2009
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Whispers
Copernicus: Worn down by time. When Ptolemy and Copernicus meet to chat about love, which they do in Rome on…
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Then
Italy was healthy enough to strike in the 1980s. In 1975, brother might spare you a dime. Badger him for…
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Frog
Wanda Scaravelli. The yoga teacher is angry. She’s a Scorpio after all. Loyal, secretive, protective, jealous — or so say…
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Epic
Czestochowa, Poland, June 4, 1979. Epic is a tricky word. So is historical. And groundbreaking. Invited to make history, Americans…
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Untouchable
Nokia 5110: Do not display in public. The Dalits are the lowest of all Indian castes, indentured servants known as untouchables. I…
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Agonistes
Eluana Englaro died Feb. 9 after being in a coma since a 1992 auto accident. In the United States, a…
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Air
She was afraid of planes so he booked her on liners. My depressive, imperfect father was a little-things man. He…
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Intervallo
For years, RAI filled downtime with static images. Films in Italy are messily chopped in two, a primo tempo and a secondo. A…
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Black I
Well-crafted diaries were available to literature. As an adult-in-training I was judiciously steered from using the first person. Putting raw…
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Icky
In a galaxy far, far away… Eight times in the winter of 1964 my elementary school class carried out civil…
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Moonless
The “rival cult” … In mid-1989, American political theorist Francis Fukuyama wrote an essay called “The End of History” in…
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Endgame
When newspapers mattered… Newspapers are dying. Their fate recalls that of transatlantic luxury liner travel in the decade between 1955…
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Paleontology
My very own funicular. Iwanted to be a paleontologist. In fact I wanted to be all words I couldn’t spell,…
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Luck
Keep it slow… Early into an article about upheaval in the American book industry comes this line: “The metabolism of…
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Old vibrations
Earthquake epicenters from 1963 to 1998. The earth is a caged circumference rigged to rupture. Those tied to their rural…
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La nube
Eyjafjallajokull volcano in southern Iceland. From my Rome balcony, I count the noises. It’s Sunday Noon. Below, a child shouts.…
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Snapshots
The woman in the stadium. Ifound two of my favorite photos on a news agency desk 40 years ago. Both…
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Pakistan
Rashid Iqbal’s shot of Taliban insurgents in northwest Pakistan. You could call them bullies, Syria, Egypt and Algeria, bad-boy Arab…
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Swine
How could citizens lead productive lives if haunted daily by the menace of tomorrow’s bad news? Count the ways: “You…
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Donna canone
A steeple where a tent-top once was. Apermanent gazebo is going up at the American Embassy residence in Rome next…
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SOS
Smile, it’s intralazzo… Look up members of Italy’s ruling classes on the Web and you’d think Machiavelli got a five-century…
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Cat
Missing minutes… An injured cat is camped under the entertainment section of a Rome newspaper. It sits like a lump…
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I’m yours
I love you… This is a recording. I’m overwhelmed by a private anthropology, or maybe closet sociology. I can’t see…
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Teflon
Egyptian soldiers watching Obama’s speech. Mad about Yes We Can Obama? Not quite. The question is why. Why is this…
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Not heard
The everchild. Sudden death comes to the cooing nation. This time the casualty is an “icon,” a word once applied…
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-stan
Vladimir Putin with Kim Jong-il in 2000. He’s since suffered several strokes. Sometimes North Korea seems like the outgrowth of…
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She-cat, lost
Piazza Esedra in a 1950s postcard. There were lost elephants in my time of manners. And vanished big cats. Nothing…
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Relevant
Like being there… Just before the Moon landing, Chet told us about his first kiss. He had been hiding it,…
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Unto health
Social welfare: A recipe against revolt. The downtrodden citizens of late 19th century European states propelled the chaotic, lucrative and…
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Mœurs et coutumes
Kings, presidents, tapeworms… In the mid-1980s, the insurgent national newspaper USA Today overhauled the postwar bond between newspaper and reader, anointing itself…
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Prufrock
Make the pain go away… The parents of my friends are dying. Cancer, Parkinson’s, bad hearts, the sheet music of…
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Ho! Ho! Ho!
The Jolly Green Giant. Ropes made me skittish before the start of the school year. Lyndon Johnson seemed morose. Even…
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Bolt
Usain Bolt in Beijing. Usain Bolt is faster than words. After demolishing a prestigious field to win the 100-meter gold…
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Joe 1
The Tsar’s fireball. Joe 1 looked like a Midwest tornado. Narrow at the base, chuffed and self-important higher up, the…
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Warning
The Spanish flu, known as “La Gripe Española” or “La Pesadilla”: The root of all fears. Before feudalism relinquished its…
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Gargle
The cause-mo-not. Health care was once a foregone conclusion. There was Doctor Washington, tall as Abe Lincoln. He made house…
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Glass houses
P.T. Barnum’s Man-Monkey. America’s house is glassier than ever and the rocks in its quarry too many to count. Most…
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In portineria
The keys to a daily life’s realm. Last month, the building custodian had a bad back. So painful were his…
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Then
Polanksi with Catherine Deneuve in 1967. Anything but passing strange that the case of director Roman Polanski would remind me…
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Golden Calf
Joltin’ Joe and Marilyn: Myths and more myths. If Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize peeves or perplexes you, take a…
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Used men
From Detroit. Bring a kit. Ioccasionally I trawl Craig’s List in search of provocative and edifying personal ads. Craig is…
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Amba Aradam
The message may not be clear but it’s colorful. The shop that sells tiny batteries for my aging watch has…
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Last flag standing
The 17th Lancers: Ill-fated… Eight years ago the United States began an offensive against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan largely…
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The Lost Time
Filling up The Lost Time. As boys, the time in which we thought we had nothing to do was called…
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Presto
The army bought in. Let’s begin with instant coffee. “Presto,” an Italian word, met “instant,” its American counterpart. Poof, magic.…
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Water
Bagarre in aula: More parliamentary noise. Relationships, observes novelist Philip Roth, are “instinctively strategic.” So is Italy, which is a…
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Pinups
The Deco-rich French liner “Normandie,” launched in 1935. Ocean liners and not girls were the pinups of my youth. When…
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The shattered game
Remnants of an Army, by Elizabeth Butler: The British in retreat, 1842. For most of the 19th century, Afghanistan was…
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Slut-chic
Strip-club chic promotes sluts, whores and philanderers. Nuclear submarines and an outspoken prime minister helped me fall for the New…
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Rocky
Bloodied but unbowed. Abroken face is no joke, particularly among Italian men. The Anglo-American movie legacy of fistfights, gunslingers, pub…
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Lost and found
A B-17 from the 548th Bombardment Squadron shot down Dec. 11, 1943 over Germany. For years I lived in a…
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21st century fox
Berlusconi: Facilitated by those who swore to stand united his way. To North Americans, Italian politics is contaminated by complication.…
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Carnal knowledge
I’d feel better “with ‘compagnia bella’, he said. My Italian publisher had an immoveable vision regarding love affairs. They were…
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Castle and moat
The success of psychological warfare. The extreme left-wing urban guerrilla movements of the European 1970s generally justified their actions in…
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Forbidden foreboding
The 1908 Messina quake, Europe’s worst-ever, claimed some 200,000 dead. Close encounters with earthquakes leave hangovers. Following Monday morning’s fierce…
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Hornets
My first stones missed… About the same time I was subjected to my parents’ lectures about the difference between right…
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Mosque-cum-museum
Name the countries… The Italian language has a word that doubles as a tendency, presapocchismo. It literally means “more-or-lessness.” It’s the…
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New man, old story
Obama found himself in the enviable position of taking on hapless Republicans. The Internet run amok is new. So is…
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Sex and the shifty “I”
Amanda: Bad-seed foreigners. Eleven years ago, the United States and Europe dissected the sexual scandal then besieging President Bill Clinton.…
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The Italian method
At first, nationalistic talk of crushing kidneys. For modern Italians, participation in other people’s war should stop short of death.…
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The puppetmaster
The master of his own drama. My printer is a stubbornly sentimental middle-aged Communist. He sobbed when his big dog…
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The speech
There were many good lines, chromatic yin-yang glistening. What fine rhetoric this new president summoned. What pretty words he shaped…
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