Old man and his pint
Old Viola, at the door, moved his arm upwards as if referring all his quick, fleeting thoughts to the picture of his old chief on the wall. Even when he was cooking for the “Signori Inglesi”—the engineers (he was a famous cook, though the kitchen was a dark…
When sometimes a frying-pan caught fire
Meantime Giorgio, with tranquil movements, had been unfastening the door; the flood of light fell on Signora Teresa, with her two girls gathered to her side, a picturesque woman in a pose of maternal exaltation. Behind her the wall was dazzlingly white, and the crude colours of the…
For years its gnawing had been part of the landscape
It was pain she suppressed the twinge. It had come to her first a few years after they had left Italy to emigrate to America and settle at last in Sulaco after wandering from town to town, trying shopkeeping in a small way here and there; and once…
Maybe you SHOULD read this…
As a new week of partisan political planking (“Nuh-uh, the speck’s in YOUR eye”) gets going full swing through my timeline, it’s a good time to remember the words of Martin Niemöller: “First they came for the communists, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.…