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...

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...