Here I was, sitting on a very old bridge. I will fill this post out with a bit of trivia. The Ponte Vecchio is possibly where the concept of bankruptcy began. Merchants who could not service their debts would have their tables (banco) destroyed by the soldiers. When I was there unlicensed merchants stood over a bed sheet covered in counterfeit handbags. Whenever the cops came by, they would tie it up like an oversized hobo sack and wait for them to leave.

Adolf Hitler was rumored to have sentimental feelings about this bridge. Supposedly he expressly ordered that it was not to be destroyed during the retreat of August 4, 1944. This is quite plausible. There is a private corridor above the bridge that continues on into the city. It is called the Vasari Corridor. There is a slightly less plausible story that the big windows pictured here were put in at the request of Hitler, who conferred with Benito Mussolini in this private space.

This post is part of the Self Portrait Sunday tradition

Expect to see a little less from me over the next week. I am going on a trip and we will only have one laptop between us. Add to that the fact that the point of a vacation is to relax and get away from the things that you do everyday. Add to that the fact that I don’t think we will be staying anywhere with free internet access. Maybe I should keep my destination a secret and just post a few pictures while I am there.

I used to be a bit of a backyard hobby farmer. I kept domestic geese for two years. Goose eggs are too big and too rich to make for a good breakfast staple. They are great for baking, as long as you are making a big batch of whatever you are baking.

The first year that I had geese, we ordered a dozen ‘day old’ chicks from the Co-op. They were in the house with a heat lamp for the first few weeks. After that, I built a round movable enclosure that went out on the lawn. Geese are great for backyard farms because they are grazers. Some people don’t like them because they are poopers.

Keeping two or three geese through the Canadian winter was a pain. They are covered in goose down, so they weren’t in great danger of freezing. The difficulty was keeping a steady supply of unfrozen water in their pen. In the spring, I let the last remaining female hatch out some eggs.

As Canada remembers its war dead today, Canadian soldiers are in Afghanistan, where poppies grow. 90% of the World’s heroin comes from this country. The Taliban get an estimated $10 million dollars a year in protection money from drug lords. It is a logical assumption that the drug lords do not want stability, because the drug trade could not possibly flourish as it is now if there were conditions that allowed for the rule of law to prevail.

Please do not use illegal drugs. When you do, you are supporting terrorism. In North America, where cocaine is the hard drug of choice, users have in the past been unwittingly supporting covert operations by the CIA that resulted in untold suffering in Central America. Even though marijuana has less adverse effects on users and is often grown in stable developed countries, the illegal nature of the supply chain means that users are connecting them selves to violent crime in a tangential way. Activists that promote the legalization of marijuana should STOP using before they start advocating and only start partaking of the relatively innocuous drug when it is made legal and there is an ethical supply chain.

I objectively recognize that my moderate addiction to coffee is a big problem. 1-3 cups of strong coffee could very well be beneficial to my health. I generally do not have sugar in my coffee.

I sometimes get emotional about the fact that I have an addiction to a substance and and I will plan to quit. If I take any steps to quit, they are always short lived. Coffee is a part of my life in a cultural and social way. Oh, and it tastes really good. I quit eating donuts and I haven’t looked back.

I uploaded a full screen version of this picture because I love the details. Click on the thumbnail to see it. The photos above the meat are of the finish line at the annual horse race.

This is one of the most elusive songs that I have ever heard. I think that it provokes strong emotions by the very act of not voicing them. Be sure to check out the original version by Guided by Voices. It’s very different from mine and features a mini biopic of Beatle Bob.

Some of the most frightening lyrics are delivered quietly. I am going to try to record a few songs that I think of as scary over the next week or so.

There is a piece of garbage that I very much want to bring home with me to incorporate into a piece of art. I cannot bring myself to pick it up because it is lying in a vacant lot beside a busy parking lot. I am afraid that I will be seen by my accountant or the police or that guy that always talks to me.

The object is actually just around the corner from a shop filled with decorative art and furnishings. I am talking about cherubs and gilded naked lady lamps. I think I might just kick the object over and take a digital photograph. I can then use the magic of MS paint to make an unreasonable facsimile of what I had planned to do.

I am going on a holiday in Italy in about a month’s time. I am starting to get excited. I have just been informed that we will be drinking Chianti quite liberally while we are there.

I hope we don’t mess up our palates in such a way that we can no longer make do with our cheap table wine. The fiasco is that bottle that is encased in woven straw. You know, those ones that you dripped melted candle all over when you were in college?