Dear Readers,
June jottings with an Italian Connection:
Astronaut Michael Collins (1930-2021), pilot of the Apollo 11 spacecraft Columbia who, along with astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made their historic first steps on July 20, 1969 passed away recently. He was born in Rome, where his father, a major general in the Army, was the military attaché to the US Embassy. After graduating from West Point, Michael Collins had joined the Air Force to avoid suggestions of nepotism in future assignments.
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June is the month we celebrate Father’s Day. On that day we honor the “father” figures in our lives, whether it was our grandfather, uncle or older brother, who was there to smooth out the bumps of life or as a mentor. “Father” earned a treasured place in our heart and although he may have left us years ago his memory will be very much alive on June 20th, Father’s Day.
As I have said before, I think that my father, Vincenzo, and all the other young men who left their small villages in Italy to sail across the Atlantic were the “astronauts” of their day.
Modern day astronauts and their trip to the moon is worthy of our admiration, but their voyage was undertaken with the back-up of thousands, both in personnel, technology, and money.
To me, the real pioneers of travel were our fathers and our grandparents who left their isolated and obscure villages to begin a journey to what was, for them, like another planet.
To a world thousands of miles away, they set out with no money and the added burden of not being able to read or speak one of the world’s most difficult languages…
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Blue Moon or “Ce Na Luna Mezzo Mare:” the moon, always a familiar sight in the nighttime sky, put on a new show for us earthlings in 1969 when Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped onto its surface, saying “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” The Apollo 11 mission was the fifth space flight to carry men into space, and the third to orbit around the moon. But it became famous as the first one to land a man on the satellite. Almost 600 million people worldwide watched or listened as Armstrong set foot on the lunar surface. A television camera transmitted ghostly black-and-white images back to the Earth. Armstrong was followed 15 minutes later by Buzz Aldrin. A third astronaut, Michael Collins, remained in the command module. Aldrin and Armstrong collected soil and rock samples, tested their ability to walk on the moon’s surface, and took photographs. Finally, they left an American flag, an Apollo 11 mission patch, a disk with messages from more than 70 world leaders, and a plaque that read, Here Men from the Planet Earth First Set Foot Upon the Moon, July 1969 AD. We Came in Peace for All Mankind...
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Detroit, Michigan was co-founded in 1700 by Alfonso Tonti, (younger brother of Enrico Tonti, explorer and Italian “Father of Arkansas”). AlfonsoTonti, co-founded Detroit with Antoine Cadillac. Alfonso Tonti’s daughter Teresa, was the first white child born in Detroit.
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Films were slow to be recognized by the Fascist regime (1922-1943) for their propagandist potential. But by 1934 Mussolini did and began to support the cinema financially. He also limited the number of foreign imports, had films added to the arts festival in Venice, and in 1937 inaugurated Cinecittà, the film studio complex just outside Rome. From 1938 to 1944 the proportion of Italian productions against imports rose rapidly. Films made during the Fascist period featured glorious victories from the past (the Romans again), and from the present – the war in Ethiopia, for example. During this time, not all movies were vehicles for propaganda, though no films could be made that were overtly critical of the regime. Most popular at the time were escapist, sentimental, “white telephone” films, so-called because the heroine would have a gleaming white telephone in her boudoir, Hollywood-style — a touch of the exotic for the average Italian at the time, who never even saw such a thing, let alone owned one, in real life.
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June 11, 2002, the US Congress acknowledged Italian immigrant Antonio Meucci as the true inventor of the telephone! Meucci began developing a talking telegraph in 1849. He filed a patent caveat but could not renew it when it expired. Adding some scandal, the functioning models of his invention were lost by the Western Union affiliate laboratory. Alexander Graham Bell was not the inventor of the telephone even though he received a patent. In January 1887, Bell’s patent came into question in court and a move to annul the patent was issued on the grounds of fraud and misrepresentation. Meucci died in October 1889, the case was discontinued as moot. This is a case where a person who received the credit for the invention of the telephone was the wrong person. While few people know that Meucci is the true inventor, the declaration by Congress corrects the record.
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