Twenty-twenty-one was a banner year in Italy and abroad for those celebrating the life of Dante Alighieri, who died in September of 1321, in exile from his native city, Firenze or Florence, Italy. Threatened with execution, Dante spent the rest … Continue reading The Right Path Having Been Lost
When did I begin to worry more about my shoes than my fun? Continue reading Dancing in the Rain
Having lived near Siena for a relatively longer time than Hisham Matar’s sojourn, which he eloquently describes in “A Month in Siena,” I appreciate his experiences there. As a college student, my encounters with the city were more with people than with a conscious engagement with art and architecture. So, I loved “living” there again through his eyes and his immersion in Siena’s interior life. Goodread’s book description summarizes this work well–[ https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46064199-a-month-in-siena ]. I’d like to add a few passages from the book to that summary: I loved his description of Siena’s central square, La Piazza del Campo, where … Continue reading The Power of Place – ‘A Month in Siena’ by Hisham Matar
She leaves the book splayed on her breakfast table and rinses her cereal bowl in the sink before returning to the table with a small cup of coffee. Her electric espresso machine makes a doppio nearly comparable to those she … Continue reading No Regrets
A fan of Le Guin’s writing since adolescence, I appreciated the author’s effort to amplify and enrich the Aeneid. Her novel in a way completes Virgil’s epic poem by continuing the narrative after the hero Aeneas, a Trojan survivor of the war between his state and the Greeks in perhaps the 12th century BCE, defeats and kills his opponent, the Latin, Turnus. Le Guin is not the first to do so. From Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maffeo_… “%5BMaffeo Vegio’s (1407-1458)] greatest reputation came as the writer of brief epics, the most famous of which was his continuation of Virgil’s Aeneid…Completed in 1428, this 600-line … Continue reading Lavinia, by Ursula LeGuin
Stories that evoke our deepest pains, like our regret for withholding love from those closest to us, like a need to fill the void of their absence, or our inconsolable calls to their spirits—in the dark, in the shower, or … Continue reading Of Love and Regret
As I raise a warm mug to my lips, steam wafts over its rim and carries the citrusy scent of chamomile tea to my nose, a scent never failing to remind me of a very bad day. Decades ago, I was a student on junior year abroad in Florence, Italy. Enrolled in a class on the history of the Italian language I was supposed to attend at least twice a week, I thought at the time I had better things to do than sit in a dark, dank classroom in an old University of Florence building in Piazza San Marco. … Continue reading The Tea That Saved Me… Sort Of
It was autumn in Europe. I was in Paris. No chestnuts were in blossom. No holiday tables sat under the trees. The sky was overcast, and I hurried through drizzle without an umbrella. I’d taken a break from my … Continue reading Autumn: Paris to Firenze (Florence)
(A Less Than Idyllic Day in the Italian Countryside) The first blow to my youthful naïveté fell in Tuscany, a week shy of our group’s transferring from Siena to Firenze (“Florence”), Italy. We were 14 college juniors, young women about … Continue reading It All Went Wrong
Susan Bass Marcus Writes 
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