Big Al as Big Daddy

Big Al with son Albert Francis, Chicago Tribune  “Old soldiers never die, they just fade away,” General Douglas MacArthur famously noted in a speech to the U.S. Congress on April 19th, 1951. This dictum certainly isn’t true for old Italian...

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...

DANTE AND THE DARK WOODS

“Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita…” begins the opening line of L’Inferno, the first part of Dante Alighieri’s three-part literary epic, La Divina Commedia (The Divine Comedy). It’s a line every Italian student can recite by...

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...