I’ve scheduled an event at Manny’s in the Mission District in the evening of Tuesday, October 14. The event is on EventBrite. HOW COME? Well, Norma and I had a publishing business in San Francisco. I wrote the books and we shipped them out of our garage. It worked really great. Then we moved to Italy. I put the remaining inventory in a storage locker in Daly City. That was nine years...
Favorite Italian punk band from Arezzo: Osaka Flu Favorite piece about Tuscan geology: The Life of a Tuscan Wall Favorite funny Outdoor Dining in the Pandemic video This Week’s Favorite Italian News in English web site: TheLocal.it Favorite Italian Bob Dylan Scholar: Alex Falzon, author of Bob Dylan: Tu Sei quel che sogni (You are what you dream]) Favorite 60s music movie genre: I love...
We’ll be in Italy of course because we live there. That’s always weird but less weird every year and this’ll be Year Seven EIGHT! Our first year living in Italy we went to Venice for Christmas and got ripped off at some supposedly great restaurant. C’est la vie, live and learn. This year we local americani will have Thanksgiving dinner with some likewise Americans etc. at...
Hi Folks! Wow, was I insane! This week’s podcast dives deep into the fantastical delirium I experienced in the intensive care unit of San Donato hospital in Arezzo, Italy. I’ll be publishing a longer prose version soon and will let you know when that is available. Also, this is the January 12, 2021 Smithsonian Magazine article I mention at about 1:20 into the podcast. But for now...
Dear Cary, Why is it that when I tell people they need to wear a face mask, I’m the one who ends up feeling terrible? I don’t just go around willy-nilly telling this to any maskless person, although I have been known to speak up in supermarkets if someone gets too close or exposes his or her nose. But in my apartment building, where there are a lot of high risk people (including me)...
No kidding, people are different here. Everything’s got a story and often it’s a long story. We’re glad we got out of San Francisco when we did but the real Tuscany is both much more amazing and much more about regular daily life than the brand “Tuscany” co-opted by sellers of “Tuscan-brown sofas surrounded by Tuscan-yellow walls,” etcetera. That’s...
Having left America two years ago for Italy, having used the money from selling our house in San Francisco to buy a smaller less expensive house in Italy and live here for a while, maybe for a long while, having fled, as it were, as if the place were on fire, having felt tremors like an earthquake in the social strata, having seen our city, once a refuge, turn against us, having felt suddenly and...
Finally after the rains of May and June the sky went a brutal blue day after day and the ancient stones warmed and the air grew hot and everyone slowed down, even the animals. The dogs that barked all winter and spring now lie on the concrete and let me pass. Even the motorcycles sound lazy. Now the weather is barefoot, short-haired, slow and workless, without ambition, a weather of waiting, of...
Dear Folks, Well, I’m the last person you would expect to be writing a travel guide but the truth is I want to help you avoid making some of the mistakes I made when I first came to Italy. Learn to say buongiorno and buonasera: You can say buongiorno and buonasera and make people happy. Say it first when you walk in somewhere. People like to be greeted. Wear great shoes or, better yet, buy...
I have this image in my mind of saying goodbye to someone on a river, maybe on the Arno in Florence, on a bridge, maybe the Santa Trinita Bridge, that would do, that would be a good bridge, and I can see the sky, a bluish color, you’ve seen a sky at dusk when it’s bluish, you know how good it looks. I’m not sure why the image of saying goodbye to someone comes up. Maybe because I feel I have...
The way this whole thing started was my wife and I were sitting at the dining room table and I had my head in my hands and at this point I can’t remember but I think it was she who first said, Well, we could sell the house and move to Italy and yes, now that I think about it I’m sure it was she who said that first, not me, because if it had been me saying it then it would have been just another...
It’s strange, isn’t it, the ideas we get as children that we carry into adulthood, ideas we keep secret, ideas that keep us from doing certain things like dancing or singing or speaking in public, that keep us from even admitting that we cannot do something or do not know something? Isn’t it strange how we will make up a story to cover up, like, Oh, I don’t dance, or Oh...
Kids are beautiful in cities. They ain’t been ground up yet. There’s harmonicas. After grueling San Francisco-Paris-Florence flight we ride the tiny Pensione Crocini elevator to the tall windows on the courtyard, wash, nap, then espresso at the cafe and luxuriating in the beautiful visual rhythm of the Italianate style, the beautiful rhythm of spring on the Arno, which is rushing past...