Elderly woman, kneeling in the rain. Navigli bridge, Milano. January 010.

The weather is better downtown. Begging, Corso Buenos Aires. March 010.

Over the course of the past two weeks, I’ve made a point of taking my digital audio recorder on my daily errands. Turning it on whenever I leave, the goal is to record as much of the city as I can.

Milan is as vibrant an audio experience as it is a visual one. For every image, such as the photo above, of an elderly Roma on the floor of the Duomo subway station, what you hear can be just as moving.

At least a third of my time at Allvoices has been spent writing summaries of developing news stories. Over the course of the last 6 months, I completed over 130 such pieces.

I wrote Italy to Fingerprint Gypsy Population last Thursday afternoon. It’s a good example of how I write these kinds of analyses when I feel as though I have a little more room than usual to editorialize.