Genoa, tolling
John Donne can grab summer calamities by the scruff of their necks and shake to account. "Send not to know [...]
Dejà-vous!
Life comes with only a few universal experiences. Benjamin Franklin once said that everything about it was uncertain — except [...]
Ascendance complete
My mother once knew a physicist she purposely used as conversational garnish. She'd add him into her small Rome gatherings [...]
From words to anatomy, and back
About five years ago, I briefly considered embarking on a second career as a doctor. Though I’d been a health [...]
Black man, white voice
The film's title is “Sorry to Bother You," and that's also the first line of the script that call center [...]
Duck Butter
In the age of dating apps, true intimacy is a difficult goal. People spend so much time trying to gather [...]
Where I come from
My stepfather Willis and my mother Becky were Communists. They met in 1952 when both sang madrigals in the California [...]
Shoplifters
At a critical juncture in Japanese writer-director Koreeda Hirokazu’s 21st-century take on Dickensian-style urban misery, the lead character Osamu Shibata [...]
Meals with infants
The other day, after speaking at a conference and going out for dinner, I happened to pass a noisy and [...]
Fleeing carbonation
Rome slept soundly in July and August of the 1960s. So soundly you might have heard a snore, at least [...]
A peril named Davide
When your Tuscan "neighbor" has a window into your home, you have a problem, writes Elisa Scarton Detti