A postcard from Rome

What am I doing in Rome?

This is the same question world leaders must have been asking themselves earlier this week. Surely they weren't doing any leading. Perhaps they were too busy looking at all the Bernini sculptures and pretending they, too, were Harvard symbologists. In any case, the 20-nation "peace conference" here has ended, and Israel remains free to bomb innocent civilians without even the threat of criticism from the West.

So I spent the day touring around Rome's monuments to death and destruction and then had dinner with my old nemesis, the irreplaceable Matt Neely, and his wife Erica. The Zidanesque Neely recently moved to Rome after giving Mountain View the finger at his last city council meeting.

At the bar later, we happened to run into MVHS special ed teacher Kathy White (now Brenner) and her new husband, who I had met earlier at the Roman fora while he was searching for the Temple of Virgins.

One thing led to another, and eventually the discussion turned to the sex lives of city council members and school board politics. "You don't know who Rose Filicetti is?" I asked her, oblivious to my own nerdiness.

"Write me when you're coherent," Matt said as he got into the cab. Some day, I will be.