—Art competition. Il Napoli al cuore is the name of an art competition recently on exhibit at the Maschio Angioino. Readers should note that the masculine definite article, il (the), in front of the name of the city refers to the Naples soccer team, not the city, itself. (Thus, "The Naples of today..." would be La Napoli d'oggi...). So the title of the competition is something like "Naples soccer at heart." It is, in fact, an exhibit and judging of painting, sculpture, videos, and photography presented in celebration of the return of the city's soccer team to the A-League, the major league in Italy. More than 50 artists from Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Portugal, and Brazil entered works.

—The Graffiti artist known as Raffo has presented us with art of a different kind. On a wall in the Ponticelli section of the city, he has spray-painted into semi-permanence his rendition of Edvard Munch's famous 1893 painting, The Scream. No matter what you may have heard as to why the man on the bridge is screaming, Raffo tells us that it can only be the garbage situation in Naples. The blood-red backdrop in Raffo's version shows Mt. Vesuvius, and the Screamer is surrounded by piles of garbage bags. Raffo's version has become locally very popular, and photos and postcards are already making the rounds. He says that the Mona Lisa is next! She will be holding bags of garbage. Whether or not she will still be smiling is anyone's guess.

—Parking. One illicit but widely tolerated profession used to be that of the car-parker. You could double- and triple-park (even for the entire day), leave the key, and this guy would watch your and everyone else's car and jockey them around so people could get in and out. When it was time to leave, you tipped him (less than the authorized parking garages charged for the same period). It was a valuable service, since there were/are never enough parking spaces in Naples. They city cracked down on the practice a few years ago, and these sidestreet valets all but disappeared. They are making a comeback. A local paper shows a photo of a herd of illegally-parked cars in front of a police station! The photo did not show the parker, presumably hiding off camera. Apparently, the cops don't seem to mind.

—Wrong color! The recently restored white facade of the Albergo dei Poveri, the gigantic ex-Royal Poorhouse is apparently the wrong color, at least partially. Restoration has been underway since 2001 on what certainly had to be the largest dilapidated building in Europe. They looked at the original plans of Ferdiando Fuga and decided that the whole thing was white. Wrong! It was white and pink—this according to various culture mavens who claim to know. The restorers now say they knew that all along and were going to go back and paint over the white with pink in the proper places. As for the future of the building, that is pretty much up in the air.

—Small Earthquake. It went unnoticed except among the geologists who watch for such things up at the observatory on Mt. Vesuvius, but a few days ago there was a lowly 2.6 (Richter) earthquake—these days reassuringly called a "seismic event"—directly beneath the cone (!) of the volcano. No cause for alarm. Repeat after me: ”No cause for alarm...No cause for alarm...No cause..”.

—Eastern Naples. So much attention is given to the urban blight plight of the western suburb of Bagnoli, that we forget the problems in the east—that is, the areas of Poggioreale, San Giovanni a Teduccio and a few other communities. Historically, they have had their own development, lack thereof, and disasters, including the bombardments of WWII. Post-war development turned the area into the "industrial part" of Naples, including the construction of oil refineries. At least some of that territory is now up for sale; to wit, 38 hectars (95 acres) belonging to Kuwait Petroleum (yes! that's what the Q8 sign on those filling stations stands for. Get it?) is up for sale to anyone who will rejuvenate the area along the lines of a more modern high-tech industrial park, all the while "greening" the area as much as possible. Lots of luck.

—University News. There's good news and bad news. The good news is that six Italian universities come off rather well in a recent Ranking of World Universities published by Jiao Tong university in Shanghai. it is not the only ranking report in the world and, indeed, such rankings fluctuate wildy depending on academic discipline under scrutiny. Neverthless, the sciences, information technology, medicine, agriculture and social sciences are well regarded at the following Italian universities: La Sapienza in Rome, the Universities of Milan, Torino, and Pisa, and the ”Frederick II university” of Naples. (Wait for cheers to die down.) The bad news is that hundreds of freshly printed and bound university theses were found yesterday, dumped in the rubbish bins on via Medina, directly in front of the offices of the commission that is supposed to be dealing with the current, disastrous garbage crisis in Naples. All of the theses were from the new ”Parthenope” university. Each thesis represents a few years of hard work in the life of young university student. The episode is already being punned upon (since "rifiuto" can mean either "refusal/rejection" or "rubbish") as "il rifiuto della cultura". No one knows who dumped them or why. Round up the usual suspects.

—WWI "Graphic Novel". And don't you dare call it a "comic book"! Whatever it is, the book is La Grande Guerra, Storia di Nessuno—(The Great War, the Story of No One) and will be on shelves tomorrow to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the cessation of hostilities in the War to End All War in 1918. Dialogue is by Alessandro di Virgilio; the panels are drawn by Davide Pascutti; the publisher is BeccoGiallo. The aim is to reacquaint Italians with WWI by following the adventures of a Neapolitan artilleryman, Corrado Degli Esposti—nicknamed "Nessuno" because (1) no one can understand his southern Italian dialect and (2) he is a "no one" in the ironic sense of the final lines of All Quiet on the Western Front, when the death of the young German soldier was so insignificant that it went unnoticed "All quiet..."). Italy joined England and France on April 26, 1915 against the Central Powers of German and Austro-Hungary in order to "get back" Italian territory from Austria in the north. The young soldier from Naples goes north to the infamous Carso Front, where some of the bloodiest battles between Italy and Austria took place. He is then and there fused into Everyman, meaning All Italians, the terrible irony being that it took the slaughters of WWI to fuse Italy into a nation state.