I have always respected time set aside to consider invisible things. For diverse reasons, when I was a child the language and imagery of faith was inaccessible to me, apart from children’s literature (Lewis and L’Engle) and my own native animism that featured earnest petitions
If you mortals could but know The dreams that I dreamed eons ago Of flowing lava, magma glow Sloping down hills of slag in crimson streams. How I yearned to be born! To call out, Yawn and bring me forth. To this hot rock, swept through
It started gradually, then happened all at once. Via della Colonna slowly emptied of pedestrians, then cars, then the taxis numbered fewer and fewer. The endless parade of city buses continued, though they too carried fewer and fewer riders, masked citizens whose eyes looked anxious,
Starting yesterday, face masks are obligatory in Tuscany when in public spaces. The municipal government dropped off sacks of them with instructions for each family. No official announcement yet on the next extension, but we all expect it. Jason and I talked over lunch, musing
Today is the first day of the second month in the Italian nationally-decreed shutdown. I keep an eye on a calendar hanging from a nail on our laundry room door; ironically, it is from l’Erbolario, one of my favorite Italian shops, full of natural, Italian-informed
I promised some of my readers that today I would write about Marriage and Parenting in Quarantine. If you want to hear about my wild yeast starter Isadora, it’ll go up tomorrow. A month ago this evening, Italy broke the news: everyone was locking down.
What are your character strengths? How can you use these strengths in your current situation? I’ve fortunately had plenty of time in enforced quarantine to consider this very question. (Currently on Day 25 of 35.) Over the past six weeks or so, I have named
24 of 35 days in quarantine in a 4 br, 2 ba apt with little kids. New quarantine end date moved to April 13 by the Italian government so that NO ONE is confused about Easter Sunday. 760 Italians lost today due to covid. 4,668
Day 22 of national quarantine, which was extended last night to April 12. The week before the Italian government decreed a national quarantine, I lifted an unassuming book from the lounge at Gonzaga in Florence. The Merchant of Prato (1957), by Iris Origo – perhaps
