Jarrett House North

The fourth in a series of transcriptions of my experiences traveling with my wife and her family in Italy. The originals were scribbled on whatever pieces of paper were handy and are presented here unedited.

27 Mar 2002: Spend 1.5 hours lost but find Fiano Country—Feudi di San Gregorio. Very under construction. Big facility. Tour from very patient guide Cinsia includes Feudi’s olive oil production, the lab, and a 40 min discussion of the processes with head oenologist Massimo. Taste: Falenghina, Greco, Fiano, and top of line Taurasi.—Drive down toward Naples. Lunch at self serve place in Pompei. We take Lisa’s parents through—most impressive is Villa dei Misteri with frescoes of the initiation rites for the Dionysiac Mysteries. Leave. One wrong turn later, find road for Positano behind a series of buses. Dinner (1) at La Cambusa—very enthusiastically received. Bed.

The third in a series of transcriptions of my experiences traveling with my wife and her family in Italy. The originals were scribbled on whatever pieces of paper were handy and are presented here unedited.

26 Mar 2002: Directions from a resident businessman to Calitri—to make up for inadequate signage, he sends us an hour out of our way north, then down through lots of hill towns—and wheat fields—and wind farms. Half an hour after a declaration from il mio suocero that one would have to be crazy to live here, that he understands why his parents left, and that as far as he was concerned they could have it (occasioning a response from mom: “stop being such a nutty old coot!”)—we find Calitri. The Hotel Ambasciatore desk clerk Ten-Su (!) tells us that the Calitri Lucadamos had tried to find us the previous night.

We go to the records office at the Comune and discover that they have no information about the predecessors of the emigrating Lucadamo, Angelo Maria, except the names of his parents, Carmine and Teresa Schiavone. It is decided that the birth date we have for Teresa S is incorrect—she could not possibly have had Angelo M when she was 49.

We meet the young Cinzia L. who runs the town biberia—she is charming and friendly and calls the family to let them know we have arrived. Later as we discover the hotel has no heat we decide to return to Avellino. Just then all the relations show up. We spend two hours conversing in Italian to discover that there are one or two Carmine and Angelo Lucadamos in each generation for as long as anyone can remember, so finding ours will be nearly impossible—and take our leave after Cinzia gifts us with a ton of wine. We take the road back in the direction of Lione, solving the question of how to get back without a very long journey. Dinner at a trattoria—very good pasta.

The second in a series of transcriptions of my experiences traveling with my wife and her family in Italy. The originals were scribbled on whatever pieces of paper were handy and are presented here unedited.

25 Mar 2002: Lost in Avellino—just like two years ago. We miss the turn several times for Calitri—it’s not posted—and give up for the night. The Hotel Jolly, while twice the price of the hotel we were to stay at in Calitri, is as good as a reasonable European chain can be. Dinner in hotel restaurant unremarkable except for a bottle of wine from Feudi [di San Gregorio].

This is the first in a series of transcriptions of my experiences traveling with my wife and her family in Italy. The originals were scribbled on whatever pieces of paper were handy and are presented here unedited.

24 Mar 2002: 8 something pm. Off to an interesting start. Arrived at airport 5ish. Lisa and her parents had difficulty with their e-ticket—it took an hour to straighten out. We spent some time talking to the nice ticket lady and found out there had been a system changeover. We expressed lots of sympathy—being IT people, we swapped stories—she is a trainer for the new system! Shortly thereafter we got a complimentary upgrade to World Traveller Plus. Go BA.

Subsequently we had to go back over and get our boarding passes. Then we sat in the Sam Adams Bar and caught our breath.

Watching Lisa’s dad figure out the features in his seat is a lot of fun. The Man Who Wasn’t There on TV.

I was going to transcribe some of the notes I scribbled on hotel stationery and a Statue of Liberty memo cube purchased from Newark Airport today, but I forgot to dig them out of my luggage before I left the apartment today. So here’s a photo of Lisa and me from Capri to tide you over.

We’re trying to tell her mom how to use our digital camera, which partly explains my look of slack-jawed yokeldom. Or it may be, as Mark Twain stated in his short story “Niagara,” a general phenomenon:

Any day, in the hands of these photographers, you may see stately pictures of papa and mamma, Johnny and Bub and Sis, or a couple of country cousins, all smiling vacantly, and all disposed in studied and uncomfortable attitudes in their carriage, and all looming up in their awe-inspiring imbecility before the snubbed and diminished presentment of that majestic presence whose ministering spirits are the rainbows, whose voice is the thunder, whose awful front is veiled in clouds, who was monarch here dead and forgotten ages before this hackful of small reptiles was deemed temporarily necessary to fill a crack in the world’s unnoted myriads, and will still be monarch here ages and decades of ages after they shall have gathered themselves to their blood relations, the other worms, and been mingled with the unremembering dust.

There is no actual harm in making Niagara a background whereon to display one’s marvelous insignificance in a good strong light, but it requires a sort of superhuman self-complacency to enable one to do it.

Well, we’ve returned. We have been up for at least 24 hours apiece. Italy was wonderful. I am only now recovering from a two day bout with some horrible gastric thing that made me miss the papal blessing in Rome.

There was more that I wanted to say, but since I can only remember it as being dictated to me by a thirty foot tall alien who spoke with pheromones rather than audible speech, I think I’ll postpone it until tomorrow.

Be good while I’m gone. I’m assuming from the silence following yesterday’s 1.0.3 release of Manila Envelope that there are no major bugs, but if you find one email me and I’ll get it when I get back. I’ll be away in the land of wonderful wine and pasta (and seafood).