How is the newcomer to deal with Rome? What is one to make of this marble rubble, this milk of wolves, this blood of Caesars, this sunrise of Renaissance, this baroquery of blown stone, this warm hive of Italians, this antipasto of civilization?

A handwritten, personal letter has become a genuine modern-day luxury, like a child's pony ride.

Californians tend to be outspoken. When the great migration began, the more timid people must have stayed home, and the bolder ones headed west.

This is what holidays, travels, vacations are about. It is not really rest or even leisure we chase. We strain to renew our capacity for wonder to shock ourselves into astonishment once again.

The notion that the great artist requires a great patron has been around since the Pharaohs. That the born patron also needs an artist to patronize is a less-studied phenomenon.

Mind and body are not to be taken lightly. Their connection is intimate and mysterious, and better mapped by poets than pornographers.

Tourists moved over the piazza like drugged insects on a painted plate.