Category: Blogs and Blessays
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Snowing on Lake Garda
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turning it around, slowly, in the light
A beautiful line from Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf: “The compensation of growing old is that the passions remain as strong as ever, but one has gained – at last! – the power which adds the supreme flavour to existence, – the power of taking hold of experience, of turning it around, slowly, in the light.”…
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Paris
My guy’s in Paris every month – for work not play. He’s been going back and forth for about a year but I have yet to join him. I suppose it’s no longer home, and I’m traveling in the mind these days. My nomadic days exist in the review mirror; unless it’s Venice. And Lake…
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“Try again. Fail again. Fail better”
A quote from Samuel Beckett sets the right tone. An ideal mantra to let linger in the mind as I begin submitting query letters to agents for my book, “Personal Legends of Piemonte”. And a few fotos of Godot, named after one of Beckett’s characters, to provide color and inspiration. No need to wait, as…
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Why you should swap Florence for the Langhe
UK’s Independent has a great article on why you should swap Florence and Chianti for Turin and the Langue for culture and wine. That’s precisely why I’m writing a book called the Personal Legends of Piemonte. I’m almost done and feel validated – even prescient. Piemonte is the secret that needs to be told but…
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Marriage is not a love affair; it is an ordeal
So said Joseph Campbell, and I believe him. It’s also one of the best decisions we ever made; celebrating our 23rd today. Truly content, and quite happy I married an Italian; they’re romantic. However, back in Seattle, when we decided to get married, my brother was quite ill with a brain tumor, and then we…
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Lunch @Le Caneva – my bouche was amused – and that view outside really caught my eye
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happiness is…
…having a swan come up to say hello, then walking with him, back down to the lake
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“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”
“The more things change, the more they stay the same“ David Cameron is back, not as Prime Minister, but Foreign Secretary for the UK. This, the man who famously put a private part of his anatomy into a dead pig’s mouth. Etonians have class. Just look at Boris Johnson who he famously said Covid was…
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“While we know how to work they know how to live”
This is a well worn phrase comparing Northern Italy to the south. I’ve also heard variations on the following: Garibaldi did Italy a great disservice. If he hadn’t invaded Sicily and Naples we in the north would have the richest and most civilized state of Europe. It’s all a matter of perspective. We’re going to…