TOWN PRIDE

"Non ci passa una lira," says the lady we meet surveying her high plaza with diamond facade from the waist up, and who justifies our afternoon chocolates by identifying us as her "children" to a daughter several minutes later. Not a cent passes through here yet everywhere—pizzerias, baseball caps, banks—is the immense unidentified Hellenistic goddess of limestone swishings and marble imperiousness, once booty for the likes of a new tractor on the part of the locals and the wealth of a Swiss middleman, now fresh out of the craters from Los Angeles with plump neck and modern unblinking eyes stagliati. Alternate treasures are ever to be had we soon find.