I have been looking into schedules. Even when we read physics, we inquire of each least particle, What then shall I do this morning? How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.
~Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

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On the first of each month,
a guest writer
shares
how they spend the day.

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February 1, 2026: Barbara Boyle

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Newly retired and on her honeymoon, after spending a week in the south of France, Barbara Boyle and her husband arrived in Italy, and she fell in love. With Monforte, a small town in the Piemonte region. After the honeymoon, Barbara began taking Italian lessons, and her husband Kim signed them up to receive house listings in the Piemonte region. Pinch Me is Barbara’s story of making a dream come true.

It was eighteen months before they were able to return to Italy, but when they did, they met with a real estate agent.

We wanted character and tranquility and were not afraid of a ruin… I wanted birds, grass, mature trees, sun, and shade. My husband wanted a wine cellar.

The day before they were to head home to San Francisco, the real estate agent called to say he had a property to show them, not in Monforte exactly but in nearby Roddino, which was not exactly a town, and actually the house was not exactly in Roddino. “But my husband felt it was worth a quick look, so I reluctantly agreed to go along.”

I turned and faced the empty old house and barn sitting demurely in the afternoon sun—tall, proud stone walls and rusted iron doors, broken windows and shutters, crowned with a roof of old terra-cotta tiles, logs, and twigs. There were two or three outbuildings, crammed with wood, wine barrels, old farm tools, wires, tiles, and stones. The house was situated precariously on a narrow level plain that sloped up the hill behind it and slid into the valley in front. And it looked out over the whole world—vineyards, hazelnut orchards, farms and forests, and even the little hill town of Monforte, all the way out to the craggy Alps, still brushed with just a smattering of snow on the highest peak… I touched him on the arm and said, “This is it.”

These more detailed descriptions of the walls and the roof made me feel as if I were standing in the house looking around and up.

[The walls] are a disorderly combination of Langhe stones and handmade terra-cotta bricks, held together with mud and mortar.

[The roof] was a patchwork of weathered terra-cotta tiles, coppas, interspersed with old logs and branches.

Pinch Me is a delight to read and includes recipes like the “Ravioli del Plin con Burro e Salvia.”

Plin actually means “pinch” in the Piemontese dialect, and it is in fact that characteristic little pinch that separates these raviolis from all others on Earth…. the pinch forms little pockets all around the outside that cradle the ragu or melted butter with sage and Parmesan.

Spending time in Italy was teaching me, firsthand, how something as primal as eating and as simple as shopping, as essential as being part of a small community, creates a life.

Barbara’s fiction has appeared in Sky Island Journal, Star 82 Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, and other literary journals. In her first life, she was a global creative director in the advertising world, living in Paris, Frankfurt, New York, and San Francisco. While living in Paris, she took the Regional French Cuisine course at Le Cordon Bleu, and later in New York, she completed the professional cooking course at The Institute of Culinary Education. These days she lives in Italy, in the medieval hill towns of Roddino and Monforte, cooking, taking walks, working in her garden, in her husband’s vineyard, and on a novel.

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Come back on FEBRUARY 1st to read how BARBARA BOYLE spends her days.