Query

I am getting alarmingly hung up on this question--a happy way of not allowing myself to write, I suppose. Does anyone know how or where to find information on forms of address in Medieval Italy--not so much the way the nobility was addressed, but how people in the middle class addressed each other, and how children would address adults? Most common titles now (Mr., monsieur, signor) are derived from my lord, and clearly a baker wouldn't call his neighbor the blacksmith my lord. Finding this bit of data is remarkably difficult--I did find a book I'd love to look at: Medieval Italy: An Encyclopedia. Only it's $350, and the SF Public Library doesn't seem to have a copy. So if anyone has any special knowledge, I'd love to hear it.

Shoeless in the Tenderloin

The Tenderloin district in San Francisco is near Union Square, one of the highest-end shopping and business districts in the city. Where Union Square and points east have boutiques, nifty bistros and theme restaurants, cable cars and touristy things, the Tenderloin, which has a long, rich history of misbehavior, sex and crime, carries on its old traditions to this day: nudie houses (catering to both straight and gay clientele) and porn theatres, icky looking bars, check cashing places, and myriad homeless people sitting around by day or night. Avocado has a new school friend who lives in the Tenderloin, and goes to visit her after school. I hold my breath, insist on phone check ins, and have let her go.

This weekend her friend had a birthday, and her first birthday sleepover, and Avocado went. It was an elaborate celebration: they went to a go-kart and mini golf arcade in Redwood City, about 25 miles south, on Sunday morning. Since Avocado had to go to her skating practice in mid-party, I drove down to pick her up from the arcade at 4, delivered her to the skating rink in SF, drove the car home, then BARTed downtown to escort her to her friend's house for the sleepover (since by that time it was nearly 7pm, totally dark out, and not the hour in which I wanted her roaming downtown on her onesies). The plan was that today she would go back to the skating rink about noon, get in an hour or so of skating before coming home.

Except that she called me at one, explaining that she'd been searching for over an hour for her shoes, without which she could not leave. How one loses her shoes in a one bedroom apartment in the Tenderloin I don't know. By that time I was at the dog park and couldn't get back to her for an hour or so. So I told her to sit tight, I'd show up with a replacement pair of shoes. Then proceded to throw many balls to the dog, before returning home to pick up the shoes. Just as I was going to leave, Avocado called: she'd found her shoes and was on her way home. The shoes had been hidden behind a door.

So: shod and dragging her skate bag behind her, my intrepid Avocado made her way through the Tenderloin and back to Glen Park. Heaven knows what the homeless folk along Eddy Street thought of her, but at least she was wearing shoes.