An Italian-American Writer & Poet with a Yankee Outsider Perspective
At the Holiday Inn Riverview, I look down twelve stories onto a sweep of Ashley River and marsh. Charleston, South Carolina, where I grew up, is chilly this December. My parents, from Pittsburgh (father) and Hankinson, North Dakota (mother), used … Continued
A dear friend, retired from teaching Art History at the University of Minnesota, leads “study abroad” courses to Florence or Rome for undergraduates. Usually his students are native Minnesotans, attending the “land grant” university where their own parents may have … Continued
Often the items we save from the past have become icons; meaning had streamed into them. So I have brought from South Carolina my parents’ photos from BB. “before babies” as my mother used to say. My father, Leonard Henry … Continued
My Swedish grandmother was the most hidden of my family relatives. First, she died before I was six months old. Second, the name we were taught to call her wasn’t really her own, but derived from her husband’s nickname: Papa … Continued
My mother was the most passionate traveler I’ve ever met. Possibly because during childhood and college, she rarely went far from the small North Dakota farming town where her father, as she used to say, was “the big fish in … Continued
MotherLode, MommyLore, MamaLog Years ago when I was pregnant with my daughter, my mother took her first solo trip “aboad.” There I sat stewing in Minnesota while she flitted along the Rhine, across the Alps into Italy and back to … Continued