Saturday, July 29, 2006

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.

5 comments:

blondebomber said...

A crass attempt to promote the MV Voice.

Nemesis of Evil said...

I brought some extra papers with me thinking I might pay a visit to the newspaper in Mountain View's sister city in Southern Belgium. When that didn't work out, I thought I'd make a collage for the (apparently largely unread) postcards section in the back of the paper, mainly to taunt my coworkers.

More importantly, though, when are people going to understand that I never really liked the Mountain View Voice? Have I ever said anything positive about it? Come to think of it, have I ever said anything positive about anything, other than perhaps Los Altos High School water polo?

Anonymous said...

I think you are a Closet Positivist. In the post from Paris you seemed to be distinctly pro-breathing.

Kathy Schrenk said...

OK, I was really starting to worry about the fact that all the pictures featured a different copy of the Voice.

Kathy Schrenk said...

Oh, so, anything in Rome we shouldn't miss?