TSA chief, the man behind the airport pat-down, an optimist about everything but terror

WASHINGTON (AP) — Each day, dozens of U.S. intelligence officials crowd around a conference table in a small, windowless room in a government building across the street from a shopping mall in northern Virginia. At the head of the table sits the man who perhaps more than anyone else affects Americans most tangibly in the sprawling fight against terrorism since the 2001 attacks.

John Pistole, who for decades breezed past airport security checkpoints as an FBI agent — is the faceless bane of every air traveler who must remove his belt, endures an intimate pat-down or is instructed to throw away a 6-ounce bottle of shampoo.

Pistole, 53, has among the least-desirable roles in Washington as head of Transportation Security Administration, the government agency that more than others traces its lineage to the terrorist hijackings that killed nearly 3,000 people.

Based on top secret intelligence he sees daily, Pistole, a 26-year FBI veteran, sets the rules for protecting the nation's 457 airports and America's planes, trains, buses and ferries.

Pistole's story is the story of a changed nation, one that has worked feverishly to track down terrorists, fix intelligence problems and try to keep from trampling on privacy while enhancing security.

It was Pistole who, just weeks on the job, called for airport screeners to start using a new security pat-down — one that involved feeling around travelers' genital areas and breasts. It was an unpopular measure, but one Pistole believes offers the best chance of preventing a suicide bomber.

Just Friday, U.S. counterterrorism officials were investigating intelligence about an al-Qaida threat to New York or Washington, possibly involving a car bomb to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

"I'm an optimist in life in all ways other than when it comes to terrorism," Pistole said. "And I think every day that goes by, we're a day closer to the next attack."

___

On Sept. 11, 2001, Pistole was working in the FBI's inspections division, conducting a routine interview with a New York judge. He turned on the television and saw the second plane hit the World Trade Center.

"Well, this changes everything," he remembers thinking.

Pistole, who grew up in the small town of Anderson, Ind., comes from a family of educators. He practiced law before he joined the FBI in 1983. At the time, the bureau had a storied history of putting bank robbers and mobsters in prison. After 9/11, Pistole was tapped to help transform the bureau into one that prevented terrorism.

"We were building the plane while it was flying," said Raymond Holcomb, a former FBI agent and author of the book "Endless Enemies: Inside FBI Counterterrorism."

"John was there at a most critical watershed moment," Holcomb said.

___

Around the same time, the new Transportation Security Administration was struggling to get off the ground. It had to hire thousands of screeners, coordinate with airlines and buy screening technology.

"None of us really knew how to set up lines at airports," said Norman Mineta, the transportation secretary at the time, who was charged with creating this new agency from scratch.

Mineta turned to The Walt Disney Co., an organization familiar with snaking lines and anxious guests.

The past 10 years have been a bumpy road for the TSA and travelers.

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Cannolis, raviolis and 'tude: Arthur Ave. in the Bronx wants to be known as real Little Italy

NEW YORK (AP) — Arthur Avenue in the Bronx is the kind of place where you might be bribed with a cannoli.

Many years ago, my father, a teacher, was begged by a student not to tell his parents he'd been caught fighting. "I'll bring you a box of cannolis every Friday," promised the student, who worked at a pastry shop in this old-school Italian-American enclave.

My dad did not accept the cannolis. But as a kid growing up in nearby suburbs, I often had treats from Arthur Avenue that he brought home. Then one day, I saw Arthur Avenue listed on an iPod app for New York City destinations and decided it was time to get to know the old neighborhood myself, before it morphed into some Disneyland of Italian-Americanness.

I'm happy to report that while Little Italy in downtown Manhattan has shrunk to barely two and a half blocks, what some call the "Real Little Italy" in the Belmont section of the Bronx is thriving, and it's as authentic as ever.

Visitors will readily find dozens of Italian restaurants, bakeries, butchers and produce stands that still sell all the goodies my grandfather remembers from growing up in the Bronx. But it's the mix of the surly and solicitous on this several-block stretch of Arthur Avenue and the intersecting 187th Street that lets you know this is a real community, in which a slight wariness of outsiders can only slowly be scratched away to expose a deeper warmth. Leave to others the affected display of intimacy or token use of ciao: On Arthur Avenue, if someone speaks to you in Italian, it's because he thinks you do. If someone greets you, it's because he knows you.

On a recent visit, as I tagged along with my father and grandparents to see the neighborhood through their eyes, my grandpa grabbed a hunk of meat at Biancardi's and exclaimed, "Pork butt! I haven't seen this in years!" They used to call it tenderloin, explained Sal Biancardi, a third-generation butcher, and it can be hard to find these days. But not here.

My grandfather, Dominick, the son of an Italian immigrant and his Italian-American wife, had grown up in the Bronx, and he and my grandmother raised their kids there. (While my grandmother is the daughter of Russian immigrants, she's an Italian cook, taught by her mother-in-law.) My generation was raised in the suburbs, but even there, when questions like "Where'd ya get the meat?" (or the raviolis, or the manicotti) were asked, the answer was usually "Arthur Avenue."

Dominick, who is 89, recalled that he first went to Teitel Bros., a wholesaler and retailer of Italian products from beans and olive oil to spices and tomatoes, around 1932. He didn't live especially close to Belmont — he remembers taking a streetcar with his mother to get there — but even back then, when the borough was full of Italians, it was the place to go.

In recent years, the area has been getting more attention. NYC & Company, the city's tourism arm, marketed it as part of its "Visit 9 in '09" campaign. The annual Ferragosto street fair, held this year on Sept. 11, has grown from drawing a few thousand to around 17,000 last year. And then there's the app.

But merchants promise that most of their clientele are still people who grew up in Belmont or whose parents used to live there, even though few Italian-Americans are still residents. They report seeing a panoply of license plates each Saturday — from Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Vermont — as folks fill their trunks with delicacies and necessities for the week.

A few hours on Arthur Avenue — and some innocent questions — will bear out that merchants are not focused on, and are even charmingly unprepared for, tourists.

A query about the differences among sausages with long Italian names in one store, for instance, only revealed what was already apparent: Some were thick and some were thin.

A friend remembers once visiting a shop and eagerly asking what kind of ravioli they had, anticipating pasta made with pumpkin or sage like one might see at an upscale market.

Meat and cheese, the answer came back. She pressed. Meat and cheese, the salesman deadpanned again. While Arthur Avenue has benefited from the general rise of Italian cuisine — Chris Borgatti of the renowned fresh pasta purveyor Borgatti's declares, "Italian food has surpassed French food" — it is not of the trend.

Most of the shoppers on Arthur Avenue, in other words, know what cervellata is (a kind of sausage, made with lamb at Peter's Meat Market). And they like their ravioli with either meat or cheese. (Borgatti's, though, does have a variety with spinach.)

Jerome Raguso, of Gino's Pastry Shop, calls the neighborhood a "family reunion."

One of the joys to a visitor is observing those intimacies of customer and merchant.

The other, of course, is eating. A conversation about Arthur Avenue is a conversation about food, and it can be hard to go without getting requests. A Scottish friend who went with me once loves the savory biscotti from Madonia Brothers bakery — made from their famous olive or multigrain breads and laced with rock salt. A neighbor of my parents put in an order for unsalted ricotta, made fresh daily (as is the mozzarella) at Calandra's cheese shop.

Sal Biancardi remembers a call from a woman in California looking for a sausage she remembered from her childhood. Did they still make it? They did, and it was on a plane shortly thereafter.

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Little Fort Atkinson acts bigger

FORT ATKINSON, Wis. — I've been trying to think of the term for that particular experience of entering a seemingly small space only to discover it's much larger. Until I can remember the right word for that phenomenon — if the word really exists — I've taken to calling it the Fort Atkinson Effect, after the place where I experienced it most strongly.

Population: 11,000 or so. But it has an Equity theater that casts in New York, a full-fledged movie studio, a dance floor worthy of Fred and Ginger, an 8-mile bike trail with a covered bridge, mysterious Indian mounds, an honest-to-goodness frontier fort, enough bars along Main Street to support the most determined pub crawl, and a warehouse where you can buy art supplies and farm equipment.

In this south-central Wisconsin town on the Rock River, they don't just float your boat; they help you built it. They won't simply fly you up for the bird's-eye view; they'll jump right out of the plane with you.

High points

In any given week, some 7,000 people attend professional, Broadway-style productions at the Fireside Dinner Theatre (800-477-9505, firesidethe

atre.com), where every ticket ($67) includes a meal before the show. The Klopcic family's award-winning restaurant serves a crowd-pleasing menu in the intimacy of multiple small dining rooms. Looking at the outside of this low-slung, barn-red, rambling pyramid, you'd never guess it can seat 1,000 guests at once or that several gift shops are under the same roof.

For the remainder of 2011, "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" runs through Oct. 23 and "A Fireside Christmas," Oct. 27-Dec. 22. The Christian concert series ($35) continues with the Pfeifers Oct. 4-5.

Over at Salty Earth Pictures (414-587-7615, saltyearthpic

tures.org), groups of 10 or more can schedule a behind-the-scenes tour of this working movie studio. The Dove Award-winning "Movie Critters Big Picture" and the feature-length drama "Journey to Paradise" were filmed here. So was the television sitcom "Fifth Pew From the Front."

From the street, the plain-Jane, battleship-gray office front is easy to bypass. But it hides 30,000 square feet of production space, one of the largest independent studios in the United States. During the two-hour tour ($12), owners Steve and Beth Zambo show you around nine soundstages, the props department, and dressing and makeup rooms.

In the 6,000-square-foot Stage 3, your group can participate in a game show or newscast while learning how Hollywood creates special effects. Tours conclude in the Second Take Resale Shop, where proceeds help fund this not-for-profit studio. Its sales floor doubles as a movie set, and the merchandise might have served as props or costumes.

Those who want to push the envelope wind up at AtmosphAIR Skydiving Center (920-568-1700, diveout.com). Owners Bo Babovic, with 12,000 jumps to his credit, and wife, Alex, with 4,000 jumps, take first-time skydivers through a 45-minute ground school where the focus is on preparing for the emotional extremes — raw fear, then bliss — of what they are about to do. Then it's time to suit up and take off ($219).

At optimum altitude, your harness is hooked to your instructor's for a tandem jump, and out you go. The 120 mph free fall lasts about a minute, then the parachute opens for a five-minute canopy ride.

But there's no shame in staying on the ground. Somebody's got to fire up the gas grill and spread the picnic table, which are permanent fixtures on the hangar's back porch.

That Fred-and-Ginger dance floor? It's part of the fine-dining and special-event complex at Central Coast Restaurant (920-568-9695, centralcoastrestaurant.com). Join them for dance lessons on Thursday nights, or just watch from the Vegas-style tiered seating.

Simple pleasures

Fort Atkinson is the southern headquarters of the Glacial Heritage Area Watertrails. Few know its routes better than Kim Grunow, who contributed his expertise to the water trail map. He also knows his way around boat-building and helps others learn the craft at Rock River Canoes (920-723-0657, rockrivercanoe.com). For a decade, he's been milling his own lumber into quarter-inch strips that eventually become canoes or kayaks, depending on each hobbyist's inclinations. Stop by this Main Street storefront-turned-workshop, and you'll see as many as a dozen boats in various stages of construction.

Southwest of town, skirting Lake Koshkonong, 11 effigy (animal-shaped) and conical mounds have stood for perhaps 1,500 years. These 4-foot-high earthworks are preserved in the Jefferson County Indian Mound Site. Inside the city limits along the Rock River, another ancient earthwork, the Panther Intaglio (an excavated hollow), is considered North America's only intact intaglio.

Then there's 1832 Fort Koshkonong. Its reconstructed wooden palisades and watchtowers, open year round, become the scene of the old fur-trading days during Buckskinner's Rendezvous.

So you see what I mean: That's a long list for a little town. There's more to see and do in Fort Atkinson, but this'll get you started.

If you go

Getting there

Fort Atkinson is 115 miles from Chicago via U.S. Highway 12.

Staying there

Chains include Holiday Inn Express (920-563-3600, holidayinn.com) and American's Best Value Inn (920-563-6444, abvicourtyardinn.com). B&Bs include Kosh's Lake View B&B (920-563-7476, koshslakeview.com) and Lamp Post Inn B&B (920-563-6561, thelamppostinn.com).

Information

Fort Atkinson Chamber of Commerce: 888-SEE-FORT, fortchamber.com.

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48 Hours in Hobart, Australia

HOBART, Australia (Reuters) - Flanked by mountains and the sea, Hobart is Australia's most southern city. In late December through early January each year it becomes a "maritime Mecca," with yachts sailing across the finish line in the grueling Sydney to Hobart race.

The abundance of sailors converging on the city then resembles its early days of white settlement when Hobart, the capital of Tasmania, was a bustling whaling port and former penal colony.

Hobart, a 70-minute flight from Melbourne, is also a base for Antarctic expeditions engaging in research from the deep south, and it's not unusual to see these massive research vessels moored along the quay wall.

Reuters correspondents with local knowledge help visitors get the most out of a 48-hour visit.

FRIDAY

5 p.m. Check into one of Hobart's newest hotels, The Henry Jones Art Hotel, located on 22 Hunter Street, which offers waterfront and mountain views. http://www.thehenryjones.com

Then head out to soak up the waterfront ambience and stroll over to The Customs House Hotel, just five minutes away. Australia's oldest brewery is in Hobart, so enjoy a drop of local Cascade beer before dinner. http://www.customshousehotel.com

8 p.m Nearby is Muir's Upper Deck restaurant. Nestled between Victoria and Constitution Docks, the establishment owns its own fishing fleet, guaranteeing a fresh catch daily. http://www.upperdeck.com.au

Whether diners choose oysters, seafood chowder, the catch of the day or a "fisherman's basket," accompanied by local wine -- perhaps from the Tamar Valley, which has developed a reputation for its Chardonnay and Pinot Noir -- the night will be memorable.

SATURDAY

9 a.m. Leave the waterfront views behind and venture through the heart of the city for a wander before popping into The Italian Pantry Cafe-Deli at 34 Federal Street. After enjoying a light breakfast of coffee and Italian pastries, take the time to wander through the Deli with its trove of Italy's finest produce including cheeses, sausages, pasta, sugo and pickled vegetables. The friendly staff are always happy to have a chat. http://www.italianpantry.com

11 a.m Visit Salamanca Place and immerse yourself in local island culture at the weekly Saturday markets. Visitors may get a glimpse of royalty as Princess Mary of Denmark, a native of Hobart, returns home once in awhile to visit family and has been seen wandering through the markets.

Around 300 stalls cluster between historic sandstone buildings that house galleries and cafes as fishing boats bob in the harbor. It's easy to while away hours watching artisans, listening to street musicians and sampling local products such as honey, cheeses and fresh lavender. Lunch at one of the waterfront cafes or buy something tasty at a stall and eat in nearby Parliament Gardens. http://www.salamanca.com.au

2 p.m For a unique artistic experience buy a $15 return ferry ticket at the waterfront to visit MONA (Museum of New and Old Art) located on the shores of the Derwent river at the Moorilla Estate winery in nearby Berriedale, just a 45-minute cruise up the river. http://www.moorilla.com

Surrounded by a vineyard, a cellar door and a micro-brewery, this museum is believed to be Australia's biggest private museum. On display is some of the most provocative contemporary art of recent years, including work by Australia's Greg Taylor and Germany's Julius Popp.

8 p.m Overlooking Salamanca lies the tiny suburb of Battery Point boasting historic homes and colorful garrison cottages dating back to the settlement era. Amble the quaint streets and enjoy dinner at Ristorante Da Angelo, 47 Hamden Road, for a truly authentic Italian experience. A booking is necessary.

Offerings include a pasta dish of marinara, brimming with king prawns, fish, scallops and clams in a rich tomato sauce, or Pollo Paesano Macaroni with chicken, seeded mustard, bacon, sun-dried tomatoes, olives, onions, chili in cream sauce. You can bring your own beer or wine or order from their wide selection of wines, beers and spirits. http://www.daangelo.com

After your hearty meal, stroll back to your hotel via Salamanca Place and enjoy the weekend social life that spills onto the cobbled streets, creating a jovial party atmosphere.

SUNDAY

8 a.m. The hotel boasts a courtyard adjoining the rooms. If the weather permits, enjoy breakfast outdoors, taking in the views of Mount Wellington.

8.30 a.m. Experience Hobart's wilderness with a fully guided half day (full day optional) tour of Mt Wellington with Mt Wellington Walks. This eco-friendly company will submerge you in a timeless world of ancient forests and windswept peaks 1,270 meters (yards) above sea level. Visitors will get a rare opportunity to see Tasmania as the first settlers saw it in this windy wilderness. http://www.mtwellingtonwalks.com.au

1 p.m. To begin the wind down before leaving Tasmania's fair shores, grab some fish and chips or fresh oysters from the floating boats near Constitution Docks and rest your weary legs. From this vantage point you may see one or more of the icebreaker research ships bound for Antarctica, including the Australian Antarctic Division's "Aurora Australis" and the French Polar Institute's "l'Astrolabe."

Or, for the more adventurous, perhaps a 90-minute cruise on the Derwent river aboard the Lady Nelson tall ship. Where possible the volunteer crew will encourage passengers to help set sails or take a turn at the helm. For A$15 this is a fantastic way to be part of a bygone era of traditional sailing on the high seas. http://www.ladynelson.org.au

(Editing by Elaine Lies)

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Food, family focus of Sorrento class

We arrive for our cooking class in Sorrento, Italy, on Pasquetta, the Monday after Easter — a national holiday celebrated by families throughout Italy. It seems appropriate that today everyone is focused on food and camaraderie.

When we reach the driveway of Villa Ida, we are greeted by Roberta Cuomo, the first member of the Cuomo clan we meet. We follow her along a short path lined with grape vines and fragrant oranges and lemons. She invites us to drink Neapolitan coffee and plum cake around one of the large, round, painted ceramic tables in a manicured backyard that feels like a family room.

My husband, Jerry, lived and worked in Italy for a year before we met, and now, many years later, we are here to feed my interest in Italian cookery and expand his role in the kitchen beyond frothy cappuccino and carciofi alla giudia (Roman-style fried artichokes).

The Cuomos, once a family of nobles, live in a private villa that houses 20 family members in an ocher-colored stucco enclave subdivided into eight apartments. Angela (Roberta's aunt), the capocuoco (executive chef) of the operation, soon joins us. In her late 50s, she speaks only limited English (Roberta is a proficient speaker), but Angela is adept at communicating with a warm smile and seems to understand every comment we make or question we ask. We roll up our sleeves and take up our places at individual cooking stations set up on both sides of a long table next to the outdoor kitchen.

The menu includes a traditional four-course Neapolitan-style lunch using recipes that Angela and her mother, Ida, inherited. First, we make tomato sauce for a pasta dish that layers ziti from nearby Gragnano with baby eggplants and mozzarella cheese. The approach is hands-on, watching and doing.

Following Angela's lead, we marinate capretto (goat) in garlic, oil, vinegar, rosemary, sage, salt and pepper in preparation for roasting. Next she shows us how to flour and fry veal scaloppine. With our appetites growing, we assemble tiramisu for the dessert. Sophisticated looking but surprisingly simple to make, the finished desserts are placed in the fridge.

After we've finished preparations, Angela's brother-in-law "Charlie" invites us to his man cave, a cantina where he stores the wines he makes from seven grapes, including the distinctively sweet strawberry grapes of the area. "I come here with my problems to solve them," he says philosophically. "But when I enter the cantina, I forget them." It's easy to see why. We taste his white wine, red wine, merlot and a combination of red wine and gassosa soda that Charlie calls "babooza." Like the cooking school, which operates only a day or two a week — by appointment — so as not to interfere with family life, Charlie's winemaking operation is also part-time.

Charlie soon coaxes us out of our cushioned seats in the cave to get back to cooking. Two men in our group help him carry jugs of wine to another long dinner table, which is set under a pergolato (pergola). A cantankerous rooster next door is the only distraction, momentarily interrupting the nostalgic crooning of Stevie Wonder and Frank Sinatra over outdoor speakers.

We finally sit down to lunch surrounded by our cooking school adoptive family. The menu, the flavors, the setting and the warmth of our instructors combine for an unforgettable Easter Monday. A few more family members return to the villa, introducing themselves and filling out our table. Angela brings out two additional holiday desserts: a colomba di Pasqua (a Panetonne-like bread shaped like a dove) and a sweeter cake called pastira.

Every cooking class ends with certificates for the newly anointed chefs. I'm not sure my husband will expand his menu at home, but I know that, like me, he has learned two of the most important cooking lessons: Stick to simple recipes with fresh, high-quality, local ingredients, and share meals with friends and family.

If you go

Cooking classes at Villa Ida in Sorrento, Italy, are generally held between 9:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. or between 4 and 8 p.m. There is a minimum of two people and maximum of 20. The price of $185 per person includes the course and the meal. For booking, email villaida@hotmail.com.

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Warning: Debit card woes ahead

If you regularly use your debit (ATM) card to make purchases, or if your card earns airline miles or other rewards, get ready for fewer benefits and more fees. New regulations cap the fees banks can charge merchants to process debit card transactions. And the big banks, unwilling to lose even a few pennies of potential revenue, decided that if they can no longer get fat fees from merchants, they'll ding you card users instead. You're not really surprised, are you?

Here's at least some of what's happened so far:

-- Wells Fargo will soon test $3 monthly fees for debit cards on accounts held by residents of Georgia, Oregon, New Mexico, Nevada, and Washington; Sun Trust has already started issuing debit cards carrying a $5 monthly fee; Regions Bank will add fees to some cards starting in October; and Chase is testing monthly fees in a few areas.

-- Chase has already ended its reward program for debit cards, and industry mavens predict many other banks will follow suit.

Several banks say they won't assess the fee if you "don't use" the card. Presumably, they mean don't use it to make purchases. If they also mean don't use it to withdraw cash from a bank-owned ATM, that leaves the question of why have a card at all if you don't use it?

For now, banks say they will exempt some of you from future fees, at least so far: If you carry a big balance or do other major business with your bank, you're probably off the hook.

What should most of you do now?

-- If your current debit card earns rewards, figure those rewards will go away quickly. If you want to keep earning rewards, your only option will be a credit card, where banks are still allowed to gouge merchants. As long as you pay your balance off in full, using a credit card won't cost any more than using a debit card, and credit cards actually provide some valuable buyer protections that debit cards do not.

-- If you routinely use your debit card for purchases, and your bank starts dinging you with a fee, move your checking account to a different bank. For now, lots of big banks still don't add fees, but that could change pretty quickly.

Longer term, however, you can expect to pay more using plastic. Merchants -- with airlines leading the parade -- are starting to add fees for credit-card purchases. Several years ago Australia banned contracts requiring merchants to charge no more for credit card purchases than for cash, so consumers there already pay a premium for many credit card purchases. More recently, Lufthansa announced it would start adding a fee for credit card purchases in some areas outside the United States. Allegiant and Spirit already charge stiff fees for online credit card bookings -- and the only way to avoid them is to schlep to an airport when the airline ticket counter is staffed to buy your tickets there.

Again long term, look for a drive by big airlines to keep getting closer to the one bank that co-brands their credit card. Airlines are fighting with online travel agencies such as Expedia and Travelocity to determine who "owns" you as a customer -- each wants to keep the added potential revenue from selling you hotels, rental cars, insurance, and such with your air ticket -- and one way they'll do that is to tie you into a credit card partnership. You already see it with the deals the big three airlines have with their co-branding bank to give cardholders one "free" checked bag and other perks. Presumably, if the airlines start adding fees for credit card purchases, they'll waive those fees when you use their partner banks' cards.

All in all, you have to remain vigilant. Keep your eyes on statements and announcements you get from your card issuers, and be prepared to move accounts if you see some unreasonable fees.

Send e-mail to Ed Perkins at eperkins@mind.net. Perkins' new book for small business and independent professionals, "Business Travel When It's Your Money," is now available through www.mybusinesstravel.com or www.amazon.com

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A literary stamp to these three houses

Reporting from Austerlitz, N.Y.—

In 1937, poet Edna St. Vincent Millay came close to refusing an honorary degree from New York University when she learned she had been excluded from a reception for male recipients of the doctorate at the Waldorf-Astoria and instead was to have a quiet dinner with the chancellor's wife.

By that time, Millay had written almost 10 books of poetry, won a Pulitzer Prize and cut herself out of corsets and stays by — as she so famously put it — "burning her candle at both ends" during the Jazz Age.

Photos: Literary Northeast

Millay ultimately accepted the degree, but her objections to gender segregation were later taken up by the feminist movement, which viewed the term "women writers" as derogatory, consigning those so labeled to second-class citizenship.

I hope that we're beyond polemics now and that it is no longer incorrect to think women can't be great writers. Lately, I've been thinking about three who lived near me in the Northeast: Millay (1892-1950), who traded bohemian Greenwich Village for a placid farmhouse in eastern New York state; celebrated novelist Edith Wharton (1862-1937), chatelaine of a mansion across the Berkshire Mountains from Millay in the upper-class summer haven of Lenox, Mass.; and the divine Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), who spent her whole life in Amherst, Mass., and thus "never saw a moor," though she could conjure up the universe in the space of a single stanza.

I recently toured Millay's Steepletop, Wharton's the Mount and the Emily Dickinson Homestead. Seeing the houses in succession gave me a fresh appreciation for their work and the different obstacles they faced to become writers. But perhaps just as significantly, I realized how profoundly at home they were in the beautiful countryside.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

"O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!

Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!

Thy mists, that roll and rise!

Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag

And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag

To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff!

World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!"

"God's World"

Millay was born in Rockland, Maine, and given her unusual middle name because her uncle had once been treated at St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan. Vincent — as almost everyone called her — was the oldest of three daughters raised in a financially strained single-parent family after her ne'er-do-well father was sent packing.

She was 20 when she wrote "Renascence," a haunting lyric poem about spiritual awakening that made her an overnight sensation. Admirers of the "girl poetess" in 1913 sent her to Vassar, where she made friends, purportedly lesbian; Millay was a lifelong bisexual. After college, she sloughed off her shy provincialism, roaring through the 1920s in Greenwich Village and collecting lovers like bottles of bathtub gin.

In 1923, she married Eugen Boissevain, a Dutch businessman who in many ways was the hero of Millay's story. He saw her through illness and drug addiction, ran her household and left her free to have affairs — all in order to keep her writing poetry.

Boissevain spotted an ad for a 435-acre dairy farm in the Taconic Mountains near the border of New York and Massachusetts. In 1925, the couple moved to Steepletop, named for a wildflower that grows around the modest white farmhouse on Harvey Mountain. "We're so excited about it we're nearly daft in the bean — kidney bean, lima bean, string-bean, butter-bean — you dow whad I bean — ha! ha! ha!" Millay wrote to her mother.

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