"Spring teased us last week -- after three or four almost balmy days, we woke Sunday morning to a snow storm. Not much of one, but enough to drop a dusting on all the mountaintops around us. So, we took a little trip over to Scheggino in the Valnerina, which is the next valley east of us, for a Sunday lunch. It’s a whole different landscape over there. Whereas our Spoleto Valley is miles wide with farms, olive groves and vineyards, the Valnerina is narrow and steep-sided, car

"We bought our house in Italy in 2003.  It was a small stone cottage -- two rooms downstairs and two above.  It was a farmworkers cottage.  In the old days -- which was four hundred and some years ago -- the downstairs rooms housed the farm animals, and their body heat warmed the migrant workers as they slept upstairs.  This is either a true story or just some real estate bullshit -- to romanticize the house for gullible Americans, which we were.  Gullible, already overly-rom

"If you are what you eat, then I’m not a vegetable.  Vegetables don’t draw me.  Oh, I’ll eat the odd floret every now and then, if I happen to be running with that crowd.  But my heart isn’t in it.  I loathe string beans.  Zucchini is insipid.  Squash in general is unappealing -- like its name.  I do like corn, though.  And garlic and onions, of course."  READ MORE on Substack .

December 10 2025 - February 15, 2026 at Florida Studio Theatre. We’re in Sarasota, Florida for the opening of my play. We saw it at a final dress rehearsal on Tuesday. The lights dimmed and Jill squeezed my hand. I squeezed back. Then the stage lights came up on two truly splendid actors, David Cantor and Paul Nicholas, and my shoulders dropped. The small invited audience laughed softly as they witnessed the first spark of a relationship between these two strangers. My eyes

We have two fridges in our kitchen.  We inherited them from the people we bought the house from.  They’re great refrigerators, made in Germany -- not full-size -- only 22 inches wide, but there are two of them flanking a butler’s sink, and we’ve grown very fond of the set-up.  Without talking about it, without a plan of any kind, the one on the right became Jill’s and the one on the left is mine.  Hers has a shelf for dairy-free yogurt, dairy-free cheeses, almond milk and two

Well, we’re having quite a time of it. Booboo, who is not our cat, but who hangs with us and really likes us a lot, recently told us a few things that she felt we needed to understand: “Oat milk is not milk,” she said. “So don’t even think of foisting that crap on me. And that goes for soy milk and lo-fat milk. Especially lo-fat milk, which is unadulterated crap.” So, we’ve got that worked out. Enter the fox... READ MORE on Substack and subscribe.

I saw a no-see-um the other night and it freaked me out. I mean, if you can see a no-see-um, what the fuck is going on here? I also have floaters, which further complicates the whole thing. Supposedly, no-see-ums means you can’t see them, right? There’s nobody there, and yet you have these vicious little bites all over your body. Even if you’re wearing clothes; even if you have a sweater over your shirt, your entire body is itching like a son-of-a-bitch. Floaters, on the othe

We don’t have a cat, so don’t get the wrong idea. We do not have a cat. But there’s this cat, okay? She’s a feral cat, I believe, and she shows up at our kitchen door every morning. She showed up last spring as well, and hung around the whole time we were here. Then, months later -- now it’s the autumn harvest -- here she is again. She will not be touched. Jill gets closest, but even with Jill, she will not be touched. We say that she’s a she, but we have no idea. Everybody w