Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

I hope you've enjoyed my Christmas special that highlights places to visit in Naples during the holiday season. I'm taking some time off, but will be back in January with more of the Naples underground, the odious women, and the espresso tours. I'll also add new monthly posts about the nooks of Europe, excursions around Italy, as well as interviews with some interesting Neapolitans.

Until then, I am currently traveling with my three children to the naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. My husband is on his second deployment as a physician in the Navy, this time serving as the psychiatrist for the detainees.

For our family, this season will be celebrated under very surreal circumstances, and yet the fact that we can be together when so many other servicemembers are out in Afghanistan or Iraq --away from their families -- makes us feel a deep sense of gratefulness.

This post goes out to all those who are still serving. Especially those servicemembers -- many our friends, acquaintances, and neighbors -- who are now into or will be going into their second, third and fourth deployments, often away from their families for a year or more.

As a navy wife, I would also like to give thanks, first and foremost, to my three children (ages 4, 8, 11) for their sacrifices -- namely the pain of loss, the fear, and often confusion that comes with the long absences of their dad -- and thank them for serving their country at such a young age.

For the sake of them, I would like to make an appeal this Christmas:

I would like to make an appeal to voting Italians who speak much about wanting more civic consciousness in their society and whose troops are also out participating in America's war. Civic consciousness starts with the individual.

I would like to make an appeal to voting Americans who may feel fatigued by eight years of war and may not want to hear the stories of veterans as well as active duty members, so many of whom (though not all), in my personal experience, have wanted to talk about the horrors they've witnessed and want so much to be heard as part of our collective national memory. While packages to men like my husband that include hand wipes and cookies provide some media attention, not to mention fine pats on the back for a volunteer job well-done within parochial newsletters, a three-minute phone call to a Congressman or a Senator on a weekly basis that holds them accountable (by asking, for example: "What's the timeline? What's the timeline?) might also be in the spirit of giving this season.

And finally, I appeal particularly to those servicemembers (in some sections, as quoted by detailers, ranging upwards of twenty percent) who have served these last eight years exclusively without deploying 6-12 months. Please volunteer to go out, hopefully more than once, and relieve those who have gone out multiple times.

Pace e Buone Feste,

Barbara