It is a foul and nasty night out there, just as it’s been a foul and nasty day, but that only serves to remind me that only a week ago, that’s right, on October 23, I took my last swim in the Mediterranean for the year 2012. My first dip […]
Blog
141 posts
You won’t find it on a map, but Porto Pidocchio is as real a place as it gets in Levanto. A wonderful space along the edge of the beach, a sort of open-sided piazza on the water, Porto Pidocchio is the favorite local spot once the summer has come and […]
Daniele Moggia, an activist from Vernazza who was there during the floods of October 2012 and who has been a driving force in rebuilding the town and educating people about the fragility of the local environment, has just written a post about the most recent cry, after the small rock […]
It has been a long hot summer here in Levanto and the Cinque Terre, which I suppose most people would find encouraging after the epic destructive floods and landslides of last October. But be careful what you wish for, as your grandmother told you. Long hot summers mean dry grasses […]
The Cinque Terre and the surrounding lands, in particular my beloved Levanto, are obviously major summer tourist attractions, something that causes the number of residents in Levanto, for example, to swell from 6,000 in the winter to more than 20,000 in the summer, and that’s not counting the day-trippers. What […]
As I was getting into the car today, my youngest daughter looked up at me and said in her still undeveloped manner, “Why rain?” I looked up at the sky and saw blue. There were no drops on the ground. But she was right, it sounded like rain. And so […]
Considering the fact that I’ve lived outside of the US continually since 1998, I missed moment of great cultural importance when Americans started calling the guy who pours your coffee a “barista” and the sweet creamy stuff that you eat out of a cone “gelato.” Where I come from (the […]
Though I have lived in Italy for over 11 years, I have never stopped to really ask myself what this holiday Ferragosto is all about. For those of you who don’t know, Ferragosto, which falls on the 15th of August, is a national Italian holiday on which it is canonical to […]
Here in Italy during the Olympics, between one Italian exploit and the next (the Italians have been particularly strong in events involving arms, including shotguns, rifles, sabers, foils, fists, and kicks – all quite strange for such a non-aggressive nation) Apple and Samsung have been running an intense race themselves, […]
I remember four years ago watching the 100 meter final and thinking “No F-ing Way, no man can win the finals that easily.” I remember then waiting around with intense anticipation for the 200 meters and for the relay, which had at that point, for me and everyone else, become […]