Lettera quindici
There is a secret garden here. The first time I discovered this secret garden, as happens with the character Mary Lennox in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s book of the same name, I found the gate to the…
Lettera quattordici
Reaching For It. We are seated at the Café Brunellescho in the shadow of the Ospedale degli Innocenti and a few footfalls from where Susan is enrolled in painting classes. The food at this trattoria…
Lettera tredici
Irony: “From the Greek eironeia – an incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs”.[1] Yes, it turns out that October is also Breast Cancer Awareness month in Florence. Among…
Lettera dodici
Love and death and food. Have you read the Inspector Montalbano mysteries by Andrea Camilleri? Or perhaps you have seen the marvelous Inspector Montalbano series on the television. Even the Giovane…
Lettera undici
Looking up. Naturally, the longer one resides somewhere, the more one wants to understand its history, and not just the history of five hundred years ago, so it is with interest that I have been…
Lettera dieci
The moon is full again. That means there will only be two more of these letters. When the old moon is in the new moon’s arms, we fly over it to return to New York. Meanwhile there is, in the Uffizi,…
Lettera nove
I am writing this with earplugs in my ears. Those nice cylindrical foam ones. Very effective. Not far outside our window, on most days, there is a rather ancient accordion player busking. He is…
Lettera otto
Reflections. A review of the parts of the brain: The Frontal Lobe The Occipital Lobe The Cerebellum The Parietal Lobe The Temporal Lobe The Venetian Lobe This last part of the brain, tucked below the…
Lettera sette
Under the Tuscan buns. For males of a certain age there are distinct downsides to visiting Florence. For us it is not all happy seraphim-with-lutes and glorious sunsets. It is not all gaiety and…
Lettera sei
Porchetta. This shopping-at-the-Mercato thing looks easy, right? You point, they weigh, you pay, they say, “Grazie”. But, in a language one only knows ten words of, it is harder than that. So, I…
Lettera cinque
It has been a good week for dining together with friends, particularly friends who are all apostles. Yes, I have been tracking down cenaculi (the plural of cenaculo, which is the space in which the…
Lettera quattro
Being dapper after death is a rare thing. But here in a beautiful, terraced cemetery high above Firenze one man continues to impress, though he left this world in the 1930s. He is to be found next to…
Lettera tre
My first brush with authority here in the Republic of Florence. “Non camminare sull’erba” or something similar – “Don’t walk on the grass!” It is one of those things I won’t ever get used to. I…
Lettera due
Una Lettera da Firenze Alora, another week has passed. Remarkably, it started just like yours, though perhaps your view of the harvest moon was not as clear as ours. After our first week, we have…
Lettera Uno
Saluti a Tutti, We have been here eight days now. Living here is so different than visiting. In eight days most of us would have done the round of magnificent sights while recovering from jet lag,…