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Hints of consumer confidence and economic recovery are difficult to find these days, but “Star Wars Celebration V,” held in Orlando, Fla., on August 12-15, delivered. “Star Wars” fans and hardcore geeks by the thousands turned out in costume and civvies to fete the 30th anniversary of “Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.” While the official media office in the sprawling Orange County Convention Center was cagey about attendance numbers, I ran into a forthcoming Lucasfilm staffer in the elevator of the nearby Peabody Hotel, who revealed that, as of Saturday night, 26,500 fans had thronged the halls. And, this didn’t count the finale day to follow.
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We traveled to Iran with the American peace group “Neighbors East and West”, and we were arriving late. The taxi ride into Tehran at night was bleak. The Imam Khomeini Airport sits 30 miles outside of the city, and, after dark, the freeway felt forbidding. Strange and colored lights poked randomly into the sky. Farsi-scripted signs swirled along the way.
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This past January, I had a personal experience of how PRH Education can be a bridge across cultures. I had completed a three-week Annapurna Circuit Trek in the Himalayas with an all-woman company, 3 Sisters Adventure Trekking. This company partners with Empowering Women of Nepal (EWN) to employ women in Nepal. The English language teacher for EWN invited me to teach creative expression to her students, 16 young women in their 20s who were in training to become porters and mountaineering guides.
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(Editor’s note: William Buck of Hamilton is a registered nurse at the Fort Harrison VA Medical Center. During the Chinese New Year in February, he visited his son, Will, who teaches English to Chinese students in Beijing.)
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Margaret Fuller, whose 1840s newspaper column, “Dispatches from Europe,” inspired my “Dispatches from Rome” column over the summer in these pages, never made it back from Italy. In love with her adopted country, she drowned, along with her new Italian husband and baby, when their returning ship sunk off the coast of Long Island.
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Some 18,000 librarians, publishers and vendors spent the last week of June in New Orleans at the American Library Association Convention. They were welcomed warmly by everyone, including Mayor Ray Nagin, Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu, hotel, bar, restaurant, museum and shop staff, and cab and bus drivers. Even First Lady Laura Bush showed up to praise the librarians for their help in restoring school libraries and raising money for those damaged by hurricanes.
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So, how to leave Rome after two months here? Throw a coin in the Trevi Fountain, I guess, and hope for the best.
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Well into May now in Rome, the temperature is rising, the humidity increasing, the trees growing thick and lush. I’m becoming more aware of my body, the heat of the sun on my skin as I walk through the streets, the dampness of the air around me as I run along the banks of the Tiber.
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The new Italian president is 80 years old. Named in a recent chaotic and complicated parliamentary election, Giorgio Napolitano is a well-respected ex-Communist who has been in Italian politics for half a century.
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In the 19th Century, Nathaniel’s wife, Sophia Hawthorne, wrote pages and pages of descriptions of the art she encountered during her travels in Europe. The book that came out of it, “Notes in England and Italy,” shows the ways that a Victorian traveler tried to “capture” in words the paintings, sculptures, and architecture she saw.
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