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
When the primary ones are gone, those lucky of us find subsitutes. Mine is a 94-year-old second cousin which means she is my father’s first cousin, younger than he by eight years, and much much longer lived. Eleanora has been … Continued
Life at its most lush. The magazine, I mean. Life Magazine as a large weekly magazine, with glossy paper and often full-page ads, came into existence in 1936 when Henry Luce bought the name from a smaller-scale humor “rag.” Throughout … Continued
The first that belonged to me was a small tiger cat who probably wandered into the courtyard at The Old Citadel and was adopted. I remember this tiger car more in losing it than in its care. But lost, it … Continued
I thought I’d never forget my outrage at Richard Nixon in the presidency (1969-74), but so I have, until now, when listening to Barbara Tuchman’s occasional pieces brings his astonishing depredations roiling back. Yet, he was in office when some … Continued
With my students, I’m reading a touching novel Obasan by Joy Kogawa (1981) Set in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada before, during and after World War II, Obasan portrays the suffering of Japanese “relocated” by the Canadian government. It’s actually … Continued
Though I didn’t realize her power when she was first publishing, Barbara Tuchman has since become one of my top three favorite American writers about history–Barbara Tuchman, Joseph Ellis and David McCullough. Ellis and McCullough are still alive, but Tuchman … Continued
A Polish and an African-American Grandmother We get so fixated on the nuclear family in the United States with its portability, privacy, and freedom to reinvent itself that we forget, except on Thanksgiving, how rich and supportive it can be … Continued
My Father and the Bird. And I don’t mean Charlie Parker, the reknown jazzman. No, the bird in this case was the annual Thanksgiving Turkey. My father grew up thinking very little of birds. He and his brothers (one of … Continued
J. Edgar, Leonardo DiCaprio and Clint Eastwood “The FBI in Peace and War”–was that the title of the radio drama? I never listened, but the music from a companion show, “Dragnet,” even now plays its “bum-bum-bum-bum-bumbumbum” through my head. As … Continued