The four-dozen roses bought from the expensive on-line purveyor arrived promptly on Thursday, February 4…
The Mouth In The Oval Office: Our State Of The Union 2020
No, Donald Trump. The state of our union is not strong. You have demonized for three years the voters in 2016—a majority of all who turned out–who thought that anyone other than you would be an infinitely better choice. You have lied incessantly and knowingly in...
The Mouth in the Oval Office 2: Impeachment and the Liar-in-Chief
The headline for the article by Peter Baker in The New York Times (December 10, 2019) caught my eye: “In a Swelling Age of Tribalism, the Trust of a Country Teeters.” I started reading and came to this: Most Americans tell pollsters that they do not believe what he...
Christmas Letter 2019
My Dear One, noticing that we had a lot of empty calendar space from the end of October to the beginning of November, suggested that we fly off to somewhere in Europe. France? Italy? It took almost no time to decide on the Veneto. For ten days we nested in the...
Fall in the Veneto 4: Getting a Grip on the Biennale
I had long wanted to fully experience the Venice Biennale. In 2017, the curator of the American pavilion was Christopher Bedford, also the newly hired director of the Baltimore Museum of Art. The credentials created quite the synergistic buzz. The artist who...
Fall in the Veneto 3: Buon Appetito
I travel to eat. My Dear One not so much, although he takes pleasure when we hit the culinary jackpot. Eating is not just about finding those restaurants you want to keep secret from Tripadvisor and Yelp. It’s about the idea of food, the way local ingredients might be...
Fall in the Veneto 2: Palladio
Andrea Palladio published I Quattro Libri dell’Architettura (The Four Books of Architecture), an inventory of his buildings, in 1570. Palladio largely invented the concept of the country home, conjoining the physical space of artifice with the metaphysical space...
Fall In The Veneto 1: I Colli Euganei
In 1368, at the age of sixty-four, the poet and philosopher Petrarch settled into a home in the bucolic village of Arcuà in the Euganean Hills, just southwest of Padua. His daughter and her family joined him there; she ran the household while Petrarch studied, wrote...
What I learned in on my trip to Washington DC
I have learned that I need to open up my Surface Pro tablet, my travel device, several days ahead of time and make sure everything is working. Specifically, I must check that Microsoft OneDrive is working properly. Once home, I booted the thing up and tried again....