I hope that you are well and happy. Here, summer is coming to an end - already. Nevertheless, days have been warm (eh, hot) while thundershowers, following the Camelot strategy, have occurred only at night. There were reader queries about last week’s edition:

“You mentioned, Dan, that Team CB won the dressage event.” Bert said.

“Horse-dancing?” I replied.

“The judges made a big mistake.”

“Really?”

“The Dutch girl was better.”

“We’re talking about horses, not girls.”

“Our girl was riding the horse.”

“The horse was dancing, Bert. Why would a Dutch girl want to win a contest by dancing with a horse?”

“On a horse, Dan.”

“If I were the judge, I would have awarded Holland the gold medal. Does that make you feel better?”

On another issue, a reader asked if I had failed to mention anything about our trip to California. Actually, I did. With the assistance of Melika, Nazy and I scheduled dental visits. In my case a routine cleaning went..

“Awry, Nazy.” I wailed a few days after the visit. “My tooth hurts. A lot!”

“Did you take an aspirin?”

“Take an aspirin? An aspirin? I need morphine or..”

“We could get some Ambesol®. It’s great for minor oral pain.”

“Minor pain?” I thought. I would have clenched my teeth, but the ‘minor pain’ made it impossible.

The aspirin/ambesol combo proved ineffective. Luckily we had a 24 hour dental emergency number. Nazy decided to make the call:

“Hi! Hope you’re enjoying the weekend. My name is Naz Martin. I’m from Switzerland, visiting my daughter Melika. She is engaged to Tom Adams, the son of Judge Adams - who has remarried and has two additional younger sons. Tom - in fact, both Toms - and his brothers have been visiting your practice since they were children. Well, maybe Judge Adams didn’t visit your practice when he was a child, you probably weren’t born then. To make a long story short, our flight from Switzerland took us to New York first - we saw a new musical called ‘Once’. Then we flew to Los Angeles where we celebrated our 40th anniversary with all three of our ‘kids’. After that we got a rental car and drove to Santa Barbara. Melika, with Tom’s help (the son, not the Judge) arranged visits to your practice so that my husband, Dan, and I could get our teeth cleaned. We enjoyed meeting your staff and found the experience pleasant. Well, at least as pleasant as any trip to the dentist’s office could be. However, a few days later, Dan started to have a little pain. Although he complains a lot, it may be a good idea for you to have take a little ‘look-see’. We will fly home this week and .....”

For some reason, we didn’t get a response to the “emergency” call. I drove directly to the dentist’s office on the following Monday and got antibiotics, pain killers and a warning that I shouldn’t have waited so long.

When we got back to Zürich, Nazy discovered that the freezer had frozen over.

“Well,” I thought. “This time, Nazy can’t blame me for excessively opening the freezer door. I was 8000 miles away when this happened.”

“Why didn’t you close the door when we left?” Nazy asked - dashing my hopes to escape blame.

“I did close the door!” I replied truthfully (and fruitlessly).

Together, Nazy and I defrosted the freezer. I suggested that ‘the overcrowded, jam-packed contents’ might have an adverse affect on circulation:

“In fact, Nazy, this might be your fault. You overpacked..”

“A half kilo package of frozen peas completely fills the middle freezer shelf, Dan. What would you suggest?”

“We could repackage the peas into three ziploc bags and disperse them on the three shelves.”

Nazy glared.

“Hmm,” I replied. “Time to change the subject,” I thought. “Did you know that no one goes broke in a legitimate Ponzi scheme?” I said.

“What is a legitimate Ponzi scheme?”

“Investors have ways of shutting that whole thing down.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“I got it from Congressman Todd Akin, a member of the House Science Committee. Now I’m reading his report about how Adam and Eve raised pet dinosaurs.”

“He sounds like a dinosaur himself. He’ll never be elected.”

“Colossal stupidity has never stopped anyone from being elected, dear. On the other hand, saying offensive things about women won’t work in countries where women can vote. Akin should move to Afghanistan and run for Mullah.”

On the weekend, Nazy suggested that we take a day trip to Solothurn, a very old city in Switzerland. I immediately concurred. Luckily we had assistance from the navigation automaton (named ‘Claudia&rsquo. She directed us around several traffic jams on the A-1.

Solothurn is a very old city on the Aare River. It has a beautiful Cathedral, a bevy of wonderful fountains, quaint cobblestone roads and a clock tower dating form the 11th century...

“They didn’t have clocks in the 11th century, Nazy.” I proclaimed.

“Maybe it was called a sundial tower at that time.” Nazy replied. “Yes! You can still see the sundial.”

“The tower has a shade over the sundial, Nazy. That particular configuration is not ideal for timekeeping accuracy.”

“The sunshade, Dan, is there to protect the sundial..”

“... from the SUN?”

Although it was a warm day, Nazy and I enjoyed walking through the city. We stopped for ice cream. Nazy stopped for..

“This guy is getting married, Dan. For 5 Francs, I can cut part of his costume away.”

“Where is his bride?” I asked. “Maybe I can cut out part of her costume,” I thought.

The photo shows Nazy posing with the groom and his team. Nazy chopped the lower circle from his outfit. (I couldn’t find the bride.)



We ended our visit with a delightful dinner on the Aare.

Solothurn also hosts a plethora of fountains, many of these are pictured in this letter. Additional photos of Solothurn are available here.