Three in a Row!

What a week it has been.  Today is the birthday of Rome, the Eternal City – 2,777 years young.  April 16th was composer Henry Mancini’s 100th birthday (Rest in Peace), and April 17th the 500th anniversary of explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano’s arrival in New...

Passing the Torch

It comes with aging.  How do we preserve and pass on the things we value, like heritage?  Dilemma: what you value may not be of value to your descendants.  Heritage is easily lost.  Marriage may hide an Italian surname in the case of females.  Catholicism is...

Diversity without End

My local library showcases books according to ethnic and gender celebrations.  This month it’s Arabs and Scots.  Last month honored the Irish and Women.  You can spend a day googling ‘diversity’ to find out what Americans are celebrating each month.  But I’ll save you...

Jesus, the Italian Factor

Did you know that four Italian cities – Rome, Reggio Calabria, Syracuse, and Pozzuoli – are mentioned in the Bible, or that the first non-Jew that the Apostles converted to Christianity was an Italian? It is safe to say that Christianity itself might well...

What’s Behind Everything?

The Italians have a word for it dietrologia*, literally the study of [what’s] behind.  Nothing is what it appears to be; there’s more to it than meets the eye. *(dee-eh-tro-lo-GEE-ah) I used to roll my eyes at such Italian cynicism, but the ensuing decades have taught...

The Tale of Two Saints

Their celebrations are only two days apart, and St. Patrick and St. Joseph have something in common—one worked for Jesus, the other raised him. We know much about St. Patrick.  He was a Roman by descent, he converted Ireland to Christianity, and he is beloved by...

Connecting Dots

Connecting “the dots” is a saying from the Analog Age.  Recall how those dot puzzles entertained us as kids as well as taught us that objects could be hidden in plain sight until you connected the dots?  Today, I’m playing connect the dots with our March...

A Man to Remember

I read Newsday every day.  It’s Long Island’s only regional newspaper, the 8th largest newspaper in the nation and the highest in suburban readership. It is an ultra-liberal newspaper with a keen eye for “mafia” news.  When John Gotti died in 2002 the paper...

The Genovese Sorcerer

A lesser known aspect of the Great Navigator Christopher Columbus was his superpower.  Beyond his amazing nautical skills, the Admiral seemingly had the heavens on his side. On February 29th 1504, during his 4th voyage to the New World an eclipse of the moon...

The Manly Art of Crime

Fatti maschii, parole femine is the state motto of Maryland, the only state to have an Italian motto rather than one in English or Latin.  It translates as “Deeds [are] Masculine, Words Feminine.” Such male chauvinism is typical of Italian culture dating back to...

Happy Birthday Vatican City!

Today marks the 95th anniversary of the treaty that created Vatican City. Top story around the world At the time in 1929 this event was considered almost miraculous—to both Catholics and nonbelievers alike.  The Lateran Treaty, as it is known, settled a...

Where Credit Is Due

My wife and I recently went to see A Beautiful Noise – a Neil Diamond biography – on Broadway.  We highly recommend it.  You can’t go wrong with any Broadway show based on musical legends like The Four Seasons (Jersey Boys), Cher, Carol King, Barry Manilow,...

La Dolce Vita?

Is Italy better off today than any time in its modern history?  Despite being heavily in debt—140% of its annual income—having the lowest birthrate in history, awash in illegal aliens coupled with a super-aging population, massive unemployment among its youth,...

A Remarkable Man

Last Monday was Martin Luther King Day, preparatory to Black History Month in February.  On cue, the media is already filled with informative Black history, a subject that is of interest to me. Booker Taliaferro (Washington) One PBS program I watched in the Black...

An Image Too Far

The other night I was watching Primetime on FOX News when host Jesse Watters interviewed Salvatore Gravano, the notorious mob butcher known as ‘Sammy the Bull.’  Gravano recently completed a 20-year lockup, after a plea deal for his testimony against his boss...

Are You Hip?

Little did we know that those Hippies from the 60s would go on to dream up a new America for us when they got older.  They were the “counter-culture” at a time when America needed a new direction – away from the pointless Vietnam War and a blind obedience to the...

Masters of Time

Celebrating New Year’s Day on January 1st is definitely a Roman development.  Like so many other facets of our existence, Italy figured large in mastering time. We learned in school that the Egyptians, Babylonians, and Sumerians all studied the heavens and...

Weeping with the Fishes

Another Christmas Eve has left my wife Rita and me exhausted from all the work.  The Feast of the Seven Fishes has become an annual celebration to prove that money is no object and no sea creature is safe from the Italian digestive system. Why must we serve seven...

The Ukraine in Spain

The current war in Ukraine seems hauntingly similar to the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).  That conflict began as a fratricidal war but quickly turned into a contest between Fascism and Communism. Both wars have Russia in common: in 1936 Joseph Stalin’s USSR...

The Mosaic at War

A new cable series (AppleTV+) is coming next January paying homage to the bomber crews of World War II.  This collaboration by the two men – Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks – who have been extolling the virtues and sacrifices of the “Greatest Generation” will follow...

Quo Vadis?

My title, a famous movie epic of the 1950s.  It’s Latin for “Where are you going?”  In legend, it was Peter’s question to a vision of Jesus. Ultimately, it was Peter’s call to his own martyrdom. In today’s increasingly chaotic national and international...

Babes in the Woods

As my soon to be seven-year-old grandson gets older I can’t help but measure his progress against my own bygone youth.  Surely, this is a common exercise among parents and grandparents. My grandson is of mixed ethnicity, all Euro-American.  He hasn’t an Italian...

Death by a Thousand Cuts

There have been many concerned citizens over the years who have warned of the death of Western Civilization.  They uniformly believe that unfettered immigration from Third World countries would be the means to our end. Is this ‘the-sky-is-falling’ panic just...

The Media’s Protection Racket

On November 17th, filmmaker Martin Scorsese will be 81.  His soulmate Francis Coppola is already 84.  I’m sure the media have obits prepared on both these octogenarian goombahs.  We can only wait to see what accolades they will pile on, and how many...

The Gates of Hell

Did you know that the entrance to the Underworld, according to poets Virgil and Dante, is on the Bay of Naples?  It’s called Campi Flegrei (“The Burning Fields”) an underwater basin (“caldera”) of collapsed volcanoes—about 40 of them—that are still active.  Vesuvius...

Gaslighting:  The Final Insult

Have you ever wondered where the staying power of mafia movies comes from?  Just about any day of the week you can find an old mafia movie on cable or streaming. They never seem to go out of vogue.  Every year, new versions are being filmed or planned. ...

Workhorses of the Atlantic

One of the fond memories of my early years was visiting ships docked in New York harbor.  In the 1950s and early ’60s, my father worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and had a paesano who was chief engineer on a cruise ship.  With such connections, dad...

War, Latin Style

Wars are breaking out all over, so far in Ukraine and Israel.  Is Taiwan next? The odd nature of these conflicts is that they are being waged within the same ethnic groups.  Russians and Ukrainians are both Slavic.  Israelis and Palestinians are both...

Discovering America:  The Back Stories

Will popular history ever reveal how crucial Italians were to opening the New World?  There is so much already known of this “Italian enterprise” but buried in a few books.  Sadly, our community is consumed by the struggle to save the reputation of Columbus from...

Our Inner Caveman

Some Italian researchers wondered why so many residents of Bergamo, in the northern region of Lombardy succumbed to the Covid-19 pandemic — 800 died on one day.  So, they sampled DNA from 10,000 survivors around the area and concluded that Neanderthal genes may have...

Two Very Different Welcomes

My local librarian – a young man of Italian descent – suggested I watch a DVD titled Golden Door about a Sicilian family immigrating to America in 1904. The 2006 Italian film, originally titled Nuovomondo, has an introduction by Mob-filmmaker Martin Scorsese who no...

Capital of the World

A number of people I know went to Italy this year.  Overall their impressions were positive.  The reasons for their trips varied.  Some cousins proudly announced their journey was purely epicurean – food and wine was their goal and only Naples and Gaeta...

An Empire of Sex

The A & E cable channel has done a documentary on Bob Guccione, the founder of Penthouse Magazine and his short-lived global empire. Older folks followed the Guccione saga in real time starting in the 1970s when he challenged Hugh Hefner’s Playboy empire. ...

Almost Our Queen

History has many twists and turns.  Nations and cultures can be shaped by a single event. A Roman battle fleet September 2nd marked the anniversary of the Battle of Actium in 31 B.C.  Julius Caesar had been assassinated thirteen years before, setting off a...

The Italian Tribe

de Corti, of the Italian tribe Before it was condemned as ‘cultural appropriation” non-White movie roles were played by Euro-Americans.  For Indigenous Americans one of the most egregious appropriations was Chief Iron Eyes Cody, the iconic face of the...

Muzzled Voices

Last week, our suburban newspaper Newsday published an op-ed by former congressman Steve Israel recounting how Albert Einstein wrote President Franklin Roosevelt in 1939 warning him that Nazi Germany was pursuing an atomic bomb.  The op-ed cited work by Jewish...

Hidden in Plain Sight

Zorro: Armand Catalano I was reminded the other day of the Disney TV series Zorro (1957-1959, 1960-1961) starring Guy Williams.  What a handsome fellow!  Zorro means “fox” in Spanish (volpe in Italian).  He played a fictional character, a Hispanic version of Robin...

History in a Song

You have probably heard Italy’s national anthem but know little about its lyrics.  Like our Star Spangled Banner, it was adopted from a poem written in wartime.  But unlike our anthem, il Canto degli Italiani, tells the story of Italy – from its Roman foundation to...

Road to Nowhere?

Presidential candidate Ron DeSantis seems to be stuck in a political quagmire.  His message accentuating his cultural battles with the Woke and Disney have mobilized the Left and put him on the defensive.  Worse, Donald Trump is still out-polling him despite...

Still Scoring

Admiral Lisa Franchetti The U.S. Navy appears to be the source of many Italian American firsts.  Newly nominated for Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) is Admiral Lisa Franchetti. If Senate-approved, she will be the first female CNO and the first female on the Joint...

Keeping the Lid On

Back in 2020 I wrote of the execution-style murders of Paul and Lina Marino in a Delaware cemetery by a Black gunman.  Early reports indicated that the murderer was dressed in black, with a rifle, and waited in ambush for the couple; that he was motivated to take...

Assisting Diversity

With the recent Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action in university admissions, I spent a few minutes thumbing through my college yearbook.  Looking back now with so much real world experiences under my belt was an eye-opener. I attended a small private...

The Elusive Founder

There were 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence; of those we have confirmed Caesar Rodney of Delaware as having Italian roots.  Another, William Paca of Maryland, has been elusive despite having an Italian-sounding name. Declaration signer William Paca...

Behind Every Event…

Magellan’s flagship the Trinidad Last week, a “tall ship” visited my Long Island village, a port of call that has seen the HMS Bounty and replicas of every kind from the Age of Sail.  This time it was the Nao Trinidad, one of Ferdinand Magellan’s Spanish...

Pride Redefined

Every year around June 24th I write of the momentous event in 1497 when navigator Giovanni Caboto landed on North America (perhaps Newfoundland) and planted the flags of England and Venice.  That small ceremony was the seminal event in the creation of our United...

Access via the Axis

Why didn’t Italy stay neutral in 1940?  In hindsight it seemed like the smartest course.  Nevertheless, on June 10th of that year, Italy threw in its lot with its Axis partner.  Its ultimate strategic goal: access to the world’s oceans. Benito Mussolini...

Get Ron!

Political Enemy #1 in America today is presidential candidate Ron DeSantis.  Both Donald Trump and the liberal media want to take him out pronto.  But Ron’s worst enemy appears to be the Black Establishment. Anticipating Ron’s entry into the presidential...

The Memorial Day Message

An estimated 750,000 Americans on both sides died during the Civil War.   A fratricidal war that ended the “original sin” of slavery and gave the North mastery of the nation.   For the next 150 years the United States pursued the goals of a more...

A Lingua Franca

I took a walk this morning across the county line into New York City (Queens) – I live in adjacent Nassau County, Long Island.  It only took me a few minutes to experience the “open Biden border” crisis first hand. As you know, the millions of illegals being...

Faulty Logic

A strange thought occurred to me this week.  Will Mother’s Day survive the Woke Revolution?  What is a “mother” anyway?  Shouldn’t it be called Birthing Person Day?  If Nature has been replaced by Identity, nothing should be assumed. Everything is...

The City with Four Names

Emperor Constantine There used to be a British TV series called Connections which explained how modern events or inventions were derived.  The show connected all the historic dots. May 11th will be the anniversary of the founding of the city of Istanbul, Turkey...

An Unworthy Opponent

The once all-male Italian political scene has come a long way as evidenced by how the Right and the Left are now embodied in two women:  Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and opposition leader Elly Schlein (Sh-line).  These ladies are at odds in a cultural war...

Liberation Day

Among Italy’s national holidays is Liberation Day on April 25th.  It commemorates the day in 1945 that a coalition of Italian partisan groups in northern Italy put the last nail in the coffin of Fascism and the German occupation.  Four days later the German...

Humans for Export

An alarm is sounding as Communist China makes inroads into Africa.  Just like the old Soviets did back in the 1950s and 1960s, the Chinese offer to build infrastructure in developing nations, funding the projects with Chinese loans.  When the Africans find...

Slave Tales

I’ve written before about the PBS show Finding Your Roots, hosted by Prof. Louis Gates.  As an avid viewer for nine seasons the complex detective work by genealogists to uncover the roots of celebrity guests has intrigued me. But the show rarely wavers from its...

The DeSantis Offer

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis threw a lifeline to Donald Trump last week. The former president and perennial Democratic target was indicted by the Manhattan District Attorney and ordered to surrender this Tuesday for an undisclosed felony. Trump can either jet to New...

Our Symbolic Heritage

House of Representative In March of 1919, newspaper editor Benito Mussolini founded the Partito Nazionale Fascista with a group of fellow veterans.  They took as their symbol the Roman fasces. That bundle of rods with an axe attached was created on the Italian...

A Ten-Foot Pole

Back in the day, Italian Americans were justifiably excited when one of their own achieved stardom.  In the 1930s, the elections of Fiorello LaGuardia and Angelo Rossi as mayors of New York City and San Francisco announced our arrival in the dominant Anglo/Celtic...

The Uncurious Irish

Irish Americans will soon regale us with their ethnic pride, celebrating the saint that converted them to Christianity.  They concede that St. Patrick was a Roman, but they wince at the suggestion that Paddy’s paesans also trampled on the Old Sod.  Since...

My Favorite Stereotype

I had a minor procedure done a few weeks ago by a Dr. Baciagalupo.  For those of a certain generation this name evokes pleasant memories of the Abbott & Costello television comedy series of 1952-54. I was a faithful viewer of the reruns as a kid.  The...

One Tough Dude

He was called the “Sword of Rome” in his time, but a man forgotten in popular history.  He should rank among the greatest military leaders that Italy produced, up there with Julius Caesar, Napoleon, and Garibaldi.  Marcus Claudius Marcellus created the Italy...

Running the Gauntlet

It was on February 19, 1942 that the Second World War came for Italian Americans.  President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 making many in our community “enemy aliens.” The order primarily targeted Japanese Americans who lived on the West...

In the Trenches

Recent polls among Republican voters are finding that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is a serious contender against Donald Trump for 2024.  DeSantis hasn’t officially entered that race but even the left-leaning media envisions his entry. The Florida governor has...

Hard to Stomach

One of our duties at the Institute is to monitor the media – how the Italian heritage is perceived and broadcast across the nation. The Learning Channel (TLC) has a popular series called My 600-lb Life, about morbidly obese Americans who decide to avert early death by...

A Real Insurrection

Turner Classic Movies (TCM) recent showed the 1962 Italian film The Four Days of Naples, the true story of the Neapolitan uprising against German occupation in 1943. I had seen it as a teenager at a Brooklyn theater when it first came out.  It was one of the...

It Takes All Kinds

I came across an interesting statistic last week on blood donations.  Of the 400,000 donors last year 78% were White, 16% Black, 2% Hispanic, and 2% Asian.  Whites and Blacks contributed more than their census populations would suggest: Whites are 60% of the...

The Other Storia Segreta

Eighty years ago today, a little known dispute between the Axis powers came to a head when the Royal Italian Army occupying southern France refused to turn over thousands of French and foreign Jews to their German ally. The Italians had been occupying a section of the...

What’s in a Name?

One of my favorite television commentators is Dana Perino of FOX News.  You may recall her from the W. Bush Administration when she was the White House Press Secretary, the second female to have the job.  Clearly, Perino is an Italian surname but in the all...

Master of Media

The Wall Street Journal had an interesting article on the Frank Capra film It’s a Wonderful Life. It seems this Christmas classic was a financial flop when it premiered in 1946.  In fact, Capra’s production company Liberty Films took a loss of $25,000 – $400,000...

Christmas Ramblings

The Feast of the Seven Fishes? Sounds like a solid tradition until the first fish-hater comes to the table.  Then tradition takes a back seat in the name of hospitality. Granted, clams, mussels, and oysters turn some people off.  Octopus, squid, and...

Assassination Mysteries

Last week the National Archives released almost 13,000 new documents on the JFK assassination.  Many pages were redacted and another few thousand are still under lock and key. The good news is that this trove of information appears to debunk the Mafia hit theory,...

The Birth of Wi-Fi

Imagine our world without ‘wireless fidelity’, Wi-Fi for short.  The cell phone, radio, radar, and broadcast television unite the globe using Nature – the very air we breathe – as the medium. Just as Cristoforo Colombo united mankind with that first courageous...

The Road to Reparations

 “We are all brothers under the skin…” has been attributed to Russian Jewish libertarian Ayn Rand.  The rest of that quote is not so altruistic: “…and I, for one, would be willing to skin humanity to prove it.” For the past few years, the ‘elite’ utopians in...

What Nancy Wants…

Rumor has it that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to cap her career by being the U.S. Ambassador to Italy.  She would be a shoe-in with a Democratic Senate to confirm her if nominated by President Biden. At 82-years-old the posting to Rome would be a...

Victorious Lies

One day at college an African American dorm-mate snidely remarked that the Italian Army was a joke in World War II.  Those were the days just before The Godfather – book and movies – so the main “embarrassment” Italian Americans had to deal with was Mussolini’s...

The Plots Thicken

A gay man accuses Governor Ron DeSantis of luring him into a degrading sex act.  That was the plot of the final episode of the Paramount+ cable series The Good Fight, a spin-off of the previously successful broadcast series The Good Wife. Not having watched this...

Italic Pot-Boilers

The election minestrone is being stirred and some Italian ingredients have reached their boiling point. All of a sudden, Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) got so hot that he attacked fellow Dem President Joe Biden just the other day.  Seems that Biden is “divorced from...

Not a Horrible Life

Halloween is upon us and our thoughts go back to one of the best Draculas of our youth:  Christopher Lee.  Christopher Lee as Dracula in nine films Sure, Bela Lugosi was the original but he had a black & white existence on screen.  Blood isn’t blood...

With a Handshake

In 1864, during his invasion of the Confederate South, General Sherman famously wrote to President Abraham Lincoln: “I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah …” Whether Sherman knew it or not he was mimicking a similar gesture performed four years...

Caruso Confounds the Woke

The city of Los Angeles is in the middle of a mayoral election pitting two Democrats against each other.  One candidate is a Black woman, her opponent is a White man – or is he? During a televised debate last week, the moderator summed up the contest as between...

Islands in Between

Christopher Columbus was a deluded man – thank God!  He convinced himself that he could island-hop his way to Asia.  And many fellow Italians provided the maps that fed his delusion. It started with his own experience as a young sailor venturing out into the...

Mafia, Behind the Times

Think America has a problem with Mexican drug cartels, Chinese fentanyl, random street violence, computer hacking, and scam artists fleecing the feds for billions?  Think again.  The NYTimes recently did half a page on “Nine Charged in Scheme Tied to Mafia...

No Questions Asked

Ever wish you had asked a parent or relative about things in their past?  Do you regret a lack of curiosity about the world while you were young?  “If only I had asked… ” ” I wish I could go back and find out why…” At my June...

Fleeing Venezuela

Did you know that Venezuela means “little Venice” in Spanish?  That was the name Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci gave it (Veneziola in Italian) when he visited it in 1499 and saw indigenous huts built on pilings around a lake. (Some 5 million Venezuelans have...

Royals in Waiting

Ever wonder which side you would be on in 1775?  It has been estimated that only 30% of Americans at the time wanted an independent nation.  The remaining majority were loyalists or probably just apathetic.  Unless I got swept up in revolution mania, my...

The Taxicab Army

The history of France would be quite incomplete without reference to Italians.  From its Romanization launched by Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars to its cultural transformation under Catherine de Medici’s near thirty-year control (1547-1574) of the French throne,...

Confusion without Consequences

Everything you ever believed in, every rule you thought valid, every law of Nature you considered indisputable, is going on the chopping block.  Behold, this is the Age of Confusion. P-I-E-T-A-S and image of a mother with children Most of us were raised in Italian...

A Missing Star

There are still plenty of us around from the Silent (1928-1945) and Boomer (1946-1964) generations.  Growing up with old movies and multi-generational TV variety shows were part of our cultural foundation.  We easily remember personalities from decades...

Rudy Goes Rogue

He used to be an Italian American icon.  As a federal prosecutor he brought organized crime to its knees.  Then, as mayor of New York he made the city safe and a financial boomtown.  The horrific attack on September 11th and his praiseworthy response earned him a Time...

An Italian Temper

Many years ago, when I was taking allergy shots two or three times a week, my doctor was somewhat perplexed when I complained that his “express hour” for patients coming in for a quick shot was false advertising.  In fact, he was taking in patients for exams...

Straight Talk

We are living in an age of euphemisms and doubletalk.  “Birthing person,” “lactating person,” “gender fluid,” “non-binary,” and “cisgender” are all artificial constructs to replace “male” and “female.” These word games have consequences.  A euphemism like...

Climate of Fear

Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) has become the Benedict Arnold of the Democratic Party for his serial opposition to the utopian Left.  One Biden Administration bureaucrat just labeled Turkey’s President Erdogan “the Manchin of NATO” for impeding the memberships of Sweden...

Two Against the Tide

Both the U.S. and Italy are at a crossroads today.  Both are dealing with ideologies that threaten political stability.  Two men, almost alone, have taken courageous stands to bring their respective nations back to sanity. I have written many times about...

It Began with Verrazzano

On July 8th 1524, Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano returned to France after having roughly surveyed the entire east coast of North America from Florida to Newfoundland.  A few months earlier, he had entered New York Harbor – the first European to do so....

The Ideal (Italian) American

After five years of trashing the concept of a “great America” – that exceptionalism embodied in July 4th and a century of patriotic Hollywood movies – as Euro-American propaganda, the Left is finally realizing that the vast majority of Americans love their country,...

“It Never Ends!”

That was activist Manny Alfano’s most often used exclamation.  No truer words were ever said, as we in the Italian heritage business can attest.  Anti-defamation is the last thing we feel comfortable doing.  Yet, the media set our agenda decades ago. Manny passed away...

Juneteenth or the Umpteenth?

Where will it all end?  Everyone is trying hard to make Euro-Americans an accursed race.  We invented slavery, stole everything from its rightful owners, and rig every system in our favor.  If you don’t believe that, just ask your grandkids.  This is...

Top Gun Nancy

If I had to pick the top gun in Washington today it would be, hands down, Nancy Pelosi. By every metric, House Speaker Pelosi is the keystone of the Biden Administration.  Not only does she have the president’s legislative back, she is the narrator-in-chief for...

War in Europe

The war in Ukraine has become a touch & go situation for the West.  The war conjures up all our nightmares:  Stalin reincarnated in a “democratic” Russia, Europeans killing each other over borders, refugee crises, entangling alliances, fears of nuclear...