We are still in the process of moving, although this is so embarrassing to admit that whenever anyone asks me if we have finished yet, I say, "Almost!" I have been saying that for a week now.

Putting out the (increasingly copious) trash at the rustic farmhouse a couple of days ago, I saw a young man standing in the middle of the road scrolling his phone while a little white dog on a long leash snifted at Fabio and Luciana's wall. I spoke to the dog, naturally ("Hai trovato qualcosa di interessante?") and then to the young man ("Buona sera. Come si chiama il cane?") The young man looked very startled and said, "Oh! Errr! Ummm... I don't speak Italian." And so I said to him in English, "I asked what your dog is named." And we chatted together for a bit. He is visiting from London and his dog is named Whiskey -- meaning that both of the dogs whose names I know in Capriglia are named Whiskey. At the end of our chat, he complemented me and said that I speak excellent English. I don't want to brag, but this is absolutely true.

I turned to go back in and realized that our electronic security gate had closed behind me while I was talking to dogs in the street and I was now locked out of our property.

"Oh, shit," I said, demonstrating that my mastery of the English vernacular extends even to the most colloquial and profane. "I'm locked out." 

"Ah," said the young man. "You can probably climb over it." And with that, he and Whiskey took off. It's a tall fence and he could see as well as I could that he didn't want to get involved.

But I did manage to climb over it, even though it is much taller than my head and even though I am 63 years old. I tell you this because I am prouder of this achievement than I am even of fooling ungallant English sops into thinking that I am Italian.

But really, I am hardened now to these sorts of trials and tribulations by having faced down, just this week alone, both an American insurance company and also my dire mortal enemy -- the Italian Post Office.

The battle with the Post Office involved me spending two entire days (10 hours each) sitting on the belfry house terrace overlooking our mailbox from a hidden position and then suddenly pouncing out on the mailman, taking him by surprise just as he was planning to leave a notice saying that he couldn't make the delivery because no one was at home. I mean, he still sent an email notification later saying that, but at least now he can't look me directly in the eye. And I did get the delivery the next day.

So I won that one. The American insurance company, tragically, is still up in the air. They are so evil, the insurance companies, that -- on the FIFTH international long-distance telephone call -- I did something that I have never done before in my life: I cursed at a service worker. The curse I used was "bullshit."

I'm not saying that I have never cussed anyone out before, but I think (as best I can remember) that that sort of thing has always before been reserved for boyfriends. (As one of my colleagues at Colorado College once said, apropos of a faculty meeting that went especially awry, "'Motherfucker' can actually be a term of endearment.")

So this morning, I went to have blood tests ordered by my doctor, who is upping the strength of my blood pressure medication. I am not joking.

But the big news these days is that Daniele is a finalist in the Tordelli D'oro Competition. Tordelli are a filled pasta, sort of like ravioli, a delicacy of this region, that Daniele serves with a zippy and aromatic meat sauce. He goes next week and all of the finalists will make tordelli for the judges at a public event in Bologna. We would go and cheer him on, but tickets are 60 euros each and it is a school day for Jonathan. But Daniele says if he wins, we will all eat free tordelli that night. "Aw, c'mon," Manuela says to him, "even if you don't win, we will all eat free tordelli that night!"

 

Eternal optimism is a beautiful hallmark of my character. In other words, I am a chump.

I have ordered a new bathing suit to be sent in the mail in preparation for the summer. I had to order it online to be shipped because the style of bathing suits around here -- every single one, no matter how grandmotherly and modest is the rest of the suit -- is to have only a thin string of dental floss going up your butt, leaving the rest uncovered. Now, I make no judgements about the amount of butt that other people choose to exhibit to the world. You go, girl. But if I were to wear such a suit, I would spend the whole time trying to pick that bit of string out of my butt crack. And I just don't think that would be attractive.

So I ordered this new bathing suit and crossed my fingers that my friends at the Post Office would somehow allow it to come to our house here in lovely Capriglia-by-the-Sea -- perhaps in a moment of inattention. I am following its progress very closely. So far, it has gone to Milan, then to Rome, then back to Milan again. It is now at Milan Malpensa Airport (MXP) -- the international airport in Milan, as opposed to Milan Linate, which is for domestic flights -- waiting to fly out of Italy to god-only-knows where. One thing about our mail -- it certainly gets to see the world. I will update on its whereabouts when/if I get news.

We continue to search for houses to buy. We were offered one that is about halfway down the mountain at a very reasonable price. True, it has no bathroom, but -- on the bright side -- it is surrounded by dense forest which could possibly suffice. We also have a lead on one that is next to the church almost at the level of the belltower. Jonathan thinks that this is a mark against it, but I think it would be lovely to be able to see straight into the belfry and watch the hunchback ringing the bells. Not to mention how much we would probably learn about the habits of bats.

We are going to help out a bit at the pub this summer now that it is getting close to the time when Alice's baby is due. We will be in charge of adding up all the bills and doing the money on nights when it is very busy and crowded. This will now make the second time in my life when I have ended up working in a bar just because I was around all the time anyway. The first time was in North Carolina at The Cave and The Drunken Spelunker's Guide to Plato is based on that. If I ever write another book about our time here (after the one that I'm currently writing about our first thousand days), I will call it Barflies in the Belfry.

 

Some updates:

Moroccan Salt-cured Lemons: Coming right along!

Jonathan's Driver's License: Still MIA.

Italian Post Office Efficiency: Birthday card mailed to the US in the beginning of March (March!) has not yet arrived.

Moving Document Hell: First completed batch sent off yesterday, awaiting further complications.

Snakes: A notable lack of mice and other rodents around the house. Local cats looking nervous.

 

Today for the first time in weeks, Jonathan and I are having a quiet day at home, just the two of us. The sky looks stormy in between moments of chiaroscuro sunlight, but the rain is holding off.

I am spending the day researching international movers. The political news from the US is so frightening and the Magats seem so violent and deranged and bent on the destruction of everything that we fear complete chaos there by the time the fall election arrives. So we are going this summer to begin the process of shipping to Italy the things that we left in storage so long ago in Colorado Springs.

But, of course, we are leaving behind Aiden and Tris, who are all I really worry about in the US. But they don't want to come here with us -- at least not now. So I comfort myself by believing that I am building a safe haven for them here, if they ever need it.

In the meantime, we have been hosting guests -- five groups so far in the past seven weeks, staying anywhere from two days to two weeks. And we ourselves went last weekend to visit a friend near Milan. We went to Lake Como, where I had never been before, and even more excitingly, to a lovely pastry shop in Monza where we walked in and ordered "one of everything." Then we ate them all over the course of the next two days. That is the sort of thing I wouldn't have dreamed of doing when I was younger and more sensible. 

But I am older now and more rash and much more aware of the brevity of life and of the certainty that many, many chances will never come again.

We have started going to our beach club now, the Bagno Internazionale, even though the season doesn't really swing into gear until the beginning of June. There is just enough activity that some beach chairs are out, but not enough to scare away the sandpipers and the feeling of fathomless aquatic serenity.

I am in limbo, waiting to hear something good from some publisher about my book. I have been waiting for what seems like a very long time. Jonathan gave a talk in Italian at MUSA about Artificial Intelligence. The boys at the pub have moved outside to the terrace on sunny afternoons, but are still drinking red wine, not having made the jump to summer prosecco just yet. 

I have discovered absinthe-flavored candy for sale at the store where Jonathan buys his coffee beans and am now a lost soul. 

Flush with the sugar high from all the pastries, I made an obviously foolhardy decision to try to mail a present to a friend in the United States. The extraordinarily dour woman at the shipping counter -- ensconced behind about a mile of yellow crime scene tape covered with signs saying "Keep Out" -- demanded to know what we were shipping and then told us to fuck off. It's nice to know that in this world of dizzying changes and rapid-fire transitions, that some things never change. We can always count on no success of any kind regarding the mail.

Mimmo came across and dispatched (I assume -- and hope -- with great rapidity, although I was fortunately not there in person) two very large snakes living in the grass near our front gate. The wisteria is over for the season, but the poppies glow like pocket sunsets in the grass everywhere.

 

Eight months ago, as required by law, we started the process of switching Jonathan's Swiss driver's license over to an Italian driver's license. There is an international treaty regarding this -- it is an automatic process (no tests or anything else required). "Oh," the man behind the counter said, "it takes five minutes. Come back when you have your new identity card and we will handle it." That was eight months ago.

We are now dozens of visits, emails, and phone calls in -- so many that we have lost count -- and still no license. The highlight of all of this for me was having to get a verified photo of Jonathan. This involves going to a photo booth on the street, taking a picture, and then making an appointment at the city offices for someone there to look at the photo, look at Jonathan, and officially confirm that this is a photo of him. The people at the driver's license place are not able to do this sophisticated task.

The person at the city offices, having looked at both the photo of Jonathan and at Jonathan, then issues an official piece of paper to say that the photo of Jonathan is, indeed, a photo of Jonathan. The piece of paper has many stamps on it, including one that cannot be purchased at the city offices or at the driver's license place , but only at a tobacco store. Naturally.

The verification of the photo actually took two visits because the first attempt was rejected. "It needs to be a recent photograph," the woman at the city offices said. "And I can tell this is not recent because you are wearing a different shirt." This is the kind of keen-eyed attention to detail of which the driver's license people are apparently incapable. So Jonathan had to go home and make another appointment to come back the next week wearing the same shirt he had on when he took the picture. As God is my witness, this is the truth.

But he was successful on his second attempt, got the paper all stamped and verified and signed, and brought it to the Driver's License place, where (having been the ones who told him he needed this in the first place) they now told him that they didn't need it.

In any case, we are now waiting for the official license to be available for pick-up. We have been waiting for about a month. Tuesday afternoon, Jonathan called to see if there was any news of it. We are now on a first-name basis with Magdalena at the Driver's License place (I left out the other dozen or so visits that the whole process has entailed). When Jonathan called and asked for an update, Magdalena just laughed. "She laughed at me," Jonathan said when he got off the phone.

We continue to wait.

Then yesterday we had to meet our immigration attorney at the Post Office to continue the apparently incessant process of procuring my long-term visa. We met her at the Post Office because that is, of course, where you make appointments to go to the Police Station and the Police Station is where the Immigration Office is. The procedure is that you mail the Police a stamp that you have bought in the tobacco store and when you do that, the clerk at the Post Office gives you an appointment with the Police. (Even after more than a year here, this seemed so convoluted that when our attorney told us to meet her at the Post Office, we thought there must have been a translation error somewhere along the line.) We had a couple of letters to throw into the wind mail, so we had already taken a number and were actually at a teller window throwing our letters into the wind mailing them when our attorney arrived. She joined us and tried to conduct our visa business, but was told that she couldn't and would have to get a new number and wait in line again -- not because you can't do two things at once at the window, but because she had walked into the building when we were already at the window. Our attorney took this completely in stride as a reasonable thing to do, which is why she is our attorney -- she understands what is going on, which we pretty much never do. In any case, the Post Office had just opened and there was no one else there, so we got a new number and then were seen right away.

So last night, to calm our nerves after so much bureaucracy, we went down to the pub, where we had not been since the "Incident Festival of the Big Chicken." Nonno was waiting for us -- he had a present for me. It was a book from his own library of the history of Pietrasanta, illustrated with beautiful maps and paintings and photographs. He was giving it to me, he said, because he thought I might be interested and because after he dies, he says, his family will "just throw everything out." So he is glad for me to have it, even though I only understand about one out of every ten words. I am better than no one.

This reminds me of when I lived in the South Pacific and once the old people on the island found out that I was there, they came to me in a steady stream with objects for me to see or old photographs or stories. I did not have to go searching for informants or pry secrets out of people through some sort of devious means. They said the same thing to me over and over: "No one around here wants to hear my stories. My children and grandchildren aren't interested." But they themselves needed so badly to speak, to know that these treasures would not vanish from memory when they died. I spent long afternoons sitting on Emily's shady veranda hearing these stories or seeing these photos and objects -- an ancient corset that the missionaries used to make the women wear, the photograph of a lover from long ago, the remnants of a dancing costume they had worn when they were young. They needed someone to see it, to hear about it, before they were gone.

I lived on Rarotonga twenty years ago. I am much closer in age to Nonno now than I was to the elders of Raro back then. And so now, when I sit and listen to Nonno's stories, I wonder if anyone will come around when I am 90 who will ever hear my stories and show an interest in the books in my library or look at the remnants of my old dancing costumes. I will need to speak about my treasures, too. So I write blog posts and throw them into the wind.

So yesterday, I was paying for my (obviously egregious) sins committed in a previous life by having to go to the Post Office. While I was waiting*, an elderly woman finished her business at one of the counters and as she left, she said to the room in general "Ciao, bimbi!" ("Bimbo" is Italian for "baby" and the plural of that is "bimbi," so this rather ancient woman basically said to the whole room full of the damned [i.e., people waiting their turn for customer "service" in the Post Office], "See ya, babies!")

Then this morning while I was in the Frutta D'Oro buying this lovely garlic braid and a fairly large quantity of apricots, an elderly man came in and said to the room at large, "Ciao, bimbi!" ("Hey, babies!")

So I feel fully justified in going ahead and unilaterally calling it now: this is the Hot Bimbo Summer. #Feelin'It

(*Jonathan was told that he would need to submit Form 251c in order to mail a birthday card to the US. As God is my witness, this is the truth. In the end, they didn't make him do it, but it was touch and go there for a while.)
 

 

We thought we had it figured out. We thought we could beat the system. 

But we were wrong. Very, very wrong.

In January, we spent $104 re-mailing the box of books that already been returned to my brother's house in Washington once before. We took this bold step because we thought that this time we would be able to get it. We thought that this time the box would come to our house in lovely Capriglia-by-the-Sea. We believed.

We were fools.

It showed up this morning in Washington again, having been returned from the Post Office in Pietrasanta again,  making -- for those of you who are keeping score -- THREE round trip voyages across the Atlantic Ocean for this particular set of books.

At this point, it's just straight-up sadism. Those fuckers in the Pietrasanta Post Office are vicious. They are sick.

This behavior is in very stark contrast to the happenings in the lovely pub here in Capriglia-by-the-Sea. This evening, Jonathan and I walked down -- taking the long way in the lilac light of evening because the sea was irresistibly sparkling and the air smelled of violets and mimosa. When we first arrived, there were only three of the old men in the pub and Renata and us and the light was dusky and the fire in the wood-burning stove was smoky and warm. Two giant wheels of cheese has arrived -- 37 kilos each, sitting on the table with the old men. We talked with Renata about Jonathan's upcoming birthday and when she brought out our prosciutto, etc., she had lit a birthday candle on the cheese for him and sang Happy Birthday to You in English.

Later, we walked home through the village holding hands, with a half kilo of the cheese that we took home with us. The sky had changed from violet to hyacinth blue and Jupiter  and Venus hung above the sea. It is not my birthday, but if I had a wish, it would be to have days like today last forever.

We still don't know for sure what "sn" means, but whatever it is, it includes us. The power went out at 9:01 yesterday morning and, although at first it was delightful to sit in the sunlight coming in through the windows and read from books, houses made of marble and stone cool off more rapidly in the February chill than you might think and we abandoned the place in late morning.

We had a good time down in town paying the cell phone bill at the tobacco store and being told at the Post Office to go downstairs behind to check for the Posta Fermo that we could see very plainly sitting on the shelf behind the teller. Then we went over to Viareggio, where M.C. Escher got married and where they take Carnivale therefore unsurprisingly seriously, and failed to find a food processor.

But in the end it didn't matter because by the time we got home, the power was back on and our lives in the sunshine progress peacefully enough without processed foods or mail.

In Pietrasanta, we've been having the celebration of the Feast Day of our Patron Saint, San Biagio, who is one of the lesser-known saints -- known as (according to Wikipedia) the "so-called Auxiliary saints." This seems needlessly dismissive to me. He is a famous intercessor for the healing of throat maladies and we celebrated in town by having a traditional Blessing of the Throats in the piazza in front of the church and with an equally traditional and somewhat more popular Luna Park set up just outside of town. Actually, Jonathan and I attended neither of these, but we could see the lights and hear the calliope music from the main street up here in lovely Capriglia-by-the-Sea. It is nice to know that people are eating tons of greasy carnival food and then riding contraptions that whirl them around wildly, even (or especially) if we aren't among them.

Aha! Aha! Ahahahaha! Ahhhhhhhhhh-HA!!!

They have shown their hand and I have them now!

"Who?" you ask.

Who else -- those fuckers down at the POST OFFICE!

Kids, take a word of advice from an old pro: If you are going to gaslight someone, you have to go all IN! You cannot swerve, you cannot break, you cannot relax your total control of the matrix for even a heartbeat! You cannot BLINK!

The fuckers blinked.

A letter arrived. A letter addressed to me -- to the Post Ferma address. And there it sat, on the little shelf behind the tellers where I fucking knew the Post Ferma was held, but where the Mean Old Man refused to even look, insisting that we had to go downstairs behind, where they in turn insisted that we were nuts.

But the Mean Old Man was not there yesterday and the Generally Pretty Well-Meaning But Absolutely Not In Any Sort Of Hurry Whatsoever Lady, torn between her standing orders to tell us to go ask downstairs behind and her desire to reprimand us for waiting so long to pick up our mail, let the urge to reprimand get the better of her. (Admittedly, this did have an additional tasty layer of irony-laced icing on top.) And so she reached behind herself to the little shelf and forked over a letter from my friend Esther. 

Ha! And so I have them now!

The Posta Ferma mail does come. It does come to the address we gave everyone. It comes to the Post Office upstairs and not downstairs behind. It does sit on the little shelf. 

I know that there is absolutely nothing to be done with this newly won knowledge, but one must not be greedy. I have the truth now and, god help me, it will sustain me through the cold dark months ahead as we are again inevitably, repeatedly sent to check downstairs behind.

The Truth will warm us in the winter of our hearts.

(p.s. A sign up in the Post Office alerts us to the fact that they are on strike from December 15th through January 15th. It is interesting to note that this work stoppage makes absolutely no difference whatsoever because they are in a very real way kind of always on strike.)

 

Forty years ago, I spoke Italian better than I do now. (Forty years ago, I did a lot of things better than I do now -- but I'm a lot happier now, so there's that.)

Oddly enough, although I have forgotten almost all the Italian that I once spoke with subtlety and verve, the one thing I never lost were the curses:

"Dio cane!" ("God dog!")

"Porca miseria!" ("Miserable slut!")

"Stronzo." ("Piece of shit.")

"Va fa un cuolo!" ("Fuck off!")

"Che cazzo!" ("What a dick!")

You may ask, "Um, you don't seem to be your usual sunny self today, Kath -- is anything up?"

I answer: "The Post Office."

The box of books we mailed ourselves (cost: 81 actual US American Dollars) from Colorado Springs last August has finally arrived. 

Unfortunately, it arrived not at the rustic Tuscan farmhouse, but at my brother's elegant Capitol Hill townhouse in Washington, DC, USA, having been -- and here's the kicker -- returned from the Post Office in Pietrasanta. TWICE.

While Jonathan and I were going in constantly to inquire after it or any mail at all, they were busy stamping the box with all their little stamps and returning it to the US as "unclaimed."

I suppose we should count ourselves lucky -- I was in there about a month ago when one of the tellers (true story) actually made a woman cry. But, really. Our box has made more trips across the Atlantic than most college students. It has frequent flier miles now and the cabin attendants all know its name. The only beings in the universe who have spent more time hanging around in the Pietrasanta Post Office than it has are Jonathan and I looking for it.

Dio cane!

Jonathan is down in town this morning -- third day in a row -- trying to renew his Italian passport. He is having an extremely Italian experience in that everyone is being really lovely and friendly and kind (and well-groomed) and he still doesn't have his passport.

The shortest version is that on Wednesday morning he went to the closest passport office (in Forte dei Marmi), was told he didn't need an appointment to be seen, was told that he did after all need an appointment, was told that he could only make an appointment by telephoning during the lunch break, tried calling but no one was there to answer the phone during the lunch break (because they were all at lunch), was taken in very kindly even without an appointment, and then was told that he can't renew his passport without first getting an Italian Carta Identita, which is not available in that office. He was told he could get it at the Commune Offices in Pietrasanta.

On Thursday, he went to the Commune Offices in Pietrasanta to get the Carta Identita and was told he could not get his Carta Identita in Pietrasanta but would have to go to Rome to get it (since that is where his Italian citizenship papers were issued 30 years ago) and then they very kindly said that they would do it here in town if it was OK with the boss, Maurizio. Maurizio was not in the office. "Where is Maurizio?" the office workers asked each other. "The usual place where he always is," they sighed and said to each other. This was not further explained, leaving Jonathan with increasingly alarming speculations. Where is Maurizio hanging out these days when he should be in the office and what is he doing there?

But Maurizio eventually showed up, had a stunningly well-groomed beard (according to Jonathan -- I am sorry that I was not there to see it, but we are keeping me out of the picture at the moment so as not to -- any further - complicate things) and agreed that they could issue the card here in town. But first they would need to see some Italian proof of identity, such as an Italian passport.

Then there was a longish period of time where everyone enjoyed the bureaucratic beauty of needing a Carta Identita to get a passport but needing a passport to get a Carta Identita. 

They were quite nice about it, commiserating even, and eventually decided that since Jonathan's American passport had been accepted and stamped at the border when we entered the country (by, as I recall, the world's most uninterested and blasé border official) that it would be accepted as valid proof of Italian identity. Then Jonathan had to pay the fee, which is not, of course, paid in that office, but is, naturally, paid in a tobacco shop.

This may seem baffling to Americans, but is absolutely true and is a regular feature of Italian life. It's like being sent to the nearest 7-11 to post bail or pay your telephone bill (another thing that we do in the tobacco shop.) So Jonathan hopped off the the nearest cigarette store, coughed up the dough, was given a series of official stamps (actual paper stamps with glue on the back) and went back to the Commune Offices were the printer fucked up twice printing out his card, a discussion was had about whether or not to call in Andrea, who knows how to fix the printer but who was apparently also in his "usual place," meaning that Maurizio got the chance to really show his skills by expertly peeling off all the official stamps and Jonathan's photo from the old version of the form and putting them on the new version of the form, perfectly lined up with the overlapping printing. Jonathan now suspects that Maurizio's "usual place" is not the brothel that he had originally imagined, but is instead a high-end art forger's workshop. This is why he is the boss.

By the time Jonathan left, they were all on a first name basis and using the informal with each other.

So today he is back at the Passport Office in Forte dei Marmi (stopping in first at the Post Office to pay the fee, which is not taken at either the passport office itself or at the tobacco shop, for some reason, and also to inquire if they have any mail for us that they are willing to release. I'm not holding my breath.) He has been gone a couple of hours now, which is probably a good sign.

(Oops! Jonathan is just back. They were out of the forms he needed at the Post Office and told him to go to another office. "Any other Post Office?" he asked. They stared at him and just said "another office" and made vague waving gestures with their hands. Apparently any type of office will do, but not the one he was currently in. Naturally. He went to a Pak-n-Ship Store and got the forms there. Then he spent a good long while waiting in line at the offices in Forte dei Marmi, only to be eventually told that the passport office is closed and he should come back Monday. Also, there was no mail for us at the Post Office.)

On our way down the mountain (and from here, everything in the world is "down the mountain"), we pass a house. On the front of the house is a mailbox. In the mailbox is a letter. A big juicy letter. It has been sitting in that mailbox for days and days now, untouched, sticking out into the sun and the wind and the rain. It is taunting me.

We don't ever get mail. Well, last month we got three pieces of mail out of the four that my brother sent me. (He is very kindly receiving all of our forwarded mail in the US and passing on to us the things that are truly necessary.) The one piece that didn't come was my Criminal Record from Arkansas, which I need for my application for Italian citizenship. It is out there somewhere now, floating around and showing that in my early life, I was either very good or very sly.

But that has been it. Just three things to show us that they could deliver the mail here, but they choose not to. The box of books that we mailed ourselves from Colorado last August has not arrived. My subscription to The New York Review of Books, which was arriving with great regularity all summer long to Gabe's apartment in Zurich, stopped completely when I changed the address to here. The thousands of cards and letters, with which I am sure my many friends are deluging me, have yet to materialize.

Now, you might think: "But who needs physical mail here in the actual 21st century?" That is because you do not have a Visa card that you depend on that is due to expire very soon and for which you will need the actual physical replacement. I do. Actual physical checks for our insurance rebates, mortgage escrow payoff, book royalties, and some of the pay for Jonathan's consulting work are things that it would be nice to be able to lay our hands on. I could go on and on. (I'm like that.)

We check the mailbox here at the house every day because we live in a state of perpetual optimism (punctured diurnally by despair.) And we also go into town and enquire in the Post Office whenever we feel we are able to handle the emotional strain. We take a number from the machine and wait until we are eventually called to the service counter -- from where we can clearly see boxes and letters sitting on the Posta Ferma shelf right behind the counter -- and ask if there is any Posta Ferma for us. Once they looked through the things on the shelf and said "no." Twice they typed our names into the computer and said "no." But mostly a rather forbidding man behind the counter tells us that Posta Ferma does not come there (without so much as asking our names or deigning to turn his head to even glance at the Posta Ferma shelf which -- again -- we can see completely clearly right behind him) and tells us to go check downstairs behind. 

Downstairs behind smells strongly of garbage and appears to be some sort of loading dock. The workers there look at us like we are crazy and tell us that Posta Ferma doesn't come down there and that we should enquire upstairs. Twice we have actually gone back upstairs to say to the people upstairs who sent us downstairs that the people downstairs told us to come upstairs. The forbidding man then says "no" and waves us away. 

We go away empty-handed and just hope that whoever has our box of books is enjoying them (some of them are Jonathan's high-level math books and therefore will of course provide hours of amusement and pleasure) and that whoever has my Arkansas Criminal record is using it for good and not evil.

In the meantime, the persimmon tree is loaded with luscious persimmons, most of which we cannot reach even with a ladder, even by climbing. We get what we can and call it a day. (The chestnuts, as if in compensation or maybe in a warning about being wary of abundance, continue to be oppressively available.)