LESLIE MCBRIDE WILE There’s a hole in the heart of Piazza. Our farmacia storica has closed its door under the portici, the metal gates pulled tight. The hand-painted sign remains above, as if some other pharmacy might come along to…
LESLIE MCBRIDE WILE A few words—very few–as any attempt by me to make sense of or draw neat conclusions about 2021 seems presumptuous, futile, and redundant. It’s been a year, four seasons and 365 days, events unique and mundane, day…
LESLIE MCBRIDE WILE 13 February It’s snowing again, a lazy tumble hiding not a thing, dropping a delicate web over tree and field, garden and wall. My husband says he’s done with winter, and this half-hearted effort seems to show…
LESLIE MCBRIDE WILE 1 February Here’s a new month in the new year, but I can’t escape a recurring sense of déjà vu, of experience spiralling back upon itself. It feels as if the same full moon has been rising…
LESLIE MCBRIDE WILE 13 January 2021 We’re having a proper winter, snowy and cold, the kind we haven’t seen for a couple of years. The landscape is just as it should be—snow-covered hills, bare branches—a perfect study in black on…
LESLIE MCBRIDE WILE I could quote Sweet Baby James to tell you about the first of December, go on to describe the hush and sweep of falling snow, how it dropped a curtain between house and valley and filled our…
LESLIE MCBRIDE WILE With November comes la nebbia, the fog that rises from Piemontese valleys and blankets the plain of Lombardia. On the day before the United States presidential election I watched it form above our prato, the damp air of a chilly afternoon…
