My child, What world do you live in now? I cannot imagine. When I was your age, there was no internet, there were no mobile phones. When I went out into the forest with my dog, there was no way for my mother to call to see when I was…

My dearest one, when I moved into the house where you were born, I was a poor man. I spent all I had to buy that house. Week after week, I cleaned the dirty rooms, repainted old faded walls, and slowly began to improve the more complicated systems. I learned…

Domani si vota in Italia. Guardo le personalità che si contendono i posti di potere, penso alle loro parole e le loro azioni negli ultimi tempi, e cerco una stella che possa indirizzare la decisione. Credo che l’indizio più rilevante sia quello che nessuno vuole nominare. Ricordo le mie conversazioni…

Recent news and research on lockdowns has reminded me of my personal conversations and a few small articles that I wrote last year. In my interactions with a few scientists and policymakers, at first we debated in an attempt to be objective and rational, but after a time we grew…

River of tears, river of light — My youth was spent running down the long straight roads of the Oregon plains. One mile straight; turn right; one mile and a half straight, turn right; two miles with a few lazy turns, turn right; one mile straight home. Checkerboard theme, with variations. I ran to the beat of…

A Sabbath poem — The river, fat and viscous, slides, thickens, slows — exhausted, summer is coming. Clanking clanging cowbells ring under poplars; green grass, lacy white flowers, grey bark, dun beasts. Foreground: bright primaries, impasto bells ring randomly, yet personally, one, then another, emerges from the din. Seventeen different grasses, twenty-one trees, forty-nine broadleafs…

Three Ukrainians sat around my table last Friday: a grandmother, a mother, and a two-year old child. We were celebrating. The little group of refugees had travelled across Ukraine from Zaporizhzhya, where a huge nuclear power plant was the location of some heavy fighting in the early days of the…

Italy is famous for the excellence of its local products. It is renowned for wines that express the specificities of its territories, whose area sometimes covers only a few acres, and for microclimates that permit the production of widely different cured meats. Italy is famous for styles of painting and…

Here we are, all of us, almost two years on, still having to debate what appears to each of us to be incontrovertible. I suspect that most people made up their minds early on, and continue to pay attention only to the articles and news anchors who support their position…