An Italian-American Writer & Poet with a Yankee Outsider Perspective
Getting from Saint Paul to Kalamazoo-ooo-ooo ain’t easy. But “I gotta gal in Kalamazoo,” as the old song goes–my friend Chris who was my new baby coach once upon a time, until life swept us apart. Now it’s bringing us … Continued
To have the quiet and concentration to call up into the mind’s eye a great work of art, and let that eye survey and pause, query and recall requires either daily monasticism or illness. Not illness of a ravaging sort, … Continued
For the first hour or two after take-off on an over-the-ocean flight, my spirits are bouyant. I enjoy talking to my seat-mate. Yesterday (which stretched an additional 7 hours), my good luck had me seated next to an Irish lawyer … Continued
The largest city in Florida until the late 1890s was Key West, so I recently learned. We were perusing the exhibits in the Key West historical museum, one of which featured the story of Cuban cigar makers who set up … Continued
Those years we visited Isla Mujeres every February, we coveted Mexican masks like bits of the sun and moon–a tiny scrap worth more than gold to take home. My husband always bought Mexican beer the day before we caught 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
Leaving the little town at the harbor end of Isla, we walked past Tripod Dog and the Naval station, soon reaching the air strip with its overgrown margins of tired oleanders. Soon we were flanked by brushy woods of accacia … 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
All the bridges in Venice are pedestrian–it’s a city without cars. Yet, the map shows only a few–the Rialto and the huge bridge crossing the Grand Canal before the railroad station. But how do people get across? I asked myself, … Continued
If you stare across the lagoon from the northern edge of Venice, the world seems an immense roil of waves, tongues of land lapping out of them, and sky contesting above for prominence. In the Cinquecento, 1500s, with only candle … Continued
