Here in steaming Knoxville, I’m reading about medieval gardens for my next novel, set in 1190 in what is now Italy and Germany. From my study I look over the little crescent of sunny land that Maurizio and I precisely…
Blog Archives
7 views of Cuba
We were in Cuba last year and here are some pictures. Since I can’t figure out how to arrange them artistically, scrapbook-like, here are the captions. The corresponding image should be easy to figure. There’s Maurizio on the Malecon in…
Greek to me
We’re in Ancona, on the Adriatic in these days, staying with Maurizio’s family. On Thursday we’re going to Greece to visit our friends Yiannis and Jo Ann Pantanizopoulos who have a house by the sea. Their handsome, kind and very…
Lago Averno and ancient beasts
We lived in Lucrino, outside Naples, for nearly a year. It wasn’t the best of apartments. Built into a hill, only the living room and kitchen had windows, not the bedrooms. No heat or ventilation. In winter the cold was…
Cheesecake: rich, creamy, ancient
I recently made a cheesecake for a B-themed party for my friend Bingham. Guests brought burgundy, beer, green beans, salad with bleu cheese; I made cheesecake with blueberry topping, rather like the picture. Naturally, for these august occasions, one doesn’t…
A bounty of buttons
Irma delights in buttons, the pewter buttons she is given on leaving Opi and the many different and wonderful kinds she sees in Madame Hélène’s dress shop. Which got me thinking in a button way and discovering that . .…
Writing on the beach
Everybody’s got summer reading lists. Here’s some ways to astonish and delight yourself with your writer’s wealth in just ten minutes. Yes folks, it’s easy! It’s guaranteed. All you need is a writing implement and paper (or digital equivalent). Don’t…
“She died of childbed fever”
You can’t go far in reading fiction, biographies or family memoir written before modern sepsis and antibiotics without running into phrases like: “his/her mother/wife died at childbirth. . . died giving birth to . . . . died of childbed…
Coming from Turrivalignani
Sometimes readers tell me of their ancestors who came to America in Irma’s time but for any number of possible reasons could not or would not share this experience with their families. In those cases, if reading Irma’s story helps…
Mysteries of mozzarella di bufala
This weekend, an experiment in mozzarella making at our house produced a product which looked like mozzarella and tasted rather like the dry and rubbery balls one buys here in the supermarket. In the hierarchy of mozzarella, our homely balls…
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