The writer went to Assisi last year and visited the basilica, but she felt a special kinship with the problems of the town of Massa.
Speaks of the theme around which soap operas are built; the plights and problems of small town characters stretched into endless sequences.
At the peak of the United States deployment, 505 American bases operated in Iraq, meaning the problems of this town are far from unique.
Wigan are hoping to challenge Leeds as the best-supported club in the Super League this year, but insist that has nothing to do with the current problems of the town's Premier League football team.
But Stamford has neither the army of preservationists so common in richer towns nor the problems of needier towns that, in their own loopy way, deter builders from replacing old buildings with new.
These might seem unconnected, but the problems of coastal towns, with their glamorous seaside image long gone and with only half the economic hinterland of any other town, are shared around the country, even in the otherwise prosperous east or south-east of England.
"I had some problems getting out of town, a little broke and stuff, so I had to come home and, you know, tough it out," said one resident of Rockport, Texas.
We also had to solve the town's problems, which are the problems of every small town in Japan: old people getting older, young people leaving".
In the 19th-century, we solved the problem of the town drunkard by putting him or her in the stocks.
The problems at this end of town are, by now, a constant: the steel and textile mills are long gone; jobs are few.
