Rainy day in Florence

Florence, Italy

It's raining in the morning so we break out the umbrellas and plastic raincoats and head for the market. Our hotel is centrally located a block from the market, train station and three historic churches. The Nerbone in the market sells Staccatto (slow-cooked beef stew), Lampredotto (stewed intestines) and Panino con Bollito (sliced beef on a roll)...

The Duomo has a line of umbrellas about four blocks long waiting to get in so we go to plan B and walk the back alleys to the Pitti castle...Luca Pitti (not to be confused with Luca Brasi) built this palace ...you should read about Luca, Machiavelli and the Medici clan...somewhere in here they came up with double entry accounting...

 Same deal...long lines...my Dad told me never to stand in line so we go to plan C and walk up the hill to the Pazzalle Michelangelo which has a super view of Florence and the Arno River bridges...

 Later I wash my sneakers and jeans in a laundromat...it was one wash too many for the sneaks and the soles separate from the tops...too bad but they were stinking too much to wear in public anyway...

 We buy a bottle of Chianti to drink in the room...

 Maybe a train ride to Pisa in the morning?

 A nice day for a white wedding...

Hey little sister, what have you done?
Hey little sister, who's the only one?
Hey little sister, who's your Superman?
Hey little sister, who's the one you want?
Hey little sister, shotgun!

It's a nice day to start again
It's a nice day for a white wedding
It's a nice day to start again

Desolation Angels

 North Cascades National Park, Washington

Not that many people still remember Jack Kerouac, the "Beat Generation" or Beatniks (How many even remember Sputnik?).

 
Jack spent a winter here up at Desolation Point in a fire tower writing "Desolation Angels". We could only handle two nights with no internet, telephone, television, FM radio, satellite radio, GPS, electricity, running water or sewer connection. The trees pressed in so closely overhead that even our satellite technologies failed to work (GPS, TV, Sirius Radio). It was kind of like the 1980s when all the National Parks had pay phones from which you could call your stockbroker...if you had a pocketful of quarters...

"No maps, packs, firefinders, batteries, airplanes, warnings on radios, just mosquitoes humming in harmony, and the trickle of the streamlet – But no, Lord has made this movie in his mind and I’m a part of it (the part of it known as me) and it’s for me to understand this world and so go among it preaching the Diamond Steadfastness that says: “You’re here and you’re not here, both, for the same reason,” – “it’s Eternal Power munging along” – So I up I get and lunge along with pack, thumbed, and wince on ankled pains and turn and turn the trail faster and faster under my growing trot and pretty soon I’m running, bent, like a Chinese woman with a pack of faggots on her neck, jingle jingle drumming and pumping stiff knees thru rock underbrush and around corners, sometimes I crash off the trail and bellow back on’t, somehow, never lose, the way was made to be followed – Down the hill I’ll meet thin young boy starting out on his climb, I’m fat with butchers, and it’s Springtime in the Void – Sometimes I fall, on haunches, slipt, the pack is my back bumper, I burnst right along bumbling for fair, what words to describe hoopely tootely pumling down a parpity trail, prapooty ........."...Desolation Angels"

Jack ended up living with his mom in Indian Rocks near Tampa. At the end he was best known for projectile vomiting cheap red wine.



The North Cascades National Park is a huge place that is a strange combination of dams to generate power for Seattle and hundreds of miles of lovely hiking trails.



There are three big lakes up in the Cascades. They are named Gorge, Diablo and Ross. Each lake terminates in an electrical generating dam that feeds into the next lake.


We did find two tennis courts. I played well against Mrs. Phred, but I prefer not to disclose the scores. It was sort of a sports movie and I was part of it (the part known as me).

“Pretty soon...do you realize there'll be so many additional childhoods and pasts with everybody writing about them everybody'll give up reading in despair-There'll be an Explosion of childhoods and pasts, they'll have to have a giant Brain print them out microscopically on film to be stored in a warehouse on Mars to give Heaven Seventy Kotis to catch up on all that reading- Seventy Million Million Kotis! - Whoopee! - Everything is free!” -Desolation Angels