Born in Urbino on April 6, 1483. RIP.

I woke up today convinced it was Monday.  It is Sunday. Who can tell anymore?

Consulting my social media, I discovered it is Palm Sunday.  I received this from some Italian friends. It wishes a happy Palm Sunday, saying “this olive branch is for all of you with all of my heart.” The heart shape says the princes and the princesses.  I’m not sure what that means on the picture.  That is typical of my life here: I am never really sure what anything means.  Ha ha.  I’m having a bad day, I think, although it has just started, so who knows for sure.  Ha ha.

Palm Sunday and Holy Week are of course a big deal in Italy.

I’m not going to sugar coat it, almost a month of quarantine is a lot to cope with. The highlight of my day is watching Andrew Cuomo give his update.  The voice of compassion and reason, in the middle of a big scare.

According the experts, it is still too soon for Italy to release us.  The current end date is April 13, but everyone expects it to be extended to at least May.

 

Well, here are some pictures from my recent foray to the supermarket. Empty Florence.

The pictures are repetitive, just like my life.

 

This is me:

…ships with their entire crew used to anchor [on an island outside of Venice] for 40 days (quaranta giorni) during illness outbreaks, a practice dating back to the 14th century’s Black Death. Venice, for centuries a maritime merchant society, was especially vulnerable to disease spread from distant lands via the comings and goings of ships (something that, given the seasonal megacruise invasions on the city, has changed little), which might explain why in Venice, and not in Paris, where we were days earlier, our temperatures were taken before we were allowed into the non-security-restricted area of Marco Polo Airport (which had become, inversely, the security-restricted area). Regardless, in addition to “ghetto,” the medieval Venetians are credited, etymologically, for introducing a second “containment” word to our vocabulary: “quarantine.”