I have not written a blog post since last August.  Now that I am a full time graduate student, I simply do not have time.  I have much to write and I hope to do so again sometime in the near future.  For now, my mind and my writing efforts are immersed in Medieval and Renaissance thinking and art.

I was out for dinner with an Italian friend a few weeks ago though, and he asked me why I cannot put short stories or mentions on my blog, why do they always need to be like a chapter of a book?  Good point, I told him.

So, here is a short story–no photos and I am not taking an hour plus to write it.

I was in Padua last week with my professor and it started to rain. She was without an umbrella and she asked “Where are all the guys selling umbrellas?  If we were back in Florence, they would be all over!” And this is true.  In Florence, the very moment a raindrop falls, the umbrella sellers appear out of the woodwork selling their flimsy umbrellas that turn inside-out at the first little gust of wind.

Today, as I stepped out of one of my favourite bars in my favourite piazza (allow me to clarify–a bar in Italy is a coffee shop), it started to rain.  Of course, as usual, there was suddenly upon me a man offering umbrellas for sale.  “No grazie, ho un ombrello” I said as I pulled  my sturdy wind-resistant umbrella from my bag.  I proceeded through the piazza and he was just behind me.  As we passed a couple of construction workers, the umbrella man offered them “un ombrello”.  One of the construction workers replied “Voglio una donna, non voglio un ombrello”, which means “I want a woman, I don’t want an umbrella”.

I continued home in the rain laughing to myself !