Hi Judith …

 Your story of Venice was full of love and wonderful, the personal stories touching.  But I have never heard one of the most beautiful, wonderful cities in the world called a tourist trap before.  Is it a tourist trap because word-of-mouth has made it "the place to go in Italy".  Well, it is . . along with a handful of others.  I then consider it a city of visitors - for very good reason - and no more.  Doesn’t it denigrate it a bit - put it down actually to those who don’t know better - to call it a tourist trap - even 5-star??? 

And tourists I suppose have been known to try to put something over on locals.  I haven’t seen it happen but know it must.  But not "adventurous travellers".  Certainly that is the wrong term.  Adventurous travellers - of which I supposed I could be counted as one - rarely "do" cities.  We don’t do "tourists" either as we are about as far away as we can get from human habitation.  You will likely find us on a mountain top in nowhere or diving in Palau.  We don’t harm a soul as our interests find us normally in the remote corners of the world where we only see others with the same dreams as we have. 

After saying that, I found your stories touching and charming.  I like Venice, too.

1969.

We landed a man on the moon. Threw a little bash at Woodstock.

And started something pretty special on that street where the air is sweet and the sky is always sunny.

Enter a likeable chap named Gordon, who takes a girl named Sally, on a little tour to meet some of the residents.

Hello Susan, Bob, Mr. Hooper, an 8-ft.-tall goofy yellow bird.

Where is that singing coming from?

That’s Ernie and Bert’s place. Gordon explains if you hear singing it’s because Bert is taking a bath.

Other characters soon follow: Buddy and Jim, Alice Braithwaite Goodyshoes, Kermit the Frog, Cookie Monster, Jennie, and the Anything Muppets.

It was the very first performance of "One of these things." (Is Not Like The Other.)

That makes sense since it was the first show.

And when Ernie and Bert introduce a cartoon about the letter E…well the rest is Extraordinary.

(Kermit here, in his classic moment, written by Joe Raposo, would go on to be an international star.)

Not to mention Big Bird who, despite making the cover of Time Magazine, never let it go to his head.

Before Joan Ganz Cooney and Jim Henson, children’s television was mainly about a freckly marionette and his pal Buffalo Bob.

Howdy Doody’s format was followed into the 1960s by Captain Kangaroo and Bozo’s Circus.

Along came a show that recognized the power of television as a learning tool, and aired it all in a racially mixed neighborhood where everyone got along.

Suddenly learning was entertaining and smart.

What a concept.

Today, it’s seen in 140 countries, including South Africa, where Kami, the HIV positive muppet is bringing his message and smiles into countries where AIDS is destroying lives and spirits.

Many happy returns Sesame Street.

Lynn - loved it!

OK, Jimmy, we found the silver spoon so we have only three more to go:  the cat’s in the cradle, little boy blue, and the man in the moon.  C’mon, I think we might have a chance to win this game!

Answer:  the very first time I felt I was an adult is when I had to pay full prize for a ticket to the movies.  I was 27.

The story:  I had graduated from high school at an age when most people hadn’t started.  I met my husband-to-be the first week at the university, and married him three years later at graduation day.  I actually still felt I was about 12 and looked very young and - yes - innocent (which I was). 

This was still a time - at least in my village - that there were kids’ tickets at the show, high school tickets through age 17, and adult.  The person told the price of the ticket himself - HE made the judgment I felt then - so every week I would go to the show and I was automatically given a high school price ticket. 

My kids were now in school.  As I still felt like I was very very young - and looked it - the high school price tickets still came thru the slot at the movies.  I wasn’t not going to look a gift horse in the mouth when we had little money!  But there came a day — and we all know the feeling of THAT day when the ticket seller unbelievably thought that I was "an adult" and said the adult price.  I still felt like a kid … and so it was a blow to the heart.  And so, at 27, I must have looked 18.  It was a crushing day, still remembered.  Did I suddenly "grow up"?  No.  But I felt I could no longer get by with feeling like I was a kid (a kid who had kids).  There was NO adult purchase afterwards that had the impact this day has had on me.  I remember it well. 

Somehow, some way, with all the news thrown at us daily by the media, it is so easy to let this "one day wonder" of a personal "tidbit" escape most of us.  So, to help Liza out, this is what you missed:

President Obama drew heat last week for a story that surfaced outing his private White House male-only b-ball games. The story was that even though two female members of his cabinet were members of their basketball (!) teams in college, they were excluded, as were all women, from this most private of male-only clubs. The story became a metaphor for how the president views women generally and threatened to reveal some inconvenient truths about the man. 

And now you know.

After years of watching the career of Harold Evans with interest, on reading his autobiography I often found myself humming: "Those were the days, my friend, I thought they’d never end … those were the days, oh yes, those were the days."  It is always enlightening, encouraging as well, to read of a person’s climb from seemingly nowhere to the Sunday Times in London - a position we knew he was suited for.  A time when he was at his peak.  Yes, there were plaudits for his accomplishments when he jumped the Atlantic to New York and made his mark in publishing here.  But, it seems to me in looking back, that he reigned in England at what seemed - in looking backward - to be the height of the Golden Era. 

Will we ever see anything like it in journalism again?  Sadly, I believe I have to say "no".  But Evans has to be glorying that he was there in its heyday - that he was an intregral part of it … a man with stories to tell us.  And readers who still care.  

Home delivery … we have all but forgotten those days so long ago that were so much a part of our lives.  There were alleys - actual alleys behind our homes - where those deliveries were made.  Men came along with carts, calling out that they would sharpen your knives as you waited.  And - while you would go into the heart of the city to the department stores to shop, that same afternoon a green elegant Marshall Field department store truck would deliver your purchases free to your door.  Those were the days!!

Even in the 1990s, as we travelled through New Zealand, it was a view back in time.  At meals, doilies (you remember them, don’t you?) were always placed on the array of courses served in restaurants.  Place setting of silver to correspond with each course had been placed for each person.  If you were having fish, a fish knife was replaced for the regular knife — and this was everywhere we went.

But back to milk bottles, in Christchurch, NZ, a beautiful small church - a landmark building - was across the street from our room at the hotel.  And every morning, lined up on the stoop were milk bottles with the cream rising high over the top with that old-fashioned cardboard lid still in place on them.  Shades of the old days, bringing forth memories of old.

As one of those who travels in big planes, small planes, tiny planes - and have forever - I would probably state that "the joys of getting there" that brought some of my greatest experiences over the years have become - what? - I guess I would say "an ordeal".  But like other things in life, you accept what you cannot change OR, if you choose to, you can ruin your trip from the start by bitching about it.  My own focus tends to be the joys I hope to find at the other end, whether it is people or just the romantic ending. 

But there is no doubt the constant, continuing evolution taking place in technology - seemingly overnight - making the products you bought continually outdated has taken us to another world in a very short time.  We no longer question the amazing advances.  We no longer say "who did this?"  "How could this be?"  The monetary outlays we, as consumers, are paying is rarely talked about … but we know that this industry will continue to be the most lucrative.  I think all of us would have to say that this technology has changed all our lives faster and more radically than any other single thing.  So you win, Candice.