“Don’t even think about it,” Tizi said. We were walking down to the local market the other day, a two-mile round trip on foot. It was a bright morning in October, perfectly autumnal. I was telling her about a professor of mine who used to say au-TOOM-nal, a pronunciation I liked and tried on for…More
Monthly Archives: October 2023
Beans and Baroque
This morning I have a pot of bean soup on the stove. These are pinto beans. We buy them still in their pods at a local grocery store. Tizi is obsessed with them. Whenever we find a basket full of pinto beans, she buys all of them, carrying out a whole shopping bag stuffed with…More
The Birds and the Beatles
I’m reading a New Yorker article about Paul McCartney at the breakfast table one morning. At the top of the page there’s a black and white photo of the Beatles, circa 1965. It’s the year, the caption tells us, of Help! and Rubber Soul. My wife and I are leaving for Italy in a week…More
iSmell–coming soon to a nose near you
When I was a kid, I loved to watch my father shave, the brush, the whip-cream soap, the razor, and most of all, Old Spice. The bottle alone, with its ocean blue galleon and red curlicue font and its peg-leg cap, was exotic. Some nights, once he was done shaving, he would pat my cheeks…More
More Than Enough–on walking at 5:00 a.m.
I’ve been thinking about topophilia of late. “One’s mental, emotional, and cognitive ties to a place,” as University of Wisconsin geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, who coined the term, defines it. Where I’ve had this feeling, of being tied to and restored by a place, is just outside my door. This morning I can’t see much of…More
When Bacco Smiles–from American English, Italian Chocolate
My wife’s old aunt has an omino (the diminutive of uomo, the Italian word for “man”). Omino. Little man. When she wants to cook a rabbit for lunch, she has an omino who sells her the rabbit. She wants fish, she has another omino. She has a repair job to do in the house, she…More
On Wine Tasting and the Limits of Winespeak–from Get Thee to a Bakery
“You taste wine the same way I do,” the guy pouring says. “We all have the same equipment: nose, mouth, tongue, palate. Technically, yes. And it’s very nice of him to say that. It’s my last day in Sonoma. I’ve had a head cold all week, so none of my “equipment” has…More