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I have been noodling around with short prose forms for nearly two decades. First, on my Travel Italy the Write Way website, back when my husband Tim and I led small groups all over Italy, and later, when I was asked by my long-time friend Barbara Worton to join her, Rochelle Udell, and Joyce Markovics to write for the weekly blog, The Adventures of the Baker’s Daughter.
Here are a few of my pieces from those blogs.
Buying in Italy
During Covid, I would often hear about some crazy impulse purchase my friends had made. Chalk it up to damn-it-if‑I’m‑going-to-die-I-might-as-well-get-what‑I’ve-always-wanted spending. Roombas came up a lot. So did luxury food delivery services. Wildly expanded cable tv packages. And so on. My husband and I bought an apartment in Italy.
2 min read
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Crossroads
We are in a small coffee and sandwich place housed in a former two-bay service station in Richmond, Virginia. Boxes of paper goods and food service supplies are piled almost to the ceiling. Everyone who has ever been here has taped a business card to the wall. They are the usual suspects: real estate agents and Reiki practitioners, computer geeks and Kundalini yoga instructors, pet sitters and psychoanalysts. They all come here.
2 min read
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Almost Losing it in Rome
Do Rome in small chunks. Get to Rome, stay in your (imaginary) lane and promise to come back and see something different next time. Rome will always be Rome.
3 min read
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Traveling the Write Way, Part II
With the 2007 publication of the anthology Deep Travel: Contemporary American Poets Abroad, interest in travel poetry has increased in writing circles. But travel poetry has, of course, been around for thousands of years. The Odyssey, Canterbury Tales and Divine Comedy can all be considered travel poetry. And sometimes your recollections and observations just naturally seem to fall more easily into a poetic form than into prose.
3 min read
11
Off-the-Beaten-Track Italy
Established in 2001 with the blessing of The National Association of Italian Municipalities (ANCI), “the most beautiful villages of Italy” is dedicated to promoting the small villages and towns that best represent the authentic, traditional Italy, respecting and, in some cases, reveling in their local culture and traditions.
2 min read
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Foodie Poetry: With Apologies to Ogden Nash
When I attended the Massachusetts Poetry Festival recently, I took a class on writing poetry about food. I’m off to Italy soon. What else did you think would happen?
1 min read
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La Bella Figura
There are fashionable ways to be both comfortable and respectful and it only takes a little effort to be both. A few carefully chosen, neutral items that coordinate with each other is all you need. Some comfortable shoes and a handbag (cross-body bags are especially good) or day pack. A colorful scarf goes a long way as an accessory — best of all, you can buy them very reasonably at the local markets and they make great souvenirs. Fewer but more adaptable items.
3 min read
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The Art of Travel
The Art of Travel, by Alain de Botton, takes travelers where they’ve likely never contemplated going before: to the “how” and “why” of the act of leaving one place and going to another. The book has been called “dense” (I disagree) and is certainly more of a philosophical treatise on travel than a guide that will help you prepare your itinerary. But it will, I believe, help you prepare your interior itinerary: your rationale for and expectations about travel and how to prepar
5 min read
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