LIVE FROM ITALIA: PART I

Like Aeneas, we have made our way to Italy. Only he had a harder time of it.

At McCarran, emergency clergy consult calls were coming in right up until boarding time. But I declared the point where the flight attendants make you put your cell phone in airplane mode the beginning of my sabbatical. The long flight was from San Francisco to Frankfurt. I conversed at some length with a woman whose raison d’etre is spaying and neutering dogs and cats in Romania. It’s a strange world. I also got a lot of reading done as class prep for my upcoming Church & Society class for our Nevada postulants.

We arrived pretty jet lagged in Frankfurt, where we connected with one of Linda’s law professor buddies from Sacramento and her husband. We are all here in Verona for the Global Legal Skills Conference. We had dinner with her law school friends tonight – yes, it was very good pasta – and tomorrow she makes her presentation at the Conference. While standing at an ATM machine to get euros, I saw a young woman sauntering down the sidewalk wearing a t-shirt with NEVADA boldly emblazoned across the front. I started to speak to her, but then thought better of it.

So far Verona strikes me as a quaint old city. We are in an old hotel with a room that actually has a tiny balcony. “Hark what light from yonder window breaks?”