thoughts

Viva, viva la Befana

La Befana vien di notte Con le scarpe tutte rotte Col vestito da romana Viva, viva la Befana! Long live la Befana! The more you learn...

In Backyards

It’s been quite a few years since I’ve seen these tents. They’re icons of my childhood summers. Every August, we celebrated my...

Recipes I Learned Over the Phone, Part 2: Pasta e rapini

Week two of social isolation, the week I learned to make pasta e rapini over the phone, was the week I started preparing for ...

Recipes I Learned Over the Phone, Part 1: Nonna Lucia's Italian Birthday Cake

I’m not one for long phone calls. As a kid and a teen, though, I remember easily spending two to three hours on the phone after school...

Occhio, malocchio, prezzemolo e finocchio

On April 16, 2016, I walked into Anna Arcaro’s cluttered-but-clean - in the way it seems only a certain generation of Italian ladies can...

Oral history is where do we go from here

On May 14, I arrived in Hudson, New York after an 8-hour train ride through the Adirondack region, not realising how much I needed to be...

One Saturday Morning

One Saturday morning, sometime in the late 90s, as I sat in front of the three-foot high stereo sound system in our living room, I began...

Girls (in progress)