Hashtag Retired

by Angela

A bit of a, sort of a reading rant

January always nudges me to read, simplify, and bake bread, not necessarily in that order. I read all year long, of course, but who doesn’t like a towering new queue to start the year? Although it’s more a work in progress than absolute, that’s my pile in the cover photo, plus The Piano Tuner, The […]

by Angela

Those islands—the second time around

Falling in love with a place isn’t that much different than falling in love with a person. As the old movie theme song goes, the experience can be even lovelier the second time around. First visits have their knock-your-socks-off magic, for sure. But just as the song describes, when you have “both feet on the […]

by Angela

Those missing puzzle pieces

I fall prey to a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle now and then, most often in the dead of winter but occasionally off-season as well. It’s a little thrill when you’ve finished, even if your dog always manages to steal and [possibly] consume a few pieces, so that in the end, like many things in life, it’s […]

by Angela

Thank you, Richard Russo

I remember a time when I’d sit with paperback in hand at the water’s edge for hours, on one of those low-slung sand chairs, the surf washing over my feet. No need for prescription sunglasses in those days! That time of lazy beach vacations has long since passed. Over the years we’ve become more attached […]

by Angela

Lake shores

After far too long a stretch, we finally hit the road for an extended weekend that took us through three states and one Canadian province. Erie, PA, was our first waypoint, chosen so that we could spend an evening with treasured friends we hadn’t seen in far too long. Natives of Pennsylvania’s Great Lakes shore, […]

by Angela

Vermont: a love affair

Our beloved Vermont is hurting right now, and our hearts hurt in turn. Hubby and I have spent many glorious hours ambling through Vermont, most often with my beau-frère and belle-soeur*, who lived in the village of Newbury for some time. We came close to settling there ourselves, back in 2010, but the universe had […]

by Angela

Red

One Word Sundays…My first attempt at a themed photo post.

by Angela

A tribute to my mother…

Hello, everyone. Happy Friday, happy spring, happy Cinco de Mayo, happy Coronation weekend. Just letting you know that Bernadette of Bernadette’s New Classic Recipe graciously invited me to pen a post appropriate for Mother’s Day, which in the US is the second Sunday in May. I’ve written about my mother many times, but this one […]

by Angela

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm…

I’m a native of the state whose “tea party” spawned the American revolution, a second generation Italian-American firmly planted in US soil. If you’ve read my posts, you know how much being Italian means to me. Beyond my birthright, I’m a francophile and an anglophile. And in the latter capacity, I confess to being a […]

by Angela

Grand hotel: The Omni Bedford Springs

Note to my much appreciated readers: This is the third post in my grand hotel series; the first were Wentworth-by-the-Sea and The Omni Mt. Washington. My idea of a near perfect North American odyssey would be a season—it doesn’t matter which—spent wandering from one of the continent’s grand old historic hotels to another, drinking in […]

by Angela

The ‘remember table’

Sounds a little like the title of an Anne Tyler novel, doesn’t it? Sometime in our pup’s second year, Hubby noticed that Enzo goes on high alert if he notices one or both of us at the vanity mirror, attending to the things that people do before they leave the house—Hubby shaving, me fussing with […]

by Angela

Inside that rabbit hole: a progress report

A few posts ago, I shared that I’d done a DNA test that yielded at least one expected result: I’m Southern Italian by an order of magnitude. But it also yielded close to 6,000 DNA matches from all over the place, from Rome to Canberra. The one result I’d really been after, a “proven” connection […]