Three weeks ago a neighbor in our weekend co-op complained that his baseboard heat was not working.  I checked the boiler room and found his circulating pump making disturbing noises.  A plumber was called, the pump replaced, and the heat restored.  But, a few days later, the same problem. The plumber returned and diagnosed it as an air-bound pipe.  He purged the water line to remove any air and the system started working again.  But not for long.

We decided to call another plumber.  He also purged the system until the water flowed again.  Days later, he had to come back.  In all, two different plumbing companies, in four visits, made the same diagnosis and failed.  In desperation, we called a third plumber, an older Italian American.  Within twenty minutes his diagnosis was that the first plumber had installed the wrong replacement pump, which actually sucked air into the system.  He then removed a “check valve” inside the new pump and the hot water has been flowing ever since.  Explaining how he came to this diagnosis he mentioned the Venturi Effect, a water flow condition observed by Giovanni Battista Venturi in the 1700s.  Whatever.  Bottom line: saved by two Italians.

Over the years, I have experienced many instances of our paesani thinking outside the box.

Back in the 1980s, my mother had a major operation, and while recuperating she suffered severe abdominal pain that forced her back to the hospital.  Her two Jewish doctors diagnosed diverticulitis, put her on a high fiber diet and released her.  A week later, despite her new restricted diet, she ended up back in the hospital.  Again, the doctors said it was diverticulitis.  After they left her room, her young surgeon came to see her – Dr. Angelo Procaccino.  In a few minutes, his diagnosis: kidney stones.  That afternoon, she passed the stones and went back to her regular diet…but drinking more water!

Jewish people often brag about how many Nobel Prizes they have won; how so many landsmen dominate the professions; how Israeli technology is legendary.  Meanwhile, Italians have been revealing the secrets of the universe and inventing stuff for two thousand years.  The “box” was never a barrier to our thinking.  It wasn’t to Galileo or Columbus.  Enrico Fermi pursued graphite to control nuclear energy while, thankfully, the Germans wasted time with heavy water.  Post-war Italian carmakers partly solved their country’s gas shortage with the Vespa and Isetta – that tiny “bubble car” with one door.  (How the Isetta saved carmaker BMW in the 1950s is in The Italic Way issue XXIV, online).  More recently, while the world was looking for an HIV vaccine in the 1990s, Drs Robert Gallo, Paolo Lusso, and Fiorenza Cocchi discovered how “chemokines” could give patients a near normal life, and still do.  Today, amid another plague, the government’s Vaccine Research Center that co-developed the Moderna vaccine is headed by Dr. John Mascola.

While some Italic people frustrate me (and the reverse may be true!), we have a lot to be proud of.  Again, my own experience bears this out.

When I first met the late Stefano (Steve) Gristina, a co-founder of the Italic Institute, he had just immigrated with his family from Catania, Sicily.  There, he had an electrical business and taught at the Archimedes Technical School – named for the Greco-Sicilian genius of Siracusa who discovered “specific gravity” and famously yelled Eureka! (“I found it!”) when it dawned on him in his bathtub. Steve wasn’t just an electrician, he knew electrical theory from electrons up.

It wasn’t long after we met that we launched the Institute.  Steve had also started an electrical consulting business to serve the Manhattan real estate industry, while I was managing skyscrapers for that industry.  One day, one of those skyscrapers – the famous Seagram Building on Park Avenue – had a major black-out.  Con Ed had lost a network protector inside our building.  To get us back on line, Con Ed provided temporary power.  It didn’t last long.  The next day we had another black-out.  A few days later the problem was finally fixed, but my company (TIAA-CREF) wanted Con Ed to pay for the failure of the temporary fix.  Con Ed said it was just a fluke – no fault of theirs. So, I hired Steve to examine the temporary wiring.  Within a day, he proved that Con Ed had “undersized” that wiring.  Con Ed handed us a check for $80,000.

A little Italian genius goes a long way. -JLM