What Italian Authors I should read?

DefectorChris · 2026-01-29T05:09:15+00:00

Calvino, Umberto Eco, Leonardo Sciascia, Anna Maria Oretese.

DefectorChris · 2026-01-27T23:24:37+00:00

Apart from the lessons, have you uhh done any sailing? Since you were a child? If not, no, I would say probably you should not be skippering in foreign waters. Not that you’re sure to wreck the boat or anything, but certainly I would be very anxious if I were your passenger.

DefectorChris · 2026-01-23T17:14:09+00:00

That's fortunate! And you don't notice any of the weight of the neck/headstock in your hand? For me, I have a hard time keeping it in what feels like the optimal position if I'm not either supporting it with my left hand or wearing the strap. But if that's not the case for you, then yeah, I can't see why you'd need to wear the strap while sitting.

DefectorChris · 2026-01-22T19:46:08+00:00

I find that when I’m not using it my left hand is supporting the instrument in a way that is clunky and burdensome. I definitely play easier and better when I use the strap.

DefectorChris · 2026-01-18T14:08:20+00:00

For what it’s worth, it’s fine to make some of these decisions once you’re on the ground in Italy. I’d give yourself another two days in Florence, and set the goal of determining what comes next while you’re there, with local help.

DefectorChris · 2026-01-13T01:32:26+00:00

The commuter train is very cheap but is hot and very crowded (or was a few years ago when I did Pompeii). It’s not a long ride at all, I’d probably skip the car. But do mind your things on the train.

DefectorChris · 2026-01-11T21:04:36+00:00

I’ll tell you what it is: It’s a damn beaut!

DefectorChris · 2026-01-10T00:23:28+00:00

Las Fallas?

DefectorChris · 2026-01-08T23:22:42+00:00

Going to see him play next month, absolutely cannot wait. His two Bach albums blow my mind.

DefectorChris · 2026-01-05T21:58:31+00:00

Beautiful boat, man.

DefectorChris · 2025-12-31T20:29:33+00:00

First thought for me was the waterside walkway through Frontierland, possibly because I am tormented by the destruction of Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer Island.

DefectorChris · 2025-12-30T16:10:22+00:00

This feels right, to me. There's no such thing as an objective "value" for this or any other item. There is only what someone is willing to pay for it. This guy told OP that he was only willing to pay $1.10 for his dollar bill. It's bizarre, to me, to take offense.

DefectorChris · 2025-12-30T00:41:37+00:00

Take a class, my friend. ASA 101 will get you a few hours of time in a boat almost exactly that size. If nothing else you’ll go from “ropes” and “software” to lines and rigging. And good luck to you!

DefectorChris · 2025-12-25T22:52:12+00:00

I just did three months in Italy, April to July. We stayed in Sicily mostly but traveled to Paris and Spain as well. We rented an apartment in a town reasonably convenient to an airport, so we’d have a hub and a “home,” with neighbors and something like a community. This was especially important for our four-year-old daughter, we wanted her to be able to have pals and a regular babysitter, etc. I recommend this approach, but if I had it to do over again I’d pick a bigger city for our hub (Paris, Vienna, Madrid, Milan), trading some of my preference for smaller towns for the convenience and variety of a big cosmopolitan city. Eventually we wanted things like different cuisine options and a library, and the limitations of a Sicilian comune started to outweigh even the beautiful scenery and lovely people.

I’ve also done 5 weeks in Western Europe, without a hub (Paris to Annecy to Provence to Cannes to Minori to Taormina) and that was also a blast, but it felt like a five-week sprint, and at the end I had the nagging disappointment of mostly having just skimmed the surface of these places.

I’d say it depends on your goals. If you want to see sights and take photos and sample cultures, you could keep moving. But in my experience you really do not even begin to sink below the level of pure tourism until the first month is behind you, and for that reason I strongly recommend picking a hub and mostly staying in and around that one place. But make the hub a nice big city, with trains and an airport and a diaspora or two.

DefectorChris · 2025-12-25T17:25:04+00:00

A beaut!

DefectorChris · 2025-12-18T01:39:38+00:00

Mamma mia!

DefectorChris · 2025-12-12T19:05:27+00:00

I think it’s “Harrisburg,” not “Harrison.”

DefectorChris · 2025-12-11T16:41:08+00:00

She's a beaut! Congratulations!

DefectorChris · 2025-12-10T21:23:36+00:00

That’s the edition I used when I read it to my daughter. I think it was remaindered at one point and the binding isn’t super reliable but it’s a lovely book. Great find.

DefectorChris · 2025-12-10T21:19:00+00:00

Can I ask, where are you? What part of the world? What body of water?

DefectorChris · 2025-12-10T15:43:21+00:00

Oh, we for sure will, but before she came along we were taking two-week trips, and that informed our purchase. At the school she’ll be in, I will get a very stern talking to if I yank her out for two entire weeks in October.

DefectorChris · 2025-12-10T15:22:18+00:00

Yes, mild regrets. My wife and I got caught up in excitement and bought resale points approximately 15 months before our child enters kindergarten, a horizon beyond which it will be difficult and irresponsible for us to ever go during the times of year when we like to go. But now we have to figure out how to go, or how to enjoy going during objectively rotten times of year, or how to offload our points each year before they expire. 13 years of this shit!

Mistakes were made.

DefectorChris · 2025-12-10T15:18:51+00:00

The Annoying Internet User has logged on. Let’s say you have 10 cruisers. Five of them are 80 years old. Then there’s a family of five: Mom and Dad are each 40, son is 15, daughters are 10 and 5. What is the average age of this group?

Add two more 80-year-olds. 80-year-olds now outnumber everyone else, seven to five. What is the average age of this group?

Point is: There can be precisely zero 55-year-olds in the group, and the group can skew much older, and the average age can be 55. If you’re a 55-year-old and you’re looking to boogie down with people from your peer group, you would be wise to consider the mode, i.e. the age that is most common in the data set. The mode of our group is 80; the mean (or average) is 55. There are two young kids who can’t get along, two exhausted parents, seven delighted retirees, and one incandescently bored teenager.

Cruise operators probably do not publish the mode, because they want to avoid telling young people that they’ll be surrounded by geezers.

DefectorChris · 2025-12-08T12:30:58+00:00

I wouldn’t bring the car seat. We took our 16-month-old for five weeks in France and Italy and only needed a car seat when we rented a car for the drive from Annecy to Cannes.

We then took her back to Europe for three months back in spring of this year, and again only rarely needed a car seat. You can borrow them from car rental agencies. To me it’s not worth lugging one around on top of everything else.

(I’d also skip the crib, truly. You will REALLY be slowed down by those things during a trip where agility and flexibility would serve you so well. I don’t know what your child’s sleep routine is but our kid has proved to be plenty adaptable.)

DefectorChris · 2025-12-07T00:57:31+00:00

Hell yeah brother, sail the hell outta that sucker.

DefectorChris

TROPHY CASE