Adventures and Other Happenings

During our October 2015 trip, we had only one day/night on the itinerary for Agropoli, the town where Jeb's grandfather was born on the southwest coast of Italy. Despite Jeb's attempts to reach out to his American relatives for clues of family ties, he had no contacts there. Decades and generations had passed, and with them, the treasured connections to long-lost relatives. Most of his grandfather's (very) large family had immigrated to America, so any remaining family in Italy would most certainly have been distant cousins, perhaps belonging to branches of the family tree several degrees from his grandfather. Nonetheless, we set out to explore the small city on foot, hoping that maybe, we'd get lucky. Once an ancient maritime settlement, Agropoli is now a normal working-class town. It's rare to find anyone who speaks English there and tourists are limited to Italians who come to the seaside on holiday. A beautiful beach with a smattering of hotels is the ...

Despite the many ways in which we're connected and plugged in these days, I think we're also a closed-off society, with an over-emphasis on privacy, space, security, and the like. We don't keep the same open-door policies that our older generations once kept. We don't pop in for visits without first scheduling and announcing, and reconfirming, our arrival. I had a great uncle, rest his soul, who was notorious for showing up at relatives' homes unannounced, sometimes hundreds of miles away in other states. Most of the time, he was welcomed gracefully, but not without the element of utter surprise... "Oh, well, we were just leaving to go on our family vacation for a week, but sure, come on in!!" Sometimes he was greeted with disdain. Nonetheless, that was how he was brought up, in a society where it was socially acceptable to make impromptu visits. In fact, it was sometimes the only way you could build and maintain relationships--other than the occasional ...