I have an email notification on my phone this morning: Nothing Last Forever. I read that right. So did you. Nothing Last Forever. As if we didn’t know that. Maybe the grammatical error is intentional, a nudge to get me to actually open the email rather than summarily delete it. If that’s the ploy, it…More
Tag Archives: church
About the Fat: Reflections on Lent, Food, and Italian Traditions
These are full body yawns. I’m sitting in Serravalle’s church of Sant’Andrea with Tizi and her friend Alba. We’re here tonight for the Ash Wednesday service. As soon as we sit down, the yawning starts. Every muscle in my body participates, tensing, contracting. I lean back in the pew so the yawn can travel down…More
Subtracting the Negatives–Orvieto caves and a focus on feet
We have a new server at Nud e Crud, one of our favorite restaurants in Rimini. Tizi and I form attachments to servers. Dido at Passatore, Valentina at Marianna, Luccio in San Gregorio, Sergio at La Rivetta. We’re more than consumers passing through, paying for a product and service. We’re regulars now. The food, the…More
Mastery of Mystery–ashes, old friends, and the faith
We arrive in San Marino on Ash Wednesday afternoon. To get here we’ve traveled all night and through most of this day. We unload bags, turn on the water, and raise the heat in the apartment. Tizi makes a bed. We pull sheets off a couple chairs so we have a seat in the morning.…More
And Now This–lunch, pain, and redemption
My wife says I have plumber’s butt. We’re in the kitchen. She’s applying a lotion that’s supposed to help with my lower back pain. I’m a drug man, myself. Every six hours I’ve been hitting the Ibuprofen and extra-strength Tylenol. “Better living through chemicals,” my dentist friend Dennis says. Better living through stretching my MD…More
Road Words–how can a cloud be a saint?
Deep into North Dakota, Tizi asks: “Do you know the words to the national anthem?” We’re doing 80 mph on I-94, west of Bismarck. Today is a 700 mile day, La Crosse, WI, to Medora, ND. At Bismarck there’s 120 miles left to go. North Dakota looks a lot like Minnesota, and a lot like…More
When Images Speak, and We Listen
The reminders come. We see Nicola, the son of one of Tizi’s cousins. He’s in the travel business. I ask him how things are, if work is picking up since Covid. He says, Yes, and now there is the war. Later, his sister’s husband, Tomaso, who is in the food business, when I ask how…More
A Perfect Day in Venice–Carnevale, an empty church, and feet
We’re short on time, not sure we can see both Murano and Burano, and make it to the train station on time. We decide on Burano. Which you reach by getting on one of Venice’s water buses, also known as a traghetto, roaring away from the main islands, past the floating cemetery, past Murano and…More