From the Blackberry.

I'm sitting in the International Terninal typing on a Blackberry. Canoelover Jr.is asleep with his head on my thigh. Always was a cuddly kid.

In two hours we'll take off for a grand adventure. The one thing I have been worried about is how to explain something he has never seen -- extreme poverty.

Sicily is not Italy as any right-thinking Italian will tell you. Support for "Il mezzogiorno" dries up as it heads south from Rome, like the Colorado River flowing to the Sea of Cortez...what gets to the mouth ain't much to speak of.

I am not sure how to handle this, quite frankly, but I'm sure by tomorrow I'll figure it out. And he'll learn from seeing kids in rags that we are increfibly wealthy. We'll spend more on hotels in a week than many of these folks see in a year, and we're not talking the Ritz-Carleton. The Ibex Shak he's wearing would buy groceries for someone for a few weeks

I hope this experience changes him, but not in such a way that leaves him jaded, cynical about a world that talks about helping the poor but for the most part, ignores their existence.

My hope is that it just makes a grateful young man all the more grateful for his blessings.

Respectfully (and slowly) submitted,

Canoelover