Yesterday I got to my real mail and found a letter from Venice, Florida. The writer thanked me for the article I had written about her city, and especially for its mention of the trapeze school, as she was the "old woman dressed all in black" that someone had told me had been taking lessons.

With the letter was an article she had written for a magazine. Reading it, I learned that not only was she a senior trapeze artist, she was a cancer survivor. In 1999 she had been diagnosed with colorectal cancer, and given at most six months to live.

Yet, in October of 2004 - at the age of 79 - she "performed on the flying trapeze before a gasping, awe-struck audience at the opening ceremonies of the Venice Circus Bridge."

In closing her letter, she mentioned "a new health challenge" as well as her "striving for a return to the flying trapeze in the very near future."

Then, after signing her name, she wrote: "Life is a Circus!"

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Yesterday afternoon I paid a visit to Fort Lauderdale sculptor Jim McNalis. Jim periodically e-mails me, almost always with updates on the situation in Burma, which he has visited eight times in the last nine years.

His apartment, overlooking a canal in Coral Ridge, was bright and filled with busts. On the coffee table sat copies of The Irrawaddy, the magazine published in Thailand by Burmese intellectuals who successfully fled the country's military dictatorship.

Jim gave me a tour of the living room, which was like a quick lesson in recent Burmese history. The trio of busts on an end table were the Mustache Brothers, a comedy troupe that engages in political satire and spends a fair amount of time in prison.

The half-pig, half-human in the army hat was Than Shwe, the leader of the military regime, whom Jim has dubbed "Than Shwine." This may explain why, in September, Jim was denied a visa to enter the country.

The bust with the determined eyes and folded arms was of Aung San, "sort of the George Washington of Burma," JIm said, explaining that he founded the army and got independence from Britain.

A bust of his daughter, Aung San Suu Kyi, stood in the corner, with her famous resolute gaze.

It was the most moving interior I'd ever seen in South Florida.

This morning I found an e-mail from Jim: "Burma is a real heart breaker...such a gorgeous country...such wonderful, curious, courageous people and one of the most inhuman military dictatorships in the world.
There, as in many parts of this world, the bad guys are winning."

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