Sometime in the 90’s, while I lived in Italy, American restaurant service style changed. I came back in 2000 and now all wait persons had names they needed to share. Go to a restaurant and be “taken care of.” Managers…
Blog Archives
The wonder of boiled dinner
When Maurizio and I were first dating, he proposed a “cena bollita” (boiled dinner), a.k.a. “cena della mamma” (Mom’s dinner) on a cold winter night. Posed thus, with the aura of “la Mamma” and being the new girlfriend, naturally I…
The lady, unicorn, gorgon and manticore
During the Great Depression, a single woman in her 30’s, the sole heir of a very wealthy landowner in Kentucky inherited a palatial Victorian estate in a small town, surrounded by acres of immaculate gardens and hidden behind a high…
African queens in Naples
In the years that I lived in Naples, one of the most beautiful scenes took place on Thursday nights in the summer. Imagine. It’s perhaps 10 o’clock, still warm, with a breeze from the Bay. The Castel Nuovo (the “new…
The four nights of meatloaf
My mother grew up in the Depression on a small farm on a plot of land now absorbed into Houston. She was by long habit frugal with family food and given to meticulous planning, even if my father’s income no…
Writing from a small city
Not quite the NYT Bestseller list, but When We Were Strangers made the list at Knoxville’s Union Avenue Books, our local and very fine independent. Here’s the list, FYI: Celebrating Our Favorite Local Authors and Special Friends Who Ranked Among…
Dangers of devouring books
If you read this blog, probably you were an eager reader of books as a child. Perhaps you even “devoured” them. I came upon this 1835 article from the American Annals of Education and quote in full, so that you may…
Dangers of Italian wind
It always struck me as strange that for a coastal city, wind was considered such a mortal risk in Naples. I’m not talking about howling winds, tornado winds or hurricane winds. I mean breezes that might just flutter summer leaves.…
Italian at the train station
Aside from native born Americans and some tribal peoples, most of the world is bilingual. I studied a few languages at school in a desultory way, but it wasn’t until 1990 when I moved to Italy that fluency took on…
Soldier coming home
The happy news of the end of the Iraq War reminds me of a scene a few summers ago at the Knoxville airport. I was coming to pick up Maurizio, parked in the short term lot and followed a pretty…
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