Calligraphy may be the cure for sloppy handwriting Now that calligraphy, the art of formal handwriting, has become a popular hobby, enthusiasts are sharpening their pens to improve the atrocious scrawling of the rest of us. It will be a mighty task. In America, writing is the most neglected of the three Rs. The basic problem is that the letter forms taught were not designed to accomplish the necessary combination of legibility, speed and ease. At the start, schools ...

In 1997, the Museum Of Modern Art in New York City announced that Yoshio Taniguchi had won a 10-entrant competition against world-famous architects like Bernard Tschumi and Rem Koolhaas to design the museum's $425 million overhaul. Around the world, art lovers and architecture mavens alike responded with a loud, bemused, "Who?" So unknown was the 67-year-old architect outside his native Japan that one confused well-wisher congratulated Terence Riley, MOMA's chief curator of architecture and design, on selecting "Tony Gucci," ...

While much of the world can only dream of democracy, other places have trouble making it work. Tiny Albania emerged from communist dictatorship in 1990 only to tumble into a rough world of gangsters, fraudulent financial machinations and incompetent governance, exacerbated by lawless capitalism and devil-may-care politics. In 1997, popular fury over rigged ballots as well as a plague of failed Ponzi schemes led to a massive uprising that saw army warehouses looted and 1,500 people dead. ...

From beaches to renaissance art, sometimes it seems as if there's nothing the Italian island of Sicily doesn't have to offer. And if there's one city that captures it all, it's Catania — a great place to take in the mountains, the Mediterranean, folk traditions and fantastic food, all in the course of a day. Here are five Catania essentials. 1. The Fish Market Kick off the morning in the lively piazza nearest the Duomo, where fishermen hawk ...

THE CHRONICLE OF THE LODZ GHETTO, 1941-1944 Edited by Lucjan Dobroszycki; translated by Richard Lourie, Joachim Neugroschel and others; Yale; 551 pages; $35Ghetto is an Italian word, but it is defined in German. In 1939 the Third Reich took the obsolete custom of separating Jews from the human community and gave it new meaning. No longer were there merely segregated facilities, suffocating laws and a curfew. By the '40s isolation had become a euphemism for what Nobel Laureate Nelly Sachs calls "Habitations of death . . ...

Like the lesser celebrity chefs we've all seen so much of, Mario Batali has had it pretty good. After creating and running some of the most successful Italian restaurants in the U.S., he has made enough money to buy Sardinia. He's such a big TV star that even his vacations get made into TV shows. Through his cookbooks, his magazine articles and the deathless repetition of his various cooking programs, he has influenced the way America cooks ...

Aspiring opera singers in the U.S. are in a predicament similar to that of aspiring comedians; they have a hard time getting onto a musical borscht circuit where they can develop their vocal patter. A year ago, an opera-loving Cincinnati adman named John L. Magro decided to remedy the situation, organized American Operatic Auditions, Inc. Its purpose: to hunt down fresh operatic talent for a summer of seasoning in Italy. Winners would get round-trip fare to Italy and a living ...

Of the more than 200 people who packed themselves onto a 40-foot boat for a dangerous journey out of Libya and across the Mediterranean earlier this week, only 51 are alive today. The rest are gone, swept into icy waters after their boat capsized during a rescue operation early Wednesday morning. The death toll is possibly the single biggest loss of life since unrest in North Africa drove thousands of migrants to flee to Europe. But it ...

Standing in their uniform miniskirts and stilettos, three young women bend over ironing boards, pressing men's shirts before a live studio audience. They're competing to be schedine, young women who dance a little, wear little and say little on Quelli Che ... Il Calcio , a popular Sunday afternoon show on Italian state TV. "Schedine have to be beautiful, but they've also got to be practical," grins the show's presenter. "Let's see how they do!" An ex-footballer descends to judge ...

The television vans had lined up early Wednesday morning. Telephone cables had been laid. Permissions had been secured. More than 150 journalists, from as far away as Russia and New Zealand, had been accredited. They lined the benches in the Milan courthouse and stood four deep in the back waiting for the start of the trial of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on charges of paying an underage prostitute for sex and abusing his office to cover ...