Vacation season is upon us and I hope everyone can enjoy the kind of Sabbath rest that Genesis says is so useful and natural for us. For a long time I have worked to provide restful vacations for folks wanting to travel on my fund-raiser trips I conduct for my parish. For over 20 years I have invited the public to get aboard package tours, usually in Europe, although North America has also been a great destination.
Travel is enjoyable for a lot of reasons, one of which is its educational value. For instance, I learned that it is rather hard to rob a bank in Italy. Not that I’ve tried, but I see the way Italy has learned from its days of politically motivated gangs trying to fund their coffers on the quick. We ought to do what they do.
When you enter an Italian bank, you pass through a metal detector at the door and walk into a room of bullet-proof glass. A clerk tells you to deposit the gun in your left rear pocket in a lock-box that has a key. You take the key with you when they buzz you into the bank proper for your business, and you retrieve your sidearm when you leave.
Of course, it is not legal that a civilian is carrying that handgun because Italy and most other civilized countries of the world ban them. Chances are that you smuggled it in with your checked luggage when arriving from the U.S., where statistically there is a handgun for nearly every citizen, all with no objection from the government whose primary job is to protect us. Yet as security tightens, baggage checkers will examine more than random suitcases, all of which must be left unlocked when a traveler checks them in at the airport counter. Your heater in other words probably will be found eventually and confiscated.
Airport security X-rays your carry-on bag to see if it has contraband like pistols or box cutters, as we would expect after 9/11. But it also bars liquids or gels or toothpaste in containers weighing over three ounces because it could be plastic explosives masquerading as ordinary toiletries. Larger amounts have to go into the suitcase.
The security check that even the pilot and crew have to undergo consists of shedding belt and shoes and any metal such as coins or laptops. These too have to be X-rayed. It’s rather comical presenting your boarding pass and emptying your pocket while holding up your pants. The scrutiny is the reason why you must arrive at the airport three hours before international flights depart: the time it takes to process everyone would otherwise delay departure. Local flights require only two hours. Folks with pacemakers and other metallic implants are wave-searched, so it is good to have the doctor’s wallet ID card.
Another thing I learned in my ancestors’ native land is that people are thinner and healthier. Diets of garlic, onions, olive oil, wine without sulfites, fresh vegetables and fruits and less meat and more fish rather embarrass us with our proclivity for sugar and hurry-up junk food. People of all ages exercise more, usually by walking. Being more expressive of emotions both positive and negative, they have less stress to give them cardio-vascular trouble. They close stores and banks for two hours every mid-day.
But if they need medical help, Italians have access to medical insurance to a degree similar to our access to handguns. Since their defense budget is minimal even though they have an army, navy and air force, they have funds for social needs. In their list of national priorities, they have chosen social preferences such as medical coverage, subsidized college, family aid and more, all without worrying about being called socialist. After all, it all depends on what things a nation thinks are more important.
Italy has its recession, too. For the country that nearly invented amore (Roma is the inverse of the Latin word for love), their birth rate is so low that, were it not for immigrants both documented and otherwise, Italy would run out of people in the next century. So today the whole village rejoices when one of its women is expecting, and even strangers ask her how she is doing. How could you not want to visit and learn from such experienced humanists whose life expectancy is beyond ours?
BTW, Italy has fewer than 500 handgun deaths in a year, with a population of 58 million. Care to guess how many times worse our wild-west, pistol-packing rate is?
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