Granted, most people come to Assisi to admire the Giotto frescoes. To follow in the footsteps of native son San Francesco. Or maybe to visit the nearby resting place of his Facebook friend Santa Chiara, patron saint of television (no joke). Well, we did all of those things. But then Miriam, Nick and I took some paths less traveled in this beautiful Umbrian hilltown. Good meals, visits to friendly proprietors of local pastry shops (Nick was researching his Great Italian Desserts book) and then just some ordinary things like dropping into a hardware store (where I bought one of those clicking ignitors for manually lit gas stoves, which I still use today.) And this. A reminder of how completely gaga tutto Italia was about the King of Pop’s tour. He continued to dog us for the rest of our Italian visit. And the first leg of my journey home (a flight from Torino to Zurich) was actually dominated by his staff and technical crew on their way to the next gig. Michael, it seems, had arranged private transportation.
Saint Clare of Assisi, patron saint of television! Oh yes, Sandy, I remember when you informed me of that back when we both worked for WGBH in Boston after one of your trips to Italy. You had seen souvenir plastic TVs with a peep hole which revealed an image of Clare. I loved that and researched her. Turns out that Clare was on her death bed, too ill to take part in Christmas Mass. But when the other sisters looked in on her afterward, she gave them a detailed account of the Mass including style critique of what the nobles were wearing. She had "seen" the whole thing in wide-screen, HD quality and Dolby sound on the wall of her cell -- the first flat-screen TV! Thanks to you, Sandy, I have a little plastic Saint Clare next to my TV: http://0.tqn.com/d/catholicism/1/0/D/3/-/-/Saint-Clare-Patron-Saint-Of-Television-WW.jpg
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