—After a year and a half of construction, the bottom station of the Montesanto cable-car is finished. The station is also the downtown Naples terminus of the important narrow-guage Cumana railway. For months, it looked like a pit. Now they have put in place a neat little retro-style 1890-ish station.

—Various demonstrations have taken place, sponsored by those who produce mozarella cheese, all in an attempt to convince the public that the product is safe. This included a man dressed as an ancient gladiator and eating mozzarella in front of the Colosseum in Rome. Trace amounts of toxic dioxin have been found in some cheeses and dairy farms in the Campania region near Naples. The airborne contaminants were attributed to the local garbage crisis in which trash was burned because dumps were at capacity. Mozarella is made from buffalo milk, and by late March, members of the NAS (Nucleo antisofisticazione—sort of a public health police force) had taken samples from dozens of homes where the buffalo roams in the provinces of Naples and Caserta. The results are ambiguous. Reports vary from day to day and newspaper to newspaper. The situation is udderly confusing.

—The police are upset at the TV series Nuova Squadra (New Squad), a weekly crime drama centered around plainclothes agents in Naples. In a recent episode, a female agent has her pistol stolen; the weapon then turns up as the murder weapon at the scene of a crime. Much of the episode centers on how the police conspire to tamper with evidence in order to replace the agent's weapon with another. A (real) police spokesman calls the episode defamatory.

—I knew there was something wrong when I saw that high-powered Lamborghini pull into the handicapped parking space! Not quite, but, in any event, the Finance Police have just "decapitated" (their word) a large counterfeit ring that has been furnishing phony documents to people who claim to be—but are not—entitled to the financial and social benefits that accrue to the handicapped.

—I never know whether to take this one seriously, but it has happened before. Two "hypno-bandits" in near-by Giugliano have been busted for spooking people out of their money. They walk into a place (generally not near Naples), wave a trinket, turn on the "you are getting drowsy" routine, and get the victim to hand over money, jewels, whatever. They apparently pulled this stunt at a money exchange counter in the airport in Treviso in northern Italy and were caught on the security video camera.

—This is getting monotonous. Another WWII bomb was recently found at the port of Naples, about 70 yards out from the pier where steamers leave for the islands of Sardinia and Sicily. A squad of expert bomb squad divers from the Italian naval base at Taranto were dispatched and the device was disarmed without the massive two-day- long closure of the port that occurred two months ago when a similar event occurred. The port of Naples was heavily bombed in WWII, and there is no realistic way to predict how much more unexploded ordinance is still in the water or even in the ground near the port.

—For many years, the area directly in front of the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli and the Politeama theater was a dirty parking lot. City fathers then had the fine idea to turn it into a park with trees and benches—a little oasis in the middle of the cty. It was done and they did a good job, and everyone liked it. Now, they've cut down the trees (photo, right) to put in the upper entrance to the new two-tier "Martire" station of the number 6 metro train line. As that line has snaked its way east over the past few years, a lot of trees have been removed, but they were replaced once construction was done. That will happen here, too, I imagine. I give it about three years.

—Old stautes in Naples and elsewhere look better from a distance than they do up close. Indeed, as you approach the row of famous eight statues on the western facade of the Royal palace, you start to see that bits and pieces have been chipped or broken. Entire fingers are missing, swords are broken off, etc. Some of that can be chalked up to the ravages of time and some of it is no doubt due to vandalism. A commission has been set up to use public subscription to pay for the restoration of the statues, currently underway.

—Over the last few years, almost 600 horses have been rescued from the clutches of what is called the "zoomafia." The animals are used in illegal trotting races on steets in one of the roughest parts of town, Poggioreale, home of the brand-new Civic Center as well as the largest prison in southern Italy. A short while ago, passengers were trapped in their bus for an hour while races were held on their street—jockeys, racing gigs, the whole deal, all patrolled by zoo-mobsters on motorcycles who made sure no one interfered. As they say, investigations are on-going. Arrests will no doubt be made, a few more horses salvaged, and drugs used to juice up the poor creatures will be confiscated.

—I went to a funeral the other day and learned that the deceased had ordered the cremation of his remains. That no longer raises eyebrows in Naples, although it used to. Indeed, Christians have generally buried their dead over the centuries, viewing cremation as pagan. There is nothing really doctrinal about this at all. Christian writers as long ago as the third century said that the mode of burial obviously could not interfere with the resurrection of the body by an omnipotent God. Nevertheless, in Italy, and especially in the south, families still retain a psychological attachment to their departed loved ones if they can go "visit" them in a cemetery. In any event, the deceased mentioned above had to be transported to Salerno because there is no facility for cremation in Naples. That is about to change as the go-ahead has been given for just such a facility to open in Naples in 2009.