Somebody loved a stranger

Hey, Wilson,

We're baaaaaaaack! Blue and I have returned from the gelato capital of the world. I must have eaten a ton, but I only gained a pound.  Ha! Probably because I walked miles over uneven cobblestone streets to eat just tiny bits at a time, with itty bitty spoons like those in the photo below.

Italian-style gelato needs only small spoons to be appreciated.

And while we were in Rome we visited refugee centers, distributed One World Futbols, and we may have started laying a foundation for a network to distribute the remainder of the 179 futbols we raised this past year!

An anthem, a slogan, and a benign cancer

Along the way, we selected the Team Wilson's anthem, developed a slogan, and recognized a wonderfully benign and incurable cancer.

For the past year you, I and the donors have raised unbreakable futbols for distressed communities where standard soccer balls didn't have a chance of survival. We also distributed some of them -- 10 to Ecuador, 4 to Tijuana, two to China, 3 to Thailand, and just as we were leaving for Rome, 3 to India. And in Rome, we saw a real uptick -- 23 to two refugee centers.

At one of the refugee centers, a contingent of University of Washington anthropology students cooked for the refugees and spent time with them. And as I was packing to leave, I heard back from their professor that the students had revisited the center and the residents were making good use of the futbols. So we done good.

It was after I returned to Seattle that I had time to reflect on this cancer I mentioned a moment ago. This has to be the kindest cancer of all. It can appear seemingly out of nowhere, grow exponentially, metastasize rapidly, disappear overnight, and then unexpectedly reappear. And it can transfer between hosts. You may wonder how any cancer can be benign and what this has to do with you and your cousins.  Well, I'm getting to that. First of all it will help to know who is immune to this cancer.

The Colossus of Xenophob

One of the people who seems most immune is running for president, and he has a tremendously loyal following. He thinks refugees are scum. He uses terms like "anchor babies," and "rapists" and things like that to refer to them. He wants to sort people by religion. He displays characteristics of clinical narcissism, seeking power, glory and attention, not for the good of others, but for himself, at the expense of the most vulnerable. And he's been successful. He is like one of those seven wonders of the ancient world, the famous Colossus of Rhodes, a gigantic statue so tall that by some accounts, ships could sail right between its legs to reach harbor. You can't tune into the news without hearing about this  cynical charlatan -- I forget his name.

The New Colossus

Poetess Emma Lazarus

There's a much better colossus, much more highly regarded, and she is not immune to this cancer. She is rife with it. Emma Lazarus, a poet, told us everything we needed to know about her in a sonnet written 132 years ago and today, more relevant than ever.

One test to determine whether you have this cancer would be to read this poem aloud, slowly. If you can do that without having a catch in your throat, you might be cancer free -- but don't count on it.

The new colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. 

"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Cancer agape

Can you feel the cancer, Wilson? The name for this cancer is Love. And we're never going to eradicate it. Just when you think it's gone, it shows up again.

This isn't about the love that makes you all giddy or makes you want to get laid. I'm not even talking about the love that makes you want to kiss a baby or hug a puppy. I'm talking about a pervasive, subtle below-the-radar force that lurks unseen, but which makes its presence known in the quietest of moments, or the most unexpected of ways. This is not eros. The ancient Greeks called it agape.

It was agape that caused the woman  pushing her grocery cart  to  pick up and hand me the debit card that fell from my wallet.

It's agape that causes you to reach  out to catch someone who is thrown off balance when the subway jerks forward.

The American World War II sergeant I read about a couple weeks ago had agape. His entire unit  followed his direction to declare that they were all Jews, rather than let an SS officer separate out the real Jews, who were their comrades.

My friend Melanie has agape, She is a retired Air Force physician's assistant, who flew to Ecuador last year to help employees from the Mayo clinic who volunteer their time to perform surgery on children with deformities. She invited me along, and that's why there are at least 10 One World Futbols in Ecuador.

Melanie Wood is one of those afflicted with cancer agape. She flew to Ecuador to assist in surgeries for children with deformities. This child underwent her second operation for a club foot. Mayo Clinic employees, who also are afflicted with this incurable cancer, volunteered to perform the surgery.

Cancer agape has infected my childhood friend,  Jay, who flies to Cambodia twice a year on his dime to make small, interest-free loans to Cambodian fishing villages so that they can develop the capital to manage their fisheries and farms.

The emergence of  the Team Wilson's anthem

Other carriers include those University of Washington anthropology students who connected with Rome's Baobab refugee center as a result of Team Wilson's effort to distribute futbols. They took to it like a duck to water, cooking meals for the residents of the center  before and after it was raided by Italian police agencies, who removed, and perhaps repatriated about two dozen of the residents.

One night, when those young people were preparing dinner,  music was playing from a cell phone. When the tune,  "Lean on Me," came on, Meraf, a student of Ethiopian descent,  broke into song.  It seemed fitting for the work they were about -- and so touching. It became a moment of clarity -- Lean on Me became the anthem for Team Wilson, because if there's one thing you can count on, it's a One World Futbol.

Meraf, a UW Anthropology student and veggie chopper in the kitchen at Baobab refugee center in Rome, sings and pantomimes the hit song, Lean on Me, inspiring the Team Wilson anthem.

Others blessed with this cancer include the Eyes to Burma charity in Ashland Oregon. Those folks supports a retired photographer, who is afflicted with the desire to make life more bearable for a group of Burmese refugees living on a garbage dump on the border of Thailand.

Inflicted, as well, are the contingent of Catholics from St. John Vianney Parish in Kirkland who fly to Tijuana every year to build at least one home for a family in need of dignified housing.

Last May the team from St. John Vianney flew to Tijuana for the pleasure of performing tasks such as chopping and digging up tons of wet clay to lay the foundation for a home they built to give a local family dignified housing.  Wilson, in the foreground, went along for the ride.

Jahnigen, right, and the
musician, Sting, who provided

 the research and development 

funds for the One World Futbol.

And let's not forget One World Play Project itself, which rose from an idea one man dreamed up  after he watched a documentary that featured children in Darfur playing with soccer balls made of trash. That man, Tim  Jahnigen of Berkeley, California, invented a ball as resilient as children. The ball remembers its shape and sustains hundreds of punctures without deflating. It's a ball that complements the potential of children by extending to them the therapeutic power of play in the world's most popular sport. He didn't succeed on his own. He had help from others  who are similarly afflicted. Click on this photo, for a video of his story.


And once you get an idea like this, it has a way of spreading and growing. One World Play Project has already sprouted the seeds of diversification. Check out the photo below. No, click on it. One World Play Project has partnered with organizations to start raising funds for jump ropes.

Yes! Why limit the love to soccer balls? These young people are "jumping" rope! They live in Kibera, Kenya, one of the largest slums in Africa. One World Play Project reports that, in Kibera, one million people live on 632 acres of land. That's less than one square mile. 

Dogs, cetaceans and trees

We don't own this cancer. It can cross species. People love their dogs; the dogs protect their masters. People go ga-ga when a whale eye-hops next to their boat and nudges up its calf for a better view. And they crowd a beach to help a whale re-enter the sea. Likewise, there are stories of dolphins who rescue drowning sailors or surround swimmers to keep sharks at bay.

I have even seen this in the eyes of a First Nations weaver, who, when she didn't know I was watching, quietly, reverently and gratefully thanked the cedar which had yielded up a strip of its bark for her baskets.

Agape springs eternal

There were setbacks in Rome. The Paris terrorist attacks put everyone on edge, and that may have been the reason behind the raid on Baobab. And after we returned home, Ann Anagnost, the University of Washington anthropology professor who hosted my visit, reported that Baobab had been shut down permanently. A brief news report said something about it being returned to its owner through a court action. Supporters and volunteers haven't given up; they are looking for a new location.

But the agape just sprang up someplace else. When Team Wilson showed up at the Joel Nafuma Refugee Center, a New York transplant by the name of Daniela Morales immediately saw the benefit of the futbol and led a group of refugees to a local park to try it out. That connection resulted in a referral to a third  refugee organization, and from there to Liberi Nantes, Italy's first soccer team for refugees.

After returning home, Team Wilson e-mailed Liberi Nantes and shared the One World Futbol story, along with the images below, including the one of the Pope meeting one of your cousins. Well, who can say no to the Pope? Liberi Nantes wrote back to say, Yes! Send the futbols!  Through Team Wilson's campaign, One World Play Project covers the shipping cost from their distribution center in Germany.

And yes, in the center photo, that is the Pope!

Pipeline expanded?

The connection with Liberi Nantes will improve the opportunity for Team Wilson donors to get a better sense for how their gifts are benefiting others. Also, what's especially good about that latest development is that this may expand the inroads One World Play Project has already made in Italy, at a time when One World Play Project is trying to find ways to supply refugees in Europe. So, in a tiny way, we may have uncovered a new pathway for the project. When our supply of footballs has been exhausted, there's a good chance that  One World Play Project will be able to step in.

A slogan emerges

 The world is a big place. Fewer than two million One World Futbols have been distributed so far, and that's not even a gleam on the drop in an enormous bucket of need. It's easy for One World Futbols to drop into the void and disappear from sight. However, I would  not be surprised to learn that a trickle of these, one-by-one, is making its way out of Rome and across Western Europe, packed off by refugees in search of a new home. And they aren't the sort of thing that stays hidden.

Readers, if you should see a One World Futbol in your travels, you'll know there's only one way that ball got to where it was -- some unknown someone, like you, a carrier of cancer agape, bought that ball for an individual they didn't know and whom they would never meet, just because they wanted that stranger to be happy. Somebody loved a stranger.

And that's Team Wilson's slogan from now on -- Somebody loved a stranger.

Love,
Robert,
and Blue

For those who want to give again, or share the love with others, some more links:

Carolina for Kibera Kenya

Street soccer Mexico: 

The Iztapalapa neighborhood in Mexico City, Mexico, is considered one of the most dangerous in the country’s capital. Due to the high level of criminal activity there, street youth are constantly challenged by exposure to drugs and gang violence.

Street Soccer Mexico works to keep youth away from the negative influences of street life by providing opportunities for play and learning. For the past two years, Street Soccer Mexico has run a soccer league, which uses One World Futbols, in Iztapalapa to do just that and help the youth develop healthy habits to pursue a better life. Now, the organization is looking to add another play-based program for the youth, a screen-printing workshop that will teach the youth art and business skills.

Fairplay for All, Philippines

Payatas is one of the poorest and largest slums in the Philippines and home to an estimated 500,000 people and the largest dumpsite in the country. Children in Payatas very rarely attend school or drop out to work to help their families meet basic needs. They often take up jobs as jumpers or trash sorters.

Jumpers climb garbage trucks as the trucks enter the dumpsite, pick the best trash off the top and then throw that trash to other children waiting below. Throughout the process, the trucks don’t stop moving, and many jumpers have been seriously injured as they get caught under the trucks while climbing up and down. Trash sorters help their families sort through bags of trash to wash and resell what they can to recyclers.

My "Dear John" letter to Wilson

Dear Wilson,

This is a hard letter to write, particularly after all we've been through together -- traveling the world,  climbing hills and mountains, sharing the same condo -- I've never had a relationship quite like this  one.

But the time has come for me to move on. Well, sort of. I mean, I'm not really moving on, because you will always have a place in my heart. But at this point, it's not the major place.

I've found someone else.

This may be difficult for you to bear, up there on cold, blowy and snowy Mount Adams, alone. You may feel forgotten. But you're not. Really. I think of you often, and I tell your story every time I tell folks about One World Futbols.

Was it the Trevi Fountain?

But two weeks in Rome changed everything. I had 24 futbols to distribute, most going to the Baobab refugee center. But as I cast my eyes over them, one caught my attention. I don't know why it happened. Maybe it was because of all those coins I threw in the Trevi Fountain. But for whatever reason, as they say, the rest is history. Better that you know right away. Anything else would be deception, and we've gone too far together for that.

Blue, the new One World Futbol in my life, wasted no time getting comfortable in my condo. They snuggles into a heritage mahogany rocker with  my son's  toddler OshKosh Overalls (stuffed and pillowized) and his Teddy Bear (which is wearing my Cub Scout scarf. That's an Amish pillow behind them.

I want to tell you about the new futbol in my life.  You'd like them. Their name is "Blue."

Oh, you'll remember that "they" is the new third person non specific singular word that keeps us from being sexually discriminatory in language. When I talked about you, I used "they." It took some getting used to, but I get it right most of the time. Same thing for Blue.

 So Blue is my new traveling companion, housemate and goodwill ambassador for One World Futbols. They likes the same see-through net tether that you felt so comfortable in. It's almost like having you here, only it's Blue, instead. Sometimes when I wake up in bed and feel Blue, it gives me a start because I think you've come back down off the mountain. Being with Blue is like having you here. Uh, that's a compliment.

Not a case of promiscuity

There will never be another Wilson. You should know that. And you should know that I will always have a place in my heart for you, even with my new companion.

You see, people sometimes think male hominids are promiscuous. But that's not quite true. A man can love more than one One World Futbol at a time. He just can't address the needs of more than one at a time, which helps to explain monofutbolamy -- the "one man, one futbol" relationships which seem to be the norm. So I'm committed to Blue.

I think it's because I'm human that I'm trying to be gentle here, because I naturally empathize with you, even though you're a ball. I think a psychologist would call that "projection," or something like that. The reality is that you don't have a heart to break and you can get punctured 1000 times and not deflate. You'll be fine.

And just to be clear, you'll always be a part of me. As my sainted wife used to say, relationships don't end, they just change. I'll still be writing to you as more and more balls get distributed. But now it will be me and Blue writing. Oh, by the way, Blue isn't jealous. They loves you too -- uh, as a cousin.

Love,
Robert
And Blue

Lean on me -- another cold evening at the Baobab refugee center

Hello. Wilson.
Rome was chilly last night. It only snows lightly here in the winter, but it still gets cold, and several UW students returned to the Baobab refugee center to cook dinner for the 66 residents who remain there following the police raids last week.

Before I go any farther, I should say that there's a lot to see here, so feel free to jump over the text and photos and go straight to the video at the end of this dispatch. It's short and a little choppy, but I think you'll like it. It's a message that may resonate with the members of Team Wilson -- you readers and donors. 

Having said that, here's the latest:

The day began with me and Ann Anagnost dragging our roller airline carry-on luggage to the Mercato di Campagna Amica to purchase provisions for the minestrone soup which would be part of the meal. This is kind of a miracle market. It opened a few years ago in an old Jewish fish market, and has contributed to a renaissance for local farmers.

A thriving straight-from-the-farm market in Rome.

Romans are beginning to flock there for straight-from-the-farm produce, meats, wines, olive oil and other locally-produced products. This has not only kept some farmers in business --it also has spawned a renewed interest in young people about becoming farmers.

For myself, it was a chance to push my way through the throng to purchase two-year-old pecorino cheese for 22 euros per kilo, about $10 a pound, which is competitive with six-month old Spanish Manchego at Costco. And I bought it from the producer--who cut up the wheel and shrink-wrapped the pieces. There was also fresh bottled olive oil, shown in the photo below with the cheese. This is nothing you keep around the house, and you don't cook with it. You drizzle it on your salad and see what olive oil tastes like when it's fresh.

Two-year aged pecorino cheese shrink-wrapped for travel and fresh olive oil samplers.

The reason this sampling olive oil is green is because it is very young. It does not sit in a warehouse. It comes straight from the farm.

This farmer is cutting meat from the hogs he personally raised. He knows what they ate, how they lived, and how they were butchered.

Those Pink Lady apples may have been created by an Australian, but they were grown in Italy, by the man leaning on the counter, who wears sterile gloves to hand them to the customers, who cannot handle the fruit themselves.

 That afternoon, I packed 10 One World Futbols into an REI duffel bag and the group of us headed toward the bus. We knew something was up, because a helicopter was hovering overhead. Vice President Biden had already left town, so it wasn't until the next day that we learned that a man had evaded security and scaled the Coliseum to protest the banning of the actors dressed as Praetorian guards who stood with tourists for photographs. These new security measures were throwing working men such as himself out of work, he shouted, as emergency crews stood below with a inflatable cushion in case he jumped.

Tightened security was having impacts on refugees as well, and on us. When we arrived at Baobab, a number of young men were kicking soccer balls around, including a few balls we had left behind on a couple previous visits. They were very good, and I shot a video of their antics. But we decided not to publish the video, because Ann raised the question of safety for refugees. With facial recognition software and sophisticated search engines, were these people safe even at the refugee center?

You can't just simply ask the refugees if it's OK with them. Last night we learned that North Africans who had time to flee last week's police raids stayed at the center because they felt there was no danger to them. We learned that nothing had been heard since of the two dozen who were carted away; the fear is that they were returned to their home countries--the very place they were fleeing.

With that in mind, in the photo below, I blacked out the face of one man who was engaged with another in bouncing a  ball back and forth from their foreheads with impressive control. Then I flattened the image so that it blacked out layer couldn't be removed through some digital wizardry. And then, for good measure, I converted it to a black and white image. This may be the new reality for people who believe they have sanctuary--and for those who wish to help them.

Refugees demonstrate their soccer proficiency by volleying back and forth with head shots.

Baobab practices its own security. Refugees are escorted into the clothing pantry to make sure it stays organized, and the balls got deposited in a separate room, where they can be doled out as needed So far, 22 balls have reached Baobab and one was left with the Joel Nafuma Refugee Center to prime the pump for future distribution. Gradually I'm learning about other possible outlets.

Bored as refugees, but safe, several One World Futbols sit around, awaiting their destination, in a storage room at Baobab.

 In Baobab's kitchen, the UW students prepared dinner. The menu included a minestrone soup and a pasta dish with tuna. The ingredients were carefully selected to meet the dietary needs of Muslims, something we hadn't been fully cognizant of the first time we cooked for them -- this is a learning process for everyone.

When your pasta with a tuna puttanesca sauce fills a pot this big, it takes two hands for Courtney to stir it.

Now, normally you think of a kitchen as a place where there's a lot of heat, right? Not this place. Check out the photo below. People are wearing coats. The kitchen was not as cold as the alley, but it was chilly, even with the boiling kettles of soup.

Baobab's kitchen was chilly, and the help wore wraps to stay warm.

Huge bubbling kettles of minestrone soup, gastronomically correct for any Muslims at the center, simmer.

There's more to Baobab than the kitchen -- a lot more. The place is somewhat cavernous. With my GoPro running, I took a walk and this is some of what I saw:

...some sort of entertainment center, which is dark most of the time. There a stage there and some sort of sound system.

Turn a couple corners and you find a long hallway that reveals the large size of the center.

Shorter side hallways lead to bedrooms.

Bedrooms are austere, and cold. But they offer shelter.

 While the food was being cooked, cars were driving up to Baobab's door, and people were coming in with clothing to donate. The voluntary nature of this center made it difficult to figure out who to direct these folks to, until the appearance of a diminutive sprite from New York City, who was flattered when, observing her energy level, I said she reminded me of Puck, a figure in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. It was a wonderful relief to meet Nujrit Yael,   who is multilingual, has lived in Italy several years, and knew her way around Baobab. Nurit kept appearing, disappearing and then reappearing right when it was handy. That's her in the photo below, with glasses, in front of  Meraf and Michelle, two of the UW students.

Nurit Yael, a New York native who has lived in Italy for several years, was a big help last night for her multi-lingual abilities and her knowledge of Baobab procedures. It's my hope that she will become another link for setting up distribution points in Rome that get One World Futbols to refugees.

Time to serve the food up. Many of the refugees ate at the tables on the left, below:

By the time the refugees were fed, we were dragging tail, and except for a few scraps we hadn't had dinner, so we headed back to our apartments. Afterward I slipped out for my Gelato fix, and who should greet me but an old friend, lounging like a lady of the night on the folding door of a shop closed for the night. The Italians obviously understand  how to cater to American appetites:

Love,
Robert

And now for a little entertainment:

Turn up the sound! I told you to expect a video. While the students cooked dinner for the refugees someone played a familiar tune with her iPhone. You're welcome to click on the photo below and sing along.

Caesar's cathouse, and other roadside attractions

Dear Wilson,
Stuck up there on top of Mount Adams, you get almost get a view of all creation, but there are some parts of the world you can't see from there, such as Rome. In all our travels together, we never got to Rome, so I thought I would send some grab shots I've taken which you and the readers might enjoy seeing.

Some of the following photos speak for themselves, but most will be explained via captions. They start with photos I shot Nov.16, the day after I arrived, up to Thanksgiving. By the way, I'm writing this while drinking a fine white wine that I can't explain because the label is in Italian, while eating a bread with pistachios baked by a University of Washington student and chasing some Thanksgiving leftovers with home-made pistachio ice cream with a chocolate icing, also made by UW students. Now this is the way to see Rome!

The 'hood.' The University of Washington Rome Center's entrance is on the right, close to those plants. Nothing ostentatious about the setting. It's ordinary. This is how much of the city looks.

BIDEN WAS HERE: Incredible as it seems, the Vice President apparently walked through this square, the Campo de' Fiori, in a whirlwind visit to Rome on Thanksgiving, enroute to Croatia. This story is someplace between Rumor and Fact. I'm leaning toward fact. This is less than 200 feet from the front door of the UW Rome Center.

Slurp! This is a drinking fountain in the market. To make it work, you plug the drain with a finger and water squirts out that tiny hole you see halfway up the neck. These things are all over Rome. The story is that a politician got voted out of office for trying to put a price on water. All stories are true, right?

The Palatine Hill -- this is the 'hood' of the Caesars. This was shot from a government facility which hosted the annual "McGovern Lecture," on world food issues, named for the U.S. Senator (and Presidential candidate) who founded the World Food Program, which distributes food in times of crisis.

Castel Sant' Angelo at night.

Rome's blue November sky frames a dome seen from a window at the UW Rome Center.

Ruins of Ostia

Ostia was a port that fed Rome's revenous appetite for imports. Over time it was abandoned, and the Tiber eventually covered it with silt. It is now a marvelous park that shows how the city was organized; the park includes a necropolis.

On the outskirts of Ostia, I plugged the tip of the fountain so that water squirted up into my mouth -- and into my beret, onto my glasses and all over my face.

A wall and bench in the necropolis. The stones in the wall are similar to cobblestones in Rome's streets.

The way this is organized suggests a family grouping in the necropolis.

Note the structure of the arches. Were they filled in afterwards to keep the arch stones from slipping out of place?

The ruins suggest that parts of Ostia were very densely developed.

A room with a view--if you can find it. We stumbled across this scene of Amore and Psiche quite by accident while making our way around walls and down corridors. Try as these two might to be discrete, this was a case of kiss and tell. They kissed; and now we've told.

Is this our fate, too? --To be gradually devoured by snails no larger than the nail of your pinkie finger, just as these two molusks are licking down an ancient column in Ostia?

Meanwhile, back in Rome, the locals gather in a square leading to a church, bundled against the chill November day.

Just outside the church door, a toddler tries in vain to capture the attention of her older sibling.

 Inside the church, candles burn in memory of a young woman who died in Paris.

And before the French Embassy, there are many, many flowers...

...and many candles, as well.

There were opportunities for glorious vistas, like this one from the Capitoline Hill.

And there were more touching views like this one at street level, made all the more poignant by the suspicion that the dogs were docile because they had been drugged to lay still.

At the Trevi fountain, I kept a promise and toss in some coins for friends who asked. The gray smudge in front of the arrow at the top center is one of them. (I was able to capture the image by taking a screen shot from a cell phone video.)

On a major street, a florist tries a novel way to capture the eyes of customers who might purchase cyclamen, a popular flower in Rome.

We pass the Protestant cemetery, where the poet, Keats, is buried in an unmarked grave.

And we make our way to what might be called "amphora hill." Olive oil was shipped to Rome from Spain. The amphorae containing the oil were methodically broken and the pieces stacked, accumulating this enormous pile. More recently, buildings have sprung up, some attached to tunnels into the hill. These buildings are host to a thriving night life of song and dance. By comparing them to the size of the  hills behind, we can appreciate how much the Romans loved their olive oil.

Back at Campo de' Fiori, a delivery truck awaits at the green market. The austere appearance is not uncommon in Rome.

Dominating Campo de' Fiori is this imposing statue of Giordano Bruno, "an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician, poet, and astrologer whose cosmological theories included the concept that stars were just distant suns, like our own. That didn't go down well with the inquisition, and he was burned at the stake in Campo de' Fiori. Afterwards people kind of got to liking him, so they erected this statue to him, and for the next few thousand years or so he will experience the honor of having seagulls shit on his head.

I'm under the impression that this automobile was designed specifically for individuals who cannot stomach back seat drivers.

I kind of like this as a moody photo of an alley in Rome at dusk. Note the archway in the distance, joining the two buildings. Clearly, space is at a premium in the Eternal City.

She must have a Sysyphus complex. The woman is sweeping off a bench that no-one in their right mind would sit on. Those white specs are not a fashion statement, unless you are a starling.

CAESAR'S CATHOUSE. This is believed to be the notorious site of Caesar's assassination. I call it "Caesar's Cathouse," because the Romans love cats, and this has become a cat sanctuary. Although they don't show in this photo (the residents declined to sign waivers) they are all over the spot. Readers may recall that Wilson, I and several of his relatives scheduled the Madison Street Marathon earlier this year for the Ides of March in honor of Caeser. if the great man had used an indestructible One World Futbol for his body double on that fateful day in 44 BC, no-one would have been hurt and the future of Western Civilization would have been radically different. For example, one of Shakespear's most famous speeches wouldn't have been written, and Liz Taylor would have gotten stuck playing the role of Nefertiti.

THE PROJECTS. For some reason, everyone wants to see this place. I don't know why. Bad things happened here. There were a lot of stabbings. And there were cats so big they could rip up the visitors. The reason it's called an "arena" is because that was the Latin word for sand, which was used to soak up the blood. And up in the upper levels were the people who laughed while others were being butchered. Not a nice neighborhood.

Thanksgiving

Getting overlooked by the Vice President didn't dampen the spirits of the UW anthropology students attending Ann Anagnost's class on the Culture and Politics of Food. Thanksgiving was one of the highlights of the wind-down of their class in Rome, and it was a chance to celebrate. Sorry, they were having too much fun for me to photograph all the action, but here a few shots that tell a bit of the story.

Young as it was, this student-crafted cheese had character. Put it away for a year and it will be superb. It was one of the skills the students were shown during their course.

Nicole, whose family raises grass-fed beef on a farm in the Skagit valley, brought bread to the feast, including one loaf full of tasty pistachios.

In the right corner of this decorative setting is a reminder to students of the instruction they received from Dafne, who invited them to her Italian kitchen to learn the art of creating pasta, cheese and soap.

And this is Dafne, bestowing on Professor Ann Anagnost a marble necklace as a reminder of a memorable quarter for students who had gained an understanding of the politics of food -- what goes into it (or shouldn't), the implications of producing it locally or internationally, and how food is used in power politics. Part of the experience included cooking for refugees who were fleeing war and famine. Most of the students were in their 20s and some had never traveled before. For them, Rome will be an unforgettable milestone.

Well, I trust that these are enough photos to digest in one sitting. Hope you have enjoyed it. I have just one more to add to close this dispatch. It's from the theater in the heart of Ostia. Break a leg!

Love,
Robert