Metropolis as Matrix - Umberto Tosi
Gavin and his book on city wildlife One of my earliest childhood memories is of scattering breadcrumbs around my grandmother's back porch on a bright, snowy, New England winter morning. It must have been a Sunday because she was rolling ravioli dough in the kitchen. The porch extended from the rear of her upper floor Victorian flat, perched on a hillside overlooking an icy Mystic River in the then mainly Irish, Italian and Portuguese, Boston suburb of Somerville, Massachusetts. Feeding "nonna's birds" was a "big boy" treat for which I bundled up in navy blue woolen coat, cap and leggings. She felt a kinship with those birds, espcially for the sparrows, pigeons, blackbirds who braved the frigid, Northeastern winters instead of migrating south. "Just-a like-a we do," she smiled her big warm smile, "Dey no run away to Florida. So dey need-a little-a help-a sometime," she would add, " poverini " [poor little ones]. Once I h...