“A highly original work by an accomplished and enterprising scholar, Bernini’s Beloved offers a compelling, untold human story. It shows us the lively 17th-century Roman art world from a novel perspective, that of a woman. . . . It will be welcomed by anyone interested in art, artists, gender, and the social history of Rome during the flourishing of the baroque..”—Elizabeth S. Cohen, York University

“Bernini’s Beloved will definitively change the way people look at Bernini’s portrait of a woman who turns out to be the descendant of a Pope. . . Sarah McPhee argues that Bernini used his utmost artistry to convey Costanza’s divine dignity as a new Venus, reconciling the background of this remarkable statue with its evident value in artistry and materials. The whole picture, for the first time, makes eminent sense.”—Ingrid Rowland, University of Notre Dame

The Maho Beach Resort was an unlikely end to a gorgeous Caribbean vacation on Anguilla, but that’s where it ended in a massive hotel with over five hundred rooms, a casino, a vast pool with a bar in it, people sipping cocktails, playing bingo, smoking cigarettes, relaxing.  On the beach next to the hotel, a beautiful white sand crescent, jumbo jets roared in from Paris and Amsterdam, 747s, 767s, 757s to touch down just on the other side of a barbed wire fence, one after the next, glinting in the sun on the horizon, growing bigger and bigger until they were right above, so close it seemed you could jump up and touch their bellies.  When they weren’t landing they were taking off, blasting several hundred tons of thrust from both engines, blowing sand ferociously like thousands of small needles piercing the skin, making waves in the sea, causing people to hang onto the fence.  Planes have never seemed possible to me somehow, like extraordinary, potent magic.  Here the show was free; you watch it from your beach towel.

Check out Josef Hoflehner’s photos.

IN GOOD COMPANY

(from More Magazine — November 2007)

On a corner in Fort Worth’s Southside, my friend Donatella Trotti (known as Dodi) has opened a tiny trattoria.  It is called Nonna Tata, after her grandmother, and is in a 500-square-foot cinderblock building on a seemingly lonely street.  The cozy interior is completely designed by Dodi, the walls sponged a pale yellow, tables and stools laminated with flowers and photographs and old Italian adages: LIFE IS TOO SHORT FOR BAD WINE.  AT THE TABLE YOU FORGIVE EVERYONE, EVEN YOUR RELATIVES.  Now widely popular, Nonna Tata took nine months to open.  ”Like a baby,” she says to me in her strong, exacting Italian accent.  Of course, I had to visit.  Dodi is one of my oldest and closest friends.  I am who I am because of her.  She is who she is because of me.  We met, as I like to say, when I was 16 and she was 17.  ”Yes, I am a year older,” she admits with a roll of her eyes when I tell our story.  A Rotary Club exchange put us together.

Read More — In Good Company

My husband and I were fortunate to see Porgy and Bess on Saturday night.  I still have chills from Audra McDonald‘s performance.  This Porgy and Bess is elemental, the tragedy of Bess is felt in a very personal way.  I physically ached for her, the way we ache for Anna Karenina or Lily Bart — women trapped by making bad choices in a supremely unforgiving world.  Though ultimately Joe Nocera isn’t a fan of this production, his Op-Ed in the New York Time’s was illuminating on the history of the opera and is a must read whether you see the production or not, like the production or not.  I recommend you see it.  In most of our lifetimes we won’t have this chance again, to be moved indelibly by the power Porgy and his Bess, Bess and her Porgy, by the power of their story and music.

I met Christina Ball first day of freshman year at Bowdoin College.  She was my roommate and she arrived in our room with an entourage: a sister, a brother, a mother and father, a grandmother.  They crowded in, inspected, turned over pillows, looked out windows, absorbed us — my father and me.  We’d arrived first,  in time for me to haul in a suitcase and a lamp and to realize the two small rooms would be even smaller with three people living in them.  After Christina had surveyed the room, she went to my lamp and, not knowing that it was mine (a brass floor lamp that was now dark with age — it had been my grandfather’s at prep school), said, “This is ugly.  We’ll have to get rid of it.”  I wasn’t sure what to make of her.  She was tall and had lots of dark hair and big dark eyes.  She was gorgeous and self-possessed and had an eager curiosity that made her seem ready to alight.  I was more introspective and quiet, happy alone, in love with an Italian across the ocean and to whom I corresponded endlessly.  At first glance we were opposites, and what is it  they say?  We attract?  It didn’t take long.  We bonded over our desire to get rid of the third roommate, mainly because she was unhappy with us and because we wanted her space.  After that mission was accomplished we became unstoppable.  We labeled ourselves the Cosmo Bohemians and wore clothes that caused us to stand out on the rather preppy campus.  We wore plastic high heels in electric colors (snow or shine), started wine tastings and a catering business to make some extra cash.  She loved that I spoke Italian and that I’d been to Italy many times, that I’d lived there the previous year.  She wanted to know all about it and dreamed that she’d be able to go with me the following summer.  That was our first realized dream, paid for with our catering money.  I took her to Italy, to Greece and to France.  She had never been to Europe before.  And, as my life was changed by a chance summer exchange with an Italian girl three summers earlier, her life was changed too, Italy creeping into it to take it over quite miraculously.  She would marry an Italian, have an Italian daughter, run a thriving language school,  Speak Language Center.  She wouldn’t live in Italy, but that is just a detail; she was surrounded by Italy all the same.  Now some thirty years later she has invited me to dream with her again, this time in Todi with writers longing to have time with their craft.  She’s arranged a workshop at a boutique spa hotel with sumptuous food, Roccafiore.  It is my honor.  And I can’t wait.

Dreaming In Umbria

Unforgotten Italy (an article I wrote for More Magazine on Christina)

ONCE

for my husband’s birthday i bought tickets to the movie turned musical at

the new york theater workshop.

a neighbor had raved about the performance and tickets were already sold out.

the show was moving to broadway,

but i didn’t want to wait for that.

so here’s what i learned, a tip:

call at 1pm on the day you want to see it to put your name on a waitlist.

you have until january 15.

tickets come up, not but many, but they do.  tickets have been saved for guests who want to become patrons.

call 212-460-5475.

the night we were there alan rickman was there too.

the music is marvelous.

overall, even better than the movie.

go.

be sure to have a drink on stage.

one of the things i love to do most is cook.

over the holidays i made two dishes i’ve not made before:

bouillabaisse (which I now know how to spell)

and

potato pizza

both are easy and quite delicious.

i encourage you to make both.

happy new year, 2012, the year of the dragon.

i’m a dragon, my daughter is a golden dragon.

do you remember stringing cranberries and popcorn?

 the cashier girl at the food store asked me what i was doing with the cranberries and popcorn and oranges.

“a recipe?” she asked.

 i told her about stringing cranberries and making dried orange ornaments.

“cool.  i’ve never heard of that.”

In my mother’s basement, the Christmas after my grandmother had died, I found the top of a box that had belonged to her. My mother and I were down there retrieving ornaments and lights so that we could decorate the tree, a painful Christmas that year, 1995. My stepfather had died not long before my grandmother. The box top — 18 inches by 18 inches, watermarked, frayed and torn — had once covered a wreath, but the wreath was long gone, and now the box held ornaments, each one neatly wrapped in tissue. I lifted the lid off the box, and immediately I noticed my grandmother’s handwriting, a jumble of words that spilled out to fill the room. My mother would later tell me that she had known about the box top but had never read it, that after seeing her mother’s handwriting she had shut the lid: Pandora’s box. But I could not shut the lid. I had to know what was written there.

From the T Section of The New York Times — written a couple of years ago; it’s a seasonal favorite of mine and wanted to share again.

Read More