A 2023 round-up!

Perhaps more for me than for anyone else: a thought exercise.

I know top 10 lists have likely fallen out of fashion—I haven’t published one since I started my first newspaper job. But as a freelancer, self-promotion can only come from me (I realize that’s built into the word), and I’ve done a lot of work this year of which I’m proud, particularly work that involved interviews in Italian, European-based subjects and issues I think matter. I suppose this list is helpful as much to focus my own goals for the coming year as it is to show the world, whoever that may be, what I’ve done.

To my Substack subscribers: I know it’s been forever, and I do hope to resurrect this newsletter as actually fashion-related in 2024. But for now, please enjoy some stories that may interest you as we wind down this year.

(NB: For no reason other than mere organization, I’ve simply put the stories in chronological publication order.) 

“A Look at New College’s Cloudy Future,” Sarasota Magazine, January 30, 2023—It used to be that Sarasota’s New College was most well-known for its unique moniker: “Barefoot U.” But when Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed six new members to the school’s Board of Trustees at the beginning of this year, his Education Commissioner pledging to remake the college into a “Hillsdale of the South,” the world took note. The entire process was so chaotic that the piece had to be updated to reflect that the college’s president had been terminated shortly after publication (unrelated to the story itself).

“Spoken Latin is Making a Comeback,” Smithsonian Magazine, Feb. 14, 2023—It was a Roman Catholic priest from Wisconsin, Reginald Foster, who popularized the art of spoken Latin, but it is his disciples who have carried it on. Yes, it really is possible to travel to the Roman Forum and hear a group of students speak to each other in the language the Romans used. Aside from the novelty, I talked to academics and experts who explained the real pedagogical benefits of teaching spoken Latin—and how it may even keep the language alive, academically speaking.

“What do Italians think of the war in Ukraine?,” Wanted in Rome, March 16, 2023—A little more than a year after the start of the war in Ukraine, I asked Italians how they felt about the war’s impact on their daily life and the Italian government’s decisions in offering aid to Ukraine for Rome-based, English-language publication Wanted in Rome. The story was my first time writing for a Rome-based outlet and one of my first times conducting interviews in Italian.

“Florida Youth Activism, from ‘Don’t Say Gay’ to Parkland to Dream Defenders,” Teen Vogue, April 25, 2023—I’ve been writing about Florida in some capacity since 2017, and I’ve always been fascinated with the state as a study in contrasts. On the one hand, it’s become a major Republican battleground. On the other hand, it’s also been an incredibly fertile spot for youth activism. But is that just an incredibly obvious cause-and-effect? Or is there something intangible in the state that has allowed activism to take such a strong hold? I attempted to answer that question for Teen Vogue through interviews with activists, experts and movement leaders.

Meet Kacie Rose Burns, the Florence-based TikTok star, Wanted in Rome, May 18, 2023—If you’ve dreamed of moving to Italy and want to know what life is actually like here for an American, chances are, you’ve seen Kacie Rose Burns on your ‘For You page’ (spoken like a true TikTok troglodyte—me). Burns is an expert at breaking down the realities of living in Italy—she lives in Florence—and the romanticized bits. (What? Some parts are romanticized?!) We talked about the realities of Italian life in this Q&A for Wanted in Rome.

“What Are ‘15-Minute Cities’ and Why are Conspiracy Theorists Worried About Them?,” Teen Vogue, May 18, 2023—If you were anywhere in the world this spring, you likely heard about the “15-minute city” movement, which, depending on who you asked, was either a conspiracy theory propagated by the Illuminati or an urban-planning philosophy coined by a Parisian professor that makes, to many, good sense. This explainer looked at the real theory and what actual young activists living—or craving—the 15-minute city experience had to say about it.

“Will Americans Change Their Daily Lives to Acknowledge Climate Change?,” Teen Vogue, May 24, 2023—When I learned France had passed a ban on domestic flights between cities able to be reached by train in less than 2.5 hours, a proposal itself generated from a citizen assembly, I was fascinated by the contrast by what could stand in European climate policy and what would likely never in American policy. But in a world increasingly threatened by climate change on a quotidian level, perhaps what we’re willing to sacrifice is changing. This column at least poses some of these inquiries, though it is only our future that can answer them.

“What It Means to be Florentine,” Italy Segreta, June 2023—We know what it means to be Roman, a Neapolitan, a Milanese—at least, in Italy, there are deeply-rooted stereotypes. But of the Florentines, I knew only, from a taxi driver, that they spoke the best Italian in the country but were the meanest people you’d ever meet. I set about to interrogate this stereotype for Italy Segreta through on-the-ground reporting, in both Italian and English, and found there to be some shred of truth in it. (They are, of course, not the meanest!)

“Local journalism’s burnout crisis is unsustainable,” Poynter, June 22, 2023—A UNC study put numbers to the epidemic we are all living: burnout in local news. Out of more than 500 participants, roughly 72% of local journalists reported some form of personal burnout (and 70% some form of work-related burnout). Those results also varied significantly by age—much higher for those under 45 than over. Do non-burnout-suffering journalists exist? Yes, they do. But my interviews show this is—unsurprisingly—more a systemic than an individual problem.

“For aspiring and early-career journalists, is 2023 a breaking point?,” Poynter, July 12, 2023—It’s never been easy to be a young journalist, in a sometimes grueling and generally non-lucrative career, but 2023 was a year of near-record-breaking publication shutdowns and layoffs at even the most stable news organizations. For Poynter, I talked to half a dozen college-age and early-career journalists about their prospects and what they saw as the future of journalism.

“How the Sarasota Woman’s Club Transformed Our City,” Sarasota Magazine, Aug. 2, 2023—We may associate the history of Sarasota with John Ringling or Bertha Palmer, who does also happen to be involved in this story, but we may not have known that the Sarasota Woman’s Club was an instrumental player in the development of the area’s persona. It lives on architecturally as Florida Studio Theatre’s Keating Theatre, but I combed through meeting minutes and conducted interviews to learn more about this vestige of my hometown’s past.

“Italy’s uninhabited islands: Is abandonment a blessing or a curse?, “ Italy Segreta, August 2023—This story started from a selfish reason: I had just gotten back from a trip to the island of Ponza, where we’d stopped for the day on the largely uninhabited island of Palmarola, and I found myself obsessed with the idea of uninhabited islands—particularly those still frequented by tourists but not literally lived on. How does their infrastructure get maintained? What made them uninhabited in the first place? What is their modern significance? Could there actually be any part of this Earth untouched by humanity? That last question informed the whole piece, but you’ll just have to read it for some of the answers.

“Extreme Heat in Europe: Soaring Temperatures and the Heatwaves to Come,” Teen Vogue, Aug. 16, 2023—Anyone who went to Europe this summer, really, anyone who went anywhere this summer, was likely struck by the soaring temperatures, which were often record-setting. In Rome, where I live, the city reached more than 107 degrees Fahrenheit in mid-July. When I recall moments from those summer days, I physically shudder, because the heat brought with it a kind of world-ending malaise. But one of the major factors that separates the US from Europe is our reliance on air-conditioning: for better or worse, almost 90% of American households have some form of AC. In Europe, that number is less than 10%. Like everything with climate change, the solution is unclear. But one thing is certain: it’s not retaining the status quo.

“Andrea Palladio: “The Father of American Architecture” was from Veneto,” Italy Segreta, November 2023: Most Americans likely know Andrea Palladio by style, if not by name. The Italian Renaissance architect’s Quattro Libri Dell’Architettura became the basis for much of England’s and, perhaps more importantly for our purposes, America’s Neoclassical architecture, like Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, The White House and the U.S. Capitol. I went to Veneto and, specifically, Vicenza, to see the very villas that this great architect created. So struck was I that I wrote: “This is the power of Palladio—his work makes the fantasy so convincing that, for a second, it becomes reality.”