"Living in rome now...fiddling tuneful"

"Unfair," you say.  Yes, I do indeed live in New York City, read New York Times:

Whitney Museum to Receive $131 Million Gift

Leonard A. Lauder, the cosmetics executive and chairman of the Whitney Museum of American Art, said on Tuesday that his art foundation would give the museum $131 million, the biggest donation in the Whitney’s 77-year...

Or, I could live nearby, read The Philadelphia Inquirer-- on the very same day Pennsylvania's "blue collar white males" (worried about jobs and gun ownership) voted for the more prosperous Democratic candidate:

Museum of Art Seals Eakins Deal

By Edward Sozanski, Inquirer Art Critic

"The emotionally charged saga of Thomas Eakins' iconic painting The Gross Clinic ended on a positive note yesterday when the Philadelphia Museum of Art announced that it had raised the last chunk of money needed to keep the 19th-century masterpiece in Philadelphia."

"Chunk" in its entirety = $68 million.

Wasn't it just yesterday some sense of local urgency led Las Vegas to announce a plan to build a second city for  $6 billion.

Rome not so bad when you can read it all in American English.  Same language, our screwed-up country where the food banks are having trouble keeping supplied.  Feels like the Rome of the past.  For a memory of who we once were, send a check to your local version of CITY HARVEST.  They will be  grateful for two digit amounts.

UPDATE 4/25/08: Link from the blog at Bill Moyer's Journal (PBS)  provides way to map your local food bank.  "Hunger in America" was a powerful report broadcast earlier this month and can be heard HERE; there's also a vodcast, new word for me.