An Italian-American Writer & Poet with a Yankee Outsider Perspective
George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), describes his seasons washing dishes as a plongeur in an immense Parisian hotel, where the kitchen and scullery are sunk into the depths like Satan’s den, and the floors above … Continued
Along today’s roads through rural Minnesota and Wisconsin, one-room school houses remind us that once rural people walked or rode in horse-drawn wagons and buggies to school, town, or relatives’ houses. The school houses held perhaps 30 pupils–most of whom … Continued
My photographer friend Linda Gammell recently told me about a winter week she spent in the Boundary Waters of northern Minnesota. Her work usually focuses on prairie plants–rose hips, gamma grasses, staghead ferns. What was she doing in all that … Continued
In Minnesota Scandinavia, the Danes figure, along with their more populous cousins the Swedes and the Norwegians, as contributors of delectable (and hard to make) holiday treats; civic accountability; spare, appealing furniture design; and the Danish Gymnasts. Friends took me … Continued