Some people have parents who behave conventionally, not so in the case of columnist Madeleine Johnson, whose mother and father had methods all their own for dealing with the vicissitudes of daily life.
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A husband too far
Birthdays feed on ghosts. Sifting through an antique chest I come upon the 86-page manuscript of a play written by [...]
An Apulian love story
One late spring day in 1940, a day on which the southern Italian sun was already pounding down, Rocco came [...]
Violin lessons
Every time I return to my father’s house in Iowa, I try to whittle down my childhood belongings. I’m down [...]
Too deep
When Alfredo Rampi was trapped in a well near Rome in June 1981, Italy came to a halt.
Of knives and fire
Some memories seem not to belong to one’s own life, but rather as details from a youth spent on some [...]
Make room for Yuri
Our Solar System was the only one with a planet named Yuri. This important piece of information emerged from Mrs. [...]
James and Peggy in the Latin Quarter
This is excellent, wrote my bass teacher, sending me a link to an article about American writer James Baldwin’s relationship [...]
My debt to Ol’ Blue Eyes
When you learn a foreign language by teaching yourself, what you miss the most is the possibility of speaking in [...]
Becoming my grandmother
It’s often said that women become their mothers. Ever since my mother died twelve years ago, I’ve noticed how I’ve [...]
When you become her
I usually avoid mirrors. But one caught me unawares the other day. To my surprise, the person in I saw [...]
Memories of a kingpin
Sheldon Adelson, a one-time tour operator out of Boston, who parlayed an annual electronics and computer convention into a casino [...]