English Listening Practice: Botticelli’s Primavera
English Listening Practice Format Botticelli’s Primavera is the subject of this listening practice format, for students who need to learn to understand English at normal speed. Audio content, plus the available option of written text, can be a very effective combination for practicing that. It’s better if the content is interesting and the speaking is […]
Read More >>Brew Ha Ha Radio Podcast Launch
The Brew Ha Ha podcast is now live, starting with the first podcast episode from February 2018. It is the second podcast and show website that I have done for my client Vicario Productions. The Brew Ha Ha podcast can also be found on iTunes, Android and Stitcher. The podcast is recorded live on the […]
Read More >>California Wine Country Podcast Launch
I recently finished launching the California Wine Country podcast, for my clients at Vicario Productions. The podcast website is here and it can also be found on iTunes, Android, Stitcher (any day now) and more. The podcast is recorded live on the radio Wednesdays at 5pm Pacific time, so the podcast has all of the […]
Read More >>Moldy Cheese
These forms of provolone cheese have the wrong kind of mold on them. These pictures were taken recently, in an Italian grocery store somewhere in the USA. No self-respecting store in Italy would ever display them like this. I checked with several Italian friends and over a dozen of them agreed, including a shopkeeper who […]
Read More >>The Madame X Rocket
John Singer Sargent first showed his portrait of Virginie Amélie Avegno Gatreau at the Paris Salon of 1884. More than 130 years later, the gigantic figure of Sargent’s masterpiece was launched into orbit on the thrust of millions of tiny pixels. The Madame X Rocket was built as a joint effort of the Royal Society […]
Read More >>My Pineapple Pizza Discussion on Italian Radio
13 marzo 2017 – La Buona domenica del lunedì mattino era un segmento settimanale d’un programma radiofonico dove parlavo con Sonia Frassei. Lei presentava un programma mattiniero in Radio Azzurra FM a Novara. Parlavamo ogni settimana delle differenze grandi e piccole fra l’America e l’Italia. In questa puntata parliamo dell’ananas sulla pizza. March 13, 2017 – The […]
Read More >>Roman Coins of Tiberius
This post started as a test page for the blog on this site. Now that we’re more set up, I hate to delete it. So here it is. Here are some Roman coins of Tiberius. First, here is a denarius, a silver coin. The term for this coin is the root of the Italian word […]
Read More >>How to Pronounce Tagliabue
The name Tagliabue is often pronounced “TAG-lee-a-bu” in American English. The former NFL Commissioner’s surname is pronounced “tal-ya-BU-eh” in Italian with the accent on BU. To an Italian speaker, the American way to pronounce Tagliabue with the hard G sounds harsh. The name means Butcher; Taglia means cut and bue means steer, so it means “steer […]
Read More >>Machiavelli’s Belfagor: my English translation
I have translated Niccolò Machiavelli’s Belfagor the Archdevil into modern English. Here is a link to the page on this site where you can read it. The novella Belfagor is short, only 3220 words in the original, and barely 4000 in translation. My translation is as clear and faithful to the original as I could […]
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