Stepping Lightly: Sestri Levanti, Italy, Rapid City, South Dakota, Nashville, Tennessee, Louisville, Kentucky and the Freedom to Control Your Day.

I recall when applying for a visa to go to India, they asked applicants to list the countries that have been visited in the previous 5 or 10 years I can’t recall which one. What I do remember is stopping after listing 50 countries. I’ve probably travelled to 100 over my lifetime, the great majority after my transition from full time to part-time faculty status at the University of Hawaii – 15 years ago in 2007. Since that critical moment in time, I have taken the attitude that - what I want to do comes first, and all the rest including work related duties are subjugated to this self-empowered primacy. If that does not satisfy my employers, so be it. So far it hasn’t, but it eventually will and that will finalize the end of my career. After all, I’m no spring chicken…… 76 in less than a month.

It’s still worthy of emphasizing how truly wonderful it is to have control over one’s day. This is ESPECIALLY true of someone like me, a former, devoted intensive care physician who was tethered to his phone and pager, subject to the whims of subordinates, other health care workers, and anyone else needing advice or assistance. This is truly the value of any type of successful partial and/or total retirement from work, the ability to call the shots, day after day and night after night without guilt or duress; otherwise, you’re exchanging one type of subordination for another. This freedom cannot be overstated; it is simply the ultimate expression of happiness and self.

The title above suggests some type of relationship between one village in Italy and several cities in the US. There is not, other than the fact that they represent the destinations of my last three trips taken over the last three months. Ordinarily I would blog the details of each of these trips in fine detail and include a potpourri of visual representations. I will forgo the details and focus on a few snippets, and quirky moments and reflections. Each of these destinations was travelled for different reasons, not that I need a reason to travel most anywhere.

Parenthetically, I am bothered by the steeply rising prices of flights to anywhere, particularly since I am committed to purchase business or first-class fares with mostly lie flat seats to insure comfort and privacy. Fares have doubled in the last year along with general inflation, but President Biden assures me that it was Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and world inflation that are at fault, and not Joe Biden and his reckless multi trillion-dollar giveaways. And from his perspective, the economy is doing well, and I believe him. After all, the windfall of dollars from China and Ukraine that his trusted son, Hunter has earned, has been generously shared with the big guy, his beloved father.

Chapter 1: Sestri Levanti is a beautiful northern coastal town on the Mediterranean nestled in the heart of the Italian Riviera just north of the famous Cinque Terra. You fly to Milan, take a train to and then south of Genoa, and you’re there. The town has a little of everything! Beautiful surroundings, excellent cuisine, coves and beaches with crystal clear waters for swimming or sunbathing (it irks me that so few people understand how damaging the sun is to one’s skin!). People are friendly – with exception – I was kicked out of a restaurant after waiting for an hour for service, unwilling to pay for what was ordered that was yet to be served! Through my eyes, the world of Italians seem to revolve around hedonistic pursuits and self-fulfillment. A truly beautiful place to visit and enjoy.

Italy is a place that everyone should find the time to visit. If only one foreign country is ever visited in your life, make it Italy. It truly has something for everybody. Perhaps we would discourage those Americans who have the desire to destroy historical artifacts, topple monuments, and/or deny history, or those easily offended by opinions not condoned by their woke taskmaster liberal academic advisors.

Using Milan as the home base for Italy allowed me to revisit the Milan Cathedral or Duomo. This arguably is the third largest church in the world, but to me is the most impressive and powerful religious building I have ever visited, with the exception of the Vatican. You are allowed to venture below the church to see some of the remains of the earlier construction, and also, for a price to climb to the top of the cathedral and witness the majesty of its complex architecture from above as well as a panorama of the surrounding city below. Truly a meaningful experience for believers and non-believers alike! Hope you like some of the pictures below!

Chapter 2: Rapid City, South Dakota is not the most popular destination in the US, but it serves as an appropriate home base to see some beautiful sites of the black hills, and some notable landmarks: Mt Rushmore, Crazy Horse Memorial, Devils Tower, Custer State Park, and Deadwood to name a few. Too much hype about Deadwood’s history, the fate of Wild Bill Hitchcock and Calamity Jane, the significance of Saloon #10 was the luring attraction, but the reality is that this town is a disappointing tourist trap and nothing more.

Depending upon the number of wonderful hikes you are planning, overall, I think a minimum of three days is adequate to see most of what’s worth seeing. I was spooked out because September was a popular month for rattle snakes to make their presence known, and after all I am hard of hearing, which may have been a benefit. In any case, I was not accosted by a rattle snake although I was prepared as much as anyone with eyes peering back and forth in a nystagmoid fashion and my walking stick in hand and ready for the fight. In any case, September was a better month to travel to Rapid City because August is the month that a horde of motorcycle enthusiasts converge on a nearby town called Sturgis, leaving little room for the run of the mill tourist to maneuver.

Rapid City was not a bad small city; it had the interesting distinction of having statutes of life size US presidents on street corners in the downtown area. Lots of tourists, a decent assortment of restaurants, and the smallish size and lack of congestion created a rather relaxing environment. A very nice extended park and playgrounds seems to butt against an industrial area; the extent of the city’s charming areas extend only a short distance before the city deteriorates into a worn-down US look alike middle America anywhere town.

Verdict: South Dakota is a good as any tourist destination in America. Mount Rushmore is worth the trip in itself.

Chapter 3: I went to Nashville to visit my old college campus at Vanderbilt University, and out of curiosity to venture to Music City’s country western music dance scene. I can’t remember the last time I was in Nashville, probably about 30-35 years ago. The Vandy campus had grown to a sprawling community, no longer a contained university that can easily be walked without crossing major thoroughfares. Buildings were mixed modern, and others were old and reminiscent of the old Vandy campus I attended in the late 60’s. Its seems that medicine had taken over an increasing part of the footprint and that specialty centers for just about any type of medical care was now offered. Vandy had swallowed several other neighboring schools such as Peabody, where many of us had to resort to frequenting looking for coeds to date, giving up on the persnickety Vandy girls who were flooded with too many suiters. Moreover, no one would prefer a Yankee to a good Southern boy.

We went to the Grand Ole Opry and that was a fantastic experience. Now relocated to the outskirts of the city, it was surrounded by restaurants and music venues crowded with young people watching sports, drinking beer, and eating burgers and fries. Not everyone was overweight, but it was truly an unpleasant sight to have so many millennials frequent these establishments in an endless sea of fast food, beer, TV screens and live music all converging into a frenzied crescendo of gluttony and cacophony. Every third person had a cigarette hanging from their lips; one young girl was passed out in the ladies’ room during one outing. The place we went to for lunch had 18 TV sets strategically placed in direct line to easily catch the gaze of all patrons who were mindlessly rooting for one team or another.

Downtown Nashville was not much better, lined with country western music venues, musty and weathered bar rooms with sticky wooden floors, and an endless flotilla of tourists eager to donate to the Nashville economy. I didn’t see anyone dancing other than the occasional flailing tourist with beer bottle over one’s head and a glazed look of stupor. Nothing like the memory of the past, more like New Orleans rather than old Nashville. Can’t think of why Nashville has become so expensive a place to visit or why it has become a favorite destination of relocated easterners and west coasters. It would clearly not be a place I would ever choose to return to without design or purpose.

Chapter 4: Louisville, Kentucky was much nicer overall. Downtown was tolerable, a little drab except near the waterfront, but it was outside the center city that was pleasant and scenic. After all, it was autumn, and the bountiful leaves displayed a striking variety of bright greens, reds, yellows, and browns. There was Cherokee park where I lived during most of my medical training and internship, and I was thrilled to find the exact location of the house that I occupied during this critical juncture.

I almost forgot to include the drive from Nashville to Louisville, passing through Bolling Green, being reminded of the historical significance of the establishment - Pauline’s, crossing over a 133-year-old bridge that we visualized collapsing under us during crossing. We were also reminded that Abe Lincoln was born in Kentucky, and we visited his old log cabin home enclosed in a museum describing his roots and early years. It was very pleasant especially because we were one of only a few visitors present, and we had the time and the attention of the attendants to tell the stories and answer questions.

Back to Louisville, we visited a one-hundred-year-old candy shop – Muths- and ate at a Vietnamese restaurant, both favorites of my best friend Buzz – who came from Louisville and attended Vanderbilt with me. We also had tickets to attend a Jack-O-Lantern Spectacular in Iroquois Park – a truly amazing experience worth the struggle to get there, wait endlessly in line and endure the procession of families parading around an open arena passing time to allow those who preceded our time slot to begin the adventure. Viewing the photos tells a much better story than anything described in a hyperbolic narrative.

My visit was intended to participate in the festivities of my 50th medical school reunion at the University of Louisville, now part of the University of Kentucky state school system. I won’t bore you with the details or too many pictures of old, mostly retired doctors that we reconnected and reminisced with. Who was alive and who passed, who was healthy looking and looked younger than 75ish, and who looked older than their age and amorphous. It gave us great joy to be there realizing we were the lucky ones, alive and able to tell our stories. We were also unanimous in our recollection of the life changing experience of the Anatomy lab, cutting and dissecting cadavers in the first year of med school. Situated in the old medical school – now 153 years old, the anatomy lab commanded the top floor – 4th – the smell of formalin, the endless line of cadaver laden stainless-steel tables, the late-night hours we spent stuffing our brains with the alignment of muscles, nerves, vessels, visceral organs, and bones, created a sense of macabre that was not easily escaped or forgotten. Most of us had never seen a dead body, no less a room full of preserved, naked, dead bodies lined in rows and columns to accommodate nearly 100 medical students with four students assigned to each body. In any case, it made for a good story line during the reunion and probably responsible to some extent for weeding out some of the 15 of our class that never made it to graduation. Moreover, we made it a point to visit the old medical school, which gave me goose bumps until we found out that the building had turned into a Ronald McDonald House that we could not gain entrance to.

The dinner itself was a lot of fun, and as usual in those kinds of events, I had too much to drink and was too loose with my tongue.

Chapter 5: There is no chapter 5; we came home the next day after the reunion. It's been about a week since that time, and I’m packing for another trip in 3 days, this time to visit my son in his new home in Oregon. Then back for a week and off to Thailand. I’m hoping that December will bring snow to Utah and a reason to fly to Salt Lake City for some skiing. 2023 will be here before we know it and with it, more trips to enjoy and describe. Stay tuned!

Sestri Levanti, Cinque Terra, Milan Cathedral