An Italian-American Writer & Poet with a Yankee Outsider Perspective
When my sister visited from Boston last week, we dragged out the family albums and letters. Really, it’s only one side of the family that’s represented, and only one letter writer–our North Dakota grandmother, our mother’s mother Augusta. We knew … Continued
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
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
A dear friend, retired from teaching Art History at the University of Minnesota, leads “study abroad” courses to Florence or Rome for undergraduates. Usually his students are native Minnesotans, attending the “land grant” university where their own parents may have … Continued
It’s a “Misty Moisty Morning of real Chicago weather,” my mother used to recite, except we weren’t in Chicago but Charleston, South Carolina, and my mother, the Midwesterner, couldn’t help herself. Midwestern weather and geography overlay her view of our … Continued