Getting Your Cartouche Cleaned The other day we took a ride around the Borghese Gardens in an enlarged golf cart. It wasn’t part of a plan, but the cart showed up when we got out of our cab and it was hard to pass it up as a way to see the entirety of the lovely gardens before ambling down the Via Veneto to the Cappucin Crypt Church on the Piazza Barberini. One of the…
Back in the Kabubble I watched some movie or other five years ago that was about a journalist that ws covering the war in Afghanistan. It seems that it is always the case that journalists in war zones hang out at the same western hotels where they commune with one another and both check notes with one another and stay connected to a world they can recognize rather than the one that’s going on around…
Stanley Tucci Go Home There are certain actors and actresses that everyone likes. That can’t be said for all actors and actresses. I have always found it interesting that while Tom Cruise and Kevin Costner have drawn lots of controversy, Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep have stayed above it all and are beloved by all. That’s all a little easier to understand with star-quality actors and actresses who get paparazzied to death on a daily…
The Real Rome Kim booked us for a tour of the working side of Rome. I can only assume that I have done a good job of showing her all of the regular tourist stuff that constitutes the bulk of the Trip Advisor tours she can find on the internet. What she did instead of that was find a woman who proposed a tour of the Testaccio and Ostiense areas of the city, areas that…
The Best Seat Ever I am, once again midway over the Atlantic Ocean on my way to Europe. For the first time, Kim and I are flying directly to Europe from San Diego. We are on our way to Egypt and Jordan for a few weeks of pure tourism. We are with Mike and Melisa and have all decided that the best way to do this is to fly to Rome and spend a few…
We Come and We Go There are two schools of thought when it comes to personality. One is we are who we are and that we never change. I guess you would call that the “nature” camp. The opposite would logically be the “nurture” side which believes that we are all a function of our environment and that we are constantly changing. While I am certain that people think about these issues in the context…
Going Back in Time We all know that time travel is a load of crap. But you don’t have to jumble your molecular structure and go all H.G. Wells (He published The Time Machine in 1895) to take your mind back to ancient times. I have always had a thing about antiquities, probably due to growing up for a few years in Costa Rica, where pre-Colombian art was on most everyone’s mind in the late…
The Palestinian Problem Some problems never go away. And some problems just bubble away under the surface, hiding in wait, biding their time. The problems of the Middle East seem to embody both sorts. History and religion are difficult backdrops for justice and nowhere on the face of the earth has more of both than the corner of the world where three continents meet. Africa, Europe and Asia and their diverse cultures come together is…
Why Humans? I am drawn to unusual articles from sources like National Geographic that challenge the very foundations of our existence on this planet. Today I saw an article that, in some ways, does a better job of challenging those foundations than most. I think we all understand that human life began, for one reason or another in East Africa. A great deal of recent research indicates that this precept is a bit mistaken in…
Rowdy All Over Again Last night was my last class in my ethics class for a month. Kim and I are headed off on Monday to Egypt and Jordan for a few weeks. Normally I try to not miss more than two weeks when I teach, but this time I will miss three weeks, but I get a pass on the last week since it is the official school Spring Break. I have been sure…