His love for glasswork and his desire to guarantee the Murano glass tradition led him, in his retirement, to teach future generations of those who share this passion, including in the United States at nonprofit glass centers such as Public Glass in San Francisco and Chicago Hot Glass. — The GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet, December 21, 2010

You never know who you’re going to meet when you go on a trip abroad. This past November, when I went to Umbria with Dream of Italy’s Umbrian Harvest Tour, I lived amongst a dozen interesting, funny and smart people for a week. I saw two of them — Rosemarie and Valerie — for dinner in New York a few weeks ago. And one couple, Lee and Tarie Harris, are among those I also know I’ll stay in touch with. The very first night, Lee regaled us all, as we sat around the fireplace waiting for dinner, with the prior week’s experiences, among them a three-day trip to Murano to visit his glass-blowing mentor, Elio Quarisa, who was very ill with cancer.

None of us had ever met a glass blower before. A PBS special on Dale Chihuly was about the closest any of us had gotten. But Lee had studied with a “first master” of the Venetian glass school and the love he had for this man and his art and the people who are involved in this incredible industry was evident as he talked into the night.

A month after we returned home, we got an e-mail from Lee saying that his beloved mentor had finally

Maestro Elio and Lee

succumbed to the disease. He was distraught, of course, but grateful for the days he and his wife had spent with Elio and his wife, Adriana. He wanted to get the story out about Elio, his work and the scholarship fund that has been set up by The Studio at the Corning Museum of Glass, where Elio taught in his retirement. I hope you enjoy reading about this amazing man and his efforts to keep an ancient art alive. Thanks, Lee!

“I was incredibly honored not only to be in a workshop with the Venetian Goblet Maestro Elio Quarisa, but to become great friends with him, from the very first day of the workshop at my home glass studio, Chicago Hot Glass, about seven years ago.

Elio and Pino Signoretti, the greatest glass sculptor ever — and one of Chihuly's most treasured Muranese glass artists

“Because of his stature as a living legend I, as well as other top glass artists in the U.S., found ourselves reserved in his presence, to say the least. At the same time, from the first moments of assisting Elio, his quiet reassurance and sincere gestures of kindness made these fears melt away, and in their place came admiration and the sheer joy of being with him.

“With Elio’s awesome good looks, poise and wonderful carriage, he confidently sculpted exceptionally thin and delicate glass into amazing dragon and “delfino” (dolphin) stem creations. You realized quickly that you were in the presence of someone of supreme confidence that only a lifetime of working with glass and the hands of God could produce.

Elio and Adriana

“After only a few weeks of becoming friends with Elio, I and my wife Tarie had the additional gift of becoming friends with his wonderful and beautiful wife, Adriana. I  told Elio that he was actually the Marcello Mastroianni of glass and, were it not for the fact that Adriana had frosted hair, I would have called her the Sophia Loren.

“When you worked with Elio, rushing to bring him a bit of hot glass to finish a complex, delicate goblet, he would look up from the bench, with his wonderful smile, and say, in his broken English, ‘easy, easy…ELEGANTE, slow, breathe’ — in effect, reassuring both the advanced glass artist or neophyte to relax, enjoy and not worry. ‘It’s only glass,’ he would say.

“After these years have passed and now that he has left us, I must admit that if I ever really thought about the

Shaping the dragon

stature of this remarkable glass legend, I might not have experienced the depth and majesty of this amazing man.

“When Tarie I stayed with Elio and Adriana at their wonderful home on the island of Murano, we would walk along the canals, and we would constantly hear people calling out, ‘Ciao, Elio.’ And without even turning around, Elio would call back, ‘Ciao Rosa,’ or whoever it was, knowing everyone by their voice.

“He was Murano — a time and place where neighbors came out early in the morning, sweeping their front streets, or trimming their flowers in the planters of their front windows.

“Seeing this gentle Maestro, one would never know that he had actually gone to work in the glass factory at nine years old during World War II, when his father died and he needed to help support his mother and sister. At an early age, he was recognized for his energy and amazing glass talents. By the time he was 21, he was regarded as a ‘Primo Maestro,’ the highest level of glass artist in what has been the undisputed glass center for 1,200 years.

“After working with several different famous glass studios in Murano, he worked for nearly 30 years at the exclusive — and oldest — furnace in Murano: Barovier & Toso. Jacobellus Barovier was a French chemist, who started the company in 1295. His secret glass coloration formulas are still held by this glass studio, and the company is still held by the Toso family. Elio became their chief of design, in itself an amazing accomplishment.

Signing one of his amazing dragon goblets

“I visited with Elio in November, just a month before he died, hoping that his battle with cancer would end differently than it did. I am grateful that for those amazing three days, not only did I find Elio mobile, but could hardly keep up with his energy.  One day he and Adriana had planned to have his cousin and his wife meet the four of us at the ‘vaporetta’ (water taxi) to get their cars at the Venice airport parking garage, to tour part of the mainland and have a wonderful lunch and dinner. It was about a 12-hour day, and though Elio was experiencing intense chemical poisons to kill the cancer, he never complained and hardly seemed tired.

“Those three days will always be something that makes me smile, because I was with ‘my Elio’ at his home, finding the embracing residents of Murano, whether garbage collector or fellow maestri, all happy, as always, to see Elio.  And, as usual, Elio would stop and ask them how they were, and would want to know how their family and friends were…to catch up.  He would listen and look into their eyes with each word they spoke.

“Of course the people of Murano — many of whom were his artistic contemporaries, legends, suppliers and shop owners who had the benefit of being a part of their lives and their families — also felt he was ‘their Elio.’ I can only smile with the one thought, that perhaps he is now God’s Elio, which I am jealous of.

“So, when I email or speak with other Maestro friends, or glass suppliers and friends in Murano and Venice, when we say hi, or goodbye, we say ‘Ciao.’  To me, it has the same meaning as ‘Shalom,’ because when Elio said Ciao, he meant take care of yourself, because I care about you and your well-being and want you to be happy.

“Ciao, Elio. Shalom.”

Lee wanted me to tell you about a wonderful project being organized by the Corning Glassworks:

Elio, after he retired, came to the U.S. to be sure that anyone interested in Classic Goblet creation could learn from, study with or simply watch the Maestro. It was critical for him that his love of Muranese Goblet design would live on. And so The Elio Quarisa Scholarship Fund has been created by Corning Glass. Each year, Corning hopes to have Elio’s legend live on by awarding scholarship(s) to students wishing to learn and develop classic Venetian Goblet creation.

For more information, contact Amy Schwartz at 607.974.8914 or thestudio@cmog.org. To donate by check, please make checks payable to: The Corning Museum of Glass (designate which scholarship fund in memo/note). Mail donations to: The Corning Museum of Glass, Development Office, One Museum Way, Corning, NY 14830.

Buon viaggio!

I’m going to show you the real New York — witty, smart, and international — like any metropolis. Tell me this: where in Europe can you find old Hungary, old Russia, old France, old Italy? In Europe you’re trying to copy America, you’re almost American. But here you’ll find Europeans who immigrated a hundred years ago — and we haven’t spoiled them. Oh, Gio! You must see why I love New York. Because the whole world’s in New York! — Oriana Fallaci

I was in New York City last weekend. A native New Yorker, I need to go a few times a year, and I am reminded of another quote each time I go. This one is from the writer Sherwood Anderson, who said:  “I think you know that when an American stays away from New York too long something happens to him. Perhaps he becomes a little provincial, a little dead and afraid.” Maybe so; I don’t want to find out.

Anyway, my friend Sharon and I flew up last Friday night for a girl’s weekend. We had tickets to a play at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. (That’s not true, really — we had tickets to see Alan Rickman. He could have stood there and said nothing for two hours and we would have been happy). And I had a mission. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about a certain little Italian comestibles shop called Eataly.

Hotel Mela: Trendy Lobby Area

We checked into the Hotel Mela (which means “apple” in Italian; I loved that) on West 44^th Street. A super friendly boutique hotel that opened in 2007 right in the heart of Times Square, Hotel Mela is comfortable, features amazing staff, offers free Wi-Fi, has beautiful Egyptian cotton sheets and is remarkably well-priced for a hotel this cool. Best of all, it sits directly across from one of my all-time favorite hangouts, Café Un Deux Trois, which I discovered when I worked a few blocks north in the 1970s. A pleasant surprise was that the Café is now open for breakfast as well as lunch and dinner, and it was oh-so-continental to start the day with a steaming cup of caffe au lait under the chandeliers.

And let’s face it . . . I came to eat. So Sunday morning we set off to be at Eataly when it opened at 10:00. The fact that I could even think about eating again after the fabulous dinner we ate with friends Barbara and Geoff on Saturday night in the tiny and tres chic Aurora (Soho) was another thing. It takes practice and, I’ll admit it, I’m well practiced at over-eating good food. Not to mention good wine.

But back to Eataly. Twenty-third Street and Fifth  Avenue (right where, as I once said in a poem, “Fifth  and Broadway do-si-do . . .”) will never, ever be the  same. This was not even a neighborhood when I  lived in New York (and I lived just 4 blocks away!).  The only reason you’d go over to this corner was to  catch a cross-town bus. Especially on a Sunday  morning. My, how things have changed!

Getting there early was a good idea. The entrance  that we chose opened into a little Italian café . . .  authentic coffee concoctions (made from Torino-based Lavazza, of course) were paired with yummy pastries, and couples and families were coming in slowly and filling up the seats. It was friendly and bright and relaxing and we were off to a good start. As the morning went on, the crowds grew more intense and, while I’m not big on crowds, there was something enjoyable about this. Maybe because we were all here to have the same experience. Maybe because there were so many different languages being spoken (including a whole lot of Italian) and it was transporting. Maybe because the places is just so smartly designed and the products are so irresistible that you didn’t care. We stayed for nearly five hours.

Eataly was created in 2007 in Torino (Turin), Italy, the brainchild of Oscar Farinetti, an appliance/food store impresario who had a dream to create an experience that combined the elements of a lively Italian marketplace with a resource where customers could eat, shop and learn. His first 30,000 square foot enterprise began the journey to make high-quality Italian foods available to everyone. Today there are Eatalys throughout Italy (Torino, Bologna, Milano, Asti and Pinerolo) and Japan (Daikanyama, Mitsukoshi and Gransta); the New York City location, which opened in 2010, is the latest venture.

Joined by business partners Mario Batali, Lidia and Joe Bastianich and the Slow Food Movement, Farinetti’s Eataly NYC is a singular experience, sometimes overwhelming but always amazing. The store’s 10-point Manifesto begins with the statement, “We’re in love with food” and sets the tone for the tour. These people are passionate about food and passionate about sharing it with the public. They believe in selling quality products (which means they don’t always come cheap) and offering quality service. I wasn’t disappointed.

Delizioso!

Where to start? What’s your pleasure? Fish? Buy it for later and enjoy the raw bar while they wrap up your gorgeous selection. Vegetables? There’s a produce market like none you’ve ever seen and you can be seated to enjoy fresh-made soups, bruschettas and more. Pizza and pasta? Of course. A little wine and cheese? Go straight to La Piazza for your tastings. Looking for some bread or sweets to take home? There are almost too many to deal with. There’s a selection of house wares in the back, including the always amusing Michael Graves-for-Alessi selections. Restrooms? Of course. And, as the sign says, they’re in the back by the beer . . .

Bello carciofo!

While all the individual tasting areas were more than tempting, Sharon and I opted to have the full Eataly experience and put our names in for a 12:15 seating at Manzo, the formal dining room. I’m happy to report that this meat-centric restaurant has something for everybody, even mostly-meat-avoiders like me. The service was impeccable and the food was to die for. We each started with an appetizer — a roasted beet salad with hazelnuts, poppy seeds and smoked ricotta for one, and then crispy baby artichokes with oven-dried tomatoes on a bed of arugula with a dressing of whole mustard and olive oil. We could have stopped there. But of course, we didn’t.

Ham and Cheese!!

Sharon had the Girasoli di Mortadella with Pistachios and Scallions. There’s nothing quite like a stuffed pasta in the shape of a sunflower to make you smile! And I opted for the Angolotti del Plin with Brown Butter and Parmigiano. These closed-up little guys were stuffed with a combination of chicken and mortadella and the shaved cheese on top was so sweet it almost made me cry. Stop there? Not on your life! Bring on the Torrone Semifreddo and café! Sure, it would have been cheaper if we’d just gone over and ordered a slice . . . but really, who knows when I’ll get back here? I have no regrets, just another pound or two to work off before the next Weight Watchers weigh-in. I only wish I could have stayed for one of the Lidia Bastianich-inspired cooking classes. Next time . . .

And with that, we went back to the hotel to wait for our car to the airport, armed with a few gift selections and good memories of the theatre, the restaurants, the hustle and bustle of it all and Eataly. You should go. Sign up for the mailing list and take a cooking class. Travel to Italy without the passport. Mangia bene!

Buon viaggio!

New Year’s Day: Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions.  Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.  — Mark Twain

You have to admit it: 2010 was a strange year.

• The economy’s not much better for us little folks, even though Wall Street is having a banner year (with banner bonuses, no doubt)
• We witnessed the largest oil spill on record in the Gulf of Mexico this year (please, God, keep disasters away from Louisiana and Mississippi in 2011 — they’ve had enough!)
• Haiti got hit with a deadly earthquake — and is now struggling with a cholera epidemic
• There was that volcanic eruption in Iceland that messed up both the air and the air traffic for quite some time
• We’re still at war on two fronts after nine years and nobody has given me a really good reason why
• At least the Chilean mine disaster had a miraculous, happy ending
• Then there was the Tea Party
• And Sarah Palin shooting Alaskan animals on TV
• And WikiLeaks
• And, of course, Silvio Berlusconi, the “teflon” Prime Minister

What can I say?

My husband, being the child of an all-English father and a half-English mother, inspired me this year to include Christmas crackers (“bon bons”) on our dinner table on December 25^th. It was very cute to see Tim and his mother and our friends wearing colorful tissue paper hats and opening their little toys. What was not so cute was the fact that I had to present my i.d. to the check-out lady at my local Target in order to buy them — Christmas crackers are considered to be in the same class as weapons! My driver’s license is now on file there. Happy Christmas! I’m not amused. A strange year . . .

I made it to Perugia!

But 2010 brought some very good things for me, too, a lot of it involving travel of some kind:

• I went back to Salem (MA) twice and realized how much I miss it and how much it has become home for me
• I got to stand up for my friends Sharon & Jerry at their brilliant wedding in Williamsburg, Virginia
• I spent 10 days in San Francisco with Tim; we got hooked and now claim it as our own
• I got my ESL/TOEFL certification — and even an advanced certification in teaching Business English (anybody in Italy need an English teacher??)
• Alain de Botton wrote to me to thank me for my review of his grand book, The Art of Travel
• I gifted myself a long weekend at The Porches writing retreat — and wrote!
• Thanks to My Mélange, I won a copy of 30 Days in Italy — I’ve never won anything before!
• I had a great time working for my old company, Thomson Reuters, doing a full-time contract gig (which extends through January — yay!)
• Finally, I got to fulfill a long-time dream and took myself to Umbria, going as part of the Dream of Italy Umbrian Harvest Tour

So all in all, a strange year, but with some terrific highlights for me.

Here’s to hoping that 2011 will see us being a little kinder to each other, a little less contentious, a little more receptive to other points of view. Here’s to hoping that the unemployment rate improves, that more people find affordable housing, that no one goes hungry and that we learn to share better. Here’s to lower gas prices, shorter lines at the airport, cleaner air, less greed and more love in the world. Oh — and of course, here’s to more travel and exciting destinations!

Buon viaggio  e buon anno!

Nothing you write, if you hope to be any good, will ever come out as you first hoped. — Lillian Hellman

Sometimes, after all the creating and rewriting and hair-pulling, we writers need a little R&R. By which I mean we need to get away for a few days to be surrounded by other writers, learning about the craft, exchanging ideas and getting re-energized about going back to the otherwise pretty isolated world of putting one word in front of another. For me, this meant going to the James River Writers (JRW) Conference in Richmond last weekend. It was my third JRW Conference, and they keep getting better and better.

As a native New Yorker who had lived in the Boston area for some 15 years, I wasn’t expecting much of a literary community when we moved down to Richmond five years ago. Boy, was I wrong. The Poetry Society of Virginia, for example, is the second oldest State Poetry organization in the U.S., founded in 1923 at The College of William and Mary. A newcomer by comparison, James River Writers was founded in 2002 by a group of well-known professional writers, among them David L. Robbins, Dean King and Phaedra Hise. The Writers Conference debuted in 2003 as a two-day affair to provide seminars and lectures for both aspiring and working writers. Over the past eight years, it has becoming a state-wide phenomenon.

And JRW itself? It has grown to host a year-round calendar of literary events, including the monthly Writing Show and Writers Wednesday get-togethers, writing contests, and the annual Virginia Arts & Letters LIVE. This year, JRW was even the recipient of an NEA grant. All in all, it’s a great supporter of central Virginia’s literary community.

At this year’s conference, I was once again in the difficult  position of having to choose between a group of great  panels. Really, I need to clone myself. But I had to choose,  and so I did. My final answers were: Writing Religion with  Kristen Swenson, Zachary Steele and Susanne  Cokal; Writing in Multiple Genres, with Silas House,  Michael Olmert and Jason Howard; Memoir, with Melissa  Sarver, Jason Howard and Margaret Edds; The Art of the  Interview, with May-Lily Lee, Harry Kollatz and Phaedra  Hise; Writing About Nature, with Stephanie Pearson,  Jason Howard and Meg Olmert; Changes in Publishing,  with Lucy Carson, Joseph Papa and Jeff VanderMeer; and Publicity through Social Media, with Lauren Oliver, Joni Davis and Joseph Papa. Add to that several plenary sessions and the very helpful “first pages” critique session and you’ve got an informative, exhausting and — somehow simultaneously — exhilarating 48 hours.

So now I’ve got business cards to file, authors and agents to contact, websites to look up, books to read, tweets to tweet, query letters to craft and — most importantly — new words to write. I’m leaving for Boston and Salem today and will be there until late Sunday, during which time I will have lots to think about. I’ll leave you with some of the more delightful/telling/disturbing comments I discovered in my notes and a helpful list of the “go-to” sources of inspiration, especially for nature writers.

But first, tell me: where do you get your inspiration? How do you kick-start your imagination? What do you do for R&R? Let’s share some ideas to help each other . . .

“Being a writer is not something you should turn on; you should have to turn it off.”  Silas House

“Our lives are defined by what’s outside.” Silas House

“A lot of people don’t see nature anymore.” Meg Olmert

“[As writers] we have no idea what we’re doing . . . but just keep plugging along.” Meg Olmert

The “go-to” sources for grounding and inspiration:

• “Self Reliance” by Emerson
• Anything by Thoreau
• The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich
• Ecology of a Cracker Childhood by Janisse Ray
• Anything by Mary Oliver
• Anything by Wendell Berry
• Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

Buon viaggio!

The ultimate [travel destination] for me would be one perfect day in San Francisco. There’s no city like it anywhere. — Larry King

Coit Tower

It’s official. I read it in Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel. According to the magazine’s October 2010 Reader’s Choice poll, the most beautiful city in the world is . . . wait for it . . . San Francisco. Yep — the City by the Bay beat out Paris, Vancouver, Venice and Charleston for the top spot. Even the editors were surprised.

But they shouldn’t be. San Francisco also ranked #2 as the “Best Food City in America” and  #4 as the “Most Fun Place to Get Away With the Girls/Guys.” As Tim and I learned this past June, it’s a fabulous place. And the diversity is what really impressed us. Not just the diversity of the people and their neighborhoods — Japantown, Chinatown, Koreatown, Italian North Beach, the gay Castro, the yuppified Marina — but the diversity of the place itself. And the city’s gift for reinventing itself after disasters like earthquakes and fires.

At Mission Dolores

One of our favorite spots in the city was Golden Gate Park. Talk about diversity! In one space, three miles long and half a mile wide, there are 27 miles of walking trails; its 1,000+ acres make it the largest cultivated urban park in the country. Want a carousel? The Herschel-Spillman Carousel, built in 1912, is here — in the first children’s playground in the US. How about a Japanese Tea Garden? Check. A Shakespeare Garden? Yep. An art museum? How about the deYoung? A lake? Stow Lake and Strawberry Hill island fit the bill. A place for music? That would be the Music Concourse, which has been the home to wonderful outdoor events since 1894. There’s also a Dutch windmill and tulip garden, a Victorian flower conservatory, a Giant Tree Fern Grove and, on the grounds, the California Academy of Sciences holds court with its swamps, reefs, rainforests, planetarium and penguins.

Tree trunk at GG Park

Tim and I spent our time one day slowly taking in the beauty of the Strybing Arboretum and Botanical Gardens. Home to more than 7,000 plant species that live in climates similar to that of San Francisco, the “environments” created include a Biblical Garden, a Redwood Trail and a Primitive Plant Garden, among others.

Here is a sampling of the pictures we took that day. I wish I knew what some of these beauties are; I just aimed and shot at whatever took my fancy. Hope you enjoy them — mostly, I hope you get a chance to go out and see this for yourself. There are a whole lot of reasons to see San Francisco. These are just a few.

The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business. — John Steinbeck

Tim and I were talking before breakfast this morning. Last week — including the weekend — was exhausting, what with work and volunteer stuff at our church. We’ve also been babysitting his Mom’s dog for two weeks and let me tell you, two dogs are more than just one more dog. I don’t know why this is so, but trust me on this.

Anyway, we were thinking about our travel schedule for the next few months. First we’re going to the SIBA (Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance) Trade Show down in Daytona, Florida at the end of the month, where Great Little Books, LLC will have a booth. We’re manning that booth (or “person-ing it” to be exact) in an effort to let the southern indie booksellers know all about our four magnificent titles: THE LONGBRIDGE DECISION, UP AT THE VILLA: TRAVELS WITH MY HUSBAND, TOO TALL ALICE and BEDTIME STORIES. Keep your fingers crossed — and if you’re an indie bookseller, please visit us at booth A6 and place a big order. Please.

Then in mid-October we’re going back up to Salem, MA to hear Margaret Marshall, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court talk about the 1629 Massachusetts Bay (Endecott) Charter, which established the right of self-government in the state. While we’re there, a dear friend is celebrating his 50^th birthday and we’ll be on hand to help him. We’ll also have dinner with Mario Scalzi, president of Parker Villas, so we’ll hear all about the business and will talk about George Clooney, The American and Abruzzo.

In between these two trips, it’s likely that Tim will have to go to meet with clients far and wide. And in early November, I am going to Italy. Yes! I will be going on a tour that Kathy McCabe, editor of Dream of Italy newsletter, has put together and you’ll be hearing more about that when I get back. Umbria in the fall. Harvest time. I can smell it and taste it already. Umbria has been a dream of mine for a long time, so who better to go with than a group put together by Dream of Italy? I’m ecstatic!

Tim even talked about going to England for Christmas — another crazy dream of mine — but I’m not sure that either one of us could handle that this year. We’ll see.

So where am I going with this? I’m not sure. But I do know that in this economy, these seem like bold moves. When we looked at this list of places and trips and the reasons for going — and this list doesn’t include the two trips to Italy in the Spring which, please God, can be done back-to-back because we don’t want to pay for airfare twice — we wondered what drives us. Is it courage? Faith? Unbridled stupidity? Or just a need (at least in my case) to combine the love of words with the love of travel into something that just might make me a career some day, finances be damned? Maybe.

Neither of us got a lot of support vis-à-vis pursuing our dreams when we were growing up. For instance, I was never encouraged to dream about marriage and family as a little girl; an only child, I was too busy taking care of my quirky extended family. I was a stay-at-home child whose primary pleasure was being in my room, reading and writing or scratching around on the violin. When my mother called upstairs to see what I was doing, my standard answer was, “Don’t worry Mom, I’m not having any fun.” That’s okay; it taught me how to be pretty self-sufficient and have a fairly high tolerance for other people’s craziness, skills that have served me well over the years in advertising agencies and on church committees.

Doing what I love

But as I got older and discovered that what I wanted to be was a writer, that discovery struck terror into my parents’ hearts. While I think (I hope) they were secretly pleased about what I was writing throughout my school years, I was never sure. I’d read something aloud and they’d utter some iteration of, “You wrote that??!!?” When I was a newly married woman in her early 20s, I gave up writing so that I could support my college-attending husband (now ex). And besides, it just wasn’t fittin’ for a married woman to sit around all day writing. Right?

Ten years later, freed from the marriage, I started up again and found to my amazement that a sheaf of old poems gained me access to the prestigious Bread Loaf Writers Conference in Middlebury VT. When I reminded my parents that I was going, my mother snapped, “Oh, that thing you have to pay for?” My lungs lost all their air.

My mother never lived to see either of my books published. My father chose never to come to one of my readings or to the performance of either of my plays. I had written one about the relationship between my mother and me (it had softened over the years after her death, as it always does) but even that wasn’t enough to get him in the audience. But here I am, still writing, adding the element of travel into the word exploration.

Yes, it’s a bit of a crazy life. I threw over the corporate scene in the early 1980s and have been freelancing ever since, some years more successful than others. When I decided to boldly step into the world of travel a decade ago, I kind of knew what I was in for. But I am in good company. Open a travel anthology and see what I mean. There’s life in those pages: adventure and discovery and danger and new ideas and history and great food and so much more. So I’ll continue to travel and write as long as I can and hope to keep myself and my audience entertained.

Thank you for being along for the crazy ride. Thank you for reading and commenting. It means more than you can ever know in this crazy life.

Buon viaggio!

If we had to say what writing is, we would define it essentially as an act of courage. — Cynthia Ozick

My mother’s mother, Ida, stood about four foot eleven inches tall  and wore a size 3 and a  half shoe. The entire time that I knew her  (some 25 years) she wore variations of the classic  “little old lady”  shoe – chunky heeled, high vamp tie shoes that were  distinguished as  “Everyday” (plain white, navy or black leather)  and “Dressy” (black leather shoes with a velvet  vamp and decorative  little  holes). For many years, we drove from our house in Massapequa,  New York into New York City to the Dr. Scholl’s store on  34^th Street. Grandma would get her  foot measured professionally (did we think it had grown since last year?) and then view the  new  selections and pick out what she wanted. They had to be special  ordered, of course, so there was a return trip back to pick them up. All in all, this was a very expensive proposition for a very middle class working family. But hey, Grandma needed shoes, right?

Progress came when Dr. Scholl’s opened a store in the suburbs. Hempstead was still a haul, but not the teeth-shattering, anxiety provoking trip that going into Manhattan was for my family. One year, maybe 1963 or 1964, when Mom and I were on the “return trip” to pick up what Grandma had ordered, we stopped for a few minutes at a bookstore. I was about 14 years old, already an experienced angst-ridden young poet, and was scouring the shelves for something suitably shocking to get my mother to buy for me (these were the days of $1.00 a week allowances, so I couldn’t buy much for myself).

Anyway, Mom was getting impatient, standing in the front of the  store and waiting for me to come out of the stacks. Then I found  it: 100 Selected Poems,  by e.e. cummings. Originally published  in 1923, this was the first Evergreen Edition, from 1959, and it  bore a price tag of $1.75. I still have my copy, unglued cover and  all. I flipped through its pages and was very pleased with my  choice. Here was a book that, by its very publication, told me that  it was all right to break the rules. Lower case letters. Lines that  stretched across and up and down the page. No discernable  rhyme scheme. This would do nicely.

Of course, I had a passing acquaintance with cummings already, and had adopted his lower cases in some of my own poetry (as did most teen-aged girls at that time). But here (as was required in my household) was proof that this was legitimate. And that poetry itself could be lovely and nonsensical and horrifying — all in the same line.

I brought the book up to the cash register and my mother met me. She saw the little purple-covered book and rolled her eyes. But then something happened. The man behind the cash register looked at the book too, and then at me, and then back at the book. “You dig cummings, eh?” he said. My heart stopped. No one — not even my teachers, who knew I was an aspiring writer — had ever asked me what I “dug” before. I nodded feebly, trying to look as cool and grown-up as I possibly could, no mean feat for a chubby, introverted teenager whose idea of a good time was to actually get to listen to an entire side of the latest Peter, Paul and Mary album in peace. “Let’s see how much you know,” he went on. I was doomed. Then my mother got interested, clearly enjoying this.

He opened the book and began reading, “Buffalo Bill’s defunct . . .” and when he got to the line, “. . . and what I want to know is . . .” he stopped. Cold. And he looked at me. And my mother glared at me. And for a split second the world came to an end. And then, out of nowhere known to me, came these words from my mouth: “how do you like your blueeyed boy, Mister Death?” The clerk smiled and handed me the book. My mother was gobsmacked. I said thank you to the man and walked out the door, ahead of her, trembling, but trying to remain calm. I had been tested by a total stranger and passed. I knew something. I had all I could do not to cry as I made my way out into the sunshine.

Years later, I still ask myself where the hell that line came from. Sure, I had heard the poem before but I was not (and still am not) a memorizer. Somehow, that line of poetry stuck in my head, even at that early age. Even before I knew that I really would make my life among words. Even before I began to fill my rooms with books in earnest.

This is powerful stuff, poetry. So tell me: What poems do you remember? What lines still startle you? Keep you awake at night? Provide comfort in difficult situations? Make you smile? Beg to be shared? I’d love to know. Words are a kind of journey. Please take us with you.

Buon viaggio!

A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself. — May Sarton

Your first job is to prepare the soil. The best tool for this is your neighbor’s garden tiller. If your neighbor does not own a garden tiller, suggest that he buy one. — Dave Barry

Early Rhodie

Tim is the product of a full-blooded English father and a half-English mother, so it’s no surprise that he loves to garden. In the matter of gardening, I clearly did not get my Italian family’s genes (except when it comes to tomatoes) because I can kill most plants just by looking at them, and my wimpy, weak back is not made for bending over for hours on end. Oh, sure, I can cultivate a mean african violet or two, but that’s about it. I’d rather buy sunflowers from the grocery store and admire them on the kitchen table while Tim is sweating up a storm outside.

It’s spring here in Virginia as I write this and we’ve already had a few different weather patterns thrust upon us in the last few weeks – temperatures ranging from 36º to 95º with both thunderous rainstorms and near-drought conditions. The locals say it’s pretty typical, but we still can’t get used to it. In New England, where we came from, spring was a very predictable 24-hour affair that happened some time in early June and then immediately gave way to summer. Today is, as a friend of mine used to say, “a perfect San Francisco day,” but it will be up near 90º within 48 hours.

A little contemplative spot

So it is spring and Tim has been planting for weeks. His tomato seeds are coming up nicely and he’s augmented them with some mature plants from the store. He’s put in peppers and spinach and a variety of lettuces. He announced yesterday that his cantaloupes look healthy and that if we watch them very carefully we might be able to get one or two away from the squirrels this year.

The lovely Climatis

I love that he does this. Vegetables and a full herb garden are wondrous things to have for the four or five months that we can enjoy them down here. But Tim’s flowers are what really get to me. They come early and last only a short time. But they make me smile. Here are a few pictures of this year’s selection — and a few garden-related poems.

Travel into our picture garden and then into a few poets’ words: my poem about tulips and then, for a grin, Dorothy Parker’s thorny piece about one perfect rose . . .

Peonies, just before the big bloom

Tulips

In four years I have not taken the tulip bulbs

out of the ground and done what people say I should:

bury them in the basement, hide them in the dark —

as if it isn’t dark enough under ground?

It is part of my continuing carelessness with plants.

Nevertheless, they grow, a little wild, perhaps, and unpredictable.

The tulips, once pure whites and stately reds, are now all pink,

a heathered pale hue that seems honest, a pink that joins

the best of both in their strong petals, not quite filled in

completely, like the haphazard coloring of an inattentive child.

Still, they return each year when late April chills give way

to the warming skies of May. And for a while they stand

above everything else in that little plot of promise,

announcing another safe passage, in spite of my neglect —

proclaiming the covenant of cycles, fueled by water, sun,

and the spirit-rich earth which holds the memory of tulips

for another year.

© 2010 Linda Dini Jenkins

Buon viaggio!