Bob Dylan playing a keyboard I dunno. You wait 28 years for a Bob Dylan concert and then two come along in 8 months. Outdoors at the Auditorium and most entertaining it was too. First off, Italians slow-handclapping because The Man had not appeared by 10 past the appointed hour. How ironic is that? To be honest, their hearts d...

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Young boy holding a giant flag celebrating the Italian football team

Gave up my World Cup virginity in the nicest company, and there was much whooping and hollering when Italy rammed one in in the closing minutes. The second, a lovely little chip over the goalie, made victory even sweeter. Cycled home through streets packed with flag-waving jubilation. The sight,...

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Fireworks Sitting quietly geeking at my desk, 11 pm last Thursday night. It's been a quiet day, a Roman Holiday, SS Peter and Paul. We've been at work, though, because our gaff is outside Rome and has its own saints to take care of it. Boom! I've been watching season 2 of 24, and my instinct is to look butch...

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Night scene on the banks of the Tiber with the silhouette of a she-wolf projected onto the embankment

Summer Solstice last night, so the year is downhill all the way from here. But the magic of last night will last a while. On a very straight section of the Tiber, between Ponte Sisto and Ponte Mazzini, [Kristin Jones and her crew]http://www.tevereterno.it/tevereterno.html exhibited one of the be...

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A young man wearing a sharp suit with white trainers coaxes a young girl into a baby carriage. The girl may be dressed for first communion, though she seems a bit young

That much-limned innate Italian sense of style was greatly in evidence last weekend, in the beautiful little hill-top town of Sermonetta. It seems to be the time of year for first communions, about which I know only what I just read in Wikipedia, which doesn’t tell me whether this is in fact a t...

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