{"id":1,"date":"2018-06-01T11:57:41","date_gmt":"2018-06-01T11:57:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/houndingproductions.org\/floundering-in-florence\/?p=1"},"modified":"2018-06-05T08:17:40","modified_gmt":"2018-06-05T08:17:40","slug":"hello-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/houndingproductions.org\/floundering-in-florence\/?p=1","title":{"rendered":"Day 1, Story 1: Ravenna to Florence"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This is me, at the age of 12.<\/p><\/div>\n

(by Carol)<\/em><\/p>\n

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I live in Ravenna–Ravenna, Ohio<\/a>.\u00a0 Here are a few pictures of some of the views from my home:<\/p>\n

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This is my front porch in Ravenna, Ohio.<\/p><\/div>\n

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This is my backyard, from which Daisy is looking to come inside.<\/p><\/div>\n

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This is Scott.<\/p><\/div>\n

I live in my little home in Ravenna, Ohio\u2014which I share with my husband, Scott, and Daisy the Dog\u2014and I teach at Kent State University\u2014Trumbull<\/a>.\u00a0 Last summer, I proposed to teach a course for the Kent State University Florence Summer Institute<\/a>, an upper level English\/Women’s Studies course called Adoption & Adaptation: Florence Feminism and English Literature and Film<\/a>.\u00a0 Actually, what happened was that I asked Scott, yelling to him from my little office in our house to him in his little office in our house (in Ravenna, Ohio) “Hey! Do you want me to propose to teach a course in Florence?” and he replied, “Oh yeah! Let’s do it!”\u00a0 So I thought for a good while and came up with this special topics course idea, to be cross-listed as both a Department of English<\/a> course and a Women’s Studies<\/a> course (giving students a choice for how they wished to earn the credit: for an English major or<\/em> for a Women’s Studies minor).\u00a0 Scott is also a professor, but he teaches mathematics at The University of Akron, so he was going to come along to stay with me for part of the month-long adventure, during which time Daisy the dog would stay with my mother, at her house in Wisconsin.\u00a0 That was the plan, if the course was approved, which (to my surprise) it was, and then (again, to my surprise) enough students registered for the course for it to not be cancelled.\u00a0 However, the illusion of control was not to be.<\/p>\n

First, Scott hurt his back (again) and there was absolutely, positively, no-fucking-way he was going to be able to sit on a plan for more than 20 minutes, much less for several hours.\u00a0 This made me very sad.<\/p>\n

However, second, my friend Pam was able to take his place (and his plane ticket).\u00a0 This made me much happier.\u00a0 Pam is retired from teaching at Siena College<\/a>\u2014located not in Siena, Italy, but in Loudonville, New York.\u00a0 I’ve known Pam for a long time, but that’s another story.\u00a0 The adventure, then, begins with meeting Pam at the Toronto, Canada airport.<\/p>\n

The cheapest way to get from northeastern Ravenna, Ohio (USA) to Florence, Tuscany (Italy): book a flight from Toronto, Canada to Florence, Italy.\u00a0 I got to Toronto with a shortish flight from Akron-Canton Airport to Toronto.\u00a0 It wasn’t that short: I flew from Akron-Canton to Washington, D.C. and then caught another flight from Regan National to Toronto.<\/p>\n

\"\"I should point out that I have mobility issues.\u00a0 I use a walker.\u00a0 It’s an awesome walker: big (6″) wheels in the back, with even bigger\u00a0 (10″) wheels in the front.\u00a0 It allows me to walk at a normal-to-fast pace, and I’ve even taken it on mostly level hiking trails.\u00a0 However, there is no getting around the fact that I need a bit of help, at times, such as being permitted to board the plan with parents-with-children.\u00a0 What I don’t need is what the stewardess gave me in flying from Washington, D.C. to Toronto: she stopped me from walking to my seat (having just checked-in my walker and holding onto the backs of seats to help me keep my balance) to carefully, slowly speak to me about the location of exits and so forth, as though my slow walking equaled slow thinking.\u00a0 But she was very nice, otherwise, and clearly meant well, so I wasn’t too bothered by it.<\/p>\n

After a bit of wandering about the Toronto airport, with my little computer bag and my overnight bag resting on the seat of my walker, and my giant suitcase wheeling beside my walker (awkward, but not impossible, to manage), I found Pam.\u00a0 Her sisters drove her up from their home in Buffalo, New York.<\/p>\n

We had a little meal and then it was time to board the plane to Brussels.\u00a0 Again, assistance was very nice: the stewardess came to find both of us and allowed us to board first, much to the annoyance of some people who clearly felt like we were cheating, cutting in line.\u00a0 However, going down the ramp to the plane, she tried to help me along by grabbing the front of the walker and pulling me faster than I could walk (trying to make me trot, I think).\u00a0 “Don’t help me, please.\u00a0 Let go.”\u00a0 She complied immediately.\u00a0 What was she thinking?\u00a0 I don’t know.\u00a0 After that, however, the rest of the flight\u2014though long and exhausting (as it is for most anyone flying overseas) was relatively easy.\u00a0 At Brussels, they made quite a fuss over us (Pam was using her cane), and zipped us off on a golf cart across the airport to catch the final plane, to Florence.<\/p>\n

We left Canada at night (6:00pm) and arrived in Italy in the morning of the next day.\u00a0 The sun was shining, and it was a bit warm and slightly sticky outside.\u00a0 It was good to be out of a plane.\u00a0 It was good to breathe fresh air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(by Carol)           I live in Ravenna–Ravenna, Ohio.\u00a0 Here are a few pictures of some of the views from my home:   I live in my little home in Ravenna, Ohio\u2014which I share with my husband, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-carols-stories","category-day-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/houndingproductions.org\/floundering-in-florence\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/houndingproductions.org\/floundering-in-florence\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/houndingproductions.org\/floundering-in-florence\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/houndingproductions.org\/floundering-in-florence\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/houndingproductions.org\/floundering-in-florence\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/houndingproductions.org\/floundering-in-florence\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77,"href":"https:\/\/houndingproductions.org\/floundering-in-florence\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions\/77"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/houndingproductions.org\/floundering-in-florence\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/47"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/houndingproductions.org\/floundering-in-florence\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/houndingproductions.org\/floundering-in-florence\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/houndingproductions.org\/floundering-in-florence\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}