Mark Hinshaw

Italy's two-week collective vacation period is an intense time of festivals, performances, concerts, entertainment for children, community dinners, and other events in public places. My family and I feel fortunate to have experienced this continual “social weaving” ourselves.

The reward for Italy’s diligence has been that this year the country received an EU allocation of €191 billion ($210 billion) for infrastructure projects. The program is known as the National Resilience and Recovery Plan.

Living in Italy is like living inside multiple, simultaneous movies, with an endless selection of historic periods, subjects, and surroundings.

Italy is a land of family farms, and as expats there we enjoy produce, meats, and dairy products as fresh as possible, with daily deliveries via small trucks that ascend to our hilltop village in the early morning.

I chose Dante’s little shop to begin my series because it seemed to me a microcosmic metaphor for Italian culture as a whole.

It is not without reason that the end to the daily horrors of 78 years ago are celebrated with fanfare.

So perhaps the Great American Experiment is just that – a noble effort, certainly, but perhaps doomed to fail.

The Romans made it way before tomatoes were introduced into the culture. In the early years of this century, an enterprising Roman chef claims to have re-discovered pinsa.

Driving in Italy can be hazardous to one’s mental health.

A millennium of municipal governance has paid off. I have not seen such efficiency and dedication anywhere else.