Category: Miscellaneous

Shirley Martignoni Fedeli, formerly of Amici Italiani of Rockford, IL, now living in Michigan with her husband Gene, was recently awarded one of Italy’s highest honors. The President of Italy, Sergio Mattarella, has conferred upon Shirley Martignoni-Fedeli the most prestigious honor of Cavaliere dell’ Ordine della Stella d’Italia (Knight of the Order of the Star of Italy). The distinction is bestowed upon individuals of Italian heritage living outside of Italy for extraordinary contributions to the preservation of the Italian spirit and promotion of Italy’s prestige and friendly relations with other countries through various activities. It is the highest honor the Italian government can bestow upon a person of Italian heritage residing outside of Italy.

The ceremony took place on June 2, 2015 at the National Italian- American Sports Hall of Fame on Taylor Street in the heart of Chicago’s Little Italy. Italy’s elected representative for Italian citizens living in North and Central America, Senatore Renato Turano, presented the Ribbon and Medal of the Order to her. The event was sponsored by the Italian Consulate of Chicago.

Shirley’s recognition by the Italian government was for 30 plus years of promoting and preserving Italian heritage and culture in Rockford, Illinois. She is a charter member of the Greater Rockford Italian American Association (GRIAA) and currently serves as director emeritus. Continue reading “Shirley Martignoni Fedeli Honored by Italian Government”

The Ties That Bind
— Jackie Capurro

The first time that I visited my paternal cousins in the Abruzzo region in 1976, the houses of the four families that belonged to my relatives were interspersed among another 10-15 houses on a single gravel road, Colle Marrollo, that ran along the crest of a hill outside the village of Scerni, inland from the Adriatic seaside town of Vasto. As we walked along the road, I noticed what looked like very large metallic rods attached to the exterior surfaces of the walls of many houses. When I asked what they were, I was told that they held the house together in the event of an earthquake.

At first, I thought that they were trying to see how much their gullible young American cousin would believe, but they weren’t joking. In fact, not only do these metal tie-rods truly hold the houses together, they also allow the occupants to “pull the walls back together” if they shake loose! I was intrigued!

Continue reading “Earthquake Tie-Rods”

Dear Ancestor

Author Unknown

Your tombstone stands among the rest
Neglected and alone.
The name and the date are chiseled out
On polished, marbled stone.
It reaches out to all who care
It is too late to mourn.
You did not know that I exist
You died and I was born.
Yet each of us are cells of you
In flesh, in blood, in bone.
Our blood contracts and beats a pulse
Entirely not our own.
Dear Ancestor, the place you filled
One hundred years ago
Spreads out among the ones you left
Who would have loved you so.
I wonder if you lived and loved,
I wonder if you knew
That someday I would find this spot,
And come to visit you

Italian Notebook is a free, brief, daily email from Italy read by tens of thousands of Italophiles worldwide! GB, the editor, launched the online resource with the objective of taking his dual insider/outsider perspective on Italy to the web. Born in Germany, raised in France and Italy, both a US and Italian citizen, educated at Penn in Philadelphia, he now lives in Rome again. He has many great contributors on board and is looking forward to adding exciting new features to the site.
To sign up to receive this free email and to peruse past issues, go to: http://www.italiannotebook.com/
Here’s a sample email from August of last year.

I have devoted a great deal of my life working to preserve our Italian heritage in the United States. Many of you have spent time and money doing the same but, in doing so, have we wasted our time, money, and energy? The odds are against us because we are not doing the things we should. How does an ethnic group insure its survival?

Italy today is not the same country your grandparents left, and it is true that many Italian-Americans are now highly acculturated and assimilated members of American society. We also agree that the language has been lost, and almost everything of Italy and things Italian. If there was the will, Italian-Americans could learn about Italy and her heritage. If we are able to get across to Italian-Americans that our Italian heritage is a treasure, we may have more success. We need to point out that Italian personal and family values and our way of interacting with relatives and friends is very enriching. By raising the consciousness of our intellectual heritage, they will come to value what Italy has contributed to the world!

Continue reading “Will Our Italian Heritage Become Extinct by the End of This Century?”

Recently I was paging through one of my favorite books Festivals and Folkways of Italy by Frances Toor. Toor (1890-1956) was an ethnologist who traveled through Italy shortly after World War II. She spent eight months in Italy experiencing and writing about the festivals, crafts, foods and traditions of the “peasant” Italians. She believed that the “richest” traditions and folk arts belonged to the poor.
In her book, Toor describes Neapolitans as intelligent, generous and capable of great friendship. She then notes how they are good workers but do not like working under bosses. As a result they try to eke out a living by selling something or working in their crowded bassi (one room apartments). Toor states that she saw little of the dolce far niente (sweet laziness) which Neapolitans are famous for.

She offered the following story as an example of dolce far niente.
A fisherman asleep on the shore in the shade of his rowboat was awakened by a friend who said to him,”Wake up Giovanni, a big passenger ship with many foreigners has just come in!”

Continue reading “Dolce far niente”