Dear Classmate: Recently you asked me to be your friend on Facebook and of course I accepted. We were friends and classmates in college. Our shared intellectual vivacity and similar backgrounds with rigorous, rugged individualist parents brought us together. But now I’m writing you to say that although I still will be your “real” friend, I no longer want to be one on Facebook. The … Continue reading A Farewell to Hate

Naples has always held some sort of morbid attraction for me. I have wanted to go there since I arrived in Italy two decades ago. Last week, I finally did. Driving me was the same compulsive mix that had once led my ancestors across the Atlantic to the United States, and further west, and that later propelled me to Italy. It was the desire for … Continue reading Devils in Paradise

For 18 years, when Carnival approached, I’d load the car with children (husband/father would come later), skis, bed linens, sleds and a decent teapot that the vacation rental in Cortina d’Ampezzo in Italy’s Dolomites didn’t provide. We had road music — CCR’s “Bad Moon Rising,” Janis Joplin’s “Me and Bobby McGee,” or real bad ZZ Top — and a full tank of gas. Jack Kerouac’s … Continue reading Changing Seasons

First came Amy Chua’s “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom” and now there’s “Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting.” I haven’t read either one (or “Super-Moms from Fiji!” for that matter), but they got me thinking back on my own experience of parenting between cultures. I grew up in the United States of the 1960s and I live and … Continue reading Slacker Mom

While the new face of Italy — Prime Minister Mario Monti — has been calling on U.S. President Barack Obama on his victory lap tour, the old face of Italy — Silvio Berlusconi — has also been busy. He’s been hard at work on a new screenplay for his post-Monti role, with help from co-writers in the foreign press. Berlusconi recently granted the first interviews … Continue reading Shadow Boxer

Just the other day I received a kind of letter I get every few months from college alumnae and friends of friends. It goes like this: Dear Ms. Johnson, I fell in love with Italy during my junior year abroad/vacation/reading a book/watching movies. I love Italian culture and lifestyle and I want to come and live and work there. Do you have any contacts in … Continue reading Italy at Home

I recently wrote a column about the contents of my baggage. This time it’s about the luggage. It began with Ninga, as my great-grandmother was known. A widow with five grown children, Ninga closed her house and moved into a residential hotel on Chicago’s North Shore. She gave away everything that would not fit in two trunks and then she took to traveling. One trunk … Continue reading Ninga

In the 1970s my family’s Christmas season officially started a few days before Thanksgiving. That’s when my father returned from what had become an annual trip to Moscow. It was billed as a medical exchange: Every year he went to Moscow and a Russian came to the United States. But my father’s trip always included a few days in Washington and he claimed the Soviet … Continue reading Malossol

One of the biggest criticisms of Mario Monti is that he wasn’t elected. Well of course he wasn’t. That’s the point. He’s supposed to make Italy become productive again. He’s supposed to tackle just the sort of nasty problems elected people try to avoid — the same ones everyone thought Silvio Berlusconi was going to repair back in 1994, including pension and labor market reform, … Continue reading Ma Cosa Vuoi?

In 1984, during an already successful career, Doris Lessing wrote and submitted for publication two novels under the pseudonym Jane Somers. She wanted to demonstrate that nothing succeeds like success and that an unknown writer was doomed. In fact, her own publisher, Jonathan Cape rejected her manuscripts, which eventually appeared in the United States. Had Lessing submitted this book under the Somers moniker, it would … Continue reading The Sweetest Dream