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

Rita was coming this morning to clean the house, and we knew from long experience that the best way to help her was to get out of her way. So, we jumped in the car and headed to Bevagna, which is a little over a half-hour away. Friends who’d been staying with us went to Bevagna for the first time last week and flipped over it, which inspired us to go back for another hit. Thank you, friends; thank you, Rita... READ MORE on Substack . Don't forget to subscribe!

I’m coming to the end of my second week in Umbria, and my diet plan is not working. The concept was simple: just refrain from eating pasta twice a day. Or occasionally, three times a day. This kind of self-imposed “regimen” is counter-intuitive to me, but let’s face it, folks -- if I eat pasta twice a day, every day, eventually I’m going to have to buy new pants, and that’s a Rubicon I’m unwilling to cross. So, my plan was to base my meals around meat -- pure protein, like th

“Honey!”  Jill was calling down from our bedroom, where she was in the middle of her morning routine.  I was having a coffee with my friend, Francesco. “Bianca just called,” says Jill.  “The firemen are on their way.”  Let me explain: there’s an oak tree that stands just a few feet away from the pergola under which Francesco and I were having coffee, and in that oak tree is a hornet’s nest.  And the hornets seem to think it’s their pergola.   And they’re pissed about it.  And