The Eastside View

I T'S NATURAL AND NECESSARY that we die in appropriate circumstances, therefore no cause for lamentation. When an exceptionally good ma...

  P ROBABLY BECAUSE MY FIRST hands-on experience with music was in my high school band, where I concentrated on bassoon but learned most o...

rue des Petits Ecuries, Paris, June 10, 2010— S O MUCH WRITTEN (so much ephemera) so quickly; then so long a hiatus. From Enna we descended...

Piazza Vanvitelli, Caserta, May 29, 2010— I N E NNA A FEW days ago I had an interesting conversation with the moody young man at the "...

  via Eumelo, Siracusa, May 24 — L OOKING OVER THE PHOTOS we took last night in the Greek Theater of the performance of Euripides's Hip...

via Eumelo, Siracusa, May 24 — C URTIS REMINDS ME of a few driving-in-Europe stories. My favorite was told by an acquaintance who'd got...

  via Eumelo, Siracusa, May 23 W E LEFT R AGUSA with a little bit of regret. At least I did. The hotel had been comfortable, the technology...

S O MANY THINGS going through my mind, it was difficult to sleep last night. Shortly before turning in I received a message from an acquain...

Ragusa, Friday, May 21— T ODAY REPRESENTS THE center day of our Sicilian journey: we arrived in Palermo the 11th; we propose to leave the i...

Sciacca, Wednesday, May 19— I MAGINE AN EQUILATERAL triangle. Put yourself at one corner; Nature at another; Society at the third. Well, I...

Tuesday, May 18— S ORRY TO LEAVE Tràpani, but eager to get on to the next sights, we drove out of town south today toward Marsala — but di...

Monday, May 17— Y ESTERDAY WE PICKED UP our little Panda and drove by way of Monreale to Tràpani, a town I've always wanted to see, at...

Saturday, May 15— O NE OF THE BEST books I've read preparing for this sojourn in Sicily has been Henry Festing Jones's Diversions ...

Saturday, May 15— Y EARS AGO IN simpler times my technology, on these trips in Europe, amounted to a notebook, a triple-aught Rapidograph,...

Friday, May 14— W E HAVE SPENT two full days and halves of two others in this city so far, and I have a few impressions, set forth here in...

Thursday, May 13— B Y LAND, AIR , or sea; that was the question: how to get from Naples to Palermo. I'm not sure why we rejected flying...