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...

Trying Times

Each Memorial Day we reflect on America’s war dead.  These days, we should also reflect on the victims of mass shootings, especially those who never had a chance to grow up. For those of us whose childhood roots are in the 1950s each succeeding decade is a “tree...

White Guilt

Last week, one of the founders of Black Lives Matter (BLM) stated that much of their organization’s $90 million income since its inception came from “white guilt.”  In other words, wealthy Whites and White-dominated corporations needed to buy forgiveness for...

In Search of Truth

There are many quotes in the Bible that guide us but there is one that challenges us.  It was uttered by the Roman perfect of Judea Pontius Pilate, with Jesus standing before him:  “What is truth?” In the New Testament according to John (18:33-38) Pilate and...

Lauded and Vilified

Appropriate for Mother’s Day is the old quip, “Well, at least your mother loves you!”  That might be the way Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito rationalized his overnight descent into Hell last week when his draft opinion on abortion rights was outed by some...

One with Nature

In our pantheon of heroes, Americans of Italian stock can look back some 3,000 years to a people who struggled to reconcile human existence with Nature.  That struggle encompassed the many goals of revealing the secrets Nature, of controlling Nature, and of...

The Culture War

President Eisenhower, a former general, warned us about the Military-Industrial Complex.  But, the last few years has given us another danger: the Corporate-Woke Complex – a multilateral movement to undermine democracy and subvert Western culture. Standing in...

A Roman Easter

In Issue X (1990) of The Italic Way, we explored the Italic connections in the Bible.  In particular how ancient Italians, as Roman officials, were involved in the birth of Christianity. We are all familiar with Emperor Caesar Augustus calling for a census and...

Those Other Explorers

Our Almanac reminds us that Columbus, Cabot, Vespucci, and Verrazzano weren’t the only Italians this nation ought to be thankful for. On April 9th, 1682 Enrico Tonti and Frenchman Robert La Salle arrived at the Gulf of Mexico after traversing waterways from the Great...

Hi-Octane Minorities

A London-based research outfit called YouGov matches perceptions to actual stats.  For example, panels of volunteers surveyed in the United States think that Blacks are 41% of the U.S population when the Census says they are only 12%.  The reason for the...

Putin’s Mussolini Moment

In his criminal invasion of Ukraine, it appears that Vladimir Putin has underestimated Ukrainian resistance and overestimated his own Russian military.  History is full of such folly. Take a war, any war, and you will find this same hubris at work.  The...

Inventions of Italy

On March 20, 1800, Italian scientist Alessandro Volta reported that he had created the Battery – a device to generate electricity from a pile of dissimilar metal discs, some salt water, and wire.  Two centuries later many people believe Volta’s invention will...

Putin and St. Nick

I always ask the same question when war or terror breaks out – where are the holy men?  Pope Francis seems to be the only religious leader who gets media attention if he calls for an end to violence.  This week he urged Vladimir Putin: “In the name of God, I...

Putin’s Accomplice

For 16 years (218 BC – 202 BC) Hannibal and his mostly Celtic mercenaries ravished the Italian peninsula, annihilating Roman and allied armies and pillaging the wealth of newly unified Italy.  The Italic people suffered PTSD on a massive scale, so much so that...

Shocking & Awful

These days, former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi doesn’t recognize the Vladimir Putin he used to pal around with.  The two were quite the odd couple back in the early 2000s, hugging and partying each time they met.  It almost looked like Italian...

Ole Massa Lives On

I’m addicted to watching the PBS series Finding Your Roots hosted by Prof. Louis Gates Jr of Harvard.  The series is in its 8th season, and last week it explored the roots of Tony Danza. This being Black History Month I thought it appropriate to mention that...

Some Foolish Thing

The current crisis in Ukraine conjures up another Munich analogy.  Russia’s Vladimir Putin easily fits the bill as the new Hitler.  He has already seized Ukraine’s Crimea region and now wants the rest of that country, just as Hitler first took Austria in...

Above & Beyond

I often get my blog subjects from our online Almanac.  February 3rd celebrates the courage of Lt. Willibald Charles Bianchi in 1942 that earned him the Congressional Medal of Honor during the Japanese invasion of the Philippines. Some 27 Americans of Italian...

Where It All Started

It started innocently enough, but it escalated into a debate on The Godfather. A friend and I were enjoying a leisurely ride in my car listening to Sirius Radio when the 1959 song Sea of Love came on.  I quickly related it to the movie by the same name starring...

Another Italian Gift

Last Saturday, my grandson celebrated his fifth birthday at an amusement center with all his friends and their parents.  Among his buddies was pre-school classmate Terrance, a Chinese American.  Terrance’s father was there, and we chatted a bit.  He had...

Shades of Black

Martin Luther King Day is one of two holidays celebrating Black heritage – the other is Juneteenth (June 19th), when news of liberation reached Texas slaves in 1865.  Despite having two of the only race-based holidays, most Black leaders would abolish Columbus...

The Whole Truth?

It has gone from a partisan slogan to fake history: “Republicans are undermining democracy.”  Our own Nancy D’Alessandro Pelosi, Speaker of the House, may not have authored the line but is perpetuating it. But is her narrative undermining our Republic?  Last...

Celestial Musings

Greta Thunberg, the Cassandra of Climate Change, may be too distracted to realize that the Earth may be too-late-to-save before her 2030 prediction.  An asteroid will be arriving here in 2029 – on April 13th to be exact. Fabrizio Bernardi Co-discovered in 2004,...

Broadway Legends

The iconic Broadway restaurant Sardi’s reopened this week to serve returning theater-goers.  It survived the pandemic with $4.5 million in Covid relief funds.  Hopefully, it will remain open and prosper. During my 30-year career in Manhattan real estate...

Just How Absurd?

Last week, speaking before Democrats at a holiday celebration House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may have hit the punch bowl a bit early.  She exclaimed, “Our country could not be more – it could not be better served, than with this most experienced, capable hands than...

Dr. Pappagallo

Dr. Anthony Fauci is the highest paid bureaucrat in the federal government – some $500,000 per year. More than the president earns! As the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases with a budget of $6 billion he is also the Chief Medical...

A Murder Mystery

A few days ago, three White men were convicted in a Georgia courtroom of the murder of Black jogger Ahmaud Arbery.  The trial was nationally televised and perceived as racially motivated.  Whether it was actually a hate crime will be determined in a second trial of...

The Quest for Justice

Crime and punishment have become an obsession these days.  We have lots of videos of crimes as they happen.  We see plenty of televised trials.  We see verdicts and sentencing that range from right-on to outrageous.   And since today commemorates the death of Italian...

A Touch of Genius

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...

What Might Have Been

Our Institute is finishing up a report on the origins of World War II with emphasis on the rivalry between Great Britain and Fascist Italy.  It’s been an eye-opening research project that has much to do with the colonialism of the 1930s.  For the great...

Citizenship for Sale: Cheap!

A couple of years ago, I tried to obtain Italian citizenship, but the Italians don’t make it easy.  All your vowels have to be in order – my last “i” was originally an “o”, and the documentation is complex – what the hell is an apostille!  One relative attempted it...

Where Does Utopia End?

Here’s an election dream for 2024:  Republican Governor Ron DeSantis vs Democratic Senator Joe Manchin.  Both Italian American conservatives with no utopian flights of fancy. DeSantis may have aspirations for the White House, but Manchin (orig: Mancini)...

Raining on Our Parade

In case you missed it, October 9th was Leif Erikson Day.  Since 1964, Public Law 88-566 by Congress recognizes that Nordic Americans were “believed to have been” the first Europeans to settle in America.  This year’s Proclamation of Leif Erikson Day was...

The Real Covid Tragedy

It’s been nearly two years that the world has suffered the tragedy of the China Virus.  This plague has killed close to 5 million people on the planet, including 744,000 Americans and 131,000 Italians.  And, no “experts” see an end in sight.  Even the...

Our Intrepid Explorer

Each year the President of the United States issues a proclamation reminding the nation of its debt to the Genovese explorer and the national holiday that affirms it.  This week, President Biden repeated that custom but converted Columbus’s voyage into a...

A Plague of Grasshoppers

For those of you who are monitoring the legislative sausage-making process in Congress this week, you will understand that we are not watching a Democrat vs Republican struggle but one between Utopians and Realists.  Democrats clearly have the bulk of Utopians...

A Close Shave

I don’t like the grubby look of Italian males these days – more than five o’clock shadow but less than an actual beard.  Beside the unkempt appearance, it indicates a certain laziness.  But, I’m sure Italian men with this look consider it macho and alluring...

Flattening the Spirit

We’ve come a long way from Dr. Anthony Fauci’s goal of “flattening the curve” at the start of the China Virus pandemic.  Regrettably, he and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are leading the way to a flattening of the American spirit, instead. These two Italian...

What Will It Take?

Each September 11th will always remind us that our conflict with Islam has yet to be resolved.  On 9/11, I was working in midtown-Manhattan when the planes struck in lower-Manhattan.  I recall a comment I made at the time to a colleague that the disaster was...

Ode to Ingenuity

Like many of you, I tend a vegetable garden in the Italian tradition with the goal of preserving the harvest, not merely consuming it fresh.  Planting seeds, transplanting seedlings, caging, staking, weeding, mulching, watering, and fertilizing even on a small...

Abraham Overload

This week, a fanatic at the Kabul Airport chose to annihilate himself and 108 innocent people, including thirteen American military members, in the name of Allah “the Compassionate, the Merciful.”  Akin to human sacrifice, suicide bombings have always appalled...

The Greater Humiliation

No one can deny that our current exit from Afghanistan is a national humiliation brought on by incredible political and military incompetence; and the chips haven’t finished falling where they may.  But, there is a greater humiliation that few will discuss:...

After Pelosi, the Reckoning

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is seeking immortality.  At 80, this may be her last term in public office, her last chance to create a socialist republic the utopian Left dreams about: a cradle-to-grave federal safety net, couch-potato voting, endless Black...

A Non-Olympic Sport

This month’s cover story in National Geographic magazine is about gladiators.  It’s a great cover with plenty of photos and recreated scenes to satisfy any devotee of the ancient sport. It’s a short read that dispels many of the legendary beliefs about the...

Fickle Fingers

Yesterday marked the 150th anniversary of a fickle finger of fate.  On July 31, 1871, inventor Antonio Meucci was severely injured in a steam boiler explosion aboard the Staten Island ferry Westfield. The disaster left 100 people dead and Meucci convalescing at home...

Those Rockin’ Italians

Don’t you love those PBS nostalgia specials featuring the old vocal groups?  A recent one reminded me of a mega-project our Institute undertook to produce a concert of Italian American performers from the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s. The year was 2002, we christened the...

Bread & Circuses

Harry Truman loved to say that the only thing new under the sun is the history you don’t know.  As the United States is making a hard left, Truman’s quote is hauntingly accurate.  They may call themselves “Progressives” but I prefer the label...

Many Enemies…Pick One

Is Red China to be feared more than Russia?  Can we afford two enemies at the same time?  Which has the most potential to destroy us economically, politically, and socially?  A surprising answer can come from Italian history. As a lifelong student of history, and...

Root Causes

On this July 4th, while we celebrate the most patriotic of holidays, I recall this day on a foreign shore in 1987 honoring the cultural taproot of our American republic.  I wasn’t gazing on the Magna Carta in the British Library, or upon the Parthenon in...

Some Fishy History

Many local newspapers subscribe to the Associated Press daily almanac, a one-column feature that puts current events into historical perspective.  Although the AP is a nonprofit funded by participating newspapers, the bias of those participants flows into AP’s...

Umpteen Demands

The year 2020 was annus horribilis for those of us who value tradition.  The newly minted and half-baked federal holiday called Juneteenth is one result.  It was born of two events last year that changed the direction of our Republic:  the murder of...

Declaration of Doom

In Italian history, June 10, 1940 was a day of infamy, when Italy declared war on Great Britain and France.  Eighty-one years ago this month, Mussolini and the Savoy monarchy chained their nation to a Teutonic ideologue whose insanity knew no bounds.  What...

In the Arena

Today, let’s examine the intramural struggle among our paesani in government. Ancient Romans often staged life and death battles in their arenas.   Arena means “sand” in Latin, the stuff they spread on amphitheater floors to soak up the blood. There may be...

Remembering the Sacrifice

As a child, I recall relatives talking about my maternal grandfather’s brother Luigi being killed in the First World War.  I never heard any details, but there was mention of his parents in Italy receiving money from the U.S. government for his death.  His...

Origins of White Privilege

So, let’s concede that White economic privilege exists.  But, it may not be what you think, as stemming from discrimination, exploitation, and outright theft.  Rather, it has cultural and historical roots too complex to denounce with a bullhorn. Think of...

Rudy on the Ropes

“America’s Mayor” Rudy Giuliani has had a couple of tough years.  It all started with his passionate loyalty to Donald Trump, first spearheading a fact-finding mission to Ukraine to expose the political and financial machinations of Hunter Biden, then to...

The Date Game

The official end of the Second World War in Europe was May 8, 1945.  I would think that even “woke” Americans would agree that the Allied victory was a good thing for humanity.  But, who knows?  In this topsy-turvy nation, where racism is the measure of...

Holding the Line

In 1917, the Italian Army suffered one of the worst disasters of the First World War.  A combined offensive by Austria-Hungary and Germany broke the Alpine Italian line at Caporetto and swept within seventy miles of Venice, capturing some 250,000 Italian...

The Devil Incarnate

In Merry Ole England there was a phrase that summed up Anglo-Saxon contempt for Italian ideas infecting England: “the Italianate Englishman is the devil incarnate.”  This concept was born around 1535 with the translation of Machiavelli’s The Prince...

Who’s Counting?

Italy’s new Prime Minister Mario Draghi (DRA-ghee) is spouting a form of “Italy First” these days, and getting accolades from Italians and Europeans alike.  The bold Draghi recently seized a shipment of Covid vaccines stored in a Rome warehouse that were destined...

Systemic Collusion

I used to think that mind control was only possible in totalitarian countries.  But, over the past few years an amazing transformation has taken place in this country – in journalism, entertainment, and culture.  A deluded utopian, not merely...

Doing Nothing

There is a mini-tale in Italo Calvino’s 1980 book Italian Folktales that has always fascinated me.  Titled “The Science of Laziness,” the tale is from the northern city of Trieste and is clearly politically incorrect, insofar as it targets Turks.  No doubt,...

No More Jokes

There’s a new book titled Lincoln on the Verge, about the newly elected president taking a whistle-stop journey from his home in Springfield, IL to Washington D.C. in 1861.  Covering thirteen days, with stops in eight northern states, the purpose of the trip was...

Victims of the Press

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is reportedly seeking solace from his political agony with the Black community, rather than the Italian American community – so reports the NYTimes. The irony is that Letitia James, his own Attorney General – a Black woman – initiated...

The Knives of March

March 15, 44 B.C. was the day Caius Julius Caesar was knifed by a clique of Roman senators intent on saving the Republic from dictatorship. Figuratively, the knives are also coming for another powerful scion of Italy in Albany, NY – Andrew Cuomo, 3-time governor of...

Victory by Immigration

Last week, the Mayor of Rome officially opened the Mausoleum of Augustus to the public.  The ashes of our greatest emperor were interred there in A.D. 14 as well as an engraved summary of his career called the Res Gestae (“Things Accomplished”).  Both his...

Rome Under Siege

Why are the utopian Left and our immaculate minorities intent on uprooting Western Civilization?  It’s all about “White Supremacy.”  You cannot build a utopian society from a fragmented and diverse population unless you control Euro-American history – that...

Back to Normal

I wonder if New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo is sad that Donald Trump is no longer president.  Before January 20th, New York’s Covid-19 nursing home death toll (15,000) could be conveniently blamed on Trump, with the media’s blessing. Was it a coincidence that...

Inciting a Cancellation

Do you know there is a chapter of Black Lives Matter (BLM) in Italy?  Do you know that French leaders are resisting the invasion of “woke” culture?  How are these social upheavals spreading across continents and oceans?  Short answer:  the Media....

The Corporate State

It’s hard to say whether Italy or the United States is in a bigger mess.  Both are suffering from the pandemic; both are in the throes of political turmoil. Instead of just Democrats and Republicans battling it out, as here, Italians have five parties in...