Hollywood’s Greatest Valentine’s Day Film

[The following essay was published in the NY Daily News on 14 February 2026] What is the perfect Valentine’s Day movie? Why, Rio Bravo, of course. According to Quentin Tarantino: “There are certain movies that you hang out with the characters so much that they...

UNFREEZING OUR MEDIA IMAGE

With colder temps comes thoughts of colder climates—the state of Alaska, for example. Never visited, but it’s on my (ice?) bucket list.  Why Alaska? Well, everyone knows Mt. McKinley—or, rather, its original Indigenous name of Denali (“the tall...

One Man’s Trash…

Last October, the Commission for Social Justice, an arm of the Sons and Daughters of Italy, tried to distribute positive image material to New York City libraries in celebration of Italian History Month.  Two Manhattan libraries considered the material...

Out of One Neighborhood

The Giglio Festival Yesterday I read about an Italian American neighborhood that was the original Little Italy in New York City.  No, not Mulberry Street in lower Manhattan but East Harlem above 96th Street. Today, both those areas are “Italian” by the skin of their...

How to Explain Our Contributions?

The Wall Street Journal had an article on “The Distortion of American Studies,” a report on how academia accentuates the negative in American history.  They referred to issues of American Quarterly magazine published by Johns Hopkins University, considered the...

Here’s to the Journalists

In my last blog, “Here’s to the Ladies,” I wrote about Italian American female singers from Chicago, past and present. Since then, I came across a 1979 article by Jack Newfield (1938-2004), the legendary reporter who covered stories in the Village...