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...

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...

Politics as Usual 

Anyone following this year’s U.S. presidential run can’t help notice that two Americans of Indian descent, Biotech CEO Vivek Ramaswamy and former South Carolina governor/UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, are running on the GOP side. A few Dem pundits have already...

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. ...