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Employment Law Daily Unpaid Gawker intern primary was beneficiary of internship, so not employee
Unpaid Gawker intern primary was beneficiary of internship, so not employee
By Ronald Miller, J.D. Because an unpaid intern for Gawker Media was the primary beneficiary of his internship, a federal district court in New York concluded that he was not an employee and granted Gawker's motion for summary judgment against his FLSA and New York Labor Law (NYLL) claims. Although the intern's work was potentially of a kind that displaced the labor of paid employees, the court observed that under the "primary beneficiary" test outlined by the Second Circuit in Glatt v. Fox Searchlight Pictures, Inc., the plaintiff had no expectation of compensation, received significant training, received academic credit, his internship class set his minimum number of hours he worked, and he was not entitled to a paid job after his internship (Mark v. Gawker Media LLC, March 29, 2016, Nathan, A.). Gawker is a media company that operates a number of blogs dedicated to various topics in news, technology, and pop culture. The plaintiffs served as unpaid interns on Gawker websites. As an intern, the first plaintiff assisted the blog's editors and writers. He worked approximately 20 hours per week during his internship. At the time of his internship, the plaintiff was pursuing a degree in journalism, and received academic credit for the internship. A second intern researched, wrote, and edited posts for another blog. He worked remotely from Missouri for about 24 hours per week. At the time of his internship he was pursuing a degree in political science with a minor in creative writing, and did not receive academic credit for the internship. In additional to their individual claims, the plaintiffs sought to certify class and collective actions alleging the company's failure to compensate them for their time violated the FLSA and NYLL. Previously, the court certified the plaintiffs' collective action and 17 interns opted in to the lawsuit. The plaintiffs now moved for class certification of their state labor law claims under Rule 23, as well as partial summary judgment on their individual claims. Gawker moved for summary judgment on all of the plaintiffs' claims. Willfulness. As an initial matter, because there was a genuine dispute of material fact on the question of whether Gawker's conduct was willful, the court denied summary judgment on its statute of limitations defense on claims made within the three-year time period. Nonetheless, the court found there was only one plaintiff who filed within the three-year statute of limitations. "Primary beneficiary" test. Having dismissed the plaintiffs' federal claims, the court turned to consider their remaining claims under the NYLL. The parties each filed motions for summary judgment as to whether the interns were employees as defined in the FLSA and NYLL. The court's starting point was the Second Circuit's decision in Glatt, which adopted a "primary beneficiary" test for determining whether an unpaid intern is an employee within the meaning of the FLSA and NYLL. Under Glatt, the primary beneficiary analysis "focuses on what the intern receives in exchange for his work." Applying the "primary beneficiary" test to the facts of this case, the court found that the plaintiff was the primary beneficiary of his internship. The plaintiff conceded that both understood that he had no expectation of compensation. Moreover, he received significant training. Gawker provided mentorship and opportunities to learn journalism skills that were not offered to full-time employees who were expected to already possess an advanced journalism skillset. Because the plaintiff received academic credit for his internship, the internship was tied to his formal education program. Academic calendar. While the record did not dwell on the relationship between the plaintiff's internship and the academic calendar, this factor nonetheless favored Gawker. The plaintiff's internship class set the minimum number of hours he worked, and required him to submit weekly time sheets signed by his supervisor. Further, the record demonstrated that the plaintiff's internship did not extend beyond the point where he was learning new skills and having important new experiences. It was short, and lasted only three months. Displacement of paid labor. On the other hand, the plaintiff's work was potentially of a kind that displaced the labor of paid employees. Because a reasonable jury could find that the plaintiff did the same kind of work as a paid writer, at least part of the time, this factor favored the plaintiff, concluded the court. However, the plaintiff conceded that he was not entitled to a paid job after his internship. Having evaluated the Glatt factors, the court determined that the plaintiff was the primary beneficiary of his internship. First, the court concluded that he was properly classified as an intern, rather than an employee. His internship integrated classroom learning with practical skill development in a real-world setting. Further, there was no genuine dispute of material fact that the plaintiff received significant "educational or vocational benefits." With respect to Gawker, there was some evidence of net detriment, as a manager testified that the cost of managing interns in time and effort outweighed the benefits. Still, a reasonable jury could conclude that it received a benefit from the plaintiff's reporting, which generated advertising revenue. Moreover, Gawker benefitted from the internship program because it enabled the company to identify potential future hires. Nonetheless, the court concluded that the benefits received by Gawker from the plaintiff's work did not represent the company taking unfair advantage of or acting abusively towards an intern. Nor was it unfair or abusive for it to look to its interns as a potential pool of future employees. Consequently, under the totality of the circumstance and the economic realities of the relationship, the court concluded that the plaintiff was the primary beneficiary of his internship, and granted summary judgment to Gawker on his FLSA and NYLL claims.
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02. April, 2018 | by Tristan Foster | Categories: Reviews
Tristan Foster reviews Gerald Murnane's Border Districts
Gerald Murnane, Border Districts.
Giramondo Publishing, $24.95.
Buy direct from the publisher.
In Gerald Murnane's infamous archives, the reclusive Australian writer has files titled 'I give up writing fiction — again!', '(Yet again) why I stopped writing', and 'Should I tell Literature to get fucked?' How did Murnane get to be so disillusioned with his place in Australian literature? The first half of his writing career, beginning with his début novel Tamarisk Row (1974) and ending with the short story collection Emerald Blue (1995), was marked by publishing precarity which, according to Murnane, necessarily skewed the writing. "Every one of my books was a compromise between what I would have liked to write and what I suspected would be marketable from a publisher's point of view," Murnane says in the documentary Mental Places. "I was never free to write simply what I wanted to write." While working on the unpublished novel O, Dem Golden Slippers, Murnane's doubts that it would find a receptive publisher caused him to lose his grip on the text. He put it aside and decided to stop writing fiction for publication altogether, instead directing his creative energies to adding material to his archives — a space in which he could exercise the freedoms he longed for without inhibition.
The second half of Murnane's career began over a decade later. Ivor Indyk, publisher of Sydney-based press Giramondo Publishing, asked Murnane to return to writing fiction with a guarantee that Giramondo would publish and support the output. Barley Patch (2009), A History of Books (2011), and A Million Windows (2014) all come from this period and demonstrate a cohesiveness of creative vision which, depending on one's literary tastes, either enchants or bewilders. This sequence of books can be characterised as a literature of image visualisation, and the imagery that runs throughout it will be familiar to anyone who has read any of Murnane's writing: the marbles, the horse races, the stained glass, the plains, the church. In his later books especially, Murnane has obsessively pursued the evocations of this imagery to their limits, demonstrating in the process that those limits are unexpectedly vast. Indeed, he has built an entire body of work on this pursuit. The result is unlike anything else not just in Australian literature, but in the literature of the English language, and its development, extending from Tamarisk Row through the novels of Murnane's renaissance, has now been fully realised in Murnane's latest and apparently final novel, Border Districts.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $22.00.
The unnamed narrator of Border Districts moves from a large city to a remote township and makes the intentions behind his withdrawal clear from the outset. In the borderlands, he is free to meditate on the images that have remained in his memory throughout his long life, and, two months after having moved there, he begins writing a report on what he calls his "image-history". The images range from those associated with his loss of faith as a child to the evocations of an interview with a writer he heard on the radio, to the house he stays in when he visits the city. Moving from one image to the next, undertaking a ponderous examination of each, meditating on their connotations and connections, seeing what meanings and feelings can be unearthed from them, he immerses himself in the memory fragments he is able to call to mind. The images — some of them more than sixty years old — are of value to the narrator for the sheer fact that they have been retained. He believes that those which have faded from memory were unimportant, carved away by time so that the memories left behind shine polished and bright. Each one is an image he has meditated on before, but by removing himself from the responsibilities of city living he can now devote his full attention to them, turning them all over like a kaleidoscope in his mind, yielding an endless range of subsequent images that produce exciting new patterns.
In writing and in interviews, Murnane has spoken about his holy trinity: words, images, and feelings. These three phenomena are his version of the divine manifestation and constitute the foundational elements of his writing. "Imaginative literature comes from the same source as religious devotion," he says in Mental Places; Border Districts is a book about this literary-religious dynamic and its peculiarities. The monastic connotations of removing oneself from the confusion of the city to a quiet and isolated town to meditate on memories are present from page one. The narrator accepts his isolation with the zeal of a monk in a hermitage, eager to escape the visible world for the invisible one: "I moved to this district near the border so that I could spend most of my time alone and so that I could live according to several rules that I long wanted to live by." The narrator's reveries are directly and indirectly grounded in his Catholic upbringing and his "religious formation", and, in a way, Border Districts amounts to a record of the narrator's religious formation as a literary experience: his growing devotion to the god of words, images, feelings.
The "remembering man" of the text has moved to the periphery because it is where the profound is to be located. In Murnane's mind, and explicitly in the late novels leading up to Border Districts, peripheral spaces are where the visible world and the invisible meet. They are therefore the spaces in which fiction comes to be, and indeed, many of the narrator's images are drawn from what he has read in books and retained as vividly as certain images from the visible world. In Murnane-speak, the term "fiction" benefits from its elasticity; the rigid accuracy of quantifiable fact can be ignored in favour of the precision of the image in the narrator's mind. Whether the image-memory is accurate or not, or originates in Murnane's own image-history or not, is absolutely inconsequential.
The temptation to conflate narrator with author is ever-present in Murnane's fiction. There are numerous reasons for this, and Border Districts is no different: Murnane wrote this novel when he moved from the city of Melbourne to the town of Goroke, not far from the border of his home state of Victoria; his emotionally and tonally neutral prose is typically composed in the first person and describes events that echo his own private experiences; and many of the images that his narrator holds dear align with those that Murnane himself clearly values — those which he has built his body of work on. The narrator of Border Districts actually heightens the temptation to view him as a Murnane surrogate: he calls himself "a student of mental imagery" who believes that "a state of mind is incomprehensible without reference to images"; he finds some words so strongly linked to particular memories that he can't resist following his thoughts wherever they lead and possibly rediscovering a lost mood evoked by an image; and he writes his report in a way that is so matter-of-fact that it incorporates the act of writing the report. "I am not writing a work of fiction," he insists, "but a report of seemingly fictional matters." Indeed, the narrator almost dares the reader to confuse him with his creator, executing a move in a metafictional game between author and reader in which the former tries to lull the latter into believing that his remarks afford a glimpse, via a proxy, into the author's soul.
Yet Murnane has repeatedly warned his readers against giving into this temptation. For him, there is a distinction not only between author and narrator but also between the "implied author" and the "breathing author", terms adopted from the theoretical writings of the American literary critic Wayne C. Booth. His "ideal reader", he says, is one who recognises the autonomy of the narrator and trusts absolutely in the truth of the narrator's words. This trust will be reciprocated insofar as to enter into the fictional world created by Murnane — to spend time in the border districts — is to experience what he labels "true fiction". Put your trust in the narrator of Border Districts, then, and you'll understand why the novel takes the form of a report: it relates matters of narratorial fact. The narrator really does think these things, really does have these memories, really does prefer to occupy the border districts physically and mentally. The narrator's insistence on the truth of his disclosures forms the fabric of the text, and he reinforces the text's reportness by telling the reader what he or she could have expected had Border Districts been a work of fiction. Which it isn't. But of course it is.
This explicit denial of its own form and source material isn't unique to Border Districts. It's a key element of what makes Murnane's writing so unusual, and it's often what is at stake in his fiction. For Murnane, fiction takes place entirely in the realm of the mind. This automatically precludes realist fiction from thriving in his borderlands. "An author demeans fiction," Murnane writes in A Million Windows, "if he or she requires the reader to believe that what happens in his or her mind while reading is no different from what happens over his or her shoulder or outside his or her window." Absent from his books are plot, dialogue, and even characters in E.M. Forster's sense of the term. "A true work of art in no way depends for its justification on its seeming connections with the place which many call the real world and I call the visible world," Murnane writes. He strives not for an essence of reality but for an essence of image.
For this reason, it's fair to consider A Million Windows the closest companion to Border Districts. It illuminates much of what Murnane executes in the more recent book. Taking its title from Henry James' preface to The Portrait of a Lady — "The house of fiction has in short not one window, but a million" — A Million Windows is narrated by a figure who uses James as a model for the kind of writer he and others in his milieu want to be. The book also literalises the metaphor of a house with many windows, depicting a dwelling whose resident writers both observe the outside world and seek refuge from it. The house of fiction in A Million Windows exists at the point where the real and the imaginary meet, at the collision of the visible and the invisible worlds, and now, in Border Districts, Murnane escorts us across the territory on which the house has been built: the borderlands, an entire realm of discovery and escape.
Inherent to this fiction-as-discovery is the act of repetition, of revisiting what has been written of before. Border Districts even begins with a reference to Murnane's earlier work: the opening sentence rewrites the first line of his best-loved novel, The Plains (1982). But rather than seeking out the approval of unknowable plainsmen, the narrator of Border Districts seeks interiority, choosing to explore not merely a physical territory but a mental territory inside a physical one.
Since the beginning of his career, Murnane has been striving to access an invisible world through his writing — a dimension in which the words, colours, and feelings of the real create the fabric of the imaginary; a realm that is, in Murnane's hands, seemingly without limit. His fiction occupies itself with the aforementioned holy trinity and in doing so pushes out the boundaries of what fiction can be. Especially in the more recent novels, Murnane has been uncompromising in his explorations, the surprise of what he himself finds in the borderlands of his mind compelling him onwards, and inwards. The question that Border Districts leaves readers facing, then, is not whether Murnane has finally found some sort of limit to the borderlands — because, after all, he has once again quit writing — but whether his exploration of their farthest reaches has come to a satisfying end.
While it might be the last novel, I can't say for sure that the project has come to an end at all.
For one thing, as the remarkable culmination of a lifelong project that continually strikes resonances with Murnane's earlier books, Border Districts actually encourages readers to read on by reading backwards. This isn't to say that readers who aren't familiar with Murnane will find it an ideal place to begin; it assumes some knowledge of his habitual interests, and, despite his insistence otherwise, his prose takes time and effort to penetrate. But given its repeated allusions to his broader body of work, readers who have followed Murnane to this point are unlikely to see Border Districts as the definitive end of the journey.
For another thing, Murnane has orchestrated a situation that will more strongly incite readers to return to his novels, in time and under his guidance. The control he has exerted over his career — to end it himself not once, but twice — is indicative of an impulse to influence how his writing is read, and so is the other lifelong project he has worked on in parallel to the published one. In putting together his extensive archive, which is to remain off-limits until after his death, Murnane has future-proofed his legacy by offering future readers an obsessive catalogue of his internal and external worlds. Its opening will surely provoke a new bloom of interest in his work at minimum, if not a full-scale reassessment of his life and output — and on his terms.
Of course, maybe Murnane's maintenance of his archive, and his attempts to quit when he wanted to, were merely his way of wresting back what little control he could from publishers, the Australian literary industry, and even the universe. Projects like the one he has now completed are winding, complicated, and — I would agree with Murnane on this point — rarely the product of any real planning. Given its uncertain, compromised beginnings and the way it tapered off in the 1980s and 1990s, Murnane is very fortunate to have been able to decide on an ending at all — let alone an ending that simultaneously looks to the past and promises more in the future. We have the books now but we don't have all the writing; the project is complete but it will continue to unfold in private; everything could so easily have been otherwise. One day, when those archives are opened, it will become otherwise in ways we can't predict.
About Tristan Foster
Tristan Foster is a writer from Sydney, Australia. His short story collection Letter to the Author of the Letter to the Father is published by Transmission Press. He is co-editor-in-chief of 3:AM Magazine. He blogs at No Follow and tweets @tristanfoster.
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Home » Football » Championship: winners & losers
Championship: winners & losers
Will Boro battle back?
Hull, Middlesbrough and Sunderland were out of their depth in last season's Premier League, finishing as the three lowest ranking sides. Despite what some former Blackburn Rovers owners may think – that always leads to relegation.
So, who will bounce back, who will battle their way through the play-offs, which set of fans are doomed to another season watching boring midtable football and who is a League One side in disguise? The English second flight is amongst the most competitive divisions in European football. Let's see how the pre-season betting is shaping up…..
Smoggies expected to win the Championship
You may think Sunderland would be automatically placed near the head of the betting to win the Championship and return to the head table, but you'd be mistaken. They're not even close. Middlesbrough promised much when promoted a couple of years ago, but failed to live up to their own hype, and quickly fell back down again. Boro a yo-yo club? Well, there's every chance they will be, and our traders have Garry Monk's side as 6/1 favourites to lift the title.
They'll do so ahead of Aston Villa in second, if our boys are correct, the Villans – complete with Chelsea legend John Terry as captain – 13/2 second favourites at the time of writing. As you may have noticed, there's plenty of value around if you're shrewd enough to call the winner before a ball has been kicked, but you'll deserve that value if you correctly predict the champion. Last season's neck-and-neck race between Newcastle and Brighton was another example of just how competitive this group can be.
Sunderland given little chance
The way the Championship is set up, it's possible to finish third in the table and not be promoted, while a team ending sixth goes up. In fact, it's more than possible, it's very likely. We've had a few sides go up through the play-offs that have had no business being in the Premier League, and have shown themselves up at that level, but we all love the drama of play-off football at the end of the regular season. Giving the market leaders a safety net, Middlesbrough are 15/8 to go up, regardless of the method they use to achieve it, while Villa are 2/1.
Sunderland were rotten last season, and they have since sold off a few of their higher earners, dumped misfiring manager David Moyes and brought in Preston's Simon Grayson. The 47-year-old Englishman's side were hammered 5-0 by Scottish Champions Celtic in a pre-season friendly, which doesn't do an awful lot to inspire confidence in The Black Cats. They don't have much of a chance at winning the league either, Coral handing out 12/1, while there's 9/2 about promotion. Fulham going a step further than last year and returning top football to Craven Cottage is 11/4.
Burton backed to sink
At the other end, we have Burton Albion priced as the most likely side to be relegated come the final count. They finished 20th last time, just a point better than Blackburn Rovers who went down, but won't get off lightly in 2018. Draws cost them dear, ending level in as many matches as they managed to win, but they did lose 20 times, and that was the same amount as Wolves up in 15th. So, they're not doomed.
A play on Nottingham Forest to sink looks a more interesting bet, and we'll give you a cracking 11/2 on that one. Forest beat the drop by two goals last season, and manager Mark Warburton doesn't fill us with confidence. He plays attractive football, but the Championship is not the place for pretty stats, it's about grinding out results.
Click here to read our Premier League winners & losers
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There are those who are offended by the business name, sparking angry emails to Hakadosh BBQ's supervising agency, the Star K, and thus prompting owner Ari White to change the name of the business.
This is somewhat different in nature from the "Jezebel" controversy with the OU, but conversations are arising around the role of a Kashrut agency, and if they should have the authority to ask or demand a name change, or anything unrelated to the food.
UPDATE: While I spoke to Ari White (owner of Hakadosh BBQ) before writing the article, he sent me the following message on Facebook which he asked me to publish. Feel free to comment below and Ari will respond.
A lot of hubbub has surrounded my recent decision to rename my prized 4700lb Texas made BBQ Smoker and I would like to set the story strait. Three of my four babies were named on Sukkot. Asher Elimelech had his bris followed by a huge Gemstone catered lunch at Orach Chaim nearly six years back. Three years later my second son Yoav Oz was named again during Sukkot at his bris (which I did myself=) followed by a Seussian inspired -Green Eggs & "Ham" bbq breakfast in the Sukkah at my HQ in Yonkers, the Lincoln Park Jewish Center. While my third son (Nadiv Israel) was still incubating within my wife who was on bedrest at Columbia Pres Hospital at the time, the name Hakadosh BBQ came to one of my guests in between zmirot during 1st night's dinner, inspired in the sukkah surrounded by a feast of friends enjoying a phenomenal bottle of good ol' southern bourbon. From the moment the name left Benji's lips, I knew it was what I wanted to name my new smoker – an 18ft "Stalker" model bbq rig made in Houston Texas by the ever so talented guys at Gator Pits. Over the 10 months to follow, the very nature of my business would take wild expansionary turns resulting in the pitcrew we currently have servicing the NYC area with pop-ups and the weekly Sunday street fairs.
H'kBBQ was never meant to be the name of any business as we operated then and still under the dual titles of "got cholent? Inc", our Shabbat oriented wing as well as Gemstone Catering, our on and offsite boutique catering branch. I took on the name on facebook and twitter as part of our ever active online marketing and left it at that. Ten months of work in and around the metro area and we never heard so much as a peep. In fact the name, at least for those who got the pun, was generally received with great humor and praise. Our most recent pop-up in Philadelphia however, a fundraiser for the Kohelet Yehiva and their Yoetzet program, proved to be a game changer as it seems that angry mail began pouring into the STAR-K offices aghast in outrage and condemnation for what was viewed as the trivialization – chas v'chalila – of the The Name of The Holy One, Blessed Be He. This matter was brought to my attention just before our competing this past weekend, also under the team name Hakadosh BBQ in the Long Island Kosher BBQ Competition and quite honestly left me unsettled all Shabbas long. My epiphany came while meeting and speaking with one of the judges charged with scoring booth names and designs. He too found himself offended by what he deemed as irreverence of God's name and scored us accordingly, which as an aside cost us 1st place and the Grand Champion trophy. This judge struck me as good man, mamish, and I had deeply offended him. I left the corporate world so that I could do something I love and literally bring greater joy to people. We cater weddings, bar/bat Mitzvahs, meals and kiddushes for Shabbat and work with dozens of charitable and worthy organizations facilitating many of their fundraising events. Every one of these gigs in some way works towards the goal of making this world of ours an ever so slightly better place. The answer, in my eyes, was crystal clear.


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Villa Necchi Campiglio in Milan as "House of Gucci"
I often hear of Milan as an industrial and grey city with few things to offer. That's not true at all and this is not only about the most popular tourist areas, Milan actually hides great treasures which many people are not aware of, plenty of its beauty is hidden from the gaze of tourist or hasty citizen. And here I am writing about one of the most beautiful and luxurious villas dated back to the 1930s., lodged within the colours, the scents and the tranquillity of an amazing garden. A symbol of architecture and art in Milan. Even though it is right in the city center, it seems to be discreetly hidden in one of those corners and awaits to be discovered. I am sure you'll be amazed at what you can experience there 😉.
Villa Necchi – Milan city
Villa Necchi Campiglio, located in the neighborhood of Porta Venezia, belonged to the wealthy Necchi family who made a fortune in the production of the best sewing machines.
The legend of the origin of this Milanese villa has it that this noble family from Pavia was frequently guest in Milan. So, one day, after visiting an exhibition at Teatro alla Scala, they got lost because of the heavy fog and ended up in front of a sign "Land for sale". Milan was much smaller at the time and surrounded by countryside. Without hesitation, taking it as a a sign of destiny, they bought the land the very next day with the aim of building their Milanese residence.
Necchi sewing machine
For nearly 70 years the villa was inhabited by Gigina Necchi, who married the aristocrat Angelo Campillo, and her sister Nedda. The couple never had children but they loved having guests and often important personalities of the time.
Thanks to the their generosity, in 2001 Villa Nechi was bequeathed the Italian Cultural Heritage Fund (FAI), that carried out the restoration and in 2008 transformed the building into a public museum house, preserving collections of artworks by Canaletto, Tiepolo, Carriera, Balla, Boccioni or De Chirico. Necchi sisters wanted to be ensure that after their death the villa would continue with its role of welcoming guests for many more years.
Villa Necchi
Villa Necchi is not about a boring house-museum where the interior objects are fenced and everything is saturated with the smell of antiquity, on the contrary, it seems that the owners are about to return from a trip and offer you a cup of tea. A very lively and modern atmosphere reigns here, a house that is almost a hundred years old but seems modern to us when we admire it today!
Villa Necchi – interior design
Today as it was then, the house has some very advanced features for its time. Each room of Villa Necchi Campiglio is a masterpiece in terms of decoration and design.
Villa Necchi – winter garden
Villa Necchi Campiglio is a true example of rationalism in architecture, design lovers will surely appreciate the subtleties of its interior, for example, the veranda, with its gleaming stone floors and the verdant lushness; the bathroom clad in shiny tiles in midnight black.
Villa Necchi – interior
One of the most famous architects in Milan, Piero Portaluppi, was invited for the realization of a dream villa. Interestingly, the financial costs were of little importance for the noble family, the order was to build a luxurious house for a comfortable life without any limitation of funds. So, freed from any creative or economic constraints, Portaluppi conceived a true country house in the middle of the city equipped with cutting-edge technology at that time, tennis court and heated swimming pool. The villa was built in record time from 1932 to 1935.
Villa Necchi – bathroom
The villa's internal layout, its design solutions and the impeccable combination of materials-everything here is just amazing. Imagine that here was built the first garage for four cars, elevators, dumbwaiter lifts, indoor intercoms, electrically operated glass, unusual sliding doors and the first private heated pool in Milan.
Villa Necchi – swimming pool
Moreover, here there were two parallel lives: the life of a wealthy family and the life of their house staff, for whom was built a separate staircase and was allocated a part of the house. It is remarkable that for the first time the pool was located right in front of the entrance and not, as had been customary, in the back courtyard.
💡 Interesting to know:
House of Gucci – Villa Necchi
The villa Necchi was featured in Ridley's Scott's new film "House of Gucci" which doubles as Rudolfo Gucci's home immersing the visitor in a glossy atmosphere.
Visiting the villa you will experience the timeless luxury of an Italian society home from the 1930s. Of course, I will not reveal you all secrets about this place, no story is comparable to what you can see with your own eyes, so when you are in Milan do not miss to take a tour of the villa or have a rest in the garden in the shade of the giant magnolias.
Villa Necchi – garden
Villa Necchi Campiglio also hides a caffetteria where you can enjoy Italian dishes or sip a coffee in an elegant and relaxing atmosphere.
Villa Necchi- caffetteria
How to visit Villa Necchi:
Working hours: Wednesday-Sunday from 10:00 till 18:00
Address: via Mozart 14
Photoshot by Amira Siakha
Piero Portaluppi
Leonardo Da Vinci vineyard in the heart of Milan
Christmas Ice skating rinks in Milan
Montevecchia: a trip out of town to "The Old Mountain"
Mantua, the graceful town of lakes and Gonzaga family
Fragrant Christmas butter biscuits
Yummy carrot cake with cream cheese frosting
Isola and Porta Nuova: the future of Milan between street art, tradition and modernity
Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II and its uniqueness
Duomo Cathedral' Statue of Liberty in Milan
How to make the perfect risotto. The story of the popular Risotto Milanese
Coffee world
Where does the name Cappuccino come from? How to make a good cappuccino
The best bars and restaurants in Milan. Where to eat in Milan
Where to eat in the center of Milan Nabucco Restaurant on Brera
TheMilanDiaries.com
MilanoDavai.ru
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text:
Dennis Cardiff
~ Poems & Prose
Playful Spirit
Posted by DennisCardiff in Uncategorized
eternal, fairies, fantasy, imagination, lifetimes, longing, love, romance, sighs, spirits, spiritual
Playful spirit behind an oak
laughed and flirted but never spoke.
Eyes of onyx, raven hair,
I marveled at her standing there.
Brilliant sunshine — could barely see.
Had my eyes played tricks on me?
I stood in reverence and awe
not sure of what I thought I saw.
Fluttering soft, the poplar leaves
perhaps, had caused me to believe
I'd seen someone who wasn't there —
eyes of onyx, raven hair.
The nimble spirit deftly danced
from tree to tree and lightly pranced.
I didn't know quite what to do
about this vision in my view.
I had no knowledge of such things.
What does one do when nature brings
such beauty, grace and winsome mold
who, I could see but could not hold?
I could have watched her all day long
her movements sang just like a song.
She beckoned me with backward glance
down flowered pathway of romance.
I had no choice, I was entranced;
induced to follow where she danced.
The woods had changed, were foreign now,
colors brighter, surreal somehow.
I saw some spirits on the way.
They went about their normal day.
They took no notice of my form
contrary to their spirit norm.
They were at home among the trees;
conversely, I felt ill at ease.
Abandoned, then just like a snare —
She drew me close and hugged me tight;
we kissed, caressed throughout the night.
Not a wisp of evanescence,
but a real woman's presence.
Wood smoke, sweet-grass, musk and cedar —
I took her hand, she let me lead her.
Beneath the boughs we made our bed
while stars shone brightly overhead.
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Prairie Crocus
Posted by DennisCardiff in Poetry
arising, birth, blossoming, emerging, flower, nature, new growth, prairie winter, Spring, symbol, welcoming
After the snow moves north
the prairie crocus,
native anemone,
ears of the earth
for the rustle of summer.
Gently she sways
to moments of truth.
In her petals
the purple blue mist
of far distant mountains;
a small golden sun
close to her heart.
folds close around her,
warms her
from the cold winds
of spring.
Review of Highland Pursuits
Posted by DennisCardiff in Prose
After having read The Gentlemen's Club, Cautionary Tales and Scarlet by Emmanuelle de Maupassant I eagerly anticipated her latest book, Highland Pursuits. I wasn't disappointed; this is a rollicking tale of the 1920's, somewhat in the manner of the popular television program, Upstairs, Downstairs. We read about the daily adventures of the hired help and the landed gentry who inhabit a Scottish castle. Under the hand of this talented and skillful author descriptions of nature, dialogues and actions of the various characters come to life as we learn their innermost secrets, desires and disappointments.
This read is fast paced and highly enjoyable. The author is a consummate story teller who seamlessly leads the reader through the heroine's various adventures in coming of age. We are introduced to the Lady Ophelia, a 1920's debutante, who is exiled to Scotland to live with her grandmother, Morag. With her she takes what she considers to be life's necessities: a variety of ball gowns, her lap dog, a Cairn terrier named Pudding, a Cadbury's Milk Tray and a well leafed copy of Lady Chatterly's Lover. We experience with her the fancy dress balls, an embarrassing fall in the lake and a disastrous grouse hunt. We learn her attitudes, uncertainties and disappointments as she matures under the guidance of her grandmother who eventually bequeaths to her Kintochlochie Castle. This may sound simple, but life's lessons are not so easily learned. A young woman's heart is easily turned by love, romance and a kilted Scot named Hamish.
I highly recommend reading this fascinating book.
Fiona Mcvie Interviews Rebecca Branch
books, compassion, emotion, empathy, imagination, kindness, lifetimes, love, lust, must read, romance
Posted by fionamcvie1964 in Uncategorized
Name: Rebecca Branch is my pen name. My real name is Margaret (Molly)
Born in New York City 09/25/65, moved to Florence when I was six months old, to Rome at two years, to Paris when I was six, London when I was seven, back to New York at eight, college in California and returned to live in Montclair, New Jersey for the past twenty-two years.
A little about yourself, ie your education Family life etc.:
I am the less distinguished daughter of highly accomplished parents. My father was an American archaeologist and my mother, an Italian socialite. Papa was second generation American. His father was a Hemmingway story, a Polish/Hungarian child who came to this country when he was ten years old by himself by hiding on-board a boat coming from Zagreb. He met a doctor who spoke his language at Ellis Island who adopted him and sent him to Columbia University where he became a pioneer psychiatrist and neurologist. Grandpa joined the American army in WWI and was on the medical staff of General John Pershing as a captain in the American Expeditionary Force sent over to fight the Huns. He bunked with another captain, his lifelong friend George Marshall. They both ended the war as colonels. FDR asked him to serve again in WWII as one of the chief psychiatrists in the Army Medical Corp with the rank of brigadier general. Grandma was from Russia, a student of Tchaikovsky at the Moscow Conservatory of Music. Her father was a horse trainer for Tsars Alexander III and Nicholas II Romanoff. They left during a pogrom because of their Jewish faith and came to New York, living first in Harlem and then in Brooklyn.
My mother's family were Italian aristocrats; mom's father was the agricultural minister under the fascist regime before the war, disagreed with Mussolini's decision to fight against England and was sent south to Calabria in a sort of exile. Mom was the eldest daughter, raised with chauffeurs and horses, the first to go to college and was in Rome in 1940 at the university. She was a secretary at the agricultural ministry and fell in love with the foreign minister Galeazzo Ciano, with whom she had an illegitimate child, my sister, who still lives in Rome. Roberta is twenty years older than me.
I was raised wherever my father was assigned as an archaeologist and art historian so I grew up in Rome but also in London and Paris. Every summer we were on excavations all over the Med and I have been throughout Italy, Greece, Crete, Cyprus, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Jordan and on and on. Pop was a purchasing agent for the Met, the Boston, Fogg, Getty and Philadelphia Art Museums. He was also a journalist and owned four recording companies. My readers get to meet both my parents in my books.
I attended the University of California at Berkeley, majoring in art history and the California College of Arts and Crafts (CCAC) to learn how art is made. There I studied painting, sculpture, architecture, design, photography and learned to throw a pot, smelt bronze, etc. They were preparing me for a position in museum management.
I returned to New York to work on my Ph.D. at Columbia where my special focus was on Roman architecture of the late empire. I became fascinated with the great public buildings and how they fell into disuse, crumbled and fell, or were saved to become churches after the fall of Rome in the fifth century. My first job was as an assistant to the curator of Greco-Roman Arts at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. I was paid $95.00 a week! Luckily, I was six feet tall and busty, had modelled though my college years, and could subsidize my career in the arts. Upon my father's death, I chose to go into a field where I could make a liveable wage and entered the architectural design industry, having taken a course of study at Pratt. Knowing full well that I was hired as eye candy, I worked twice as hard as the men in my business, attending all-male construction meetings as a designer, then a project manager, working my way up to principal of design where I ran a boutique which worked primarily with fashion company clients. I designed and managed projects for all the major retailers while still modelling…a hard thing to do.
I married a contractor who was kind and cerebral, English and Finish by origin, and raised two girls who are now grown and my joy in life. My husband and I recently separated and I now live alone in an 1879 farmhouse which was originally a Roebuck and Co. kit house, made of chestnut with stained glass windows, built-in cabinetry and pocket doors. I'm about to move into the city for the next stage of my life.
Fiona: Tell us your latest news?
I am going through some serious changes in lifestyle. My family is all gone and doing their own thing. My ex suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident and is now living with a woman he likes in Florida. My eldest is out of college, won a fellowship, returned after a year and now works for a Google start-up in the medical field and my youngest is about to graduate and has also won a fellowship to teach. I lost my day job last September when my company bellied-up and am now seeking new work…difficult at fifty-one. My home is threatened with foreclosure and I feel it's time to move. Oh dear.
Fiona: When and why did you begin writing?
I started writing on a dare by my youngest when she asked about her grandparents and great grandparents. After telling her various memories, she asked me to write it all down. Four years ago I had a travel job and had the time to write in planes, trains, and hotels so I started in October of 2013 and in two months had seven hundred pages of biography. A friend at Harper Collins looked at it and told me I had written four books; one about my grandparents and immigration, one a war-time romance about my parents, one a travelogue on the city of Rome and the last, a romance story about my youth and loss of innocence.
I had a dinner party and the twelve of us spoke of when we each 'lost it'. Haha. My favorite neighbor, a brilliant historian told his story. He, too, had grown up in Rome and although ten years my elder, we shared many things in our youth. I was so intrigued by his memory that I asked his permission to use his story together with my own. Thus, was born The Summer of '71, a romance of youth in the city of Rome.
It was easy to imagine my friend in the role of the hero of the book and myself as the heroine. In fact, Molly Moncrieff is very much me. She differs in the hard life she had to endure as a model, being passed from casting couch to casting couch. I never suffered such things in my modeling career and was well protected. But Molly in the book is damaged goods in need of care and understanding and she finds it with a young prodigy in the ancient city where she has ten weeks to heal, find incredible love, lust and happiness, and start a new life.
Fiona: When did you first consider yourself a writer?
I thought it was just a hobby for the first two years. Now, after almost four years and four books I guess I'm an indie author. I am, as yet, undiscovered, and certainly cannot please everyone. My books are long and filled with the things I love; attraction, flirtation, infatuation, physicality, art history, history, Italian culture, cuisine, time-travel, relationship building, loss of innocence, friendship, bereavement, trust, renewal, etc.
Fiona: What inspired you to write your first book?
I had just read 50 Shades and knew I could write something better; something about cerebral characters who love and lust without the BDSM and without the damaged upbringing. I also had a feeling that an audience would enjoy being transported to the places I love and have the chance to tour Rome at the side of an art historian, gaining insights into why we are who we are…as Americans, and as people of the western world who owe so much to the classical period which invented the things we hold dear like religion, politics, basic freedoms, the arts, literature, theater, architecture, town planning, engineering, and on and on. All my romance novels assume an audience who wants to know these things. If you want bump and grind from page one, I'm not your author. If you want to learn how to cook osso buco and then spread dessert on your dinner guest and eat them, then maybe I am.
Fiona: Do you have a specific writing style?
I write in the first person and third person and switch between characters all the time. This may take a little getting used to, but I want the reader to be inside each character's mind with immediacy. It's a style used in the nineteenth century quite often. I leave each of my books open to a sequel. I write happy and funny stories. No one gets hurt, no one is beaten or dominated (except in the nicest of ways, of course) and my books are all respectful of gender, age, ethnicity, sexual bias, and condition. My characters grow page by page. The books are all very conversational and although they have erotic moments, there is never anything gratuitous in the sex scenes. I simply refuse to hide their physical love behind a curtain. Of course, as the author, I am putting myself out there with every word. On FB, I have many followers who'd love to date me…men and women. Haha. Ain't happening. But if you read my books, you will know exactly what I like and that will have to be good enough.
Fiona: How did you come up with the title?
The original story happened in 1976 but I wanted to place my characters in the heart of the social revolution of the sixties and seventies, the anti-war movement, hippie drug culture, the outstanding music, etc.
Fiona: Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
Yes…embrace education with both hands at all times. If you don't enjoy a formal college experience, that should never stop you from learning about everything and always keeping an open mind. Embrace people of all kinds…they are the ingredients in the stew we call mankind and everyone has a place and a role to play. Never judge a person by their external shell…beautiful people reside in all kinds of wrappings and fantasy is in the mind's eye. If you're a woman without a man but have a great girlfriend who loves you and supports you, give her a kiss. She just may kiss you back. If you have neither, get yourself a great dog. Celebrate your children. They are what life is all about and make for a better world, if not for your sake, then for theirs.
Fiona: How much of the book is realistic and are experiences based on someone you know, or events in your own life?
All my books are very real to me. The hero is the man I'd like to have as a lover, mentor, friend and companion. The women are all me in varying stages of my life, in part, or actually me. In my fourth book, The Resurrection of Griffin Ballard, I actually place myself on the page as a character. It was a cathartic moment for me when I wrote it and I wanted to enjoy the lips of one of my heroes in the story. Haha. Author's license, I guess.
The two time-travel books, Great Caesar's Ghost and A Roman Holiday are well researched and the history and art history is very good. There are many secondary characters in my books who make special appearances and interact with the protagonists. I put words in their mouths in character with who they were historically. They include people like Gore Vidal, Sofia Loren, Federico Fellini, John Jacob Astor III, Nelson Rockefeller, Truman Capote, Andy Warhol, John and Yoko, Amadeo Modigliani, Theodoric the Ostrogoth, Gaius Julius Caesar and many others. Some are heroes of mine and others are villains.
Fiona: What books have most influenced your life? a mentor?
Clan of the Cave Bear and Valley of the Horses by Jean Auel influenced how I write sex and also the fact that her books are not erotica at all, and yet they are highly erotic as the culmination of lengthy periods of introspection, self-awareness and relationship building. You read and read these lovely characters and wish them to connect for the longest time. That sexual tension is terrific.
The First Man in Rome by Colleen McCullough was a great influence in writing first hand in the classical world and putting words into iconic character's mouths.
The Mummy by Anne Rice helped me along with Victorian styling in quasi-erotic fiction.
Tom Clancy was the basis for writing war stories and passages.
I adore the detail in the Harry Potter books and the Tolkien trilogy and the films made me read them again.
Dan Brown gave me hints at how to pace my time travel and the exploration of places in my books. My writing has been called Dan Brown with erotic passages. Haha.
I like some poetry, but am not a poet, nor am I likely to read much poetry, although I enjoy Shakespeare's sonnets and the classical illusions of C.P. Cavafy.
Mentors: well, my mother and father, Julian Jackson who was a collector of antiquities and a government attorney who wrote many of the child battery laws in the sixties and seventies. Dietrich von Bothmer, curator at the Met, Donna Karan who inspired me with her stand on plus size and full figured women as well as dressing women in business at a reasonable cost. Salvatore and his brother Ferruccio Ferragamo who networked me to death as a young model. Several employers who taught me to always take an ethical stand in business. My husband, who even in the most dire of circumstances always chose the path of being an honorable man. My children who will do their part in saving the world.
Fiona: Are there any new authors that have grasped your interest and who is your favorite author and what is it that really strikes you about their work?
Emmanuelle de Maupassant who writes with clarity and an elegance of language and has stood by me in tough times. I'm not a fan of BDSM but her book, The Gentlemen's Club is a true winner.
Fiona: Name one entity that you feel supported you outside of family members.
Costco. I buy everything there and can return anything which does not live up to my high standards. The butcher is of the highest standards, coffee at less than half the cost elsewhere, wonderful berries, baked goods and dips…and wine sold for 25% below the competition. They also have the cheapest cost of gas. Haha.
Both my daughters have enjoyed full scholarships at private, all-girl high school as well as at college. Both made the Dean's list and my youngest has been on the Dean's list every term. I'm very proud and repay the institutions through guest lecturing, fund-raising and sitting on boards. Working as a fund raiser/organizer at the United Nations has opened my eyes to so many things which are important to me.
Fiona: Do you see writing as a career?
I certainly hope so. I'm finding it difficult to get re-employed and know that it will not get easier as I age gracefully. Being a writer for a living would be marvelous. The trouble is becoming known. If word of mouth does not take a hand, I'm just one of a quarter million housewives who think they can write the next great American novel.
Fiona: If you had to do it all over again, would you change anything in your latest book?
Nope. I love The Resurrection of Griffin Ballard. It is my shortest book but my heroine, Bethany Lambert is a truly inspired, modern and strong women and she saves the lives of all those around her.
Fiona: Do you recall how your interest in writing originated?
A dinner party, already mentioned. I've never taken a creative writing course and only one English course in college. I wrote art history, nothing else, but I wasa raised by educated parents who could both speak and write. That sort of thing rubs off. You are what you eat.
Fiona: Can you share a little of your current work with us?
The following is a passage from Out of Time's Abyss, my fifth book and a work in progress.
"Hey lazybones. We're back. Nova and bagels, warm croissants and fresh juice is in the kitchen." He looked at his girl, all dreamy-eyed in their bed.
"Get back into bed, Maxi. I just want to lounge around this morning and maybe even go back to sleep."
He tossed his jeans and tee onto the chair, bedside, pulled off underwear and sox and slid in beside his dream girl.
"Don't you love this bed, Sally?" He said as he cupped her breast and kissed her cheek.
"It's terrific. Almost as big as my room at home, and the mattress has got to be the most comfortable I've ever experienced. Who'd have guessed that horse hair mattresses are considered the best and are also the most expensive. I also love the canopy, don't you?"
Sure do. In the nineteenth century and before, a canopy with thick drapes was thermal insulation against the cold room just outside. All homes were poorly heated until the twentieth century." He snuggled in close.
"Well, I'll always have you to keep me warm. And at the moment, the weather is warm and a bit muggy. This top sheet is more than enough." She turned her back to him and he pressed close, spooning her, wrapping arms and legs around her tall and lithe form.
"So, what was with you and Molly kissing when we got home last night? You've offered no explanation. You like her, don't you?" Max inquired.
She turned to face him and pushed his hair back from his eyes, circling her fingers around his head. "We spoke at length about little Max and you. Ambi and I both felt that she should tell him that you're his father."
"Are you sure that's okay with you? I don't want you being frightened or jealous of Molly. After all, she was my girlfriend years ago, you're my wife."
Sally looked deep into his eyes. "I guess I need to hear from you about that. I think she's wonderful and I love little Max. He's your son and it's only right that he be a part of our lives. But will you want me and keep me if Molly is also around?"
He lifted her up to straddle him from above, holding her arms near her shoulders pretty tight. "You need to ask such a thing? Think I'll stray? This happened with Ambrosia, too, remember. You slept with her before I did. What went on last night while I was dancing at Tunnel?"
"What do you mean? Molly and I sat around and spoke."
"Just spoke? In point of fact, we walked in on the two of you kissing."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Blah, blah, blah. Maxi, she's hurting. She's trying to figure things out and so am I." She lay her head on his shoulder and flattened out across his fit body. "I told her she should be a part of our family. I'm willing to share you with her…kind of, I guess. We kissed because…because our emotions were running rampant and we'd connected. It was a friendly kiss at first, but it's hard to be around her without feeling attraction. Jeez, you know this better than anyone. The woman feels like mother earth. I want to attach myself to her and draw energy from her. She also kisses just like you."
"How'd you ever get to be so open-minded? Your self-confidence leaves me breathless."
Just then, they heard the running footsteps, and little Max jumped onto their bed, landing beside the two of them. He climbed up on top of Sally's naked body and lay across her back, like a sunbather on a chaise, entangling both in his arms. They were now a stack of three.
"Maxi! Saleee!"
They laughed. Having this little boy around was definitely changing their family dynamic. "Good morning, crazy child. You're in a great mood this morning." Sally said. She turned and he slid off to the side and kissed her cheek. "I'm gonna love having you around, I think," she said.
"Goodie, because I never want to leave," he said as he nuzzled into her cheek. They laughed some more. This child was pure love.
"There you are." Molly was at the door. "I told you to leave Max alone this morning and let him and Sally have their privacy. Oh dear. I'm sorry. He couldn't wait to see you this morning. Come on, darling. Leave them in peace."
"No, it's alright. He can stay. How are you this morning?" Sally asked, looking at Molly over her shoulder.
Molly smiled with warmth. "I feel like I'm starting a new chapter in my life because of you, Sally."
"Come on mum. Get into their bed. It's enormous." He started bouncing around by the foot of the bed. The two shifted over a bit and Sally said, "Come on, lay down and join us."
Molly pulled the pajama top off her shoulders and slid in beside the couple in bed with her son. She reached over and kissed Sally on her cheek and pulled in close to her, now sandwiched next to Max.
"Goodness, all these kisses." Sally smiled as her new friend extended her arm across her back.
"Hey everybody. Is the party in this room?" Anna dragged Ambi into the room, both in terry robes which fell to the floor as they jumped up on the bed and joined the others. Ambrosia climbed over and gave Sally her third kiss of the morning.
"Feels like a party, doesn't it?" Sally observed. The boy pressed himself between his mum and Sally. He looked at her naked body, laying across Max, and cuddled in close, reaching out and stroking his little fingers across her back.
"Sally, you're really, really beautiful. You're tall like my mum but have bigger boobies. And I love your face. You look like an angel."
"Oh dear," Molly said. "Darling, Sally is an angel."
"Maxi," Sally said, "I'm just a girl like any other."
"No, you're not. You're Max's girl. That makes you extra special. Doesn't it, Max?" He cuddled in closer. They all smiled. The little boy was magical. "I hope when I get older that I get to marry someone on this bed…someone like the girls on this bed."
They all smiled. "And if you could, who would you choose, Max?" Molly asked, amused her son was being so forthright.
The boy sat up and looked at Sally, his mum, Ambrosia and Anna, all naked on the bed with Max, more or less in the middle. "I'd want to marry Ambrosia, I think."
Ambi was overwhelmed.
"And why would you choose Ambrosia?" Anna asked, with no small degree of pride.
"Hmmm. She looks different from the rest of you and I love her eyes and lips. Her lips are a little like mum's. She's smaller than the rest of you and I guess I like that too. She knows everything about dinosaurs and outer space. I love her voice and I really like how she talks to me without opening her mouth."
There was a collective intake of breath.
"How do you do that Ambrosia? How can you speak to me without words?"
Molly sat up. She reached out her hand and touched her son; the greatest gift anyone could have given her, and she looked at Max, lying beside Sally on the bed. "Maxi, my darling. It's time to tell you two things; two very important things."
"What mummy?"
"Maxi…since you were very little, I've told you that your father was American and that he died in a car accident before you were born." Maxi's heart started to race. "Well, I made up that story to protect you because…because I never thought you'd have the chance to meet him and know him." The silence in the room was palpable. "Darling, I'm so sorry that I didn't tell you the truth. I never expected to see your father again. His life was somewhere else and ours was in London. He was younger than me and I knew we couldn't be married and live a life together. He needed to finish school and grow up into a man and I needed to be your mum and not someone's wife. My wonderful son…your father didn't die. Max is your dad."
The boy's eyes welled up with tears and he launched himself into his mother. "I knew it, I knew it. I'd hoped and hoped it was true. Sally slid off Max's chest and turned to watch Molly and little Max as they spoke this truth. Releasing his mom, the boy turned and spread himself across Max's chest, hugging him to death, then turned on Sally and kissed her cheek again, looked deep into her eyes and asked, "Does that make you my mother, too?"
Sally was about to burst into tears and just nodded yes, a big smile across her lips as she pet the beautiful boy in his enthusiasm. Both had tears in their eyes, tears of happiness and they wordlessly communicated an incredible depth of feelings and love. After a few moments, the boy turned to his mum and asked about the second thing that was so important, unable to imagine what could even come close to what he'd just heard. He had a father…a dad. And the gift he was just given was the best gift there ever was. He loved Max and had hoped and hoped for a father like him. He would love him forever and ever.
Finally, in a small voice that was obviously choked up, he asked, "What's the second important thing you wish to tell me?"
Molly took a deep breath and answered, knowing she was opening the door to a truth which was far more science fiction than reality. She wondered how her son would take it. "Ambrosia can speak to you, and all of us, wordlessly, because she's not entirely human. Ambrosia is a robot."
The expression on the boy's face was to die for. He was glowing with happiness and wonder. "No way! A robot?" He climbed up off Max and straddled Ambrosia's waist, sitting on her hips and looking down upon her from above. She was so beautiful, dark and mysterious, but with a hesitant look, wondering if the boy would still like her or be afraid of her now that he knew the truth. He was the first child she'd ever connected with, and she loved how he'd constantly taken her hand everywhere they went, always asking questions and showing such warmth and respect. Passing his fingertips over her face and neck, she closed her eyes for a moment as he lay down across her body and hugged her neck tight, kissing her cheek. All the adults were overwhelmed, none so much as Ambi, herself, who cradled the boy in her arms. He whispered in her ear. "When I grow up, Ambrosia…when I am older, will you marry me?"
Ambi rose to her knees and lifted the boy, holding him in the air, then crushed him to her chest. "Yes. Maximilian Moncrieff, when you are older, if you still want to ask me again, I will marry you."
Everyone was in tears now, Anna passed her hand across Ambi's back, amazed with her creation, and so happy at her inclusion amongst her human friends.
"How long will I have to wait? I'll be eight in September. You have to tell me what I need to know so I can be a good husband. Stuff like how to change your batteries and fix you if you break. I promise, I'll be very gentle."
Anna spoke. "Don't worry little Max. I'm her doctor and she won't break. I promise. And she'll never get old so you have time to grow up and marry her when you're a man."
"But you and Ambi are best friends. Won't you be upset if she marries me?" He looked at Anna, carefully considering her and not wanting to be the cause of pain to anybody. And Anna was nice and very friendly, never talking down to him and always letting Ambi have time with him even though she also wanted her attention. Anna was her friend but was also kind of like a parent in many ways. You could see her pride in Ambi whenever she did anything cool or smart. Anna was a parent, wasn't she?
"Listen up, you beautiful child…my life is somewhere else. I love Ambrosia and will always love her, but she's yours more than mine. I hope I get to see her often, but you're going to grow up together and you will also be her teacher. She learns from you every day she's with you. You are the first child in her life, so teach her well. With you, she becomes a better human being. It's very important that you be close friends. She will need you when I am gone and she will always be there to protect you, your mum, Max and Sally."
Through the collective cheer of all in the bed, Molly glanced at Max and Sally, both with eyebrows raised and smiling ear to ear.
The door opened and Raj and Carson glanced into the room. There lay Max with four gorgeous naked women in a huge bed. Raj turned to Carson and said, "I told you he's my hero. What a lucky fuckin' guy!"
Fiona: Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?
Editing…the activity is making me blind. I write very fast when I'm inspired. When I started my new book a week ago, I had no idea where it would start or end. I now have 26,000 words. At this rate, it will be complete in six or eight weeks. This new story is called Out of Time's Abyss. It is the fourth in my Art Historian Superhero Series. When I finish this, I'll move on to something entirely different.
Fiona: Do you have to travel much concerning your book(s)?
I hide behind my pen name in order to protect my family and my position at work. I'd never have a day job if it was known that I am Rebecca Branch. I can share the things in this interview with you because I doubt that anyone in my circle would ever read it. At home, my daughters are both pissed at mom for writing romance. To them, I am a pornographer. I'm being harsh, but they are not proud of my writing and yet, haven't read any of it. They feel I should be writing some high-brow treatise on Roman Architecture. I could, you know. But if I did, it would sell three hundred copies.
Until I am making a real living doing this, I must hide in the shadows. I've only posted a few real pictures of myself and they are mostly body shots with me turning my face away from the camera or pics from when I was so young that few would recognize me. On Facebook I use doppelgangers of me or my main characters. Monica Bellucci and Sonia Aquino are my favorites and look like me, or so I've been told. Both are stunning women. Last year in Rome, I was approached by three families for an autograph. Each thought I was Sonia. Haha. But I was very complimented by the comparison. Being tall and thin has its advantages, something I did not feel when I was a teen and others called me a stick-bug with boobs. Once I make a real living from this hobby, I'll come out into the open and take a deep breath of fresh air. I'll do signings and interviews. But that's a dream. For now, writing under an alias makes me happy.
Fiona: Who designed the covers?
Courtney Lopes at courtneycreates26@gmail.com She interpreted my ideas to a tee. I love my covers.
Fiona: What was the hardest part of writing your book?
Oh dear…so many things. The reviews are the hardest part. If you read some of them on Amazon, they're so sweet. Molly Moncrieff, my heroine in Summer of '71 seems to be a dream to all my male readers. Many men are completely infatuated with her…and she is me! What a compliment. Many older gentlemen speak of their own memories of their first love who was a slightly older woman and taught them about love and intimacy. A few women have told me they really relate to the character. Many readers have fallen in love with Rome as I describe that great city and ask for hotel and restaurant recommendations as they plan their trips because of my book. One reader, a clinical psychologist for teens at Bellevue Hospital in New York wrote to me saying that Summer of '71 is a roadmap for an honest and loving loss of innocence. How great is that!
But then I get totally deflated by the poor reviews which are mostly offered by women. One wrote that the book was too long and she had to skim through it to get to the sex. Oh dear. The length is the length. Summer of '71 could have been serialized into three books. It breaks perfectly into three but I didn't want to do that. At one point, it topped 900 pages but I cut it back to about seven hundred, created numerous crisis, added and subtracted characters, etc. I feel it is the right length but if you are an erotica fan, you'll not be pleased. So many erotica genre books have sex on page three. My books are all erotic but the point is the relationships and the atmosphere, not the sex. Oh, my books are plenty steamy, but Summer, for example, doesn't have a consummation scene until page 250. By the time you get there, the reader is screaming at the couple to combust. Haha. I like that. Personally, I cannot read sex without being heavily invested in the characters. If not, then it's just pornography and is not my style of writing or reading.
Another reviewer said that the hero, Maximilian DuPont spent too much time looking at Molly's legs. Well, Max is eighteen. He is a dream of a young man, young, enthusiastic, holistic, brilliant beyond his years, entitled, handsome and fit. He's a dream for a woman who's been mishandled and abused by all the men in her life. He is safe and kind and renews her spirit and soul. And poor Max is confronted by a woman who unleashes all her sexuality on him. He can handle it. But in response to the reviewer, Max is young, and young men see women as parts and pieces until they are in love. Then they see the whole person. I write Max's thoughts as he is confronted with Molly in a way that I'd expect a young guy to see her and I write him in a youthful 1971 hippie-speak vernacular.
When I was twenty-three, I dated a guy who was nineteen like Max. The young man was brilliant and could run rings around me intellectually, had traveled the world and was the son of a diplomatic family. I loved that guy but I was a runway model and surrounded by admirers and clubbing or at events all the time and his self-confidence was the problem. He simply didn't trust me out of eyesight. He could have, of course, but he was a freshman in college and I was studying for an advanced degree, working at the Met and moonlighting for Donna Karan. It was never going to work. But Max and Molly have the summer together and never leave each other's company.
Fiona: Did you learn anything from writing your book and what was it?
I had to research many things and the history I learned in college thirty years ago, has been revised. I needed to update my own data to keep things current. In my new book, my time-travelers are in Florence in 1483. I did my minor in Renaissance Art but need a real refresher to get the facts correct.
Fiona: If any of your books was made into a film who would you like to play the lead?
This is an interesting question and I've thought about it a lot. My books could be great costume dramas and a miniseries would work well. My books read a bit like a screenplay. Molly is English so perhaps Rebecca Hall. I'd take Monica Bellucci in a heartbeat, but she's very Italian and hardly twenty-six. Max is a problem. Young actors who could run the gamut from eighteen to twenty-five are hard to find. Aidan Turner is my current man-crush but he's too old to play someone so young and a bit dark. It would have to be an unknown. Ambrosia could be played by a Bollywood actress named Asin. Alexandra Daddario might work for Sally and my dog Boris would be perfect for Kody.
Fiona: Do you have any advice for other writers?
Read a lot before you ever put pen to paper. Do it for yourself without ever expecting or even hoping for financial success. Learn the English language before embarrassing yourself. Develop your characters so they jump off the page and are real. Start with short stories. Take a creative writing course at your local college.
Fiona: Do you have anything specific that you want to say to your readers?
You mean, besides asking everyone to read my books? Haha. I suppose everyone who writes, thinks there is something special about their book. I fall into that category. My work doesn't translate well into the existing models of popular erotica or romance. When an agent tells me to send my first chapter for review, I cringe. The first chapter does not define me. When I offer my book for free on Amazon and it gets a thousand downloads and two months later not a single review, I cringe. How can that be? I've been told people download anything for free and then never read it. I have FB friends who've been entertained by my wit, my artistic and literary talents and my charm for years and yet, have never read one of my books. Why? Many FB friends have read my book and reviewed it on FB in glowing terms and then never post their thoughts to Amazon or Goodreads…why? That's awful. My website took me two months of concentrated development and yet has few visitors. Social media is the ultimate time-suck yet has little return. Publishers get over 200 submissions a day and hand the manuscripts to twenty-year-old interns to decide what should be read and what shouldn't. I have spent upwards of 4,000 hours on my writing and more on marketing for a return on investment which translates to pennies per hour. But, heaven help me, I love it. I love to write and I'm a good story teller. One day, someone connected in the publishing industry will take notice and I'll make a living doing this. Someday.
Fiona: What book are you reading now?
The Rise of Germany by James Holland and I Hate My Neck by Nora Ephron
Fiona: Do you remember the first book you read?
A.A. Milne which included Disobedience and Winnie the Pooh.
Fiona: What makes you laugh/cry?
The current administration. Well, I don't really laugh any longer.
Fiona: Is there one person past or present you would meet and why?
Marcus Aurelius. I will meet him in the book I'm writing now. He was the last of the great Roman emperors of the golden age. He was a philosopher and his book, Meditations, is still in print, 1,900 years after he wrote it. The subject, as written by the ruler of the western world, is how to be a good prince and a great public servant.
Fiona: What do you want written on your head stone and why?
Here lies Rebecca Branch, a fond owner of Jimmy Choo's, Ferragamos, and Manolo Blahnik's. She always said her feet were killing her and no one believed her.
Fiona: Other than writing do you have any hobbies ?
I love to cook and entertain at my home constantly with weekly dinner parties for ten to twelve. I love my dog and walk him in Central Park each Sunday where he is perceived as a tourist attraction. I enjoy gardening. I ride my bicycle for twenty mile trips, weather permitting. I enjoy morning yoga and dance. I like to paint on a watercolor block. I like to collect antiques and go to auctions even if I don't buy anything. I listen to NPR all day long. I'm a news junkie. I'm a feminist and a political activist. I love to stay in a cabin by a lake in the mountains. I like to fish. I like to sit around a campfire, play guitar and sing Joni Mitchell and Beatle songs. I love the spa and a good facial and massage. I lecture on Roman Architecture for design associations to audiences of two hundred and more and love the connection. I also lecture to architects and their families in Rome at least twice a year. It's fun to be a teacher.
Fiona: What TV shows/films do you enjoy watching?
Many BBC costume dramas on TV plus good investigative journalism like Frontline or nature series like National Geographic. Film…Too many to mention but I've enjoyed most of the Oscar contenders. Saw Arrival two nights ago, and enjoyed it. I like musicals and Disney movies, romcoms and foreign films. I'm very sentimental and patriotic and often cry watching films and reading a good story.
Fiona: Favorite foods / Colors/ Music
I cook Italian and can handle a grill better than any man I know. I eat sushi three or four times a week. I can also bake. My favorite music…too many and it depends on my mood. I love classical, opera, jazz and the pop music of my youth and things that came just before I became conscious of music like the sounds of the sixties and seventies.
Fiona: If you were not a writer what else would you like to have done?
I'd love to be a successful novelist, a food critic, lounge singer, a pediatrician, college professor, a time-traveller or a Secretary of State (I know, I know…this one's a stretch)
Fiona: Do you have a blog/website? If so what is it?
WEB: www.rebeccabranch.com
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Rebecca-Branch/e/B00V2HCWYM/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1
Author: https://www.facebook.com/arthistoriansuperhero/
Personal: https://www.facebook.com/rebecca.branch.1232
Melting Stars
longing, love, personal, romance, sighs
It was a soft October night —
quietly fell the snow,
flake by gentle flake —
making domes on fence posts,
on mailboxes,
tracing upturned branches
of waiting trees.
I know you heard me
(you always do)
thought it was
a stirring of the breeze,
or moaning
of the boards
to quiet times
knowing you are here,
I feel your peace
(alone)
and come to you.
You know I'm here,
can feel my warmth.
I see you smile.
Let us sit in silence.
in my embrace.
need not be spoken
as we watch the melting stars,
listen for the chorus
singing somewhere else.
all that matters —
quiet filled with you.
angel, dream, exhaustion, lust, magic, memory, romance
with wings widespread,
scent of tangerine
being peeled
and split
in sections
with my tongue
succulent and welcoming,
juices dripping
like the irresistible
tang of brandy,
one taste
never enough —
intoxicate me,
satisfy my thirst,
exhaust me,
until morning
bikers, birds, crowds, crows, danger, liquor, noise, song
i like crows
their sound more
like the bark of a dog
than the trilling
of nightingales,
the warbling
of warblers,
or the haunting
call of the loon
sounds like a raucous
biker bar
with loud interjections:
'set 'em up'
'to fallen brothers'
one glass remains
'hit us again'
i keep my head down,
but i'm home
Image: http://ow.ly/U5zcU
Highland Pursuits by Emmanuelle de Maupassant
book, book review, favorites, must read, new release, Published author
1920s debutante Lady Ophelia Finchingfield is banished to wildest Scotland to come to her senses, having refused a marriage proposal from the Earl of Woldershire. In the care of her eccentric grandmother, Ophelia is soon caught between rugged widower Hamish and the villainous Comte de Montefiore. She's ready to play with fire, but will she burn more than her fingers? A riotous romp, inspired by the work of Nancy Mitford, PG Wodehouse and Stella Gibbons. Featuring a treasure chest of characters, 'Highland Pursuits' is a wickedly naughty comedy of manners.
I eagerly look forward to reading this latest book by one of my favorite authors. The release date is 1 March 2017. I have found two of her previous books to be absolutely fascinating. I have written 5 star Amazon reviews these books:
The Gentlemen's Club (Noire series Book 1)
5.0 out of 5 stars I loved this book
By Dennis Cardiff on Oct. 19 2014
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
I loved this book. The characters came alive, in fact I identified very much with the leading male character. I'm old enough to remember the Victory Burlesque Theatre that attracted the best of international dancers. This book brought back wonderful memories. I'm glad to see that this is Volume one in the 'Noire' Series. I eagerly anticipate Volume two. Emmanuelle de Maupassant has become one of my favorite erotic writers.
Cautionary Tales: Voices from the Edges
5.0 out 0f 5 stars Enchanting, Spellbinding, Delightful
By Dennis Cardiff on March 14 2016
"Hear our stories, learn from our errors.
We too, were once flesh and blood.
Take heed: remember the old ways."
Emmanuelle de Maupassant is an enchantress with words. I already knew this from reading The Gentlemen's Club. Reading her stories lulls the reader to other times, other places where the unnatural becomes natural, where ghouls and ghosts watch your every move and will exact punishment or retribution when deserved. The characters come to life on the page with no wasted words.
I felt that I was sitting at a fireside hearing these cautionary tales told by a respected elder. Although fiction, my disbelief was suspended. While reading I was tempted to look over my shoulder, question every sound and inspect every shadow. This book is a masterpiece of storytelling, I recommend it to all adults who don't mind being scared out of their wits.
I was offered an ARC on the understanding that I would review it honestly.
Readers of Highland Pursuits have posted reviews:
5.0 out of 5 stars How Ophelia Got Her Groove
By TheJulia on Feb. 22 2017
Highland Pursuits is just what you need when the realities of 2017 seem too much to bear. Turn off the news, ignore your Twitter feed, and dive with Ophelia in this delightfully frothy romp of a story. Immerse yourself in a world of house parties, tea gowns, and ten-course meals. You will be glad you did.
The tale of How Ophelia Got Her Groove is told with wit and compassion. The heroine starts as another madcap heiress having her requisite rebellion, but the character evolves as Ophelia discovers and comes to terms with her desires (for sex, for love, and for a meaningful life). Fortunately, Emmanuelle de Maupassant has steered clear of a common sin of many historical novels: the period character with modern-day sensibilities. Ophelia is modern enough for her time and circumstances; her social and sexual awakening is in tune with her story and circumstances, and that makes her relatable and likeable, and makes the reader root for her.
The author has an "ear" for the time and place – a slightly tongue-in-cheek, self-deprecating tone, the details of food and dress, the witty dialogue – that take you back to the golden time of house parties. The naughty bits are implied more than described in graphic detail, perfectly in tune with the wink-wink-nudge-nudge undertone. Add to it a villainess who is not entirely evil, a love interest with some depth, and you end up with a quality divertimento, well-crafted escapism, brain-candy for the discerning reader. Break open the bonbons and enjoy!
*I received an ARC from the author for an honest review*
4.0 out of 5 stars Feisty rom/com of a novella set in the 1920's
By Christine Tovey TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on Feb. 15 2017
Highland Pursuits by Emmanuelle de Maupassant is a feisty rom/com of a novella set in the 1920's following Lady Ophelia Finchingfield whom we first met in the "Because Beards" anthology. Emmanuelle's writing was poetic and flowed with such ease I was able to follow these characters through their journey. The scene was set beautifully with intense detail to time period. This genre was completely new to me and I loved the flow of the story and how it felt like I went back in time to high society Scotland. I'm sure fan's & new comers to this genre would enjoy story and all it entails.
Shadrak
desperation drive
DennisCardiff on Melting Stars
Jonathan Caswell on Melting Stars
House of Heart on Melting Stars


text:
VIDEO: Helicopter drops vegetables for animals affected by Australian brush fires
WXXV,
By CNN Newsource, Associated Press
NEW SOUTH WALES, Australia (CNN/AP) — Officials in Australia loaded bins of carrots and sweet potatoes into a chopper and dropped them by air to provide food for animals impacted by recent brushfires.
The New South Wales Government posted Monday on their Facebook page that more than 2,200 pounds of carrots and sweet potatoes were airdropped over fire-affected regions.
Officials said the much-needed food will help the endangered brush-tailed rock-wallabies recover from limited food and burnt vegetation in their habitats.
https://www.facebook.com/mattkeanMP/posts/829866870799030
As of Sunday, crews battling Australia's wildfires say they have been able to turn from defense to offense for the first time in weeks thanks to a break in the weather.
The weather is expected to remain benign for the next week, although any deterioration in conditions after that could see the wildfires flare up again.
A firefighter was killed by a falling tree, bringing the death toll to at least 27 in a crisis that has destroyed more than 2,000 homes and scorched an area larger than the U.S. state of Indiana since September.
Categories: News, US & World News
Tags: australia, Brushfire, fire, Food for Animals, wildfire
USM baseball's Tate Parker adjusting back to Division I ranks
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Hancock High School sending four to the next level.


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Much of Kinect depends not just on the presence of interaction itself, but the quality and definition of your actions that the system can detect. So far we've only really noticed larger, arm gestures and whole body movements, but could it detect smaller finger movements? Certainly not in the demos we saw so far but that doesn't mean the system won't be fine-tuned and improved over time.
When Kinect was first announced, Peter Molyneux introduced a tech demo called "Meet Milo" where a virtual boy talked and interacted with a person, even to the point of observing a piece of paper with a drawing on it, that was held to a screen and immediately scanning it in and passing it to the virtual boy. A show-stopping moment that promised to usher in a new era of video game interactivity.
It's fair to say that the era of Milo that we imagined hasn't really been delivered in the launch games. Microsoft wouldn't allow us to take any video clips of Kinect running. So instead we took a clip of two journalists playing the game.
For some people, that'll be fine. "Drunk people", as PC Advisor's Carrie Ann-Skinner explained, "will love it". We suspect children will too. Hardcore gamers are unlikely to put down Call Of Duty: MW2 to play a game of 'run on the spot and wave your arms around like a monkey' but that's also understandable.
If you consider this Microsoft's create-something-like-the-Wii-but-different-enough-to-be-exciting, then it is by all accounts going to be a rip-roaring success. It's certainly got novelty factor coming out of its ears.
But there's little doubt that what we're seeing so far is the tip of a larger, and much more interesting iceberg.
Microsoft informed us that Kinect will be integrated with the Xbox interface, so you'll be able to use hand gestures to navigate the onscreen menus. There will also be spech recognition utilised in the menu system. This is the Minority Report-type of future that we're interested in. Sadly, that wasn't on show so we can't report on that. Microsoft also couldn't inform us as to how it would handle more complex gestures (like select, back, main menu, and so on). Will it be able to identify certain gestures: a finger making a circular counter-clockwise gesture for back, for example? Or will it be all palms to the screen to control the giant white blob?
We also didn't get to test out any speech recognition technology. Partly because the environment was too noisy, and also because we think it isn't yet implemented (at least not in the games we tested). We've yet to see a really good use of voice technology that works effectively for a non-American accent, but it's clear that this is an area of technology that's bounding along.
Kinect is a no doubt going to be a game changer. If for no other reason than it places the Xbox 360 in the same arena as the Nintendo Wii, and even raises Nintendo's hand. In terms of show-stopping prowess the likes of Dance Central, Kinect Sports, and Kinect Adventures get the message across: it's about body control.
What really will be interesting is if Microsoft can take the system beyond what it showed us today, and use it to create comfortably interactive experiences - ones that are subtle, rather than show-stopping. Cleverly controlled menu systems that you can understand and control instinctively without having to reach for the remote control (because there isn't one any more).
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Alberto Aziani
Antonio Bosisio
Francesco Calderoni
Francesca Maldi
Gian Maria Campedelli
Carlotta Carbone
Rogier Alexander Rutgers
Tommaso Comunale
Marco Dugato
Serena Favarin
Francesca Limberto
Thomas Joyce
Martina Marchesi
Marina Mancuso
Cecilia Meneghini
Michele Riccardi
Giacomo Salvanelli
Marina Mancuso is teaching assistant in the course of "Sociology of complex criminal phenomena", Master Degree in International Cooperation Policies for Development, Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Milan. She graduated with the International PhD in Criminology at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (February 2014). In December 2009 she received an Honours Master's degree in Applied Social Science, specializing in Crime and Security, from the Faculty of Sociology of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, with a dissertation on "The Middle-East oil industry: vulnerability and security measures. A survey of Iraq's pipelines" (L'industria petrolifera in Medio Oriente: vulnerabilità e misure di sicurezza. Un'indagine sulle pipeline in Iraq). In October 2007 she received an Honours Bachelor's degree in Science of Social Phenomena and Organizational Processes from the Faculty of Sociology of the same University.
Her research topics include primarily: smuggling of migrants, trafficking in human beings and sexual exploitation. She is researcher at Transcrime since June 2010 (Milan office) where she conducts research on the illicit trade in tobacco products and she collaborates in the Project Organized Crime Portfolio funded by the European Commission. She is currently conducting research on the illicit trade in firearms and she is part of the research team involved in the project "FIRE – Fighting illicit firearms trafficking routes and actors at European level" and she is participating at the project DIGIWHIST (The Digital Whistleblower. Fiscal Transparency, Risk Assessment and Impact of Good Governance Policies Assessed) (2015-2018).
Chapter in edited book
Savona Ernesto U., Marina Mancuso, and Luca Giommoni. 2014. "Human trafficking for sexual exploitation in Italy". In Cognition and Crime: Offender Decision-Making and Script Analyses, edited by Benoit Leclerc and Richard Wortley, New York: Routledge.
Articles in academic journals
Mancuso Marina. "Estimating the revenues of sexual exploitation. Applying a new methodology to the Italian context", in Global Crime (forthcoming).
Mancuso Marina. 2013. "Not all madams have a central role: analysis of a Nigerian sex trafficking network", in Trends in Organized Crime, DOI 10.1007/s12117-013-9199-z.
Caneppele Stefano and Marina Mancuso. 2013. "Are protection policies for human trafficking victims effective? Analysis of the Italian case", in European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research 19:259-273.
Mancuso Marina. 2012. "Prabaha Kotiswaran: Dangerous Sex, Invisible Work. Sex Work and the Law in India", in European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research 18(3):303-305.
Mancuso Marina. 2011. "Allum Felia, Longo Francesca, Irrea Daniela and Kostakos Panos A. (eds): Defining and Defying Organized Crime. Discourse, perceptions and reality", in European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research 17(4):343-345.
Since 2010 to present she has collaborated at some research projects, among which: "I beni sequestrati e confiscati alle organizzazioni criminali nelle regioni dell'Obiettivo Convergenza: dalle strategie di investimento della criminalità all'impiego di fondi comunitari nel riutilizzo dei beni già destinati" Italian Ministry of Interior, under the programme Programma Operativo Nazionale 2007-2013; THB:COOPtoFIGHT "The fight against trafficking in human beings in EU: promoting legal cooperation and victims' protection" funded by the European Commission and "Factbook on the illicit trade in tobacco products" funded by Philips Morris International.