C. Berman and L. Durham join the convent

Dwight Peck's personal website

Summer 2002

C. Berman and L. Durham join the convent for the 4th of July

Summer 2002 swooped in fast, blasted by over our heads with an acrid smell, and disappeared over the horizon. Mr D. Peck, for a large number of work-related reasons, was unable to plan any holidays from 2001 right all the way through 2002, and probably well into the spring of 2003 for that matter.

Work, work, work. With Mr Peck glued to his keyboard in early July 2002, friends C. Berman and L. Durham went to the convent in northern Italy without him, and did up a fine 4th of July with the nuns. And then one of them, guess which, rode a bicycle up through northern Italy, past the holy shrine for cyclists, and rejoined us in Switzerland over the Simplon Pass.

You may not find this interesting unless you're included here, so this is a good time for casual and random browsers to turn back before they get too caught up in the sweep and majesty of the proceedings and can't let go.

4th of July at the convent [the Villa Peschiera in the village of Carvico, about 15 km west of Bergamo]: Judy, Arthur, Lisa, Charlie display their patriotic sentiments as if there were no Cheney-Rumsfeld junta in power for the moment. It gets worse . . .

Yankee Doodle and the Star Spangled Banner in northern Italy, 4 July 2002.

Yankee Doodle himself (vere Arthur) entertaining the nuns and guests with some lively Americana.
(Arthur is actually Scottish.)

Lisa explaining why it's really necessary, on this day of all days, to stick USA flag decals on your face.

They believed her. Nuns with face stickers (back row), non-nun Lisa with face stickers (center), Arthur stage-managing the whole thing with face stickers on (right).

Nun with USA face stickers (left) on 4 July 2002, who adopted Lisa (right) immediately upon learning that her father had been at Anzio Beach in 1944.

Americana with gusto, and face stickers.

More 4th of July hijinks in northern Italy.

"GO USA, we're number one!" Possibly thinking more of 1944 than of 2002.

Mr C. Berman, having got Prof Durham to come over to Italy and carry his luggage back to the old country on the train, rides through northern Italy heading generally in the same direction. Here he pauses for pious reflection at the holy shrine to cyclists [Chapel of Madonna del Ghisallo near the village of Magreglio at the pass (754 m.) above Bellaggio].


Not as tearfully poignant as the Vietnam War Memorial that adorns the Mall to America's everlasting shame, but, as bronze monuments to fallen heroes go, much more forgivable.	Prof Berman sets off to go over the Simplon Pass from Italy to Switzerland. No worries, he's done this ride before (when half the present Italian population had not yet been born).


Eat your demographics! Mr Berman revisits the Simplon Pass of his earlier years and books a lunch table for 2010.	And then off he launches himself on the stormy descent to Brig, Switzerland, and the flats to Sierre and Sion in the valley of the Rhône, where at long last his enthusiasm began gradually to cool, long after the rest of him, and he got on the train, to Lisa's house in Aigle.

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