I didn’t agree with her on everything, but her Italian was clear and slow and just right for me. She told me that she had been born Maria, but changed her name to Marisa because Maria sounds terrible in the Milanese dialect. Also, she had an older sister who was forever envious of her and who died miserable. 

The secret to happiness: don’t be lazy. The secret to weight management: do some exercise every day, but only a little. If you do too much, you will become hungry and overeat. This is what Americans in particular get wrong, she says. Americans are also stuck in a self-perpetuating cycle of dependency on psychoanalysis and psycho-pharmaceutical drugs. 

She continued with a lament on how Venice has become a theme park for the British, and ended with an upbeat tribute to her innate powers of clairvoyance and an ability to read inner souls, including mine. -E