In this neighborhood, Saturday is market day. A string of city blocks nearby is blocked off and filled to the brim with produce, fish, cheese, flowers, housewares, clothing… and people. It seems to be when everyone does their big marketing for the week, going home and filling their tiny fridges and cupboards with Italian veggies, [...]

It’s been a pause, a respite from one endeavor so I could shift energies and surge headlong into others. I took a break from documentation so that participation could be intense and entire. And it has been. After the visual lushness of Prague last July, I returned to Milano for just a few days before [...]

Saturday morning, 11:30. The church bell just tolled. Birds in the courtyard. A lovely, fresh breeze through the open windows. Sunny and warm. And someone in the neighboring building has been playing scales on a synthesizer keyboard creating the kind of repetitious, monotonous sound that makes me “fuori di testa” – out of my head. [...]

At 10:15 last night, I stepped out the front gate from the public courtyard of my apartment complex and headed north along the canal for a couple-mile walk. I crossed over the small foot bridge near my place, then glanced over and noticed a couple of older women sitting out on their second floor balcony, [...]

Happy Father’s Day to my own “Pop”, and to the other men that I know that get to say that they are “Dad”. Sunday morning, 10:00 a.m. Father’s Day. The sun is bright in my courtyard and I’m out enjoying a CUP of coffee (not a two-sip Italian shot). Since construction workers have been rebuilding [...]

Mary was sitting there at her desk when I stepped into the little back room adjoining the chapel at Milano’s Cimitero Monumentale – the Monumental Cemetery. Now 87, she’s given her time for close to 20 years, assisting Padre Francesco with the mass, altar flowers and little details. We spent close to 2 hours chatting [...]

A bunch of friends and I met up for a lecture at 9:15 pm at the Design Library. I walked almost a mile along the canals and side streets to meet them there. Afterwards, we all went out for a bite to eat at 11:00, walking to the restaurant. We each ordered our own pizza [...]

This is real Italian food. They’re not over here just eating pizza and spaghetti. And they’re NOT eating “Fettucine Alfredo”! (If you see it on a menu, it’s only there for the tourists.) The range of Italian food is so vast. It truly does change every hundred kilometers. And most of it is nothing like [...]

Standing in my skinny kitchen, washing the dishes, I heard a couple of women talking. I looked out my kitchen window and its security bars, across the long, common courtyard and saw two women chatting, five floors up, at the corner elbow of the building. This must be the Italian city equivalent of “talking over [...]

Journal Entry – June 1, 2012 “How blessed and full of grace are these days, scented by the jasmine vine along the courtyard rail and set to music by songbirds! The hours are, at last, warm embraces with a freshening breeze, and the time is my own to color. How, and why, I have been [...]

What rain in the night! The raindrops must have been a half inch apart and hurled at the ground with such velocity! And I haven’t heard thunder, or seen lightning like that since living in the midwest 40 years ago. I had my “tapparelle” – shutters – down, but my windows open so the freshening air [...]

I was sitting in my room typing today and heard “snip, snip, snip.” I looked out my window into the little private courtyards to see a woman in her 60s, trimming in her garden which neighbors mine. I said “buongiorno”, and we started politely talking. We exchanged names, and after chatting a little bit, I [...]

I saw the Pope today. Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Milano yesterday for an evening greeting to the citizens that welcomed him at the Piazza del Duomo (Milano’s central cathedral). The event had slipped my mind, so I didn’t make it, but heard the huge piazza had been filled with thousands of people. This morning [...]

As it turned out just by chance, my dish of gelato was my nod to Italy. Today is June 2, a holiday celebrating the formation of the Republic of Italy in 1946. The Italian flag is referred to as the “Tricolore”, three colors. Whereas, in the U.S. we say “red, white and blue”, in Italy, [...]

Who can identify this birdsong? Granted, the video’s not great; it’s not intended to be. Just close your eyes and listen to the sounds I hear in my courtyard, most of all, that wonderful, lyrical birdsong that thrills me. There can be sirens and trucks, and conversations between canalside revelers. Kids can be playing nearby, [...]

Shortly after arriving in Milano, I had a nesting moment and went out to pull weeds in and around my little courtyard just to tidy it up and make it a little less jungle-like. It’s really a pleasant garden spot in the midst of these 8-story city apartments. It’s tucked in a narrow passage on [...]

Brrr! It’s been chilly in Milano much of the last week. For late May, temperatures in the low 50s are quite a surprise. I hadn’t expected it, so I didn’t even pack full length pants! Sitting here in my house trying to get my work done, my fingers were cold, my toes were cold, my [...]

The Naviglio Grande – The Grand Canal – is between my casa and the metro subway station, Porta Genova. This gives me plenty of opportunity to stroll the canals and see what I can see, to allow my eye to be caught by sight.

After sitting inside all day working, by 6:00 p.m. I had to get out and take a walk from here to my beloved Duomo. I had arrived late Tuesday evening, spent Wednesday getting settled and hadn’t yet been to my favorite landmark in town, 2 miles away from my apartment. I must always go to [...]

The mid-afternoon sunlight is coming into my almost-three-foot-wide, skinny kitchen and it strikes me as so beautiful. It’s almost a black and white shot, except for that delicious green mug, a sprinkling of red, painted petals on another mug, and red pepper lip stains on the cotton napkin. Nothing contrived or set up, yet it [...]