Blog

Too Early to Rise

I’m a lobbyist. It’s happened to me in my old age. This morning I woke up in a hotel in Mantua (hereafter referred to as Mantova). In Italy barely a week, we’re on a sightseeing excursion with…

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Toward Vitruvius

Yesterday we went to Fano, a coastal town just south of Pesaro, about a 45 minute drive from San Marino. Fano has become more important to us over the years.  At one time we steered clear. We…

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Visits

Today Tizi and I drove over to San Leo, 24 kilometers from San Marino. It’s a drive we love, especially as the road rises from the Marecchia valley into the Apennine foothills. Umberto Eco, the great semiotician…

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Stewed Cardone

You have to REALLY want to do this. Cardone take a long time. The prep is laborious, even slightly hazardous, but the result is very satisfying. But you have to REALLY want to do this. Here’s how…

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Call It a Dance (from The Enjoy Agenda)

I’ve been thinking lately about the degradation of dance.  Not how we are degraded by it, although some of us certainly look foolish. I mean how we have degraded it. When was dance reduced to rhythmic flopping?…

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A reading

I’m plenty geeked about this event. Food writing! Thrilled to be reading with these fine writers. On this site, search “lunch” and you’ll see food is one of my favorite topics. Here’s one I might read.

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The My Bar New

Hey Siri, what’s the Italian word for bubbles? It’s not a word one would expect to need. Life is unpredictable. I’ve enjoyed this morning’s bike ride more than usual, perhaps because it’s the last one. I’ve been…

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Pariah

“He was driving one of those big black SUV’s,” I say to Tizi. “A Tundra.” It’s a Saturday night. We’re watching “What Just Happened,” a movie that critics in 2008 agreed was a bad movie about a…

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The Retired Dentist

I’ve downshifted. These days I’m concentrating on “micros,” short narrative pieces that bring 2-3 memories together. You can see a bunch of them in my micro-memoir pages (see menu, above). Here’s an example. “I think it’s the…

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A Jump

A man approaches me in the Kroger parking lot. He could be fifty years old as easily as he could be seventy. He’s wearing faded khaki pants and a tan short-sleeve shirt. His hair, the color of…

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Pests

It’s not an infestation.  Call it a visit. Near the end of May I start noticing flies in the house, on downstairs windows, buzzing back and forth between the kitchen and family room. First one, then two,…

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That Time I Put My Foot in My Mouth 

Too bad about the “too.” It was an odd crossroad and it was dark. A mile out of town the two-lane road came to a stop. You turned left for the airport or you turned right to…

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