Culture

As Italian immigrants arrived in the United States circa 1850s, (before Italy was officially a nation-state) one of the first neighborhoods that many settled in was a notorious ghetto called the Five Points.  The Five Points located in Lower Manhattan …

Dear Readers, June jottings with an Italian Connection: Domenico Ghirlandaio (c. 1449-1494) was a Florentine painter of the early Renaissance, whose birth name was Domenico di Tommaso Bigordi. His father was a silk merchant and goldsmith – which likely gave …

  While driving on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in New York City, I was listening to a local radio station playing Alice Cooper’s hit song, School’s Out written in 1972. Although most students today are removed from the song, I imagined …

Durante la seconda decade del 1900, l’Italia fu coinvolta nella Prima Guerra Mondiale quando l’Austria, che aveva impellente necessità d’uno sfocio sull’Adriatico, continuava ad esercitare con violenza la sua oppressione sulla italianissima città di Trieste.   Per cinque secoli Trieste …

Bologna: la grassa, la dotta, la rossa. Apt nicknames for the capital of Emilia-Romagna, which boasts a rich culinary tradition (grassa meaning fat), the oldest university in the Western world (hence dotta: learned), red roofs and left-leaning politics (as in …

Bypassing  the strong visual power of the romantic canals of Venice, the breath-taking views inside and outside Tuscany, a portrait of Rome by night and a snapshot of the emerald Sardinian sea, it is not an easy goal.   From …

Dear Readers, On July 4th let me refresh your memory and mine on the Declaration of Independence, signed July 4, 1776 (in Philadelphia) and learn about Italian and Italian American contributions to the American Revolutionary War.   Although the colonists …

È la notte tra il 9 e il 10 luglio del 1943. Prima l’effetto a sorpresa ottenuto con un’operazione di depistaggio messa in atto dagli inglesi che sguarnisce le difese tedesche, poi l’attacco all’Europa nazifascista: in appena 39 giorni la …

The Declaration of Independence was a bold statement of human rights, based on the then radical principle that government derives its power from the consent of the governed, an idea that was even more radical when it was put forth …

There was a time, in Ancient Rome, when it was customary to eat with only three fingers, while leaving the ring finger and little finger uninvolved.  Only a person lacking sophistication and grace used all five fingers. With the morphing …