Falconry

Eagles, hawks, owls and vultures fly over your head (literally) at Falconeria Locarno in Locarno, Switzerland.

The Secret Room

Photojournalist Nick Fossella got access to the secret room, near the Basilica of St Anthony in Padua, northeastern Italy, where ex-votos are stored.

Ex-votos are votive objects offered up by pilgrims to thank St Anthony for blessings received.

Fossella, a friend of mine, sent me one of his exclusive shots: the room full of boxes and the caretaker, Fra' Pierino Simoncello.

Rocker Priest

Don Carlo Cavallin, rocker priest from Padua, Italy, appears in the music video of his song "Fuori dal coro" (Standing Out).

Latin Mass

St Anthony doesn't speak Latin.

Venice daily Il Gazzettino has a piece of mine about the celebration of masses in the Basilica of St Anthony in Padua, northeastern Italy.

Standups

Yuppies. They do a standup from the Camino Real and think they got the whole story.

Photojournalist Richard Boyle (James Woods) in the 1986 movie Salvador directed by Oliver Stone.

Terrible Paper

Mr. Salter [Foreign Editor of the Beast] went to work at midday.

He found the Managing Editor cast in gloom.

"It's a terrible paper this morning," he said. "We paid Professor Jellaby thirty guineas for the feature article and there's not a word in it one can understand. Beaten by the Brute in every edition on the Zoo Mercy Slaying story."

(Evelyn Waugh, Scoop)

World Population

According to the International Programs Center, US Census Bureau, and Drudge Report, the total population of the World will be 6,666,666,666 on May 10.

Well, it's not the Number of the Beast...

Souls with Bones

All they want is
butter but
we are stones;
no flesh: minds
with girders,
souls with bones.

All they
need is clay
and we are
marble
in our way.

(Léon Bertoletti, Souls With Bones)

Just One More Thing

Lieutenant Columbo, Los Angeles's most famous TV detective, first appeared at the scene of the crime in 1968.

The Columbo Television series originated as a Broadway show, "Prescription: Murder."

On February 20, 1968, the made-for-television film of that play first aired.

Lieutenant Columbo was created by Richard Levinson and William Link and portrayed on screen by Peter Falk.

Uh, just one more thing: it was 40 years ago.

In the trailer below you can see his car (a 1959 Peugeot Model 403 Cabriolet convertible), his cigar, his dog and his dirty trench coat.

Remembering Martin Luther King

It was 40 years ago today that a rifle bullet struck the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as he stood outside his room on the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel in the southern US city of Memphis, Tennessee.

King was to lead a march of sanitation workers protesting against low wages and poor working conditions.

Let us turn our thoughts today
To Martin Luther King
And recognize that there are ties between us
All men and women
Living on the Earth
Ties of hope and love
Sister and brotherhood
That we are bound together
In our desire to see the world become
A place in which our children
Can grow free and strong
We are bound together
By the task that stands before us
And the road that lies ahead
We are bound and we are bound.

(James Taylor, Shed A Little Light)

Dith Pran

A NYT video feature on Dith Pran (Sept. 23, 1942 — March 30, 2008), a photojournalist for The New York Times whose gruesome ordeal in the killing fields of Cambodia was portrayed in the 1984 movie The Killing Fields.