We\u2019re in Venice tonight. \u00a0For those of you who remember the last time I was in Venice, I will NOT be riding in a gondola. \u00a0Been there; done that; got the VERY wet t-shirt.<\/p>\n
Yesterday we were in Dubrovnik where we spent a wonderful several hours at a once-abandoned Dominican monastery tasting their oils, honeys, and wines. \u00a0It\u2019s a monastery that was destroyed in the \u201clast\u201d war which ended in the mid-nineties. The country is just now reopening rebuilt bridges that were destroyed in that war. \u00a0As for the monastery? \u00a0It still belongs to the Dominicans, but was taken over and rebuilt by a group of ten men\u2014veterans from that last war\u2014who have brought their individual talents to bear to do something to benefit themselves and their community. \u00a0It is a true community service organization! \u00a0\u00a0By the time we left, I was a fan of cherry grappa!<\/p>\n
But here\u2019s what I was thinking about on the bus ride back to the ship. \u00a0I was thinking about Robert Frost\u2019s poem: \u00a0Something there is that does not like a wall.<\/p>\n
If you haven\u2019t read it recently or even ever, do yourself a favor and read it now. \u00a0The wall in question is a rock wall built between neighboring farms. \u00a0In the winter frosts heave up and knock a few rocks off. \u00a0Or stray hunters or hikers knock down a few so they can pass through more easily. \u00a0But in the spring, the farmers from both sides of the wall come together to rebuild it, working together because, as Frost concludes \u201cGood fences make good neighbors.\u201d<\/p>\n
On this cruise, all the ancient cities we\u2019ve seen\u2014with the exception of Venice\u2014have had walls. \u00a0(Venice doesn\u2019t need a wall\u2014it has the Mediterranean.) \u00a0But the other cities have all had walls, built at great expense and huge expenditures of physical effort, not to keep their citizens locked inside, but to protect their citizens from threats from without.<\/p>\n
And maybe with all the yelling back and forth about building a wall or not building a wall, it might do us all a lot of good to remember what Robert Frost said. \u00a0Good fences really do make good neighbors.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the blog for today\u2014short and sweet. \u00a0As of a few minutes ago my line editing job for Field of Bones has arrived, and that\u2019s what I\u2019ll be working on tomorrow.<\/p>\n
So much for vacationing on vacation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We\u2019re in Venice tonight. \u00a0For those of you who remember the last time I was in Venice, I will NOT be riding in a gondola. \u00a0Been there; done that; got the VERY wet t-shirt. Yesterday we were in Dubrovnik where we spent a wonderful several hours at a once-abandoned Dominican monastery tasting their oils, honeys, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[165],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-traveling"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-pZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1611"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1612,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1611\/revisions\/1612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}