Why the Pope is Fleeing Italy

The real reason for the Pope's visit to the U.S. can now be revealed. He's fleeing the execrable advertising of Italy's election for Prime Minister.

Former PM Silvio Berlusconi offers up this gem. Don't worry that you can't understand Italian. It might be a blessing.



Not to be outdone (?), mayor of Rome Walter Veltroni offers this desecration of the Village People:



As bad (and humorous) as these are, can someone please tell me why every Italian looks like a fashion model? If it's the olive oil, I'm going to start drinking the stuff.

Take a Look

Feeling bored at work today?

Check out my trip photos, all 414 of them. Just click on this link.

The captions are sketchy, indeed, but they'll at least allow you to know what was taken in Naples, Pompeii and Herculanaeum, Rome, and Malta.

(The bronze statue you see here was originally in Pompeii but now resides in the Naples Archaeological Museum. Quite a modern face and hairstyle, considering he was buried by ash in AD 79. From the look of his eyes, he seems to have known what was coming.)

Brewing Up Some Myths

More about my trip to Naples and Rome . . .

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Some things are better in Italy: pizza.

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Some things are worse: coffee.

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It seems like every guide book you read gushes on about how good the coffee is in Italy. They even tell you who has the best coffee in each city (San Eustachio in Rome, Mexico in Naples).

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It's all a lie.

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For me, coffee is something to enjoy over a period of many minutes or even an hour or two. It's something that's synonymous with conversation, deep thoughts, and good times ("Let's do coffee").

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But in Italy, coffee is a quick swallow. Nothing more. Sure, it tastes OK, sometimes even good. But one gulp and it's gone. There's always time for coffee in Italy, because it takes no time for coffee in Italy: in one minute you can order, pay, swig, and depart.

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Starbucks has already moved into France and even Austria. When they get to Italy, they'll do just fine.

Datur Omnibus Mori

I'm back from two weeks in Italy (Rome, Naples) and Malta. You can't visit these places without viewing numerous churches, basilicas, and cathedrals - and even co-cathedrals and pro-cathedrals (really).

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In most of the churches we visited, we walked all over dead people. They're buried under the floors, with their tombstones planted horizontally above them. In Malta, this practice is taken to an extreme, as you can see from the photo above. In Italy and Malta both, those who don't end up under the floor may end up somewhere in the walls, with a tombstone or 3-D marker on the spot.

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Many of these tombstones have depictions of skulls or the grim reaper. It's common to see "D.O.M." on them, which is an abbreviation for a Latin phrase. Depending which authority you consult, the phrase is "Deo Optimo Maximo" ("To God, Who's the Greatest and Best") or "Datur Omnibus Mori" ("It is Given to All to Die"). In this context, the second version fits best.

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The net effect of all this is that you can't go to church without being confronted with death. I find that salutary (pun intended). Every time you go to worship God with your fellow believers, you see grandpa in the floor and uncle in the wall and you're reminded that someday you'll join them.

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"Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom" (Psalm 90.12). Each one of us will die soon - soon in terms of the span of recorded history, even sooner in comparison with the length of eternity. Yet how easily we forget that, especially in our teens and twenties, and think that, invulnerable, we will live forever.

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Even in our country, we used to lay out the dead in the parlors of our homes and then bury them in the cemeteries adjacent to our churches. Every Sunday, you'd see the dead as you came to praise the Immortal. We've gotten away from that. My church is raising millions of dollars right now for expansion, but there's no cemetery in the master plan. And I haven't heard any of my fellow elders suggest we should start burying expired church members in the floor of the auditorium. Maybe it would be good for us if we did.

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In Rome, some Capuchin monks took this message to heart. Five hundred years ago, they started preserving the bones of their deceased "monk brothers" and then began arranging them into various scenes, some rather whimsical. All told, there are now the bones of about 4,000 monks in this relatively small basement. Some would call it macabre. They would call it realistic: a sign posted there says, "What you are, we once were; what we are now, you one day will be."

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"Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom."

Coming or Going

I've been doing a lot of traveling lately, for both business and pleasure. Maybe too much. Earlier this morning, I pulled an itinerary out of my briefcase marked, "9/20 ORD" and asked myself, "Why am I going to Chicago on the 20th?" The scary part is that it took me maybe 20 long seconds to recall the purpose of this trip. Could be a sign of excessive travel! Or early Alzheimer's.

Here are a couple things I've been thinking about while traveling:

I Feel the Earth Move Under My Feet
At ATL, I avoid the shuttle train between the concourses and take the moving sidewalks, instead. It's an attempt to compensate for a lack of exercise in my daily life. I've been on and off these moving sidewalks so many times that I don't need to think about the transitions from "ground not moving" to "ground moving" to "ground not moving." But here's the kicker: every now and then, one of the moving sidewalks won't be moving. And usually, I'll walk on it, anyway, just for fun. And you know what's weird? I usually lurch getting on and off. My brain is so accustomed to having that piece of metal beneath my feet moving that it doesn't adjust well to the times it's not moving. It used to be that I could close my eyes a few steps before the beginning or the end of the dormant sidewalk and make the transition seamlessly, but lately when I've tried that, I stumble, anyway. Apparently, my brain is now calculating the distance and preparing for the transition even without the proximate visual cues.

I'm sure there's a spiritual lesson somewhere in here about learning to deal with life a certain way and not transitioning well to new realities, but frankly, I'm more interested in the physio-cognitive aspects of this phenomenon. Brains are amazing things.

Vogue, Glamour, Elle, GQ, . . . and Then There's Us
A recent poll of 1500 European hotel managers (see pages 2-3) reported that Americans are the 2nd best overall travelers, behind the Japanese, and the most generous tippers by far. One category that stands out, based on my own recent and upcoming travels, is Best Dressed. The Italians win this one, by far, followed by the French and Spanish. I'm planning to go to Italy next month, so maybe I'll pick up a few duds while I'm there. And perhaps I need to: the Worst Dressed in the poll were the Americans, by far. I've done my own survey on my last couple airport trips, and I have to agree. Just go to the airport and try to find someone dressed with any sense of style. When you do, it'll most likely be a foreigner. What is it about America that requires us to look like slobs when we go out in public? Why is comfort our highest value, and why are we so aesthetically clueless? Is there any connection between poor fasion and poor architecture and poor city design? Is it a coincidence that some of the world's best architecture is in Italy and France, the countries where the people dress the best?

That's all for now. I need to go pack for tomorrow's trip.