2017
-
Nella morsa
Go to St. Peter’s Square on a below-freezing night and you might have it to yourself. Rome has a uniquely…
-
About bastards
Two bastards, with a side order of politics. Three Italian doctors convene in windowless room in a Fascist-era Rome hospital.…
-
Carnage
For some, 2008 was a horror show. But they were drowned out, until now. January 2009 was a grim time…
-
The vengeful
Throughout postwar France and Italy, women who collaborated or communed with the Nazis had their heads shaved by vengeful crowds.…
-
Extinguished
The smile few could ignore. My mother’s depression began in the fall of 1963. It deepened in the following month…
-
The slippery buck
The Truman desk sign came to epitomize a president who spoke his mind, often unadorned. Harry Truman had a sign…
-
Dream-killer
Italy’s view of the United States is still conditioned by Rome’s June 1944 liberation. Italian mainstream media is beginning to…
-
Toys became us
Sharing was out of the question… At the epochal 34th-Street Toy Conference of 1964 (regrettably under-reported at the time), Byrne…
-
Gatté
The repressed sounds of your first language can come howling back. As you age you revert to your native language.…
-
No faint solace
The author at his Columbia graduation. Iapplied to university in an era before the cost of a four-year degree approximated…
-
Hoffa in Paraguay
Jimmy Hoffa, you ask? In Paraguay. My insomniac aunt once relied on talk radio to escort her through the unkind…
-
Tighten up
Gavrilo Princip’s murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914 led to…
-
76 trombones
Rotary heaven… At a certain age, age becomes you. Like mourning becomes Electra. New inventions and refreshed conventions disdain all…
-
Giovanni
Giovanni spent most days seated on a straw chair. The superintendent of our Rome building when I was a boy…
-
Own it
Why be aware when you can own? Recently, a friend of mine acknowledged she talked too much. But she knew…
-
Limbs to lose
Hamburg, 1945: Wantonness, and then regret. Phantom pain occurs when a confused brain sends messages to severed limbs, rejecting the…
-
All the names
Handwritten letters are now few. Afriend from university just sent me a postcard. It’s her eccentric way of maintaining a…
-
A day in the life
In the fashionable heyday of jet travel, posters were invitations to a luxury experience. It will be a very long…
-
Pizza a taglio
An unexpected career change. Adecade ago, a nearby neighbor ran a thriving Rome construction business that remodeled homes and refurbished…
-
Notsies
The Franco family was no exception to the size rule. It’s been about 40 years since I was last pregnant.…
-
My way
Donald Trump speaking at the U.S. Embassy residency in Rome, Villa Taverna. One morning last week my one-night-stand presidential neighbor…
-
Sale and commission
In 1961, outgoing President Dwight Eisenhower, right, warned of the ascent of a so called military-industrial complex: “The potential for…
-
By the tracks
Rome’s Termini station has always been a class-free and multiethnic hive, but now the tracks are locked off. Before security,…
-
To love or detest
The Curva Sud, home to Roma’s most ferociously militant fans, tends to see civility as a sell-out. Ionce knew a…
-
Requiem for Via Veneto
In the 1950s and 60s, Via Veneto was a madcap traffic by day and packed bars by night. Terry Thomas!…
-
Grins from below
Saddam Hussein in 1980: “Après moi,” le deluge, or close. In their waning days, two tyrants spun Louis XV-style foreboding…
-
The visible boy
Ellar Coltrane in the movie “Boyhood.” Iwas once a mischievously contradictory schoolboy. Sent to a prestigious Washington academy founded by…
-
Navarro- Valls
Pope John Paul II, the former Archbishop of Krakow, and Spanish journalist Joaquín Navarro-Valls when he was named Vatican press…
-
The mean season
Rome is capable of lining up a 100 straight nearly identical (and rainless) summer days. This is Rome’s mean season.…
-
The third coming
Detail from Picasso’s “Guernica”: never mind enlightened thinking. If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.…
-
M&M power
The two M’s, Macron and Merkel, have patiently helped restart the EU. Donald trump has received an early Christmas present.…
-
Loudmouths
North Korea’s Kim Il-sung (1972-1994) and Kim Jong-il (1997-2011), a father-son dynasty now in the hands of Kim no. 3,…
-
House of Trump
Donald Trump is still campaigning. Ask a hyperbolic and self-interested businessman to weigh in on an acrimonious racial dispute and…
-
Pity the general
Smiles aside, future glory seems improbable. Pity the general. He is the son of a general who was the son…
-
Κατακλυσμός
Meet Mr. Harvey. Houston did. Not a month ago, they remarked – these august journalists seated at an August dinner…
-
The storms within
Pick your storm, outside or in. Winged insects were my staples. To have and to hold and to break: flies,…
-
Last sighted
Detail from a painting by Max Beckmann. Don’t miss it. Don’t be late. Be prepared. Be prompt. Honor your pledges.…
-
Harvey Trump
Donald Trump in 2005: “…When you’re a star, they [women] let you do it. You can do anything…” Transference is…
-
Whatever the hurt
Some Rome pipes haven’t been touched in decades. Cut into a Rome water pipe and you know immediately why the…
-
Typhoid Rome
European cities, including London, Paris, and Madrid, have all been hit with terrorist violence since 2001. Not Rome. Since 2001,…
-
On witches, Reds and Spacey
Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey: separate disgraces motivated by similar zeal. Incidents of mass hysteria figure prominently in America’s young…
-
Unvarnished darkness
Anita Hill testifying before Congress in 1991: a different kind of courage. Sixteen years ago, New York City firemen entered…
-
At the mosaic, turn left
Outside the post office is the bus terminus. Late at night, you’ll have to wait. Enter the main post office…
-
When soap was soup
As the World Turns made its debut in 1956. But where’s the soup? Ifirst heard about soup operas just before…
christopherwinner.com 