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...

My Pilgrimage to Ancient Rome

My sojourn to Italy this summer unleashed a torrent of cascading emotions. Memories intermingled with anticipation, exultation and incipient joy. Yet such feelings were also accompanied by a brief bout of sadness. Marcus Agrippa’s Pantheon, 25 B.C. Upon arrival,...

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...

Movies Make the World Go Around

Mrs. O’Leary (Alice Brady) is a symbol of the American pioneering spirit in In Old Chicago (1937) while Mamma Corleone (the late jazz singer Morgana King) raises a brood of law-breakers in The Godfather (1972) The musical Cabaret, play and film, got it wrong via...