In Love with France, At Home In Italy

Dear U, Thanks for this lovely message. Wow! A sewing machine! And you probably know how to use it, too. I admire that. I went through a brief but intense period of sewing garments for myself and others. After putting so much into them, of course I have kept them all. But since I am instruction-challenged, it was one of my more masochistic activities. Even so, it was fun to look through all the pattern books and fantasize. In my excitement about color and texture, I have a long history of collecting fabric. My mom's mother was a Russian furrier who could make anything without the need for a pattern. I really admire that. Jim's grandpa was a tailor, aka The Clothes Doctor, and Jim's mom learned from him when he lived with them towards the end of his life. It's interesting to see how popular needle arts like knitting have become in Yale's stressed academic community. As an adolescent, I actually took up knitting as a stress reliever, which helped. A f...

A TWO-QUESTION QUIZ: HOW OLD IS "OLD"? HOW OLD IS TOO OLD FOR "GOODNIGHT MOON"?   The answer to the first question is "5 years older than you." The answer to the second about when you're too old for the children's classic, "Goodnight Moon," is NEVER. While painfully packing everything up to head back to my other country and life, I started thinking about "Goodnight Moon." I recall the first time I heard about that book. A neighbor, the wife of a minister who was moving to a new location was having a tag sale. And unlike yours truly, she was not a hoarder. Although my son was only about nine months old at the time, I was drawn to the children's books that she was selling. Among them was this odd little paperback that was not in very good condition. "Goodnight Moon?" "Never heard of it. Looks a bit boring.  I'm not sure I want that one." "Oh...

VEHICLES In addition to being a cyber-dunce, I have no understanding of what makes a vehicle tick. Why should something as heavy as an airplane ever get off the ground? (Especially with all the extra weight my husband, aka Babbo Natale, has in his holiday suitcase)  That's probably why I place so much faith in my magic, flowered, flying shirt and my I AM CALM socks. These are an indispensable part of my travel "uniform," which includes, of course, my magic shirt --the one that keeps the plane aloft. You've read about this before in one of my earliest posts from 2011    RECONNECTING   and also in my very first post, RISTRUTTURARE: RENOVATE, REBUILD, RESURRECT Flash to the moment it came time to leave our middle-of-nowhere-Italian home-reachable-only-by-two-routes-each-worse-than-the-other for a lovely-sounding holiday party.  Even on a good day, I think of our 2002 Renault as The Little Engine That Could. You've heard about this ca...

1. WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU TRY TO LIVE AND GARDEN IN TWO COUNTRIES AT ONCE ? YOU GET THE DUNNING LETTER YOU DESERVE FROM LEE, THE HEAD OF THE COMMUNITY GARDEN WHERE YOU'VE HAD A PLOT FOR THE PAST 3 DECADES. NO GETTING AROUND IT:YOU'VE GOT TO COME TO TERMS WITH THE DIVESTMENT PROCESS When Dick Cavett asked Katherine Hepburn about the sacrifices in her private life that she had to make in order to forge a career, she said without hesitation or regret, "You can't have it all."   Then there's the play, "You Can't Take It With You" that I saw as a kid too young to "get it." Here I am at 67.5, still trying to "get it." Hi, Lee, Thanks for your thoughtful message. You have explained the situation tactfully, and of course you are right.  I have had that spot since the community garden began, and I remember fondly having Helen, Dottie, you, and Mildred as my gardening neighbors. I also recall wonderful conversations wit...