venice with photographs of
its parishioners taped to the pews that touched me the most as to how this pandemic has effected our
collective human family.
The small parish priest had asked his parishioners to please mail or email him
their pictures so he could, in turn, tape them to the pews in order that they could “be in attendance”
with him…there in the quiet and still little church, as he conducted Easter mass…alone.
Since all church services were canceled this Easter,
one pastor in Venice asked his parishioners for their photographs,
then placed them in the sanctuary and performed Mass for them on Easter Sunday.
I next read a heartbreaking story of a woman who was unable to visit her dying father in the
the hospital due to the quarantine.
The hospital was only five miles from her home, but her dad had contracted the virus
after having to go to the hospital following a fall at home.
He had been in good health up to his fall and was expected to be fine.
But while in the hospital, he developed a cough and fever…with the hospital realizing its greatest fear…
their patients were contracting the virus within the hospital itself.
The story is difficult to read as it is helplessly sad.
One of his four grown children relays how she and her siblings
stayed on the phone with their father for his final 36 hours of life
simply listening to his labored breathing before finally, there was no more sound.
‘We hear you, Dad’: A daughter stays on the phone for hours and hours as
her father dies alone from coronavirus
https://www.yahoo.com/news/hear-dad-daughter-stays-phone-120345094.html
And yet the enormity of all of this heartbreak, sorrow, isolation and emptiness is contrasted
by petty partisan politics.
Following the first two articles, I read two very different types of articles.
Articles by Newt Gingrich.
Mr. Gingrich is indeed a very smart and astute man.
He is currently on lockdown in Itlay as his wife is US Ambassador to the Vatican.
A position the late journalist Cokie Robert’s mother once held.
The former Speaker of the House was expressing his frustration with the current speaker,
Speaker Pelosi, and the squabbles she is currently having with the President over passing
a bill intended to bring financial aid to small businesses.
If anyone is hurting right now, it is our small businesses.
They have had to either shutter their doors or operate
very sparingly.
They have had to let go of employees.
Many cannot contiue paying their bills with no business to be had.
Yet the Speaker continues to refuse to work with the President.
The impeachment fiasco was bad enough…but we now have real people,
not celebrities, not high-end athletes, not entertainers, not politicians, but real people…t
he you and me kind of people..who need help— and they need it now!
And yet…we have people like Madame Speaker who continues to want to play cat and mouse.
Madame Speaker was being interviewed from her home by a late-night talk show host.
It seems she was standing in her kitchen in front of her two rather fancy Wolf sub-zero
refrigerators while babbling on about having to spend 58 dollars for 5 pints of ice cream as she
desperately needed to restock what she and her husband had already eaten.
58 bucks on high end ice cream while there are folks who can’t pay their bills
because they’ve lost their livelihood or worse, their health.
Something is wrong in all of this.
When we need help–many of the very people we elected to help us, choose to eat
expensive ice cream instead.
No wonder Speaker Gingrich sees the correlation between Marie Antoinette telling
a starving French population to simply eat cake while our Speaker of the house
eats her posh ice cream—as a President is trying desperately to bring aid
to those in desperate need.
Newt Gingrich: Coronavirus crisis makes some leaders believe they have god-like decision-making capacity
Newt Gingrich: Like Marie Antoinette, Princess Pelosi enjoys luxuries but ignores needs of desperate people
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/newt-gingrich-the-job-killing-democrats
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[…] via Contrasts — cookiecrumbstoliveby […]
My heart ached as I looked at the church photograph. I so long to be with my family and fellow Christians the walls of our church. It’s been an eternity since we’ve been able to commune. There is something about physical contact that is so important to our state of mind. I also thought of Marie Antoinette and her haughty statement to let her people eat cake. I don’t understand what is going on within our own country, other than to see it as an attempt to make our president look bad. I also don’t understand why the common man is not seeing through this charade. Every new attempt to get rid of our president is more enraging than the last. Heaven help us.
My one week in Italy was in a less travelled area. I saw Milan, travelling from the international airport to the central bus station and then to the regional airport. Not much to see before people were awakened on a Sunday morning. I drove from Bari, upon landing there, to Martina Franca, I could see the Adriatic from my window, but I don’t know if others could see Tyrrhenian Sea from their windows on the other side of the hall. But as I drove to work each day, as soon as I left Martina Franca, headed toward Taranto and a huge steel mill, I saw the Gulf of Taranto in front of me and the Ionian Sea beyond, right into the arch of the boot. But being in a less travelled area, the people looked at us as novelties. It was expensive, but the company paid the expense. I just enjoyed the daily walks into the town and seeing the smiling faces. I also enjoyed real Italian food, like in China, it’s not what you get in the US.
The southern region is more sparse and impoverished— through in the mafia in Naples and the surrounding environs and the northern half (think Milan leading the charge) have wanted the country spilt in two, seceding as it were— but the southern portion is more of the bread basket and farming— tourists prefer the northern areas — I’ve been to Naples but the contrast was striking— I had a driver from Rome down to visit Pompeii, we stopped for gas and I was going in to get some crackers and he told not to even leave my camera in the car— that he licked while pumping gas— up in time and beyond, it’s pick pockets and prostitution 🤭😑
I saw none of that in Martina Franca, but it may have been there. It only rained one day, so we got to walk the streets with no fear – many friendly people. Then again, it’s a great view from the town, but remote.
I like remote 🙃
You can rent a trulli. They are houses that look like upside down ice cream cones.
Tourism. // great career
Such a sad heavy toll to hear of that man’s death alone!
💔💔💔💔💔💔💔