I don’t always have the mental energy to write profound thoughts or reach important conclusions, but I know that some of you enjoy keeping up with what I’m doing, so here’s a sort of travelogue about my recent move to the US.
Mar 31 Departed Milan. Enrico drove me to the airport in heavy traffic, from which I concluded that I should never again try to get to Linate during rush hour. Made it with a comfortable margin in the end, but it wasn’t worth the stress.
Transited through Frankfurt and decided never to do that again, either. Security has been relaxed, I suppose – we didn’t go through the full body pat-down I’ve experienced in Frankfurt before, but we did have passport checks at the gate. This is fine when your passport is checked just before you get on the plane, but in this case we were required to be checked before going into a holding area just outside the gate. This area had insufficient chairs and no bathroom, so it got very annoying when the flight was delayed.
The delay was due to severe overbooking (so much for German efficiency…). Lufthansa offered a business class upgrade and 500 euros to anyone who would take a later flight through Chicago. I considered it, but was worried about arriving in Denver around midnight, tired, with lots of baggage, and needing to drive an hour over unfamiliar roads to reach my new home.
The flight, of course, was full to the last seat. My seat neighbor was returning from a business trip to India, and had loved it, so we found plenty to talk about. Plus I watched some decent movies from the wide selection available on the seat-back video screens, and read the latest Montalbano book.
Sometimes Google’s news-finding algorithm doesn’t quite get it right. The photo (which turns out to be from the announcement of a local theater production of “Kiss Me, Kate”) puts a rather odd spin on this piece of corporate news from Sun.
above: another gorgeous winterline sunset, Mussoorie, December 2007
The past year was so busy that, in spite of the many articles, photos, and videos I published here, there are still travels and events that I haven’t even mentioned, video and photos you haven’t yet seen. 2008 is shaping up to be even busier so, in case I never get to those, I thought I’d do a quick gallop through 2007 and at least hint at some of the stuff you missed.
The first half of 2007 was mostly awful. But, somewhere around August, things changed drastically for the better, and I began to think of having a T-shirt made saying: “Life doesn’t suck.”
January
6: As a Christmas present from my dad, Ross and I, along with some of the British side of our family, saw Spamalot in London, the very last night that Tim Curry was in the cast. Fantastic! We also had our portraits taken.
14: Enrico and I took a day trip to Sormano and other points on the Lake Como peninsula above Bellagio
19-21: In Rome for my first (but not last) barCamp.
February
Ross and I were busy completing her application to Woodstock School, due March 1st. Much anxiety around this whole process, not least: wondering how I would pay for tuition.
14-19: I visited my dad in the UK again. I don’t remember now if this was because he had been in the hospital again or what.
Continued preparations for Ross to go to Woodstock, including getting her student visa for India.
17: Had lunch with Pamela, a Woodstock alumna, and her Swiss-Italian husband Tino at their holiday home on Lake Como.
21-25: Visited England while my dad was having knee surgery again.
Towards the end of the month, a doctor saw something she didn’t like on my mammogram, which began a period of torture and extreme anxiety. Around the same time, my mother was having an ovarian cyst the size of a grapefruit removed. Which, thankfully, turned out to be benign.
11: Finally got the word on my biopsy: no cancer. The next evening, to celebrate, we had expensive cocktails with friends before we all went to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix together (in English) in Milan.
14: Had a visit from Peter and Peggy Jenks, former Woodstock staff.
3: I flew to Colorado to spend my vacation (from TVBLOB) working for Sun, staying with Tin Tin again.
when geeks do urban planning – Broomfield, CO – Aug 2007
11: Ross turned 18 at Woodstock. By this time we were getting regular phone calls from her and knew that she was doing well and very happy. This was worth all the upheavals it had taken to get her there.
17: Flew to New Mexico to visit Woodstock friends Steve and Sharon.
18: Sharon and I visited Santa Fe, including the Crafts Museum.
31: College friend Steph came to visit from Tulsa; we drove down to Taos by way of the Garden of the Gods.
September
2: Back to Broomfield.
5: Flew to San Francisco and saw many old Bay Area friends, and a few Woodstockers, before going down to San Jose, where I filmed many Sun speakers at the Storage Networking Industry Association’s Software Developer Conference (SNIA SDC).
17: Flew back to the UK and spent a couple of days with Dad and Ruth.
20: Flew back to Milan. By this time, I had parted ways with TVBLOB, and only had one job to do, to my considerable relief.
We had house guests as soon as I arrived: my Woodstock classmate Sara Ahmed, and long-time family friends Leslie and Nathan. While they were all with us, we visited the beautiful old abbey at Piona, towards the northern end of Lake Como.
28: Enrico and I began to enjoy the advantages of the empty nest. On a sudden invitation, we took off and spent a weekend inVenice:
14: Left Milan for Delhi. Arrived the same night, slept in a hotel for a few hours.
15: Took the Shatabdi Express to Dehra Dun and a taxi to Mussoorie. Wandered around the school looking for my kid til I finally met up with her on the ramp. She hugged me tight and whispered: “We’re so weird.”
^Â I have not tried dragan (dragon?) fruit yet – never heard of it before. Note the strawberries, cherries, and plums – none of these were available in India a few years ago.
31: Arrived in Milan, Enrico picked me up at the airport. After a few hours at home to rest and unpack, we drove up to a place in the mountains where friends were staying, to celebrate New Year’s with them. I made it through dinner, but slept through the traditional midnight feast of lentils – and slept through 25 people partying in the room next door, and fireworks going off in the street outsidehttps://www.beginningwithi.com.
“One was on an essay about Religion as a Cause of Strife in the World – you can bet she went to town on that!”
this is a comment you wrote on Ross’ India Diary and i have always wanted to ask you why you believe that Ross has arrived at an independent opinion/thought/decision regarding religion when it is the exact same opinion/insight you and your husband have. maybe mistakenly, but i’ve gotten this impression that you are very prideful that her belief is identical to yours and see it as a sign of her independent, intelligent thought. how much of a stretch is that really? how different is that to the child who grows up with the gospel every week at church and every day at home? how “independent” can that child’s outlook ever be due to that home conditioning?
It’s very true and completely unsurprising that Rossella, like most kids, shares her parents’ beliefs (or lack of). The more interesting question is: did how she arrive at those beliefs?
One of Richard Dawkins’ most provocative theses is that schools and even parents should not be allowed to proselytize children into religion at young ages. He points to lifelong traumas (both physical and mental) inflicted upon people (and cultures) from infancy, in the name of religion.
One might reasonably ask (many have) how Dawkins’ desire to promote atheism is any different from a religious person’s desire to promote religion. The logic here seems to be: “Atheism is just another belief. Why is it okay for you to preach what you believe, but not for religious people to do so?”
Here’s the “fundamental” difference: most religions teach their adherents – and particularly children – to accept certain strictures, norms, behaviors, etc. because someone in “authority” said so. Believers may be allowed to question up to a point, but sooner or later every religion comes down to “faith” – a necessarily blind (because unprovable) belief that there is some “higher power” out there which has an opinion about how you should think and act.
This is emphatically NOT how we raised our daughter.
My husband is a professional mathematician. This means that he thinks long and hard to come up with new hypotheses about how things behave in his particular realm of mathematics. When he can support his ideas with mathematical proofs, and those ideas are new, and important enough to be brought to the attention of his colleagues, he submits them (in the form of articles) to professional mathematical journals. There his ideas are judged by his peers for their truth and interestingness and worthiness of publication. If he gets something wrong, either he or one of his colleagues will figure that out. He thanks the people who point out his errors, and goes back to the drawing board.
The same thing happens in every scientific field. Ideas are developed, tested, and submitted to a jury of one’s peers. Sometimes an idea is proven wrong immediately, sometimes later, as more research is carried out. A few hypotheses survive the judgement of the scientific community and the test of time to become theories: which is to say, scientifically-proven facts.
All of this is done in a spirit of cooperative enquiry and (more or less) humility. No one can claim to know more than anyone else on the basis of some externally-granted “authority” – a scientist must be able to back his or her hypotheses with solid, provable facts.
I’m not a scientist, but I use the classic scientific method in my job every day: Does this work? If not, why not? What went wrong? Test one variable at a time til you find out where the problem is, then fix it. It’s a simple logic which can be usefully applied in many areas of life.
Given our professional and personal biases (and our penchant for arguing about EVERYTHING), Enrico and I have raised our daughter to prize inquiry, and not to grant authority blindly. We would be hypocrites if we had not encouraged Ross to think for herself and ask questions – to which we always gave grown-up answers.
This isn’t a totally easy way to raise a teenager: “Why do I have to be home at midnight?” In a family like ours, “Because I’m the mom and I said so!” doesn’t cut it. In Ross’ most exhausting, argumentative moments, I have gritted my teeth and consoled myself that: “At least I know she’s not going to do something stupid just because her friends are doing it.”
And, mostly, she hasn’t. We raised her to think for herself, and she does think – and, most of the time, she comes to very sensible conclusions.
If Ross called herself an atheist simply in imitation of me and her father, I’d have no reason to boast of her independence of mind. Perhaps at 18 she hasn’t put as much thought into her beliefs as we have, but I don’t think she’s merely parroting us. She knows that she is welcome – encouraged! – to explore what others believe (Woodstock is an excellent venue for that), and decide for herself what she thinks of it all. Her father and I remain open to discussion. Ross is no fool, and very likely someday she’ll persuade me to something I hadn’t previously agreed with. It wouldn’t be the first time.
