Consider what a surprise it was for us to discover Melinda’s name all over Italy. Well, okay, I admit that statement may be a little grandiose. I mean not only were we not “all over Italy,” Melinda’s name wasn’t literally “everywhere.” But it was on a large number of boxes filled with delicious-looking fruit and in a number of places. I also found her name on a package of dried apples in a vending machine at an Italian train station. I coughed up the 1,20 € to buy it as an early birthday present for her (her birthday is this Friday).

This particular photo documents the truth of what I’m saying. I took it in the first of the five Cinque Terre towns, Riomaggiore, where Melinda and I went roaming last Monday. I found it again today while reviewing the hundreds of photos we took on vacation. For those of you who use Facebook and are fortunate enough to be friends with Chloe, she has posted nearly 200 of these on her Facebook page.

It’s a holiday in France today, an acknowledgement of the end of World War II. For those of you that read French, you can learn here how Nantes acknowledged the occasion. Back home it’s Mother’s Day, an occasion I acknowledge in an entry posted this morning on the Kind Living blog. Visit it and see what my mom looked like in the 1960’s!