This is Jesse the dog, looking stately and wise (I think) in his preferred elegant ensemble of sleek black, accessorized in red. One particularity of Jesse is his terror of bodies of water larger than a water bowl. In the…
Blog Archives
Turkish delights
In the brief time we were in Istanbul last month and not in hospitals (see earlier blog post “Cat in an Istanbul ER”) I did take some pictures of wonderful Turkish food I didn’t get to eat. So, in a…
Foreign-born in 1860
Not a lot of prose in this post. I’ll just share some stunning numbers. Such as, 400,000 immigrants served in the Union Army. The foreign-born population doubled between 1850 and 1860, with most of the newcomers from outside the British…
Ancona’s millenium of little hands
Ancona, Italy – the name comes from the Greek for “elbow.” Ancona is a stubby elbow into the Adriatic in the quiet charm of central Italy with rolling fields of lavender and sunflowers, serene hill towns and limed soil that…
Pensions, Italian style
With the death of her husband, my lovely mother-in-law Sara plunges into the Byzantine world of Italian post-mortem bureaucracy. Yet recall that this is the land of Machiavelli, of official lexicons that border on the Baroque. Example: when I was…
Cat in an Istanbul ER
Maurizio and I just got back from Istanbul. It was not the vacation we had in mind. I did get to see an ER facility in a local hospital in the capacity of patient, having collapsed because of what we…
Why cooks didn’t burn
A couple weeks ago, I was visiting my high school friend Monique for a book reading at her fabulous library in Franklin (see blog “Writing Your Ancestors in Franklin, MA”) We went to Old Sturbridge Village , a restored colonial…
Not to do in Italy
Every country has codes, every culture has codes, even as globalization washes over us. I offer these few don’ts, these non si fa (one doesn’t do this) behaviors that I picked up by doing them in Italy and learning, oops,…
Becoming your ancestors
This week I went to the lovely Colonial town of Franklin, MA, near Boston, where my book was featured in the public library’s One Book One Community conversation about immigration. The town and library are named after Ben Franklin, who…
Cleveland’s Caribou & Little Italy
I first saw Lake Erie in 1961 on a westward trek with my parents from our home in New Jersey to a family reunion with LA cousins what they determined would be in centrally located Yosemite. My mother, with her…
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