Author Archive

Double Dipping During the Holidays

I get to double dip big time during the holiday season. No, not the way you think; culturally speaking. I love the American tradition of Christmas, but I still celebrate the Three Wise Men’s arrival on January 6th. And when Peter was alive, we also lit the candles at Hanukah. The fact is that I […]


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Picasso’s Guernica / Coda

No wonder I was attracted to the black and white films that I blogged about in my last post, “The Children Are Watching.” I grew up watching Italian neorealist cinema by Federico Fellini and Vittorio De Sica, albeit they were strictly censored by the Franco regime. I used to go with my parents late in […]


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The Children Are Watching

Belfast was the opening film at the recent Philadelphia Film Festival. Directed and written by Kenneth Branagh, it is currently showing on the big screen. Filmed in black and white, it tells the story of Branagh’s childhood in Belfast during 1969 at the beginning of the so-called Troubles in Northern Ireland.  It was impossible for […]


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The Fabric of Life

Philadelphia is one of those cities that still have neighborhoods defined by trade. We have the famous Jewelers’ Row off 8th Street, although some stores have been demolished to make room for a high-rise condominium. Never mind that its construction has been stalled due to the pandemic, leaving an ugly open wound fenced by barbwire. […]


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Big Night (Revisited)

There are few things that I anticipate more than getting The New Yorker each week and, when it was the “Food and Drink” Issue (September 6, 2021), I found myself reading, tasting and luxuriating all at once. This is “An Archival Issue” that cleverly reprinted exceptional articles from years past within its usual categories. “The […]


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The Italian Market

When I was an overachiever academic, living in Narberth, a suburb of Philadelphia, making strides for tenure or promotion and raising two teenage daughters, I would sometimes feel overwhelmed. It was as if there was no time for anything else but work. Peter’s solution to turn my frown upside down, was quick in coming: “Let’s […]


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