An Italian-American Writer & Poet with a Yankee Outsider Perspective
Even if you’re born, bred and live in the Cities (here in Minnesota that means the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/Saint Paul), you have a very good chance of being seduced by prairies. Heading out of the western suburbs, the prairies … Continued
We were sitting around in our pajamas, this attire requested by the three-year-old birthday boy. He loves pjs. In fact he wanted pink pjs, in his three-year-old glory, but his older brother whom I’m ready to call the “jock” protested … Continued
Robert Frost’s poem with these three words in its title leads us into sudden contemplation of cold, deep snow, and of a woods with its heavy, silent magic lived so separate from us. Even our word woods, used in the … Continued
Margotlog: Prison, Anyone? Back up to opportunity, and even further to need: nobody needs to tell us that the economy is sluggish at best and many people are without work. Fast forward to a few days ago, driving on the … Continued
Castles of clouds, huge turrets and domes against brilliant blue–we stared into the towering white and found the scissor wings of frigate birds. They soared so high we sometimes lost them, then two or three would reappear, wheeling together, never … Continued
During the almost 14 years my mother lived alone after my father died, I often visited her in January, that month of deepest cold for us in Minnesota, but for her in Charleston, fickle in its flickering from warmish blue … Continued
When I began visiting a family resort near Cross River on the North Shore, a world of hidden structures and values opened up to me. Sure, I knew about the appeal of water from summers on the beaches near Charleston, … Continued
In the vacant Roman villas of Boscoreale and Oplontis (lst century BCE), architectural landscapes advance and retreat across room after room. On one wall, an image of a small round temple sheathed in columns rises from the top center and … Continued
In the vault of The Old Citadel, my mother sits on a saggy sofa in the huge bedroom she shares with my father. She’s reading to us before bedtime. It’s maybe the only time of the day when she sits … Continued
Meaning we go back a ways. Meaning with her jaunty, gravelly voice, Janet was apparently above death. In an illness that would have put most people in a wheelchair, she gamely refused. Throughout the years, we played all sorts of … Continued