An Italian-American Writer & Poet with a Yankee Outsider Perspective
My North Dakota cousins had one of the most beautiful churches I have ever entered–an outdoor cathedral in the pines. Air and sunlight fell down upon us. Breezes blew. Music and text, belief and sustenance rose into an immensity tempered … Continued
Numero Uno: Gave up air-conditioning. Hated it anyway. Dried up the nostrils, made ears ring. Instead: we * Put in tight-fitting new windows with UV glass in the 1912 house.This meant winter and summer, the cold and hot stay … Continued
About eight summers ago, driving home to the Twin Cities from vacationing on the North Shore, I routinely encountered many Monarch butterflies taking their lazy flight south. Then suddenly a year or two later, there were almost none. Around the … Continued
Sadie and Eleonora, younger and older, first to die at 86, second to die at 95, I’ve known since my earliest memories. My father’s first cousins who grew up down a hilly Pittsburgh street from him, whose adorable little mother … Continued
We were at the North Shore in a favorite cabin high above Lake Superior. No phone, no cell phone but the friends up the hill did. They received a phone call from our landlady: Fran’s mother had died in Tennessee.Fran, … Continued
I thought it was a hawk as first. Swiveling its beaked head almost completely around. Sitting high in the white pine, level with my second floor windows. Big but not enormous. Not an eagle. Not a condor! The bird … Continued
Dear Readers, I am no longer on facebook. A while ago, someone or other impersonated me. There were, thus, two facebook pages almost identical, purporting to be from me. But I could get into only one, the “real” one. The … Continued
It is cold today in Minnesota–minus 10 on the thermometer on the backyard deck. Two thin-tailed squirrels shiver as they cram their mouths with sunflower seeds. All kinds of birds flock–blue jays dip into the heated bird bath, cardinals alight … Continued
It is quiet now with the snow. Streets, sidewalks muffled. A dog barks. We are too far for church bells. In Charleston winters when I grew up, we often had windows open to the clack of palm fronds and … Continued
‘Tis the season to be taken to account. The US federal government has just averted a financial cliff of cuts and ups that would have, according to financial experts, thrown the country into a downward spiral. This is not news. … Continued