What Fills My Plate

I am not Catholic, and even though there are only Catholic churches here,  I decided to consider attending after last week’s hair raising bus trip.  The new driver, who had replaced my last,  who was a more calm and laid back driver, gave me a bit of the spectacular and unexpected.   Most bus drivers are exceptional and safe drivers.  Yet I began to believe, that Dale Earnhardt must have an Italian relative?   I usually sit in the first seat so I can enjoy the view when leaving the city and reaching my village.  That was my first mistake!   I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather, certainly not screaming and yelling like the passengers in my bus.  I had a front row seat feeling quite imperilled as the bus flew around corners, screeched to stops, and brushed by pedestrians who suddenly decided they should have stayed home. He Always Got The Girls I was reminded of the first auto chase movie I had seen as a ...

This will be a follow-up fact finding “mission” dedicated to my readers that responded to my earlier blog on Starbuck's invasion of Italy Ciao Tutti? It has been some time since I wrote about the Starbuck's corporate decision to invade Italy, first in Milano and later to other cities.  Howard Schultz, CEO Starbucks, had originally decided to stay away from competing with the hoard of coffee bars that Italians  frequent daily.  Times change, and placing a Starbucks near the Duomo in Milano  will be a sort of trial balloon, fishing to see if the hard-core coffee drinking Italians will storm the doors of a Starbucks coffee shop, lining up like crazed prisoners making a food raid.  Will they tolerate the long lines like the people of Moscow upon the opening of Moscow McDonalds?   My take on this is that Italians are down to earth people, they never dream  of one hand gripping a cup of exorbitantly priced java with  the other hand holding ...