Re-discovering New Haven for CNN Travel

I got to visit New Haven on the company dime and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Now you can, too -- here's my story. It's part of a series we've been doing for three years on the best towns in America that fly under the radar and are often far from the major metropolitan areas.

New Haven is home to Yale -- which you can see in this photo I snapped -- and it's also one of the most walkable cities I've visited in the US.

Here's a note I scrawled in my journal:

New Haven is glorious! I don’t really say it happily but rather with a not-so-healthy dose of jealousy and what-if-ism! It would appear getting into Yale is a golden ticket in more ways than one. You get to live in a beautiful, vibrant city that’s walkable and architecturally alluring (in addition to studying at one of the finest universities in the world).

Before I forget: New Haven is for walkers. I walked so much. So it was really unavoidable that I’d love it, I suppose.

Also, my translation, This Darkness Will Never End, was on the shelf at Atticus! YES!

Interesting fact: I gave all of my leftovers to men on New Haven Green who appeared to need food.

Moment of beauty after the visit: I bought Leo a small puzzle of the painting The Wave at the Yale Art Gallery and he really liked it. He asked to open it immediately and then instead of watching TV, he began to assemble it. When we turned on “Father Ted” after a bit, he didn’t pay much attention to it, preferring instead to painstakingly find pieces of boats that appear in the painting.

(The Yale Art Gallery is quite nice and I didn’t even get to visit the sculpture garden – home to an Alexander Calder – because of the rain).

Anyway, please read my CNN story!

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Nieman: Most Americans don’t pay for news & don’t think they need to

This isn't a blog about the profession that's helped me pay the bills. It's quite the opposite -- a blog to my passions, the ones I've nurtured before and after my day jobs, be they newspaper reporter, NPR station reporter or adjunct prof at my alma mater. 

But it's not really an accident that I became a journalist, even if I was reluctant at first (and now earn my money in additional other ways like teaching). I grew up in a house where The New York Times was delivered every day to our doorstep -- and woe if it wasn't there on time, because my father would throw a fit! He liked to take the paper with him to the government lab where he worked so he could peruse the headlines over lunch, in the era long before smartphones (obviously).

When he returned home in the evening, he would remove the newspaper from his briefcase so that after dinner -- after my poor mother had slaved over the meal, and then cleaned up the kitchen, with little help from her wayward fourth daughter -- she could sit in her rocking chair in the living room to read the news while she smoked a cigarette (or two).

I can remember talking to her in that very spot about news articles and historical moments connected to the Watergate era, the Holocaust, the Revolutionary War and many other topics (she was a history buff).

My parents were so Catholic, it was painful! I once made the mistake of suggesting I might become a Protestant, and with a tone of voice that could freeze mighty rivers, my father replied icily, "You can do that but it's not the true path." 

Yet the words my parents quoted the most issued not from the Holy Bible but rather the not-so-holy New York Times (which my mother insisted was anti-Catholic, if not simply anticlerical, though it did nothing to slow down her news consumption and I don't think she was right).

When I reported my one and only news feature story for The New York Times, my father clipped the article from the Business section and taped it up on the wall of his den in New Jersey ('one and only,' only because they've rejected subsequent pitches -- I'm always available for The Gray Lady when she needs me). I suspect he didn't really think I was a journalist until that moment.

My aunts and uncles on my father's side have also always read the newspaper. Some of them are also masters of the NYT crossword! (Such smart people from Bayonne, NJ!)

In other words, as far as I'm concerned, if The Times reports it, it's news, I should know about it and that's that. 

I've raised Leo to read the newspaper as well (as I mentioned in a personal essay that I published -- pinch me! -- with The New York Times, he and I used to begin our days when he was a toddler by looking for photos of Pres. Obama in the newspaper). We now send the dog out to get the paper every morning, and over breakfast, Leo at least looks at the headlines. He also has had a subscription to The Week Junior for several years (thanks to my Aunt Marianne).

I know he will get his news from multiple sources -- he already listens to podcasts and adores "The Daily Show" (not only for the sexual references and frat-like tone, though that helps.) The important thing is that he knows the news, seeks out news reports and understands it's vital in a Democracy.

All of this to say, I am apoplectic about a recent report from Harvard's venerable journalism institute, Nieman Lab, about a study conducted by the Pew Research Center on the news consumption habits of Americans now.

As Pew puts it, Americans have a "complicated relationship" with news, with many surveyed saying they let news "find them," because of course, these days, we are bombarded with information via social media.

But as Nieman summarizes it in its headline, most Americans don't pay for news and don't think they need to. Of the people surveyed, an astonishing 83 percent said they do not spend money to receive news (through subscriptions, memberships or donations, according to Pew). 

RED ALERT

RED ALERT

RED ALERT

In a Democracy, we must know what's happening. We must know what the government is up to. And we need people who are paid to pay attention to what's happening and what the government is up to.

It's helpful if the journalists have steady staff positions. It's not like producing a widget -- a reporter may have to spend hours upon hours talking to people or attending meetings or traveling far and wide to gather information in person before he or she is ready to publish an actual story. It could take days or even months.

And yes, a journalist may have to speak to people who do not want their names published in order to find out what's really happening.

We know from Watergate, the Iran-Contra affair, and of course the wicked Epstein file scandal that the government sometimes takes steps to hide information.

I've tried to avoid asking people to spend money on my behalf -- even with my Edith Bruck translation, I gave my author copies to the people closest to me because I didn't want to burden them by asking them to buy the book (now I'm just bugging them to write a review on Amazon).

But I'm asking you as an American to support a news organization. Not necessarily CNN, my news organization, but any news organization that provides solid, original reporting.

It could even be a Substack -- Roger Sollenberger is doing solid reporting on the Epstein files.

Journalism has to be a paid activity that people seek out for work and we news consumers have to pay for it. The advertising model for newspapers has collapsed. The work that good newspapers do, however, still needs to be underwritten, supported, discussed and valued.

When you turn on CNN to see what's happening in Iran, the people explaining and delivering the news earn a good salary so that they can tell you the latest developments accurately. They cannot do a good job if they are not paid enough to do so -- if they have to take on second jobs or can only publish their work on a personal website after being laid off or if they cut corners because they are not paid enough to do careful reporting.

Other organizations worth your time and patronage:

The Boston Globe

The Philadelphia Inquirer

The Guardian

The New Yorker

The Atlantic

Smithsonian (not breaking news but important investigative journalism)

National Geographic (not breaking news but important investigative journalism)

The Morning Call (Allentown)

Local NPR stations (including WHYY, WABE, Georgia Public Broadcasting, WBUR and Connecticut Public)

The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

Last but not least, if you have a young person in your life who would benefit from AND ACTIVELY USE a subscription to CNN or The New York Times, please get in touch with me.

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The best magazine you've never read (unless you're 12)

When “The Week Junior” arrives in the mail, my 12-year-old son sits down immediately to read it cover to cover. One quick look at its smartly-written articles and eye-catching graphics, I see why he loves it so much. As a former newspaper reporter, I am thrilled at his interest!

The weekly publication, which debuted in 2020, is aiming to instill a habit in young readers that’s already a bygone one for many of their parents. Its very existence gives me hope for the future of journalism, and it doesn’t dumb anything down; coverage has included such high-brow topics as Henry Kissinger’s visit to China.

The magazine is so good that I've pitched feature articles about it but haven't been successful so I am writing about it here (in fact, I started this post more than a year ago, hence the reference to a 12-year-old son. He's now 13!). 

Just like a news magazine or newspaper, The Week Junior covers a little bit of everything, and there are always calls for reader submissions of photos or ideas. Coverage includes tween and teen-friendly topics such as Taylor Swift and the World Cup, in addition to hard news about politics and world events.

I'm writing about it now so that the magazine can attract more subscribers and keep going. It’s hitting newsstands at a time when scores of magazines and newspapers for grownups have closed. I hope it's successful longterm because it's been a wonderful gift for Leo (courtesy of my one-of-a-kind Aunt Marianne).

And of course, the next generation of news consumers needs to be nurtured.

Journalism is at an inflection point and our national digital addiction has also reached crisis proportions. The Week Junior is attempting to instill the habit of reading the news in the next generation at a time when adults as well as children are giving up on print publications. 

I am blogging about this magazine because I want the world to know about it, even if I've been unsuccessful pitching a feature article about it. Maybe another writer will see my post and write about the magazine. Or a parent will subscribe.

This is a magazine any parent would be proud to have in the home, and which furnishes children not only with information about our world but with curiosity about it.

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For CNN Travel: why can't America have more piazzas?

Piazza Navona. Piazza Santo Spirito. Campo dei Fiori. Piazza Duomo (Milan). Just some of the piazzas I love. 

And since I now work as a contract editor for CNN Travel, I recently published an article about how much Americans have come to love public squares in Europe -- in increasing numbers, too -- only to return home disappointed that most of our towns and cities don't have these wonderful outdoor communal living rooms.

My photo editor at CNN found a gorgeous photo of the epic piazza in Lucca that has the distinction of being one of the only fully-enclosed piazzas in Italy (fully-walled, in other words; you enter through arches/porticos, not a road) (click on the link for the story to see it). I'm using here a photo of Piazza San Carlo in Torino, which is also dazzling. I took it several years ago on a whirlwind, solo trip to Italy on the occasion of the Salone del Libro -- Italy's largest book fair.

You can read the story here:

https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/19/travel/europe-public-squares-american-development

Other CNN bylines:

You can also read an article I wrote for CNN Travel about the many Canadian travelers who are no longer visiting the US here.

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Edith Bruck & My Year in Translation (2025)

It was the year of the milestone for me -- I published my first book-length translation, This Darkness Will Never End. I both love and hate to admit that I've wanted to translate a book since studying Italian at Wesleyan, which was a while ago, hence the hate. (I have a similar push-pull when asking people to buy the translation -- read 'til the end to see what I mean).

As a result of the work required to promote the book, my annual tallying up of creative pursuits is a bit thin, although in support of the translation, I also published two shorter translations online of work by Edith Bruck:

*An essay called, “My Alma Mater is Auschwitz,” (in World Literature Today, published on Jan. 27, 2025, in commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day)

AND

*An excerpt of Ms. Bruck's 1974 novella, "Two Empty Rooms," in Jewish Currents. 

As I staged readings for the translation around the Northeast (see pic of a book event in Connecticut) and taught a course at Wesleyan, I managed to spend very little time writing essays this year, although since my work at CNN has changed (I'm now working for CNN Travel), I did produce some travel writing, including an article that I wrote about the dearth of piazzas in the US and another about visiting the liberal enclave of Northampton, Massachusetts.

But I did blog, especially about Italy! You might like this post. Or perhaps you want to hear me drone on about the little keepsakes I insist on buying? Read this post. 

And in addition to blogging about Italy, I also somehow wrote a blogpost in remembrance of Liz that readers found even though I didn't share it on social media. In fact, more people have read this post than any other post I've ever written in nearly 20 years of blogging. Perhaps there are lots of other translators or writers out there who only reach a milestone after the person who would have appreciated it the most has died and that's why so many people read it -- ? But maybe it's easy to explain: grief is our shared possession, the one club every single human being will join, wittingly or unwittingly. 

It's worth mentioning one more bit of writing: I published my first obituary with CNN -- one that I had pitched to write for our pre-written obit file and which combined my dayjob with my after-hours work: Rose Girone, the oldest known Holocaust survivor died at age 113. I finished the pre-write not too long before she unfortunately left us.

I did little in the way of literary criticism but I managed to publish a review of a book by one of my favorite authors, Patrick Modiano, for one of my favorite newspapers, The Boston Globe. 

What were you up to this year? What milestones did you reach or move toward?

One last question: As you contemplate gifts for Hanukkah and Christmas, will you consider giving someone you love This Darkness Will Never End?

I'm proud to have reached this milestone and I've found hard work is its own reward. But I believe in Edith Bruck, I believe in the powerful message of survival her work transmits and I believe we must know our history so my Christmas wish is to spread the word about this translation as far as it can go. Spreading the word, for better or for worse, means selling more translations (including ebooks!).

Yours in reading, Jeanne

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Why you should press 'record' on Thanksgiving (my Bos. Globe essay)

I'm reposting a version of an essay I wrote for The Boston Globe several years ago that contains some advice I still like to offer folks, especially at this time of year. It's an essay about the power of recording our loved ones' words, and the power specifically of recording my son's words and also those of my mother, in what was one of the last good recordings I made with her. 

Be fair warned, though: "Sound gets inside of you -- it inhabits you. It can break your heart."

Here's the essay:

During a weekend visit to New York last winter, I recorded my son’s impressions of the city. I began by asking where we were. I thought he would simply say “Manhattan” or “at the hotel,” but Leo, then 9, said, “We’re in a hotel in New York City, in North America, on a planet known as Earth, in a galaxy known as the Milky Way, in a universe known as the Universe.”

When I became a mother in my late 30s, I wanted to do more than take photos or videos of my son. I wanted to remember his speech development by preserving his sounds. So I recorded him.

Jay Allison, the founder of “The Moth Radio Hour,” once told me that humans relate to sound in a way that’s distinct from other media.

“Sound literally gets inside of you — it inhabits you,” Allison said. “It can break your heart. That’s different from photos, which remain on the outside.”

I recorded Leo’s snores, his gurgles, his first words. Some recordings are filled with his guffawing as he watches TV. His belly laughs are a tonic.

Recording has been a tradition in my family. My late father recorded conversations with my sisters and me on a handheld tape deck. Piling into his den, we crowded around his desk as he pressed the two large play and record buttons. Later, we would listen back to the tape with glee.

Far too late, I grasped the importance of recording my mother and father. If pure joy compelled me to record Leo, pure dread inspired me to begin recording my parents a few years ago. What would happen to their stories when they died?

Before it was too late, I needed to piece together one bit of crucial family history that had never been fully explained: What had happened when my mother’s younger brother died in a car accident at age 18?

She rarely mentioned him during my childhood, except to say that my grandparents never recovered from the loss of their oldest son, whom everyone called Spike. I only gleaned a few snippets about him during the adults’ cocktail hour at my grandparents’ house: He had an outgoing personality and was a football star.

My mother was 19 when he died. Now, in part because of my recordings, I see his death, in 1957, as an event that has hovered over her entire adult life.

Recording my mother’s words made sense for another reason: Video is for action, and her action days are behind her. At the time of my last good recording, she was 83. She sat down in her chair at the foot of the stairs, and, bathed in the glow of a floor lamp, she lit a cigarette. She was game to talk about anything but the present or recent past, which dementia had begun to scramble in her brain. More or less housebound, she spent most days chain-smoking and dozing off, unsure of the month or sometimes even the season.

Her mental fog would soon force us to move her to a nursing home, but when I asked about the circumstances of Spike’s accident, barely a second elapsed before she began reciting a chronology of events. It was as if she was supplying answers she’d had at the ready for decades.

The accident had occurred during the summer. Spike was driving a convertible. A top student, he’d been given the car as a graduation gift from my grandparents, following his acceptance at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester. He’d been killed instantly when his car collided with an embankment and flipped over.

The funeral was held at his Catholic high school. “Oh God, thousands of people came,” my mother told me. “Thousands.” It doesn’t matter that she’s likely wrong about the number — it matters only that in her mind’s eye, legions of people came to pay their respects to the luminous brother she’d lost.

It wasn’t until months later, when I listened again to the recording, that I discovered a moment I had overlooked. After the funeral, my mother told me, they drove out to the cemetery, which was some distance away. At one point during the muggy hour-long drive, the road curved, and my mother turned to look behind her. And that’s when she glimpsed through the back windshield the headlights of the dozens and dozens of cars following the hearse to her brother’s final resting place.

More than anything else, that image crystallized for me the tragic loss she’d borne for 65 years.

Recording affords us the ability to save not just our parents’ voices but their stories.

“People would tell us, ‘I have a recording of my father’s voice, and it’s all I have left,’” Allison told me. “It was an actual part of the person — it contained his breath.”

In the years to come, these recordings that contain my mother’s breath will remain precious to me. And the little that I learned about Spike furnishes me with an outline of the uncle I never knew and his role in my mother’s life.

This holiday season, consider pressing “record” on your smartphone when you’re around the table. The sounds of gathering — the voices, the stories, the ambient clatter — will fill an audio time capsule you’ll cherish on some future day when you’re longing in vain to hear a loved one’s voice.

You can also read the essay (with the full image of the wonderful photo they chose) on the Globe site:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/11/23/opinion/why-you-should-record-your-holiday-dinner-conversations/ 

Rose Girone, the oldest known Holocaust survivor, dies at 113 (CNN)

My first published obituary for CNN -- and I'm proud to say it is one I pitched, and one I knew we had to have.

Rose Girone survived both German and Japanese persecution, and managed to live eight decades beyond  the end of World War II.

Girone was one of about 10 pre-written obits I completed. Thanks to the USC Shoah Foundation, I was able to watch hours of interviews with Girone where she matter-of-factly described the treatment she endured first in Germany, as a young pregnant wife, and later as a refugee in China, under Japanese domination.

It's a rare instance where elements of my two part-time gigs converged: editing for CNN and researching the Holocaust for my literary translation work.

Read the full obit here: 

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/27/us/rose-girone-obit

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Birthday journal

Normally for my birthday, I record an entry in my digital journal. A habit whose name in shorthand is, 'Birthday Journal.' Just a diary entry designed to note and provide my mental temperature for future me, who will be re-reading Birthday Journal entries to revisit, to reminisce, to relive.

And I intend to continue with the tradition but I also decided to do something else this year.

I am feeling particular vulnerable this birthday and so I am reaching for my security blanket -- writing. The writing I've managed to produce AND publish. It's a selfish exercise -- safely indulged perhaps only on one's birthday or death bed, and not sure about the former -- but perhaps it could shed a bit of light for those similarly vulnerable this year for any kind of reason.

So here are bits of of my own writing that fill me with pride, and which are not behind a paywall that I can't scale (the links to the pieces for The New York Times are gift articles):

About motherhood (The New York Times):

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/30/well/family/recording-the-sound-of-my-childs-voice.html?unlocked_article_code=1.104.mPll.Ay79fdY7jDCL&smid=url-share

About issues of great personal interest, including our Down Syndrome friends (NYT):

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/23/well/family/in-toy-ads-and-on-the-catwalk-models-with-down-syndrome.html?unlocked_article_code=1.104.cPce.3-6WkMS7lv1k&smid=url-share

About grief (Brevity):

https://themillions.com/2023/01/the-books-that-made-my-father.html

About the glorious 1980s!!! (CNN)

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/13/entertainment/brat-pack-documentary-mccarthy-cec/index.html

About dogs! (namely Caramel!)

https://brevity.wordpress.com/2020/11/25/the-dog-journal/

About language and its intoxicating ways (The Millions):

https://themillions.com/2023/11/the-quiet-exhilaration-of-reading-in-italian.html

Thank you all for your support!

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Writing about Patrick Modiano for the Boston Globe (Jan. 19, 2025)

So thrilled to write about Patrick Modiano in the Sunday Boston Globe. His newest novel, Ballerina, which will be published this week by Yale University Press, reminded me of a saying attributed to Henry Moore about the necessity of having a task that consumes you every day -- one that you'll never be able to complete, however. Presumably Moore was thinking about sculpture but what about writing fiction in a bid to exhume the personal and political ghosts of wartime Paris?

Modiano has published dozens of books -- yes, dozens (and I've read and re-read many of them); and nearly all of them circle a particular time period -- the Occupation and the 30-year-period that followed in France -- and a particular obsession: what Daddy did during the war.

As I mention in the review, Modiano's father was Jewish and on the run from the Nazis. A terrible story and regrettably very common in that period but Alberto Modiano took a different approach: if the Nazis essentially outlawed his Jewish identity, then an outlaw he would be, trading goods on the Black Market, possibly collaborating in odd ways.

In Ballerina, which was translated by Mark Polizzotti, Modiano only touches on such things obliquely but the mystery of his father's existence  -- coupled with the neglect shown both by Alberto and Alberto's wife to their two children, including young Patrick -- continues to haunt France's most famous living author.

Read the review at the Globe site here:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/01/15/arts/in-ballerina-patrick-modiano-again-revisits-wartime-paris/

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What women Holocaust survivors can teach us

When I went to study at the New York Public Library in connection with a short fellowship I'd won, my intention was to study the author whose work I was translating (Edith Bruck). Sure, I planned to look at other analogous works in translation.

But I wasn't expecting to uncover a trove of information about how women's experiences of deportation and imprisonment by the Nazis differed from men's experiences -- and more importantly, differed from the accepted notion of the Lager in the public imagination.

What I mean is: what we know about concentration camps comes largely from the accounts of men, including authors I prize such as Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel.

Their stories are essential, of course, but so, too, are the stories of clandestine pregnancies in the Lager and the fates of so many children which hung on whether their mothers chose to save themselves or accepted dying along with their little ones (since children were typically slated for immediate elimination). 

The only universally known story of the Holocaust not penned by a man is The Diary of Anne Frank. But there is so much more we need to learn -- and as the number of living witnesses dwindles, there's no time to lose.

Please read more at the American Scholar:

https://theamericanscholar.org/the-forgotten-writers-of-the-shoah/

And thank you.

End of ORIGINAL POST here.

Adding: I've jotted down some titles for anyone who wants to begin exploring books by women survivors, specifically. Here's a link to that post:

https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2024/01/women-holocaust-survivors-reading-list.html

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Stepping Stones Reveal a Path into Italy's Dark History -- for PBS site

Writing stories culled from your travels is a dream assignment. I rarely get paid to do it! But in this case I did, and what's more, the topic is tied to the work I do as a literary translator.

For the PBS website, Next Avenue, I wrote about tiny public memorials to victims of the Holocaust and other targets of the Nazi-Fascist forces. These memorials are copper-plated cobblestones embedded in the streets of Italy, Germany and other countries. I learned about the stepping stones while researching Italian women writers -- and others -- who have borne witness to the Holocaust.

And last summer while I was in Italy, I was able to visit some of these stones in Rome, Milan and Florence. 

The stones in some ways are a paradox: tiny but powerful, open to the public at all hours for free but especially poignant when you're able to do some additional research. Under foot -- which some people object to -- but also in the way, in your face, in a way that supporters like. You can't avoid this historical moment -- it's right under your foot.

(Editor's note: the Next Avenue site has been pared down because of budget shortfalls and many of the stories it once published are no longer hosted on the site. Click on 'Next Avenue' at the top of this post for a PDF of my story).

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The Year in Writing and Failing (final edition)

The year went so badly for writing that I pre-empted this now-annual post with a precocious version over the summer, declaring that "while I am writing, I am failing."

My year-end taking-stock has been an enjoyable ritual for the past 7 years as I am typically able to log a few solid accomplishments each year. 

That's despite the fact that I am still a completely unknown writer (trust me) and an emerging literary translator (emerging at my tender age, by the way, not so great).  

(If you're curious, here's the post from 2019 and another one dedicated to literary translation). 

But 2022 diverged so thoroughly from the outline of my writing goals for the year that in a fit of despair, I decided in July to declare 2022 'The Year In Writing and Failing' (OK, yes, only on my blog, which is read by about five people, but as you can see on the right, last year was 'The Year in Writing and Contemplation,' which sounds oh so much better than failure).

And it's because I'd decided that 2022 would be the year to write about the uncle I never knew.

What I didn’t know, of course, is that it would also be the year I struggled to write about the uncle I never knew -- struggled over and over and over. I submitted the idea dozens of times in myriad different versions, writing it and rewriting it.

Nicknamed Spike, my uncle died long before I was born -- before he could even become my uncle. Exactly 65 years ago this year.

And now at the end of what I’d dubbed the Year of Spike, I have not told his whole story -- but I did manage to tell a part of it. An 11th hour compromise that introduced my readers to him, and the hole his death left in my mother's life.

By which I mean: at the end of November, I published an essay in Boston Globe's Ideas section about the importance of recording our parents' stories, and it included excerpts from an interview I conducted with my mother about Spike. Here's the essay:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/11/23/opinion/why-you-should-record-your-holiday-dinner-conversations/

So much about Spike remains in my notebook and unpublished: the details of an archival article I found about the accident ("Youth, 18, Killed in Crash"), the comments sent via email by his octogenarian schoolmates from the now defunct Brooklyn Prep high school (that he was "a wild man," that he went to "smoochie smoochie parties," that he was defined by speed and fun), the list of high school activities (he ran track, was in the honor guard, had twice been elected Class Vice President, etc), the scholarship he may have received to the College of the Holy Cross (the college doesn't still have admission records from 1957 -- I checked).

Why you should press 'record' on Thanksgiving (for the Boston Globe)

I began by recording Leo, and ended up recording my parents. 

And I've published an essay about doing both while also researching the Uncle I Never Knew for the Boston Globe.

I also managed to quote Jay Allison, the Moth Radio Hour impresario who says something so beautiful it might have been worth building an essay around:

"Sound gets inside of you -- it inhabits you. It can break your heart."

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/11/23/opinion/why-you-should-record-your-holiday-dinner-conversations/

On all of the Joan Didion items you might want to buy (for CNN)

Every now and again, I file stories for CNN (instead of simply editing other writers' stories), and every now and again I am able to combine my identities as a part-time journalist and a part-time essayist while reporting a story.

This is one of those occasions. I wrote about the auction of personal items that once belonged to seminal writer Joan Didion.

Of course, I've read Didion's work! I aim to chronicle my whole life through essays so I've absorbed many of hers, and was thrilled to quote a few of my favorites in this auction preview story.

A bit chagrined that I am already priced out of said auction -- which includes artwork, furnishings and unused writing notebooks (that last item, hmmm, yes I would happily take those if they weren't selling for $2,500!).

I began reading the Tracy Daugherty biography & revisiting other works -- I'm even thinking it's time to find my copy of Play It As It Lays, though I haven't seen it in years. Maybe decades.

Oh and I'll take recommendations for favorite Didion works I haven't read. Not that I need anything else to put on the TBR pile but...

Here's to pioneering women writers. Here's to women writers who are so successful and iconic that their belongings are coveted.

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Walking the dog to the sound of Italian news

I hear Mike chuckle as I grab my quilted LL Bean vest on my way out the door to walk the dog one morning last summer.

“You’re not going to need that. It’s already 80 degrees,” he sniggers.

Oh, I’ll need it, I think, as I slip my cell phone into one of the front pockets.

That's because often while walking our dog, I catch up on Italian news by tuning into RAI radio programs. Walking the dog, in other words, to the sound of Italian news streaming on my phone.

As I meander through the familiar streets of my neighborhood, I become embroiled in crises half a world away. I’m getting up to speed on the latest COVID precautions. I am hearing about the current crisis facing Mario Draghi or whoever has the misfortune of being Prime Minister. (The photo above is of Draghi as his administration was falling apart; he needed a quickie espresso right on the floor of Parliament to cope). 

The usual, in other words. 

Fact is, I’ve been embroiled (happily so!) in Italian news for more than two decades. Two decades of reluctant exile. 

All because of a study abroad program in Siena, Italy, too many years ago to specify.  

Once you've heard and understood Italians speaking their native language, I don't think you can go back to the English-only world. I couldn't. 

(I often counsel friends who are about to embark on an Italian vacation to study some Italian -- honestly, nothing beats understanding what the barista is saying to a local at the counter of a caffe while he/she gets the coffee orders ready).

So while Caramel tugs at her leash, I'm enjoying the program "Prima Pagina." Or "Il Libro del Giorno," (The Book of the Day). One day, there was the radio documentary on Lucio Battisti, one of my favorite Italian singer-songwriters. (My favorite song, and the song that initiated me into the joys of Italian pop music, is "La Canzone del Sole" by Battisti).

I've written about "Prima Pagina" before because it's one of the ways I keep in touch with Italy, and the daily radio show is both novel and thoroughly novecentesco (something out of the 1900s). A different journalist each week comes into the studio to read the headlines and summaries of stories on the front pages of ALL the major Italian newspapers. But not only: minor papers, too! Weeklies! 

He or she comments on the stories, compares the way the various publications play a particular news item and fills in back story in the event the reader may have forgotten (or her dog is tugging a bit too hard on the leash). Where he or she is a seasoned journalist -- it's like a guided tour of the Italian newsscape at any given moment, in the company of an expert.

I think it's brilliant! I am a committed newspaper-reader but I only read one newspaper whether I am in Italy or America, and yet sure, I wouldn't mind knowing how other newspapers tackled the big stories of the day. I also love that I can "read" the newspaper while walking the dog -- or doing the wash (hypothetical, that last one).

As a (part-time) journalist, I have the vague notion that it reinforces the value of journalism and of newspapers, even if I can also imagine many Italians might skip buying the paper after listening to the day's episode.

(It also reminds me that knowing a foreign language is the key to a secret world. Yes, I am walking my dog in the prosaic streets of suburban Connecticut but my mind has flown, is flying, is in ecstasy). 

Perhaps what's wonderful about it all is that it has a value and provides a service even if the return on the investment is dubious. That describes a lot of Italian life -- a service exists, a flourish is provided, the extra mile extended, whether it "pays off" in the near-term or not. Because in the long term, that bit of extra always pays dividends. 

(I am thinking of the work done especially by those bariste in Italy -- the personal touch extended to each patron with a nary a tip in sight such that the Italian coffee bar remains a beloved fixture in cities, big towns, small towns, train stations, shabby neighborhoods on the outskirts and anywhere else an Italian might need un caffe).

In my case, that extra bit takes the form of a giratina through my neighborhood, listening to a seasoned journalist in a RAI studio in Italy explaining at great length the news of the day to me while Caramel sniffs around (then sniffs again) without my spending a dime for it.

So yes, I'll take that quilted vest because it holds my cell phone, which helps transport me far, far away to Italian news land where all my various selves converge.

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In Italy for the banner hed: "Addio al governo Draghi"

I go to Italy to reconnect with the old Jeanne, the one who wasn't able to resist the siren call of il Bel Paese after her college graduation. The Jeanne who hadn't yet become a newspaper reporter or an NPR station producer or a contract editor for CNN.

But as much as I am retracing my ex-pat steps, during this most recent trip I was still the journalist I had become post-Italy. And I swooned when I saw this headline: "Addio al governo Draghi."

While I slept, the Italian government had fallen (the headline can be translated as: Goodbye to the Draghi administration). As often happens, the coalition of political parties that make up the administration could not hold.

It wasn't totally unexpected, except that when I went to bed the night before, it appeared a deal had been reached to keep the current administration/coalition in power. (Plus, the prime minister in question is a serious economist named Mario Draghi who's the country's only hope at navigating the post-pandemic financial woes.)

When I went to the newsstand the next morning, I immediately realized that deal had failed.

It's not like the time that Mike went to Italy and the Pope died (!) but still, a government collapse is pretty darn big news, and for a journo like me, it quickens the pulse.

I also love this photo:

Not all that often is an American president shown (i.e. photographed) downing a quickie coffee as the world unravels around him.

There are headlines that you will never forget. I happen to have another Italian headline that I will always recall -- tied to my semester abroad in Siena: 'L'Italia è desta.' Show of hands who remembers that one! But it's a story for another day. For now, I am merely mulling over the political fortunes of my adopted country.

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When an ex-reporter like me tries to write fiction

“Well, is he crooked or not? 

My editor didn’t bother waiting for me to walk across the newsroom to his desk. He'd spotted me the moment I turned the corner from the hall by the elevator into the large open space where all of us reporters and editors worked. I was reading an email from my father on my smartphone while nibbling a bagel. Another day in journalism – fielding quasi-existential questions while inhaling lunch on the fly after a news conference ran long.

 

I was sapped. But I had been on the beat long enough to understand his unspoken question.

 

Without looking him in the eye, I said, “You ever cheat on your wife?”

 

I could feel Joe smile immediately, as if to say, “Now we’re getting somewhere.” It was almost as if I were able read his thoughts – how he preferred saucy women reporters to the men who wandered into the field with a sense of entitlement even though he wasn't going to object too much to the routine promotions of said men.

 

He allowed himself -- and me -- a small chuckle. “Not if I can help it.”

 

“Exactly.”

 

“Exactly what?” Looking at his watch, he picked up some papers from his desk. “I have to go into a roomful of editors right now and they’re going to want to know if the Mayor is crooked enough to put on the front page.”

 

“I know. And I’m telling you he might be as crooked as you are. Or he might be a helluva lot more crooked. Just can’t tell yet.”

 

The police scanner blared with static, and then the dispatcher's voice emerged. “Stay on the line caller,” she said, then nothing, followed by, “Caller advises that her husband has locked himself in the bathroom with a handgun and a three-year-old child…..”

 

We listened for a moment instinctively, then ignored it. Not our problem. Our corner of the City Desk didn't deal with the cop beat.

NYT: "Watching the U.S. Election While Irish" (file under 'articles I love')

This is the art of writing a newspaper column -- or an op-ed -- at its finest:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/13/opinion/cnn-election-ireland.html

And it's a perfect thing to post for St. Paddy's Day. I've been saving it for a while as you'll see.

Sláinte! 

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The Year in Writing ... and Contemplation

Here we are at the end of another year -- at the end of another can-you-believe-it year. A year where you could be forgiven for asking, Did that really happen? Except you would be asking it almost every day.

And those of us who write ... tried to write. (Some of us even tried to translate, though not nearly as much as desired).

It seems odd to tally up what's been gained when I am so mindful of what's been lost. Dare I say I was hoping to be a catcher in the rye, not of wayward children but of sick parents?

Last year when I wrote this annual roundup, I talked about not achieving much. But I think that when I wrote it, I admitted as much with the naive idea that 2021 would be different. We'd go back to normal and we'd be logging all kinds of achievements and wins.

Not so much, right? I was shocked a few months back when my doctor said she doesn't think the pandemic will be going away but rather we'll learn to live with it. Maybe this was 100 percent clear to you, and everyone else. But I hadn't gotten that memo. I was thinking at some point I wouldn't have one hand tied behind my back all the time.

I suppose of it's of a piece in a year in which my parents seemed to grow old overnight, and I had the belated realization that they have been the superheroes of my life -- at the exact moment their super powers have begun to wane.

I hope it won't appear unseemly to continue on with this tradition, in light of recent events, and I will be counting on you to join me so we can count our blessings together. I'll start with the year's highlight, then step back to consider the broader picture.

I didn't publish much in the way of translations this year but I did have a wonderful experience that was very much tied to translation: my short fellowship at the New York Public Library. I finally took it, aimed at working on translations and doing research on Italian women authors who have written works about surviving the Holocaust. Clearly the people who built the library's main branch on Fifth Avenue knew that readers and scholars needed a sanctuary -- a church or temple or mosque of books -- and they made it so. Every moment studying in that gorgeous monument to learning sparkled, and besides, simply returning to New York was a gift. I blogged about it, of course, homing in how I now experience Manhattan through my father's eyes, and you can read those posts here and here.

The Rose Main Reading Room dazzles; with a painted and gold-ornamented ceiling, it's as beautiful as some of the churches people visit in Florence (and for the topic I am researching, the library has EVERY book imaginable). If you visit, make a detour to the periodical room on the first floor -- it might just be the most beautiful room in the entire library. The kind of wood-paneled reading nook all of us books-obsessed folks dream about.

Having begun with the pinnacle, I will pause to ask:

What are your writing goals (or creative goals or for my sister, Denise, exercise goals)? I often update my goals -- mid-year adjustments, I call them! -- but really, I have a few permanent ones: 

*Write regularly, and 

*Land work in a new publication. 

I also have what appears to be a pie-in-the-sky goal: land a regular writing gig at a publication (like a column; I always think if I had stayed at the Morning Call, I would have hoped to become one of the newspaper's columnists). Oh and I also would like to meet Bono! But I suppose that is neither here nor there.

Putting the pie-in-the-sky aside, I managed to keep writing regularly and also land work in a new publication. In fact two, though you may think the first doesn't count: CNN. 

Yes, I work there as a contract news editor but getting an essay published by CNN Opinion is totally separate! And now that I've done it once, I see it's not so easy. Here it is:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/03/opinions/family-history-research-pandemic-year-bonner/index.html

I also did a tiny bit of reporting this year for CNN in connection with three stories I pitched -- something I hadn't been doing. Shall I inch my way back to reporting? I do miss it -- it's hard as hell but the contact with people and the process of gathering information is exhilarating. Ex-journos, how do you handle this? I don't mean to wax poetic about the business of journalism -- it's brutal. But there's something about reporting that is elemental. And I think I need to do a little reporting each year, if I can swing it. If you agree, let's chat. Here's one feature story I wrote about libraries doing some rather heroic work during the pandemic:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/13/us/coronavirus-libraries-pandemic/index.html

As for the other new publication/venue, an essay of mine was published in the Boston Globe's Sunday Ideas section -- which was a thrill. Possibly a new home for future work, and I got the whole back page the week it ran! If you haven't already read it, it's about pocketing small items from my parents' house that will let me hold onto their spirits.

Love this: How a Barber and Journaling Expert Spends His Sundays

I'm a sucker for a journalistic profile of any kind, even a mini-profile in the form of the Sunday Routine column in The New York Times. And this guy writes in his journal! My kind of guy!

He's also spreading the word about keeping a journal to others -- a calling we both share.

"Basically, I’m sharing ways to keep journaling simple and to not overthink it while at the same time talking about the value of doing it every day so that it can become a habit. I feel like some people use social media to document their lives, but creating posts isn’t great for record-keeping and doesn’t provide the space for reflection that writing a journal entry does."

(He's also a barber.)

Read about his Sunday Routine by clicking on this sentence.

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