"Colosseum at Night", Rome

"Colosseum at Night", 8x6 inches, oil on linen panel, sold

We have been in Rome for the past 5 days but I hadn't been able to post anything. Partly because we have been so busy enjoying the city and partly because I'm ashamed of being part of the narcissistic parade of trash creating selfie stick toting tourists that descend on this city everyday. A Sunday morning in Isla Vista seems orderly and acceptable compared to this daily disaster. Plastic bottles, plastic bags, gelato cups, and cigarette butts are strewn about on every surface and in every crack. The first evening we arrived, I wondered how people could just litter like this and why nobody picked it up. I still don't have an answer to the first question. The Romans are picking it up several times a day and do a full court press in the morning hours. Sweepers, trash collectors and trash trucks in a coordinated army before 6am get the place in descent shape. Then the mobs come and destroy it all again. I'm sure the river will eventually be choked with cigarette butts that everyone here casually throws on the streets to get washed down the drain. It made me proud to be an environmentally minded Santa Barbarian but very scared for the worlds future. How do we get everyone feeling responsible for cleaning it up? Half the tourists here are too busy looking at themselves in their phones to actually see the Eternal City and the trash their leaving behind.