Mission to Palermo
"Nine out of ten people here are jerks." Such is the sanitized translation of what the cab driver said as he took us to the train station in Palermo. Himself Sicilian, his actual comment was more colorful, related as it was to the human anatomy. “See what I mean,” he said with resignation as he blew the horn at a driver blocking a long line of waiting traffic. “Nine out of ten.” Our sojourn from Milan to Palermo was necessitated by yet another a crucial document in a mountain of forms, papers and seals I need to get married, help start a small company in Italy and actually do the work. Palermo was the only U.S. consular office the country that could get me in right away. I got the document as planned, so it was a success. An added bonus was the string of characters we encountered from the moment stepped off the overnight ferry from Naples. I wouldn’t call them jerks, but I would describe some as odd. It was if we were sometimes actors in an absurdist p