My life-experiences are situated in Calabria, Northern Ontario, Southern Rhode Island, New York City and Pittsburgh’s Northside. In all these places, being outdoors and getting outside were normal, everyday routines.

Our 300-year old house in the Mexican War Streets has a backyard that I made into a seasonal garden full of color, full of plants, full of silence. I spent hours potting violas, dead-heading geraniums, pruning wisteria, watering hosta.

We now live on Mount Washington and my experience of the outdoors is through windows in the front and back of our unit; and it’s through this transparent skin that I now experience the outdoors.



Mornings, I watch as fog floats above the rivers, as the sun burns the horizon, as the sky bleeds blue. Late afternoons, I have to block that same sun, because it now chars the empty sky. But by early evening, it’s become feeble and slowly falls into the west.

The featured image of the evening sky is from my home-office window; the above image is the tower of PPG Place.