1 November 2024–Today is All Saints’ Day, a holy day of obligation in the Catholic religion, and a National Holiday for Italy. In Italy, it is also considered to be people’s saint name (onomastica) day, especially.those who do not know of a named saint officially declared in the Catholic Church after whom they have been named. It is also a very special day in our family because today is Logan Stuever’s 11th birthday! Happy birthday, Darling Logan! Logan was born on a very special day also because November 1 is Brittny and Jason Baugh’s wedding anniversary! May they enjoy many more years of good health and happiness. Finally, November 1, 1958 was the date that my father and I emigrated to the United States from Italy. This was always a very special and meaningful day for my father because he always kept this memory alive for me. Imagine if November 1, 1958 never happened for my father and me! How different would this life have been for our family! Today is also the fourth day of hospitalization for John. No doctor did rounds today in our unit, not unless there was an emergency. It was a relatively quiet day at the Nuova Ospedale di San Giovanni Battista, with even the Bar (Snack Bar) closing at 1 P.M. This morning, I had the opportunity to watch an olive picker do her work. She climbed a ladder and leaned it cautiously against a larger branch of the tree. Then, she held what looked like a large yellow wider-toothed comb, shook the tree, let olives falll onto a net spread beneath the tree, and basically combed each branch, one by one, to gently pry the olives off til they fell on the spread net. Our B&B has a small olive grove on site, and I can only imagine what a time-consuming job this must be for olive pickers, going one branch at a time….Other than that, this was a rather uneventful and quiet day at the hospital with John. He is feeling so much better, and he is permitted to walk around the hospital, go downstairs to the. Bar with me, and probably even walk around outside if we asked, I’d bet. We really, really would like to be out of the hospital tomorrow, and…God’s will be done!
Our Travels 