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[Rosina Lila]

Hello you all,It's raining cats and dogs in Rome; the Metro (subway) and the Buses' workers are on strike, and, following an immutable  universal rule of law, there are no taxis to be found if needed. Another typical day in the Eternal City.Good news: the government-mandated end-of-season sales start tomorrow; stores here are not allowed to go on sale as they want, they must go on sale all at the same time, which means that they compete with one another to offer the lowest prices to the shopper's delight!Bad news:  the dollar has fallen further: an Euro is now about $1.33 Dlls., and is expected to reach at least $1.50 by the Summer (last year, at this time, an Euro was worth $1.04 Dlls.) The reasons given are the same, the huge no-end-in-sight national deficit whereby the government is spending out more than it takes in, and the gap is widening. The only alleviating means would be to decrease the expenditures (pull out of the Middle East altogether) or to increase the income!
 : raise income and other taxes. Neither of these palliatives are remotely likely to happen in an election year. After the elections we, the people, will be made to pay the piper one way or another, I expect.If you are planning to come to Europe I would suggest that you get your tickets as soon as possible; some of the airlines are beginning to pose the possibility of adding surcharges to cover the additional expense to them of all the security measures now required to fly into and out of the U.S.A.
There have been some recent messages here about the Camino being spoiled by over-use, etc.  Well, my dears, while I was in Santiago I picked up a book (mentioned here by a list member) called "Aventura y Muerte en el Camino de Santiago" (Adventure and death in the Santiago Camino) by Braulio Valdivieso Ausin, published in 1999 by Editorial La Olmeda of Burgos.  -ISBN 84-8991-5-09-1.The book is based on official church and government records, and it turns out that at one time two thirds of the pilgrims died in the Camino. Well into the end of the nineteenth century, about 1/4 of the pilgrims never made it back to their own country or land.  That was the reason for the pilgrims' blessing, they were not expected to return. The book is full of the painful testimonies of French parents as they saw their children embark on what seemed to them a one-way route. Interestingly, then, as now, most of the deaths occurred in the winter months (you will remember that last year three pilgr!
 ims died within a couple of weeks of one another in January: one from Brasil, one from France and one from Canada). The book also reports on the deaths of the pilgrims during thir return trip.Of course, they faced horrendous dangers, and they had no maps, markers, or such.... they only knew that they wanted to go to Santiago and that their effort might cost them their life. If you have read the Codex Calixtinus, the first Camino guide written in the XII century, I think, you know about the gigantic perils that future pilgrims were warned about: poisoned waters and fish; bandits who waited for pilgrims to cross rivers so that they coult cut the throats of their horses and steal their possessions; barges that offered to take the pilgrims accross so that the barge could be turned over, the pilgrims made to drown and their possessions stolen, and on, and on.... including some apocalyptic views of the people from Navarra whom the writer of the Codex, a French prelate, most defin!
 itely did not like -he did like the Galicians, however, somewhat, and 
likened them, almost, to French people.Despite these stories, that were well known, and would deter all but the most hardy from venturing to Santiago, the pilgrims went, and went, and went.Why? For various reasons, most of them only deemly perceived.In the Pope's letter that was read at the opening of the Holy Door, the Pope calls Santiago pilgrims spiritual heirs of Saint James, that "son of thunder" that left his nets behind and went forth into the unknown because his spirit beckoned.(Leave it to the Pope to know how to express unfathomable experiences.- I haven't forgotten about sending his letter to those of you who asked; unfortunately, the letter is in Spanish and translating from one language to another is a real chore for me..... but I will do it)Looking at the citations listed in the Adventures and Death book, one can see that there have been many other scholarly  other publications about the subject.  This one  book is spell-binding, I had no idea.But it does seem !
 to me that worrying about overcrowding in albergues and such is really irrelevant.Perhaps some of us have grown to think of the Camino as "a hike in the woods", which, most definitely, it is not.  I was impressed reading about the special blessing that used to be bestowed on the walking stick -also blessed as a "sword"- and by the emphasis on confession..... perhaps the pilgrim's last.As a final note, I've had some of my own pictures developed and will send them on to Pieter to post if he thinks them worthwhile.  He is a professional photographer and placed the pictures I took from my terrace of the falling towers on 9/11 in the net.  He has also sent me through this medium some lovely pictures of himself and Trigo, the wheat-blond dog that he adopted from the Camino a few years ago.Warm regards to all,Rosina