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2024 has been a marvelous year of leaps and bounds, setbacks, celebrations, seeds and fires and something altogether new rising from the ashes. Many of you know our van was burned in early summer. That fire was a significant event for us. We better learned who we are:...

“The Phoenix and Turtle” is the name of a poem by Shakespeare, which I’ve never read, and neither have you. But for most of my life I’ve known the title, which always intrigued me. I thought “What would a turtle and a phoenix have to say to each other?” Later I was...

I’m told there’s a Chinese curse that says, “May you live in interesting times”. Omicron knocking on many doors, confusion, misunderstandings, polemics, both local and global. Some digging in, others giving up— these are indeed “interesting times”. Here at la Luna,...

One of my favorite Shakespearean plays, “Winter’s Tale,” already opens with the crisis which will determine the next years of suffering. For no comprehensible reason, King Leontes of Sicily decides that his wife Hermione is unfaithful, inhabiting the bed of his best...

My grandfather died when I was six years old. Shortly before that, my budgie died. I had named my budgie “Abraham”, after Abraham Lincoln, whom I knew my father admired greatly. My grandfather was named Richard Mason McNeer, although we called him “Papa Mac”. When my...

I don’t know if it’s true, but I once heard that an ancient Chinese curse was: “May you live in interesting times.” I think these times count as “interesting.” A couple days ago an Italian anti-Covid decree was passed: no public gatherings. We’re all to stay home,...

Natascia Fogu has collaborated with us for years. Actor and pedagogue by training, horticulturist by passion, generous host by nature, together with her partner Alessandro Lucci, she looks to the flora and fauna at la Luna. The other day I asked her to tell me what...

Last autumn, another remarkable visit to Germany, specifically, to EINS UND ALLES, the amazing inclusive community near Stuttgart, with whom we have mounted new shows every October for the last couple of years. Every year, new challenges and rewards. This year, our...

As a child, I spent a lot of time in trees. For me climbing trees was the surest way to a magical world where I was at once explorer, spy, and superhero. I remember my pleasure when my parents, or even better, unrelated adults started wondering aloud where I was,...

Sometimes it’s time to start anew. That’s what moved us in programming our 2019 summer festival, just completed. “ZERO KILOMETER THEATER”: we presented some of our winter productions, including 2 dinner theater shows and some autobiographical work— this year we...

While bicycling alone through Italy in the winter of 1981, I met an elderly bicycle mechanic in the outskirts of Naples. I explained to him, in my bizarre Italian/mime language, the trials and tribulations I had endured while looking for someone to help me. I had...

I’ve written before about how Pia and I “discovered” the south, and mediterranean hospitality, about our pleasure in returning that hospitality to our many guests here at “la Luna.” Once I tried to figure out about how many visitors we’ve had in our 20 years here, but...

Lao Tzu said, “a tree falling makes more noise than a forest growing,” and yet, seated in the twilight on the old stone wall where we planted the first thousand trees here at la Luna ten years ago — at that time plants a few inches tall, now over twice our size — how...

I assume every kid thinks his own family is normal and that it defines normality. Maybe our first experiences of diversity in society come from our encounters with other families: bedtime in another household shows us that some families do pajamas then teeth, others,...

The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return Nat King Cole “Nature Boy” So we returned to Germany this year. This is the second time we’ve been to work with our friends at Eins und Alles– the inclusive residential community of...