Author: Admin_user1

“Let’s get out of here,” I yelled as the jackhammers started thundering overhead. Again. Rich pantomimed agreement and we shot out the door. We were staying in an otherwise delightful Airbnb in Syracuse, Sicily. It was sheer bad luck the neighbors directly above had chosen that week to smash up their old stone floors and…

​​“Rich, I’m in trouble,” I said a few mornings ago. “So far our stay here in Catania has been delightful, but I can’t think of a single moment that counts as a Nutter experience. What am I going to write about this week? If I just prattle on about good food and pleasant weather, even…

You have to love the impish sense of humor that prompts a train station to fill its waiting room with sturdy wooden benches then labels them, “ NON SEDERTI QUI (PLEASE DON’T SIT HERE) .” As if any further taunting were needed, this train station — and, coincidentally Rich and I — stood at the…

​Was the letter in the photo above actually composed by Satan? It was discovered in 1676, clutched in the hand of Sister Maria Crocifissa della Concezione (Sister Mary Crucified of the Conception), as she lay collapsed on the floor of her Sicilian convent, covered in ink and gibbering incoherently. As anyone would be, after spending…

On our first morning in Palermo, Sicily, Rich bounded out of bed with the unbridled joy of a man who knows he’s having ice cream for breakfast. I’d read about the Sicilian tradition of starting the day with scoops of gelato stuffed into brioche, and as Rich kept pointing out, I owed it to my…

“It was like being hit over the head with a baseball bat: This is what you’re going to do,” says Alice Mayn. Naturally this staggering epiphany came when she least expected it. “I had retired. I was living in a house that I had remodeled and was going to live in the rest of my…

I once got into a hot dispute with an accordionist, and it didn’t end well. Around the time of our tenth anniversary, Rich and I often went dancing in a small club in Cleveland’s Little Italy, where local bands played ballads made popular by Rat Pack crooners. On a whim, we hired their best band…

​“If you write about this on your blog,” my sister said, “be sure to tell them your family thinks you’re nuts.” Over the phone, I could practically hear her eyes rolling. “Oh, I’m pretty sure my readers have already worked that out for themselves,” I replied. I’d answered the call during my visit to the…

“And that’s when my Uncle Leo shot the man who killed my grandpa,” Linda concluded. And I thought, “Wow, now that’s what I call a story!” My own kinsfolk have a remarkable flair for melodrama, and I was raised on rip-roaring family tales, many of which may even be true. A few of the more…

​“Don’t tell me life doesn’t begin at eighty,” said the octogenarian who had just returned from her honeymoon. She looked jaunty and radiant, and her equally venerable new husband had a distinct twinkle in his eye as he nodded in agreement. I always love seeing newlyweds embracing the future with such visible joy. True, they…