WEEKS BEFORE our group visit to Rome, our trip's sponsor sent a note to all the travelers recommending we see the movie about Michelangelo, The Agony and the Ecstasy, as preparation for our tour of the Sistine Chapel. When I went to a small neighborhood video store and asked for the movie, the young clerk said, with a note of disdain, "We don't carry that kind of film here."

-- SAR01 (rauch01@yahoo.com), April 20, 2001