An Italian-American Writer & Poet with a Yankee Outsider Perspective
It’s not a Star Wars character, nor the name of a deep sea creature. It’s a neurodegenerative disease that attacks the central autonomic nervous system. It’s caused (as much as is known) by long exposure to herbicides and pesticides. It’s … Continued
We’ve just turned our clocks back. I never can remember which we acquire with each spring/fall maneuver–more or less light, morning or evening. But waking in the dark as I usually do, winter or summer, I send filaments of light … Continued
Lately I’ve been smelling smoke. My heart is tamped down, the fire banked, but the melody lingers on. Robert Frost’s poem “Fire and Ice” (1920) comes to mind: Some say the world will end in fire;Some say in ice.From what … Continued
In the mid-1990s, when the U.S. signed another trade agreement (I now realize it was NAFTA, a regional agreement among the U.S., Mexico, and Canada) I was driving into Wisconsin. The MPR newscast announced this new freedom granted to U.S. … Continued
Before I was forty, I didn’t take trees seriously. They were there, older and taller than I was. But I noticed them and asked their names. Tall stately magnolias in my parents’ first South Carolina lot, Mount Pleasant, north of … Continued
First or second go-around farmers in Minnesota grew a little bit of everything from chickens and turkeys to beef and dairy cows to wheat, corn, flax, rye, and the numerous tiny crops of their summer kitchen gardens. When I visit … Continued
An Italian-American who immigrated to the U.S. when she was twelve recently returned from visiting long-time friends in Rome, Milan, Parma, and Bologna. “They don’t remarry,” she said, “because they don’t divorce. They find ‘un companio’ and have children together.”Though … Continued
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
Over the weekend, after shoveling wet snow in Saint Paul, I drove off into the wilds of Minneapolis for a shower. Funny usage, that “shower” for a women’s gathering to shower a new bride with presents. I suspect commercial connivage … Continued