I recently returned from a road trip through the Midwest, and I was struck again with how much land is still empty – a fact that can escape me as a city dweller lo these many years – in spite of the agrarian roots from which I sprang.

My mother’s people were driven to America from the Neapolitan village of Potenza by the bone-crushing poverty that afflicted much of rural Italy in the early 1900s.  Her grandfather came to New York for work but hated it. (more…)