In Love with France, At Home In Italy

  OOPS! What technodunce could possibly have pushed the wrong button and sent 78 of her friends an empty message with only the cryptic subject heading, “Today’s view from here: January 2018/SENT IN THREE BATCHES”?   Then this very same person had to send an answer to many perplexed friends most of whom had replied with variations on “Huh? Diane, there was nothing in your email.” So I had to respond with something that went like this—   How right you are! The error was mine. Oops! Well, if anybody wasn’t too sure about my self-proclaimed technoduncehood, we can kiss those doubts goodbye.    I should probably “leave bad enough alone“ (the best advice ever), but I will try to explain. Are you ready?    Oh, dear! Yikes! I must have pushed the wrong button, and have done so to MANY dear people. Thank you for letting me know.   I was trying to consolidate my mailing lists in preparation for letting people know that my Letters to Men of Letters book is f...

"So which one of you has the appointment?" As usual, the staff looks a bit puzzled to see us cosily making ourselves at home in the waiting room. Let me explain.  My very dear writing partner and I share many things, including our dentist. She lives closer to his office where I spend much of my life (see "Taking My New Front Teeth For a Swim"  https://franceoritaly.blogspot.com/2013/07/taking-my-new-front-teeth-for-swim.html) than to my isolated house that is reachable only via unspeakable roads. So we often choose to meet at the office when I come for my dental appointments. That our wonderful-and-well-worth-the-wait dentist always runs very late doesn't hurt our plans to have our own little visit.  Although I have written on the subject before, in July 2013,  ( ON THE COMFORT OF HAVING A WRITING PARTNER    ),  I don't think I really explained very well what it has meant to me to have, at long last, a writing part...

I have a new friend who already feels like an old friend. Never mind that we are about two decades apart in age. E has lived in Orvieto for more than 50 years, and generously serves as the doyenne of the surprisingly large and mutually devoted ex-pat community with whom we connected last year.   E and I have become Writing Partners--a relationship I have sought ever since hearing about the concept in an article in the newsletter of the National Coalition of Independent Scholars. For two years, I was president of a local pioneer organization in the movement, but after many years of writing the newsletter (and more), I pretty much burned out. The group was especially valuable to me when I was a first-time mother with a hard-won doctorate trying to figure out how to engage with my new home town. I'm sure I owe my having been hired to teach at the university to connections that I made in this group.  Originally founded by brainy and accomplished spouses ...