A new expansion of the Bardo museum in Tunis showcases more of the treasures in this museum I love. Continue reading

“Fire is the ultra-living element,” wrote the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard in 1964. Maybe that’s why we say we carry a torch for someone. Love is like fire burning in our hearts. I carried a torch for my kitchen stove. Continue reading

My great-aunt Effie hosted generations of nieces and nephews. We were enchanted by her yard and garden full of wondrous things, like a goldfish pond and a little Dutch windmill. The windmill was an early lesson in perspective. Continue reading

We were not thinking about food when we decided to go to Egypt, although drink was on my list. My roommate and I were living in Tunis in 1980, where the school break at the end of January was rainy and cold. Egypt sounded dry and warmer. I also fancied having a birthday in Egypt. I would be 22, and I thought it might be easier for two women to have a celebratory drink there than in Tunis. It was my roommate’s idea to go. Her two-year teaching contract in Tunis was nearing its end and she did not want... Continue reading

“The sap dam suddenly burst,” my friend Bruce wrote at 5:30 a.m. on April 13. All 300 buckets were filling as fast as the Nelsons could drive the Farmall H around their woods and collect the sap, clear as water. Continue reading

Gramma Marty had a little sewing trunk sitting next to her treadle machine, 12 x 12 x 24 inches. It was made of little pine boards nailed together, covered in leftover floral upholstery or drapery fabric. Continue reading

Walking into the Eastside Food Co-op in northeast Minneapolis, I scan the citrus. They greet you at the door, fresh in from Florida and Texas and California, orbs of golden sun. One day in December I see the tag for blood oranges. You can’t rely on how they look, really—most of them look like any other oranges—but a few blush magenta. I inhale. My mouth waters. Once I lost a suitcase with blood oranges inside. It was 1979, when I was living in Tunisia as a college exchange student. I got the chance to spend Christmas in Switzerland with the... Continue reading

Growing up on the Marty farm, so full of trees, I never saw or even heard of a tamarack. The reason I never knew tamaracks is one of the same reasons tamarack appeared all over the 1851 survey map: Those trees were like gold. The mapmakers had railroads in mind, and tamarack was prized for railroad ties in the days before creosote. Continue reading

Ever since I learned that boats once came all the way to the wall of the old Tunis medina, I have wondered how the new city could have been built upon a shallow lake. A brochure from the cathedral, built in the 1890s, gives an example. Continue reading

On the big blue wooden door from the terrace into the flat is an image of a fountain made from black studs pounded into the wood in the rustic Tunisian style. To me it’s a tree. Continue reading

It was the fig tree around which the architect planned the little house not far from the sea. Past the terrace is a space with seven small trees—almond and peach and lemon among them. Continue reading

I lived in Tunisia in the fall of 1979, a year when American Thanksgiving fell on the heels of the Muslim New Year. A few weeks earlier, hostages had been captured at the U.S. embassy in Iran, two time zones east of us, setting the world on edge. Ripples reached us on that southern shore of the Mediterranean. Continue reading

Something falling on the roof woke me. Thwack. And then again, unnaturally loud, thwack, thwack, thwack. After that the sound of running feet above my head. Acorns, just little acorns sounding heavy as coconuts. Continue reading

I found the Friends of Minnesota Barns back in the 1990s and recognized kindred souls. Most of these men and women have a barn in their lives that they've helped to save from destruction or demise. Continue reading

As waves of protest and revolution have swept across North Africa and the Middle East in recent weeks, waves of emotions have swept through me. Thirty-one years ago this winter, I was a student in Tunisia. Continue reading

Auntie Lou was a boon to the Marty family, which was a pretty serious bunch. She was not only smart, talented, and skilled, but funny, too. She was cool. Continue reading

In the long school break for Christmas during fifth grade, I wrote my first long story, a chapter book called "The Twelve Days of Christmas." Continue reading

In Christmas 1960, Auntie and Uncle were newlyweds. Gramma Marty was visiting a relative in California. The twins, who started out so tiny, were thriving. Continue reading

What I remember from winter nights on the farm is darkness. What I know of winter nights in the city is light. Continue reading

So many of my gramma Viola's photographs are vistas of snow, huge piles of it, hanging on evergreens or plowed into towering white walls. Continue reading

This is my dad around the age of 13, out shoveling the path between unseen buildings, the farmhouse on the right and the woodshed and outhouse on the left. You can barely see the handle of his shovel above the drifts. Continue reading

We were a family full of pairs. Dad and his brother farmed in partnership as Marty Brothers and were married to the Anderson sisters. Before them, the previous generation of Marty Brothers ran the farm. The farm had two houses and two barns. Then Mom had twins. Continue reading

Last week I drove north to Grand Rapids on the Mississippi and talked to a group of women woodland owners. The landscape of evergreens stretched out to the horizon... Over the next few days, I drove to towns in central Minnesota. Here the land was open, broad fields separated mostly by bare hardwoods. Continue reading

Cold. Dry. Hard. Windy. There was no comfort riding on a load of corn cobs on a November day. But apparently we kids did it anyway. It was exciting. Continue reading

On November 7, 1881, Jacob Marty and Suzannah Truempler were married. He had been in Minnesota a year, and she had just arrived from Switzerland, soon to change the spelling of her name to Susanna. Continue reading