We are back in the US for a few days and I have some thoughts.

-- Customs and Immigration at JFK Airport is perhaps not the very most congenial place to get a good first impression of these Great United States. More of a shitstorm hellhole of bilge water. I once accidentally fell into an open sewer in Jakarta, Indonesia, during a cholera epidemic. (Long story.) A dead body was down there already. I looked back on that experience fondly while changing planes in JFK.

-- Signs here even in places like the International Arrivals area of major US airports are strictly English only. This is bizarre and contributes at least somewhat to the point above.

-- There is lots of space in the US. It is all over the place. There are hotel elevators in the US that are bigger than some hotel rooms in Italy.

-- Every single thing in the Walgreen's Drug Store in San Francisco is locked behind protective plastic to prevent shoplifting, including the toothpaste and toothbrushes. Apparently, this is common in big city drug stores all over the US. It speaks poorly of general standards of morality in the US, but quite well of general standards of dental hygiene.

-- Although the people we have encountered have been without exception kind and friendly, everyone seems very beaten down, just struggling to make it through the day. I blame the lack of good cheap wine, a culture that frowns on two-hour lunches every day followed by two-hour naps, and postindustrial neoliberal capitalism.

-- There is no food anywhere in Italy, under even the most extreme circumstances, that would be allowed to be as bad as the free breakfast at our hotel. Them's shootin' eggs.

-- On the other hand, you can buy things in the US that you can't (or at least we can't) in Italy -- like baby aspirin. But it is locked behind protective plastic.