In Love with France, At Home In Italy

I'm looking at where I left off at the end of the past summer here in Umbria. A year of teaching French and helping others write has intervened. I had a large number of pieces pretty much ready to go, but they have been hibernating in my "Notes" Box awaiting the time I could actually finalize and post them. I think this is what can happen to anyone who writes but who also tries to deal with the business of everyday life. Further, maybe others are able to look on transitions as opportunities for excitement, whereas I tend to view them with anxiety and dread. Now who could complain about having the luxury of getting to live in an Italian-style paradise for a good chunk of the year? Non è logico in any language! Yet to write in fits and starts like this makes it hard to decide where to pick up the thread. One thing that's for sure: it's time to stop hoarding these pieces and stop obsessing about the order in which they will go. As an aside, I have to admire my friend...

I am lucky to be affiliated with a college whose Dean sends weekly words of wisdom to our students. Of course he’s too modest to call them that. Instead, he refers to them as “Notes.” This week’s message hit home for me, as they often do, since he and I are usually on the same wave length. We come from the “old school” that views teaching not as a business, but as a sacred calling. As parents, we understand what it means to send your child off to college. In a leap of faith, you entrust them to people you hope will care about them the way you do. Our Dean is such a person. Even 65-year-old profs like me benefit from having a Dean in their corner. This week’s Notes hit a chord that prompted me to write back. This type of synergy can be a great comfort to us students of every age. NOTES “I see the moon, almost full, rising, framed by the window casing, and surprisingly exotic. Looking at her reminds me of ways of being that are so much older than our own, so much older than our ways o...

Dum da dum dum:this is NOT a disclaimer! You know those disclaimers that go something like "names have been changed to protect the innocent;any resemblance between this and actual people you think you know is purely coincidendental" ? Because I am old, I remember statements like that fondly from one of my favorite tv programs of the 50s, "Dragnet." The weekly opening was molto dramatico, with a hand hammering a definitive mark on something, kind of the way I imagined they used to mark criminals. It starred the ever-cool Jack Webb, whom I still find it hard to imagine married to the sultry Julie London. I guess he did, too, since it didn't last. Anyway, what I am about to say is just the opposite. If you look closely and see stuff that looks familiar, there might be a good reason for that. The only thing I'm aiming for is to protect everyone's anonymity, So if you think you recognize yourself here, it's because of how much your friendship means to...

While on that post-"Tuscan Sun" breakthrough trip to Italy, I stumbled on an out-of-date "Oprah" magazine that someone had (fatefully?) left at our rental house. In it was a letter from a severely risk-averse person who eventually decided that she could handle "a risk for the week." Or maybe even two. That got me thinking that rather than obsessing about everything, I might be able to handle some risks for the week. I also began to see the hypocrisy of preaching in the classroom for 43 years about the need to allow oneself to be "marked" by new things, to take a risk, and to figure out how to navigate in a culture other than that of my beloved France. So that's part of how a nose-plug type like me ended up plunging into an Italian adventure.