Speaker 1: Oh September, Oh September. You snuck up on us, just
Speaker 1: when we thought summer would never end. There you were
Speaker 1: abruptly appearing out of nowhere, telling us it was time
Speaker 1: to stop lollygagging about and get back to work, Get
Speaker 1: back to school, get back into your routine. The kids
Speaker 1: are now in school and summer adventures are becoming summer memories.
Speaker 1: I'm watching the garden in its early stages of decline.
Speaker 1: I did plant a fall garden, though, and that's keeping
Speaker 1: me on my toes. Already. The business world is sending
Speaker 1: me messages about holiday goings on. Yes, I know, I know.
Speaker 1: It isn't officially autumn just yet, but it is in
Speaker 1: the air. It's in the air, except you know, in
Speaker 1: La where it's one hundred and ten degrees. If you're
Speaker 1: feeling a bit ill at ease with it, let me
Speaker 1: tell you a fun story to take your her mind
Speaker 1: off things. Once upon a time, there was a young
Speaker 1: woman named Marie who was born and raised in Los Angeles, California,
Speaker 1: again where it's really hot. Marie has always loved to
Speaker 1: travel and was excited to take her first trip to
Speaker 1: Italy in the mid nineteen eighties. While there, she fell
Speaker 1: for a man and a city, a serendipitous occurrence that
Speaker 1: changed her life and inspired her to write a semi
Speaker 1: autobiographical novel, Beneath the Lion's Wings. Since her move to
Speaker 1: Venice almost forty years ago, the former banker has restored
Speaker 1: a two hundred year old rustic barn that became the
Speaker 1: home where she and her husband Roberto, raised their two children,
Speaker 1: and where she learned to appreciate a good glass of wine,
Speaker 1: cooked delicious risotto, homemade soups and pasta, and the Nardine
Speaker 1: family secret Tira Massioux recipe, which she says never comes
Speaker 1: out quite as good as my mother in laws did.
Speaker 1: We'll be meeting Marie today and getting her personal backstory
Speaker 1: that led to her writing her semi autobiographical novel Beneath
Speaker 1: the Lion's Wings. Just after I tell you another story
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Speaker 1: and love twenty four with me on today's broadcast, is
Speaker 1: a beautiful I wish we could do the video edition
Speaker 1: of this instead of just have it be an audio podcast,
Speaker 1: because you are beautiful, You are stunning.
Speaker 2: Thank you. That's so lovely to hear. Thank you, Delilah
Speaker 2: in mutual respect.
Speaker 1: Thank you. My podcast producer reached out and said, you
Speaker 1: are the queen of sappy love songs. Wait until you
Speaker 1: hear this love story, this true love story, and she
Speaker 1: went in a little bit to your backstory, Marie, and
Speaker 1: how you came to write your semi autobiographical book. Semi
Speaker 1: you put some things in that were not true to
Speaker 1: your story, but it's kind of based on your true
Speaker 1: love story and how a young girl went to travel
Speaker 1: for a summer and ended up falling in love and
Speaker 1: staying forever. Tell me your story.
Speaker 2: So it wasn't even for a summer. Actually, it was
Speaker 2: my first going way back to nineteen eighty five, so
Speaker 2: it was my first trip to Europe. I was twenty.
Speaker 1: Eight, okay, first trip to.
Speaker 2: Europe with a good friend. And we started in Paris
Speaker 2: and then we rented a car and we traveled through
Speaker 2: France and Italy, and I only came to Venice because
Speaker 2: my then roommate and dear friend had just been to
Speaker 2: Europe and we were undecided whether or not we wanted
Speaker 2: to visit Porto Fino on the Ligurian coast or Venice,
Speaker 2: and she said, listen, Venice is really nice place, but
Speaker 2: don't spend more than two days there. So we put
Speaker 2: Venice on our itinerary. Some of your listeners and readers
Speaker 2: will remember that in the nineteen eighties there was no
Speaker 2: internet and everything you did was through a traveler agent. Well,
Speaker 2: our travel agent didn't do a job and I ended
Speaker 2: up having to call this hotel in Venice to book myself.
Speaker 2: And the reason I'm telling you this is only because
Speaker 2: my roommate said go to Venice, and my travel agent
Speaker 2: didn't book the room for us. Did I book a
Speaker 2: hotel which is the exact canal that I first saw
Speaker 2: my husband.
Speaker 1: So you didn't even have a room booked.
Speaker 2: Well, I had to call them on the telephone and book,
Speaker 2: and we had it booked before before we got to Venice.
Speaker 2: But we were on our water taxi getting into this
Speaker 2: hotel and as we turned down this small canal, we
Speaker 2: passed this gold to Love with a gondolier obviously on
Speaker 2: the back.
Speaker 1: Do they really wear the outfits that you see in movies.
Speaker 2: Yes, the stripe shirts has to be or blue and
Speaker 2: white stripe or red and white stripe. That's there, that's
Speaker 2: their uniform. Or in those years, he was wearing what
Speaker 2: they call it was like a white shift type, which
Speaker 2: is a more formal uniform. Of they don't. They don't
Speaker 2: wear anymore. Some of the older gondoliers might. But as
Speaker 2: we as we turned the corner in our water taxi
Speaker 2: and we were standing outside in the back, we approaches
Speaker 2: gondola and I see the gondolier with these beautiful blonde
Speaker 2: curls and tan and this beautiful smile, and we exchanged
Speaker 2: smiles and I snapped a photo of him. I still
Speaker 2: have the photograph. And we went to our hotel. He
Speaker 2: realized we were going to. That hotel was the only
Speaker 2: hotel on that canal, and I never thought I was
Speaker 2: going to. I just thought, Oh, I'm gonna like Venice.
Speaker 2: You know, this is a really nice place.
Speaker 1: Oh if all the gondolires look like this, I'm really
Speaker 1: gonna like Vennis.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're good, We're good. And actually the next day,
Speaker 2: because that was towards the evening, the next day, we
Speaker 2: were walking through Saint Mark's Square, which is the center,
Speaker 2: the main center in Venice. I don't know I who've
Speaker 2: ever been to Venice. If you have, I invite you
Speaker 2: to come, because it's a beautiful place to visit it.
Speaker 2: And he spotted me in the crowd. He saw me
Speaker 2: in the square and he waved over to me, and
Speaker 2: I walked up to him, and he walked up to me.
Speaker 2: And at that point, well, you know, it's just the
Speaker 2: first hello. What's your name? What's your you know? And
Speaker 2: I remember saying to him, oh, well, always your Italian.
Speaker 2: He says, no, I'm Venetian, because the Venetian's a very
Speaker 2: cloud and being Venetian, he's also Italian. And it started there.
Speaker 2: And that evening we had some other plans. We changed
Speaker 2: our plans. He and a friend of his who is
Speaker 2: now a very good friend of ours. We the four
Speaker 2: of us with my girlfriend. We went and had a
Speaker 2: lovely dinner. We went to a club, kind of a
Speaker 2: typical little Italian, small but you know, it still had
Speaker 2: the mirror ball, what do they call that, the globe,
Speaker 2: the disco.
Speaker 1: Ball, the disco ball. We're talking nineteen This was what
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 2: Nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, did you have big hair? Did you have
Speaker 1: really big bangs and big hair back then?
Speaker 2: Well, I still had big hair, but I kind of yeah,
Speaker 2: I had kind of that feathered thing going. And yeah,
Speaker 2: we hit it off, and I really never expected. I
Speaker 2: wasn't looking for any kind of relationship and neither was he.
Speaker 2: And like I said, we weren't in Venice for very long,
Speaker 2: and in fact, our next trip, of our next stop
Speaker 2: was on the Florence and he started writing me letters.
Speaker 2: When I got home. We literally I still have the letters.
Speaker 2: This is when there was no email. It was just
Speaker 2: all letter writing and so forth, and I almost had
Speaker 2: a letter a day and back and forth. And then
Speaker 2: he made plans to come to Los Angeles and spent
Speaker 2: he spent about two less less than two weeks with
Speaker 2: his friends in Los Angeles, and then I came back
Speaker 2: to Venice for about a month that following May. So
Speaker 2: within six months, it was pretty much of a whirlwind,
Speaker 2: and we decided we wanted to be together. And I
Speaker 2: I had a good job. I worked at a bank
Speaker 2: in Beverly Hills, and I had my own apartment in
Speaker 2: life and so forth, and we went from there we
Speaker 2: survived the odds of this not succeeding, let's say, as
Speaker 2: a marriage for this many years happy, a good marriage
Speaker 2: with its ups and downs, like any relationship of any
Speaker 2: type has. But I would do it all over again.
Speaker 1: So this is like a play. I could see this
Speaker 1: on Broadway or a movie scene. The gondelier, the shirt,
Speaker 1: the smile, the curls, the American girl just on a
Speaker 1: two day stay in Venice, and boom, love happens.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that's actually what was the incentive to write
Speaker 2: the book, because when I would tell people of this story,
Speaker 2: I was living it. So I just thought, Okay, this
Speaker 2: is my life, this is what's happening, this is what
Speaker 2: feels right for me. And over the years, as I
Speaker 2: would continue to meet new people who didn't know before
Speaker 2: know me before I had met Robertus, my husband, they
Speaker 2: would say that it sounds like a movie. It sounds
Speaker 2: like a book. And so one day, it was two
Speaker 2: thousand and nine, twenty ten, I had a little more
Speaker 2: free time, and I said, well, why don't I just
Speaker 2: start writing it down? And I did. It took me
Speaker 2: a long time. It took me about eight years because
Speaker 2: there were some stalls in between there were some people.
Speaker 1: Some life happening.
Speaker 2: Life happening. We have two daughters that are now grown,
Speaker 2: but they were in high school in university at the time,
Speaker 2: and other things that came and went. You worked with editors.
Speaker 2: I was pitching and trying to pitch it here here
Speaker 2: in Italy, also in the US, and in the end
Speaker 2: I self published, and I'm actually very pleased that I
Speaker 2: did that. Perhaps if I had been a younger writer,
Speaker 2: if I had started at a younger age, it may
Speaker 2: have been more important to have an agent and so forth.
Speaker 2: So I'm very pleased, and it's done quite well for
Speaker 2: self published book, and I think your listeners would love
Speaker 2: it because it is definitely based on my story and
Speaker 2: taking twists and turns and struggles of an American professional
Speaker 2: woman moving to Venice and not speaking the language and
Speaker 2: having to listen a lot, and getting to know herself
Speaker 2: better that way too. So it has definitely been I'm
Speaker 2: a different person today for having lived half of my
Speaker 2: life in the United States and the other half here.
Speaker 1: So what did mom say, like when you came home
Speaker 1: and you were over the moon, Like did she say, yes,
Speaker 1: this is real love or did she say, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: you know, this is a summer fling. This is a
Speaker 1: you need to get back to real life focus on.
Speaker 1: Like were they cheering you on and saying, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: it's a great idea. Move over there.
Speaker 2: No, that's so funny that you me because I called
Speaker 2: my mother soon after I came back and said, Mom,
Speaker 2: we're going to get married. And my mother was not
Speaker 2: a woman. A few words and she was a nickname
Speaker 2: of you was the general, so she was. She was
Speaker 2: very silent, and I think she was in shock. And
Speaker 2: then the next day she called me up. I have
Speaker 2: two older brothers and she said, Marie, I've spoken to
Speaker 2: your brothers and I've asked them to introduce you to
Speaker 2: any friends of theirs that they might think is a
Speaker 2: good match. And I went, Mom, I'm not talking about
Speaker 2: going to the movies with someone. I'm talking about someone
Speaker 2: i'm really in love with. She hadn't met Roberta yet,
Speaker 2: so that was what I needed to tell her. He
Speaker 2: was here and I was back in Los Angeles when
Speaker 2: she met him. She adored him, she really did. And
Speaker 2: my family they all adore him and he adores them,
Speaker 2: so it was hard. She would come and visit. She
Speaker 2: no longer with us. My family comes from time to time,
Speaker 2: and I've gone back almost annually. It would be for COVID,
Speaker 2: and so I was going back almost annually. Our daughters
Speaker 2: spent a lot of their summer vacations there dual citizenship,
Speaker 2: and they speak English and Italian fluently.
Speaker 1: So that was something I was going to ask you
Speaker 1: when you met Roberto and he's Venetian, very proud, you
Speaker 1: said to me from Venice? Did he speak English? Did
Speaker 1: you speak Italian? Was there? How did you communicate?
Speaker 2: Okay? Roberta spoke English quite well. In fact, a lot
Speaker 2: of Europeans of our age and younger speak English. It's
Speaker 2: they teach it in schools, and so the majority, the
Speaker 2: older generation, the majority who are no longer with is
Speaker 2: didn't speak English as much. But except I noticed the
Speaker 2: German population after the Second World War there was a
Speaker 2: lot of English influence and so forth. So he spoke
Speaker 2: English very well. I had to learn Itali, and I
Speaker 2: went to a UCLA extension course, and I could practically
Speaker 2: order pasta and pizza in a restaurant. But I just
Speaker 2: learned when I moved here. I also took Italian for
Speaker 2: foreigners is what I call, and that helped me a
Speaker 2: little bit with a grammar and so forth.
Speaker 1: But living here immersion, total immersion.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And I touch on that in the book too,
Speaker 2: because there's a scene in my book that actually happened
Speaker 2: to me. And this is of trying to go to
Speaker 2: the greengrocer and say, give me to zucchini, who is
Speaker 2: not very easy. So I had to learn everything all
Speaker 2: over again. So that's why I had to listen so
Speaker 2: much too.
Speaker 1: So I want to talk about I want to talk
Speaker 1: about something that's near and dear to my heart, and
Speaker 1: that is your barn home, Marie. But first I want
Speaker 1: to tell people, if they're listening, where they can get
Speaker 1: your book. You said you're self published.
Speaker 2: They can catch it on Amazon and just Loogan Books.
Speaker 2: Beneath the Lion's Wings. It's in paperback and in ebook,
Speaker 2: so you can find it by looking beneath the Lion's wings.
Speaker 2: The winged lion is the symbol of venice, so that
Speaker 2: is where that title comes from.
Speaker 1: Beautiful. Now let's talk about my husband and I are
Speaker 1: just finishing our barn house. He lives in another state.
Speaker 1: We have a commuter marriage, and he lives in another
Speaker 1: state because of his career and my career and my
Speaker 1: family have me here right now. But we just finished
Speaker 1: our barn house, just like in the last couple of months.
Speaker 1: And I didn't have a two one hundred year old
Speaker 1: barn to begin with. Mine was not nearly that old,
Speaker 1: so I had to bring in two hundred year old
Speaker 1: wood and flooring and things like that because I wanted
Speaker 1: that antique, warm, inviting barn home. But you have the
Speaker 1: real thing you've done.
Speaker 2: Well, this is actually it's not the home we live
Speaker 2: in now. It's the home that we bought in what
Speaker 2: we call an absolute total rustic form. It was a
Speaker 2: portion of a barn that was once property of a
Speaker 2: regal villa that no longer existed. So this portion was
Speaker 2: had these enormously high ceilings and downstairs and upstairs the
Speaker 2: lower ceilings. But we went in there with our own hands.
Speaker 2: This was in the early nineties, with professionals too to
Speaker 2: do the professional work. And like you said, with the beams,
Speaker 2: to get the beams that had to be changed, we
Speaker 2: brought in older beams to match those that we were
Speaker 2: able to salvage. And that was that was just the
Speaker 2: work of love. It absolutely was a work of love.
Speaker 2: And I'm very pleased that you also to understand the
Speaker 2: restoration every time we've done this is we're on a
Speaker 2: third we're doing we're restoring. In fact, we're going down
Speaker 2: in a couple of weeks to Sicily where we bought
Speaker 2: another very oldport home, and the restoration is coming along
Speaker 2: very well. And each time I say it, I'm just
Speaker 2: never again. I'm never going to do this again, because
Speaker 2: it's like, you know, it's a lot of work, and
Speaker 2: there's a lot of detail, even if you're not doing
Speaker 2: the work, but there's so much that you know, you
Speaker 2: think it's going to be this much work, and I
Speaker 2: guess it's much work because there's just more and more
Speaker 2: that comes. Every time you open up a part of
Speaker 2: the house, something else needs to be addressed. But we
Speaker 2: spent many happy years in that homer. Our eldest was
Speaker 2: already four or five when we moved in, and our
Speaker 2: youngest was born, and that was the only home she
Speaker 2: knew into the home that we live in now, which
Speaker 2: is a brand new home, but we also bought it.
Speaker 2: And what they call in Italy the algredzo form, which
Speaker 2: is a rough form, and so you just subcontract and
Speaker 2: do everything the way you like and I like doing
Speaker 2: that too, and I said never again. And then we
Speaker 2: found this house in Sicily, and so that's definitely going
Speaker 2: to be the last time, because then I'm going to
Speaker 2: go down to Sicily as our second home. And it's
Speaker 2: surrounded by these beautiful vineyards and olive orchards, and we're
Speaker 2: in what they called an ancient quarter in the area.
Speaker 2: It was. Tell you the name Sambucchia. It's from the sea,
Speaker 2: and the Greeks and the Arabs and the Spaniards have
Speaker 2: all come and gone and left their mark on the
Speaker 2: architecture and the history.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful, sounds gorgeous. Ours is not quite that romantic.
Speaker 1: It's a barn on a hill surrounded by cattle.
Speaker 2: But it sounds beautiful to me anyhow. It is own nature.
Speaker 1: It is lots of old oak trees and maple trees
Speaker 1: and cedar trees. And the place that I live I
Speaker 1: have spent the last twenty two years rebuilding and remodeling.
Speaker 1: It was a house built in nineteen oh seven, and
Speaker 1: I have my gardens in and my watering system in
Speaker 1: and blah blah blah. There's none of that at the
Speaker 1: barn house. Nothing not as shrubs, nothing landscaped, and so
Speaker 1: I have big plans, but now I'm tired. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know if I want to do
Speaker 1: any of that, because I'm heard.
Speaker 2: I know. I see the house that we've the house
Speaker 2: we've been here, has a lovely large garden. So for them,
Speaker 2: we do have some people come and give us a hand.
Speaker 2: But the house and Sisily, they're just two terraces where
Speaker 2: we're going to sit and have a nice glass of wine,
Speaker 2: where our daughter's can sunbathed on the top terrace, so
Speaker 2: there's no people. Have a couple of cactuses and some pots,
Speaker 2: but we're going to go really easy there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. That's what I'm thinking. And
Speaker 1: maybe the next place it's going to have cactus in
Speaker 1: a pot.
Speaker 2: That's it.
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Speaker 1: Learn more about mercyships at mercyships dot org. Beneath the
Speaker 1: Lions Wing is semi autobiographical. So I'm guessing it's based
Speaker 1: on your love story with Roberto, but maybe he made
Speaker 1: a few tweaks to what I did.
Speaker 2: First of all, the characters are Victoria, who is from
Speaker 2: southern California. She's thirty something, single woman in a career
Speaker 2: as an executive assistant for an entertainment agent and she
Speaker 2: goes on vacation and Alvise is the young fourth generation Gondelier,
Speaker 2: which I moved the story up to more recent times.
Speaker 2: What happens there that differs from mine because it is
Speaker 2: semi autobiographic, there are things that it is not a memoir.
Speaker 2: There's some twists and turns which I don't want to
Speaker 2: give away. But there's something from Alvise's past that springs
Speaker 2: up in the middle of their romance that risks them
Speaker 2: staying together. And they have to resolve this problem where
Speaker 2: with a very what's the word and I can think
Speaker 2: of it in a time, but a very invasive in
Speaker 2: laws who try to separate them based on this situation
Speaker 2: that comes up from Alvisa's past that neither he nor
Speaker 2: she were aware of this. Now I don't want to
Speaker 2: give that away, Okay, So is.
Speaker 1: That part autobiographical? Now? When I read the book, I gotta.
Speaker 2: Know no, that that part sways from from from our life.
Speaker 2: It sways from our life.
Speaker 1: So sways, RUMs yeays.
Speaker 2: Sways it sways because.
Speaker 1: I could write, I could write some stories, but I
Speaker 1: would never I know I would just I would be
Speaker 1: incriminating myself on too many levels.
Speaker 2: So well, so you have to be careful, Yeah, you
Speaker 2: have to be careful.
Speaker 1: So it's loosely based on your love story, does it's very.
Speaker 2: Very loosely based on on our love story, my story.
Speaker 2: It's there's a lot of context of Victor Gloria facing
Speaker 2: a new culture, trying to find friends, female friends. There's
Speaker 2: rowing and boating is very much a part of how
Speaker 2: she tries to insert herself in the lifestyle. That is
Speaker 2: a very Venice is a very small city, especially for
Speaker 2: somebody coming from Los Angeles, and so it's very They're
Speaker 2: very kind, but they're also very closed. So just the
Speaker 2: adaptation of making a life here, finding a job here.
Speaker 2: She finds a wonderful job working in the jewelry business,
Speaker 2: which I did not.
Speaker 1: So did you find did you find a job you
Speaker 1: loved or did you focus on your family and your
Speaker 1: kids and restoring it to under your own.
Speaker 2: Barn I actually went and worked with Venetian Glass for
Speaker 2: a season, and then our daughter born, and so I
Speaker 2: thought yeah, and I went back to work just for
Speaker 2: a month after she was born, and I just said, no,
Speaker 2: if I'm going to do this, I want to I
Speaker 2: want to be home with her. I left my career
Speaker 2: in Los Angeles, so I'm not going to leave my
Speaker 2: daughter at home for something that just maybe is getting
Speaker 2: me out of the house every day. But in the book,
Speaker 2: she travels about and she's trying to find a way
Speaker 2: to balance work, family and this new language and this
Speaker 2: new country, this new culture.
Speaker 1: And the gorgeous gondolier.
Speaker 2: You want to talk with Roberto or the real Robert,
Speaker 2: the real gorgeous Gondelier. He's also gorge My character is
Speaker 2: also al Viza is also very very attractive. Roberto is
Speaker 2: a very wonderful man. He's a very kind man. He
Speaker 2: loves his family, and he's in love with me still
Speaker 2: and can I how can I argue with that after
Speaker 2: thirty seven years?
Speaker 1: That's a beautiful thing. What a beautiful thing?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And there's also I know, because you do dedications, right,
Speaker 2: love song dedications And if I were to ask you,
Speaker 2: can I ask you for what? Maybe just to not today,
Speaker 2: I know, but if I were to ask for a dedication,
Speaker 2: because it's a song that I speak about in the book,
Speaker 2: that I wrote about and it's ed Sheeran thinking out loud. Oh,
Speaker 2: it's on one of the first pages in my novel.
Speaker 1: I love that song. I can definitely play that for
Speaker 1: you in Roberto.
Speaker 2: Thank you. I appreciate that.
Speaker 1: So Beneath the Lion's Wing is the name of the book, Marie.
Speaker 1: Is there any chance we'll ever see this like on
Speaker 1: the big screen? Do you think with a gondolier and
Speaker 1: your smile and his curls and you know, because this
Speaker 1: would be such a sweet, sweet love story.
Speaker 2: Let me tell you this. A few years back, while
Speaker 2: I was still writing it, was approached by a producer
Speaker 2: from Los Angeles who has made a number of very
Speaker 2: beautiful films in Italy and elsewhere, but he's made a
Speaker 2: number in Italy. He was very interested in it, and
Speaker 2: we were at the point of signing an agreement and
Speaker 2: so forth, and then he backed out. And I think
Speaker 2: it was more a personal decision for him, because he
Speaker 2: said it was had nothing to do with the story,
Speaker 2: and he since has retired, so I think it was
Speaker 2: just a personal decision for him. So I think the
Speaker 2: book would make a beautiful movie, honestly, you do. I'm
Speaker 2: very partial, but I do think it would be great
Speaker 2: on the screen.
Speaker 1: Marie. Thank you for your time. Thank you for sharing
Speaker 1: your heart with us and your stories with us and
Speaker 1: your handsome gone delier with us.
Speaker 2: Okay, thank you so much, Delilah, have a great day,
Speaker 2: Han Okay you too, Bye bye, Cacha.
Speaker 1: Marie has worked as a fixer production assistant in Venice
Speaker 1: for US and UK based me outlets such as NBC
Speaker 1: and CNN, and has contributed articles to different news outlets
Speaker 1: and travel media magazines. She taught English as a second
Speaker 1: language in Italian middle schools and in adult learning centers,
Speaker 1: and recently earned her certification as a wine taster from
Speaker 1: one of Italy's most recognized organizations. She is currently involved
Speaker 1: in the final stages of her third home build restoration.
Speaker 1: This time it's their family vacation home in Sambuca de Cecilia, Sicily.
Speaker 1: She plans to spend many days of the rest of
Speaker 1: her life, she says, surrounded by the town's vineyards, olive groves,
Speaker 1: ancient monuments, the nearby Mediterranean coast, fine food, wine, and
Speaker 1: the kind Sicilian people. Let's hope more writing comes from
Speaker 1: her time there. When Maria is not writing, tending her garden, volunteering,
Speaker 1: or traveling, she returns to her beloved southern California to
Speaker 1: visit family and friends, to watch the sunset over the
Speaker 1: Pacific Ocean and stop by her favorite Mexican mom and
Speaker 1: pop eateies. Marie's main residence remains in the Venetian countryside,
Speaker 1: where she lives with her husband Roberto and their four
Speaker 1: year old bernadoodle Remo. Catch up with Marie and find
Speaker 1: links to her book at Marie Ohannesseannardine author dot com
Speaker 1: and also on Facebook and Instagram. You can also order
Speaker 1: Beneath the Lion's Wing at Amazon and Goodreads. I know
Speaker 1: it's here too soon for many of us, but let's
Speaker 1: embrace September anyway. It's a month that brings inevitable change,
Speaker 1: and though change can be challenging, resistance, as they say,
Speaker 1: is futile. It happens, and we either get on with
Speaker 1: the program or go sulk in a corner. I'm going
Speaker 1: to spend some time each day enjoying the earlier suns
Speaker 1: and revel in every warm moment and cool breeze sent
Speaker 1: my way. I hope you do the same. Read some books,
Speaker 1: spend some time in meditation or prayer, eat good food,
Speaker 1: and take care of yourself and others. September is a
Speaker 1: beautiful time to slow down and love someone