Culture

This month, despite autonomist and separatist claims from some regions, Italy proudly celebrated its 153rd anniversary as a unified nation.   But how does a country become a nation-state? In the 19th century, Italy was divided into a number of …

Dear Readers, My South Bay friend Ken Borelli, author, president emeritus and longtime cultural chair of the Italian American Heritage Foundation (I.A.H.F.) based in San Jose, California, shared with me this fascinating bit ofCalifornia history. Ken recently was vacationing in …

One of the most famous and beautiful spots in the city of Rome, the monumental stairway of 136 steps that connects Piazza di Spagna to the church of Trinità dei Monti will soon be given new life by the Italian …

We are approaching the one year anniversary of the Rana Plaza building collapse in Bangladesh.  The building housed several garment factories owned by European and American apparel companies. While the news of this horrible incident unfolded and the dust clouds …

Dear Readers, San Francisco’s Marina District has many Italian connections. The neighborhood known as the Marina District did not exist one hundred years ago. Much of the land where homes, stores and streets were built had been either salt marshes …

The year was about 1983 when a couple of friends asked me to join them for lunch at Parker’s Lighthouse, a restaurant located at Shoreline Village in Long Beach. We took a table outside overlooking a small channel where the …

In the days that mark the 539th anniversary of his birth, Michelangelo continues to make the news. Born in Tuscany on March 6, 1475, Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni is regarded as one of the major artists of all times, …

Last week roughly over two millions of Italians, or better, residents of Veneto — one of the north east wealthiest regions of Italy, participated to the first referendum of its kind: an online and telephone ‘yes or no’ vote to …

Five years after his last visit to Italy, on the occasion of the G8 held in L’Aquila in June 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama was in Rome on March 26-27, following the summit on nuclear security in the Netherlands and a …

Over two thousand named characters, action which spreads across the earth and even to the moon, female warriors, monsters, magic, three main plots, numerous sub-plots, and witty asides by the author all woven together into a veritable “page turner”  make …