It’s an unspeakably beautiful spring day and having given the next chapter in my new book to my writing group, I’m puttering in the yard with a relatively clear conscience. Now Italian has many marvelous words, and speaks eloquently of…
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Polyps, lawn problems, writing
When we moved to Knoxville in 2000 from my husband’s native Italy, Maurizio was quite fluent in English, but not, as we shall see, up on the American medical system. I was relating the adventures of my new friend Susan…
Our document wars
Immigration is difficult. Some cross deserts. Even those with the means and good fortune to attempt legal immigration, to get “in line” must affront seemingly trackless legal thickets. When I was a resident (but not citizen) of Italy, married to…
Immigration rises and falls
I found these charts of immigration from the U.S. Census Bureau. The green chart shows, among other things, the sudden drop in percentage of foreign born residents after 1910. Hostility to immigrants was reaching fever pitch, even among recent immigrants.…
8 Tomato Truths
In Chapter 1, Irma’s father speaks scornfully of Americans’ habit of eating tomatoes. In fact, the tomato’s sanctified place on our tables came through a long trail of conquest, mis-information and tax shenanigans. I’ve gleaned some facts of that journey.…
Feasting on chaucroute garnie
This Sunday afternoon I had the wonderful experience of speaking by phone with the “Eat, Drink, Laugh, and of course READ!!!!” book club of Connecticut which had read When We Were Strangers. As the organizer Shanon explained, the club typically…
Before Ellis Island
Before Ellis Island, immigrants entered the U.S. through Castle Gardens in the New York Harbor. As the illustration shows, the feel of the place was neither “castle” nor particularly “garden.” First built as a fort to defend the harbor from…
10 Notes on the National Park of Abruzzo, etc.
My story begins in Opi (see photo, left) in the heart of what is now the Parco Nazionale d’Abruzzo, Lazio e Molise (National Park of Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise). It is a lovely place of gentle wildness, not well enough…
The gender of books groups
I’ve met quite a few book groups lately. Some gather in private rooms of restaurants that vary from modest to elegant. Some meet in coffee shops or church offices with no refreshments of any kind. Mine meets in a different…
The Song of the Shirt
“The Song of the Shirt,” a dolorous Victorian poem by Thomas Hood (1843) was a lament against the exploitation of the seamstresses doing piecework, usually at home, “in unwomanly rags.” Irma struggles to avoid this fate and the helpless piety…
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