Pre-travel notes, part 3

A poll

I do not have time to figure out how to set up a poll on the blog, so I will just ask: who here (except for Dorotha Harried, who, by her own admission, is aiming for a “cruel” label, read about it here, and JFW who, in comments to Ms. Harried, indicated that "cruel is awesome" and there’s no such thing as “too cruel”), okay, let me start again: who here would find it terrifically funny to hide my passport just to see how long before I convulse into a state of complete desperation and crippling apoplexy?

No one?See! I told you no one would find it funny. You are mud! You know who you are!

Pre-travel notes, part 2

Where is the "leisure" part?

Are there people who, on the day prior to a trip, leisurely sit in front of their closet and contemplate which little number to pack for that special special evening during the forthcoming vacation? Or is everyone scrunching sun-dresses into change purses and praying to God that the calamities calling for their immediate and undivided attention will at some point stop and they can start rummaging for important things like a passport? (Did I even check to see if the expiration date was July 2004 or July 2005? It’s one or the other, I’m absolutely certain of it).

Ooops

I just got an email from my contact in Italy (we are renting a farmhouse from him) informing me that we are traveling to his place during a major holiday and so we can expect everything to be closed that day, including places to eat within a 1000 mile radius it seems. Cloyingly he asks – would I like him to place some of life’s essentials in our refrigerator for our arrival? And maybe ask a friend in town to possibly fit us in that night for a pizza or something?

Did I really forget that we will be making our way to Umbria on August 14th, the worst travel day of the year in Italy? Yes, I really forgot. [To my travel companions: ha ha ha, I regard the joke that we will be spending a week in ‘Slumbria’ as extremely funny. Ha ha ha. It happens to be an undiscovered paradise with great towns and villages within shooting distance. You’ll eat your words yet, all of you. I think.]

Thank you, Signore Bruno. Now if you could also assure me that you really do exist and you do have a farmhouse, that it is legitimate, that you didn’t just take the money and run to Corsica, and that the photos on the Net are those of your place and not some random neighbor’s – then I would feel so much more confident.

I am a trusting sort. Mostly, people making travel deals with me in far away places have not let me down. Mostly.

Feed the company, starve the infant

When I posted a photo of a demonstration last Saturday in support of breastfeeding, I noted that farmers were wondering where the issue was. At the time I thought that the protesters were referring to the old problem of promoting the use of formula in economically depressed nations. (In her blog post here, Ann suggested work place accommodation issues that would also justify the protest.) But no, I was wrong. Today’s reading of the Washington Post indicates that at least on the east coast, women are marching in front of Starbucks due to a recent incident whereby a woman nursing her infant was asked to cover herself while inside the café (read about it here). Not surprisingly, therefore, the protest I photographed was taking place right in front of our own Starbucks on the Square.

Starbucks does not have a national policy concerning nursing and so local coffee shops are free to establish guidelines concerning breast-exposure of nursing women. [It should be noted that some states do have laws that bar an establishment from prohibiting or restricting breastfeeding, but most do not and even where such laws exist, private businesses are often exempt from the mandate.]

I have to say that I am very glad that I did not know, back in the days when I nursed my own infants, that I could actually be asked to stop or leave the premises. It never struck me that this is something that anyone would want to restrict. In my experience, women are uniformly discreet in their nursing practices and one would really have to stare hard to get beyond the infant’s head and see even a fragment of the offending (!) piece of flesh. How strange (and sad) that the practice of nursing would be viewed as offensive and in violation of laws against indecent exposure!