May 2003

Changing Homes in Italy

May 22, 2003

Anyone who has had the experience of setting up a household in Italy will wince at the list of things we have to do in the next two months: sell the family home in Rome (emptying it of many years’ accumulation of books – this is a family of professors! – furniture, etc.), set up [...]

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Farewell to Buffy

May 6, 2003

As mentioned in this newsletter long ago, we’re big fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and everything else by Joss Whedon, the show’s creator, that we can lay hands on). When Rossella and I attended a Buffy convention in London in 2001, we were almost the only mother-daughter pair to attend (the few other kids [...]

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Generation Gap: Italy’s Ageing Population

May 6, 2003

One aspect of Milan I’m really tired of is that it seems so old. Europe’s population in general is ageing, but the average in Milan seems to be even older, though I don’t know why that should be. Surely they could find some cheaper and more congenial place to retire. New Yorkers retire to Florida to [...]

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Changing Places – Moving from Milan to Lecco

May 6, 2003

It’s a phenomenon familiar to people who have moved around a lot: when you’re about to leave a place, you are suddenly out of patience with it. Annoyances you’ve put up with for years loom large, and you count the days til you can get the hell out. This is a defense mechanism: by concentrating [...]

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