Author: Formaggio Bambino

It is with some embarrassment that I tell you that I hated Genoa the first time I visited there, a decade and a lifetime ago. In my book, the only mention I make of the seaside city – the birthplace of Christopher Columbus, the location where Marco Polo was imprisoned for a year (because Italy was once a collection of kingdoms constantly at war with one another) – was that it was covered in dog shit. A statement which, this time around, proved untrue.

It is a firm reminder that first impressions can be woefully misleading, but when it comes to travel, many of us don’t have the luxury of ever correcting them. Not many people get to visit Genoa once, much less twice. (My life is charmed, I know.) Considering that, you’d think that I’d make a little bit more of an effort to be mindful. But this

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The emergency porchetta was my favorite part of the trip.

That is a strange thing to say for a lot of reasons. For one, I don’t know if the concept of emergency porchetta is widely known. A Google search for the term reveals four results, the most salient of which is someone looking for cooking advice. “Emergency porchetta question” they write. But the urgency seems to come from the nature of the query itself, and not the hunk of roast pork it pertains to.

For another, we had a great trip. Despite the endless rain and the grey skies and the hotel mishaps and the projectile vomiting on the side of the road in Genoa (my apologies to all who witnessed it), we had a wonderful week in the north of Italy. So many things happened that reminded me of why I love to travel.

But damn it, that porchetta

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The letter arrived at my house at the end of October in a plain white envelope with no return address. My name – or some approximation of it (“Depruiter” it reads, because, in the words of my beloved, “The person who addressed it is an idiot”) has been printed out on a label and affixed to the front. The nondescript nature of it set off some sort of alarm in the back of my brain – something wasn’t quite right, though I couldn’t say what.

We get a lot of mail. I’ve tried to whittle it down as best I can, but towards the end of the calendar year there’s always uptick in it. I rummage through countless catalogs and requests for donations from specious sounding not-exactly-non-profits to pick out the things I want to keep – primarily a handful of holiday cards that I will display on our mantle

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I don’t know when the idea for this year’s Halloween costume originated. Rand and I have been talking about it for years. It’s the sort of thing that stays simmering on the back burner for so long that you almost have to wonder if it’ll ever come to fruition, or if the idea will simply run its course without ever being realized, growing stale before it sees the light of day. I had fallen in love with the concept for these costumes years ago. Then I grew tired of it, and went on to more pressing, timely things.

And then the idea of punching Nazis became far too relevant and timely again.

And Rand continued to perfect his impression of Sean Connery.

And I went to the thrift store and found the perfect shirt. And the perfect jacket. And suddenly the pieces started to fall into place.

Sure, sure, Indiana

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I have yet to call my in-laws (my husband’s grandparents) in the wake of a  shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. A few days have passed. For the collective American consciousness, the lifespan of a mass shooting is short. The newscycle has already moved on, as has everyone’s social media posts. (Even this post, written two days ago, feels a little outdated. The timeline for caring about gun violence is too brief in our country. It’s like that by design.) The moment to reach out to my in-laws may already have passed. Perhaps I shouldn’t remind them of the tragedy. They are in their early 90s. Besides, I do not know what condolences to offer, other than that I am sorry and that I love them. I am unsure what else there is to say.

I will likely fish the hamsa that my aunt gave my mother years ago – a

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(Above: my student ID in 1999. Let’s just keep our comments to ourselves.)

There’s this pattern I keep seeing. It goes like this:

Woman accuses man of sexual assault. Man denies accusations.

Man’s PR team then releases numerous letters from women saying that he’s not a sexual harasser because, you know, he didn’t harass them.

It’s happened most recently with Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, after Dr. Christine Blasey Ford accused him of sexually assaulting her in the early 80s. But it’s happened with Al Franken, and Tom Brokaw and countless others, resulting in a mental puzzle that becomes increasing difficult to parse: a woman who accuses a man of sexual assault is immediately under suspect – but one who defends that same man often has her word heralded as gospel.

Whenever these letters come out, I cringe. I become enraged. I want to scream about how it’s very easy

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I quit Twitter for a month.

This should not sound like a profound thing, but for someone for whom the social media platform was essentially an extension of my psyche, the act has felt monumental. I have said, again and again (usually when talking of internet abuse and responding to people who tell me that if I don’t like I “can just leave”) that for me, and many writers like me, social media, and Twitter, its enfant terrible, are not optional. If you are trying to sell a book, the first thing a publisher wants to know is “What is your social media following?” Because more important than the book you are writing is the audience of people you can market it to. This is not cynicism and I say it without judgement. It’s simply how it works. If you want to write, you need an audience. And unless you

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