My first reaction was one of panic. Wide-open and desolate, I felt completely exposed, vulnerable. Except for an occasional car and the rumbling of a freight train, there was nothing for miles.

I touched on the theme of a better working world for women for International Women’s Day 2016. My question then is the same as it is now. In the more than three decades since I took the oath and went off to boot camp, have women serving in the US Navy made any great strides?

For International Women’s Day this year, I wanted to write a long post about the women in my life. The women that have guided and inspired me; collaborated and conspired with me; helped me, consoled me or lent a sympathetic ear;

Saints names are passed down through the generations and when one is given a name they are given the legacy of everyone who took that name before them and of the Saint in whose honor they are named. And each year on the day on which their Saint is honored they celebrate their onomastico.

Commemorated March 8th every year for the past one hundred years, International Women’s Day honors women and their accomplishments and it continues its 100-year-old year old campaign for women’s rights.

Either way, I will go back to doing what I do best, writing about all of the wonderful things that make Napoli “La città piu bella del mondo.”

The Neapolitan language has a rich literary, poetic, and musical history, and yet it has no official status within Italy, is not taught in schools, and is still, even after 150 years of Italian unification, considered the language of the ignorant.

Rising up from the Tyrrhenian Sea, Naples boasts some of the most spectacular panoramas imaginable. A veritable feast for the eyes.