What is Verdura Vita?
With a last name like Vita, how could I not find a way to use it in the name of this, my first newsletter! Verdura Vita literally means Vegetables Life, or perhaps a Vegetable’s Life. That’s kind of funny.
But I was thinking of something more like, a Life with Vegetables, or Vegetables and Life. See, I’m the son of a fruit and vegetable wholesaler who worked in the Bronx. I was surrounded as a child by boxes of fresh, glistening Jersey tomatoes, California peaches, Florida lettuce. I never worked in the produce business but for the past 30 or so years I’ve become an avid gardener. Now I grow vegetables of my own. Or I try.
My name is Matt Vita. I recently decided to hang up my notepad and pen after a 45 year career as a journalist. I worked for news outlets in Maine, Vermont and New York City, lived overseas for nine years as a foreign correspondent and spent the past 27 years at The Washington Post, fulfilling a lifelong dream. At the Post, I edited foreign news and national security policy and covered Congress, among other things, and spent the past 14 years there as editor of the Sports section.
Now I’m a recovering journalist living in a 1785 former schoolhouse in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts. I can look out my window onto what has been a dream of mine for decades. A true vegetable garden of my own.
As part of my transition into this more bucolic life away from the city and the deadlines and pressures of daily journalism, I’m going to write about my garden. I’ll offer tips on things I’ve learned along the way. I’ll also write about my other interests and hobbies: my always entertaining dogs and cats, my failures and successes in the kitchen, my new life. Some days I’ll go wherever my fingers tapping on the keyboard lead me. I don’t have a road map but I hope the journey will be fun.
Please come along with me.
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