A Pope’s Bitter End
Dear Blog Readers – I just spent the week taking a journalism course in the small town of Fiuggi, in the hills a little south of Rome. I loved going back to “school” and spending hours in the classroom learning about Italian law, the modern history of Europe, and economics. While I was there, I […]
Europe’s Day in Rome
Dear Blog Readers— Yesterday was an historic day for Europe, although it seems to have gone by without much of a blip on the worldwide news radar. I won’t write much about it, but I wanted to share a few behind-the-scenes notes and photos. The leaders of the 27 nations of the European Union gathered […]
Lucia’s Battle
Dear Blog Readers, I have been working with my AP wire colleague Fran D’Emilio on a story on women fighting back against violence in Italy that went out this morning as part of the AP’s many stories for International Women’s Day. Fran wrote an excellent story (see link here: Scarred Survivors) – I handled the TV […]
High in the Sky over Lazio
Dear Blog Readers – This post is the story of how I found myself with sweaty palms in a plane about the size of a firefly looking out over the rolling hills, green fields, and tiny medieval villages around Rome. It all started with the French language. I have been taking an intermediate French language […]
From Palmyra to Rome
Dear Blog Readers, Just a quick blog post to tell you about a little gem of a story I was working on yesterday. The foreign press was invited to visit the restoration laboratory at the famed Superior Institute for Conservation and Restoration in the Trastevere neighborhood of Rome to see two funerary busts damaged by […]
The Writing is on the Wall – Mysteries and Portents in Rome
Dear Blog Readers, You may wonder where I have been since I haven’t been posting. Actually right here in Rome, frenetically rushing around as usual trying to keep all my balls in the air. Hear the sound of them plopping to the ground around me? Since my brain is too frazzled to write a well […]
Tripping Through Texas
This December we had a family reunion in Texas. Having been born and bred in the Boston area and having spent the last 23 years in Rome, I had an erroneous idea of what Texas is all about. I expected a lot of gun-toting cowboys, blond cheerleaders, and pick-up trucks. But Texas was a not […]
