Even bad ice cream is pretty good. It’s simple, smooth, creamy, and a perfect chocolate delivery system. Sometimes it’s truly great. I confess I’m a bit of an ice cream snob. I’ve been a huge fan of gelato since I personally discovered Italy in 1985: no Gianni-come-lately. Yes I’m happy gelato has come to America, [...]
“It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.” John Adams, in a letter to Abigail, July 3, 1776. John Adams was off by two days—he thought the holiday ought to [...]
To the Trees Geography offered me five choices. I picked canopy. Apples, dust and guano challenged my arrival, but skin leathered and I rose. I passed familiar robins and crows. Shy new neighbors hopped away, surprised to see skin.It’s such a loud neighborhood, especially in the mornings. As dirt caked, broke and caked again, I [...]
People in Texas didn’t speak in terms of the four or five cows that brother Norbert would have brokered in Westphalia. Here, people had thousands of head of cattle. They took enormous risks and pulled oil right out of the ground. But the biggest difference was safety, security, warmth, acceptance—knowing that your hardest times were behind you and you’d made it through somehow.
Yes, I turned the radio on and now I resent the urgent voices directing my brain to competitive stories. Did you think that trash would fill my cup—which both runneth over and cries at the long drought of emptiness? No, I don’t want to hear a state-wide discussion on a fascinating topic, or an international [...]
This piece has changed a lot since I posted it last. It somehow embodies all the feelings I had when, as a little girl, I’d see all those railroad lines moving into Chicago. I crossed steel arteries stretching red blood to locales I could never live in when I tasted city juice. Her jeweled waterfront [...]
I love cities–the story of their growth, the declines I remember, and now they’re back again, shining and beautiful–almost too beautiful. But still, it’s good to have them back and appreciated. From Big Words