Latest Posts
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Pilgrims-in-training
We are getting our legs in shape for an eight-day pilgrimage through rural Tuscany. It’s a small part of the 2,000 km route that an obscure Archbishop of Canterbury logged by foot or horseback in 990 A.D. from his English… Continue reading
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Learning Italian
The language we learn from infancy to childhood, from classrooms to books, becomes the water we swim in. That’s a good metaphor. We swim in our language, not caring how it keeps us afloat. Like fish, we don’t need to… Continue reading
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Photo Album from Lecce
I thought that, by leaving my country for a few weeks, it would improve. I was wrong. Oh well. At least Italy is still Italy. Continue reading
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The Story of Time
Of several museums we have seen in our three weeks in Italy, none moved me so much as the one with the least variety or clutter. The Museo Provincial Sigismondo Castromediano, or simply, the Provincial Museum of Lecce, is a… Continue reading
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The Disappeared Diaspora
The first stop on our tour of Lecce yesterday was the underground Jewish Museum. It is underground because a private palace and the huge Baroque complex of the Basilica of Santa Croce were built over what was believed to be… Continue reading
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A dream of blue, a New Year
The Adriatic comes thrashing into a canyon of high rock walls at Polignano a Mare. What is so beautiful about it, so Italian, is how the little city has accommodated this natural glory with designs for lovers to enjoy it.… Continue reading
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Italian Church Art
Through an ancient stone portal in the Adriatic city of Polignano a Mare, in the boot heel of Italy, you walk into a small piazza and then enter the 730-year-old Church of Saint Mary of the Assumption – Santa Maria Assunta.… Continue reading
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Fascists or Clowns?
Italy remembers its proud past with names on streets and busts in the piazzas. Streets are named for poets, composers, liberators, historical dates (XX Settembre), Communist thinkers (Antonio Gramsci), Machiavelli, and even Sacco and Vanzetti, the Italian-American anarchists executed by… Continue reading
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World-Wide Worry (and Work-Around)
In our balanced Constitutional system, the fifty states of the United States are said to be “experimental laboratories” of democracy. But a single state has limited authority to experiment with regulating internet networks. California is trying it with its Consumer Privacy… Continue reading
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A Christmas Carol
Christmas in a land with a foreign language, far from home, can be a special experience. An inspiration came to me like a morning star in the darkness. We could play Christmas carols, a universal language in Italy, on our… Continue reading
An American journalist heads for Italy to see his country changing from afar. 