Dear Readers,
An August assortment of Italian Connections:
Arthur Avenue Cookbook, Recipes and Memories from the real Little Italy, by Ann Volkwein with an “abbondanza” of gorgeous color photos by Vegar Abelsnes and published in 2004 by Harper Collins Inc., N.Y. is a must read for anyone who remembers walking along Arthur Ave, the “Little Italy” of the Bronx or any “Little Italy” in the United States, as a young child, hand in hand with their mamma.Throughout the United States, most “Little Italys” because of urban renewal, urban decay or upward mobility either are no more or have shrunk as adjacent Latino communities or Chinatowns have expanded.
Although the Belmont borough as the wider Arthur Avenue area is known, is no longer home to fifty thousand Italian immigrants and the natural boundaries of the neighborhood are the Bronx Zoo, which borders Southern Boulevard along the eastern edge, the Botanical Garden to the northeast, Fordham University to the north, St. Barnabas Hospital to the west, and 183rd Street to the south, Arthur Avenue is closest to any Little Italy in the United States that you can remember visiting as a child.
Via this book, you can once again visit the Italian neighborhood shops you remember visiting as a child.
Arthur Avenue and 187th Street form the crossroads of the neighborhood, and the shops and restaurants are huddled together in a triangular cluster from 183rd to 188th and along East 187th Street to Beaumont Avenue.Among the variety of stores are two fish markets, four butchers, two pork stores, four pastry shops, five gourmet delis, six bread stores, two cheese shops, one pasta shop, and more than a dozen restaurants.
The Arthur Avenue Cookbook also invites you to savor the memories of the neighborhood's most colorful residents, restaurateurs, and shop owners, and those of their families - many of whom have lived in the neighborhood since it first came into being.
Mario Borgatti, the noodle maker has been there for more than eighty-five years. Anthony Artuso, Sr., takes his bakery business so seriously that he went seventeen years without a vacation, in part to ensure that each bride and groom got the perfect wedding cake.
This cookbook also provides a guide to the pastry shops, delis, restaurants, and other famous and lesser-known gems that line Arthur Avenue.
The profiles and recipes in this book, reveals that those who run business here, as their fathers did and in many cases their grandfathers did, are dedicated not only to their own shops or restaurants but to the culture of the neighborhood.
Arthur Avenue is a unique, living memorial to the labor and determination of a vital community of Italian-American immigrants....
Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco were executed August 22, 1927, in the state of Massachusetts, unjustly according to worldwide opinion.
In 1920, when a paymaster for a shoe company in South Braintree Massachusetts and his guard were shot and killed by two men who escaped with money taken from the company (over $15,000) in an automobile, it was thought by witnesses to the crime that the murderers were “Italian”.Sacco and Vanzetti, two men with no criminal records but known anarchists were arrested when they went to a garage to claim a car local police claim was somehow connected with the crime.
A few days before the execution Nicola wrote his son Dante and little daughter Inez and told them not to cry “because many tears have been wasted for seven years, and never did any good.
So, son instead of crying, be strong, so as to be able to comfort your mother.
When you want to distract your mother from her sadness I will tell you what I used to do. Take her along walking in the quiet country, gathering wild flowers here and there, resting under the shade of trees.
I am sure that she will enjoy this very much, as you surely would be happy for it.”Nicola then added a P.S., Bartolo sends you the most affectionate greetings.
On August 23, 1977, fifty years after their execution, Governor of Massachusetts Michael Dukakis issued a proclamation stating that Sacco and Vanzetti had not been treated justly and that “any disgrace should be for ever removed from their names.”...
Caruso (Enrico) the famous tenor, born in Naples in 1873 died in Naples August 2, 1921. It can be said that he was the first recording star to be recognized worldwide by just one name, Caruso.
Caruso made his first recordings in 1902. The ten sides he recorded for the Gramophone and Typewriter Company in Milan on 19 April 1902 were so successful that Caruso has been credited with turning the gramophone, until then regarded as a toy, into a musical instrument.
He signed an exclusive contract with the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1904, and all of his subsequent records were made either in New York City or in Camden, New Jersey. The majority of these acoustic recordings have never been out of the catalog, and despite the sonic deficiencies, his entire recorded legacy has been repeatedly reissued on long playing records and compact discs.
...
Detroit founded seven decades before the American Revolution as a fort, trading post and settlement by Sieur De la Mothe Cadillac, grew into the largest city in Michigan and at one time produced 30 per cent of the nation's autos, trucks and tractors.
It was in August 1901, that Cadillac Motors was founded. A constant flow of traffic moves in and out of Detroit. Windsor Tunnel, which connects Detroit with Windsor, Ontario, in Canada, now home to Fr. August Feccia who arrived in 1990, to serve as the director of Villa Scalabrini and editor of L'Italo Americano in Sun Vally, California for nearly a decade. Friends who fondly remember Fr. Feccia can drop him a note:
c/o Angela Merci Church
980 - Louis Avenue
Windsor, Ontario N9A1X9...
“Grazie” to longtime subscriber Dorothy Capurro, currently living in Tucson, Arizona who grew up in Lansing, Michigan, for this information on St. Hippolytus (Ippolito) who has an August feast day that is celebrated in Italy and Lansing, Michigan each year.
Hippolytus (St. Ippolito) was a roman soldier during the 3rd century persecutions.
The young Roman Officer, together with his nurse, Concordia and nineteen others of his household, were martyred for their Catholic faith in the year 258 at Ostia, near Rome during the persecution of Valerian, Emperor of Rome.Little is known of St. Ippolito's early youth. From Lorenzo illustrious martyr deacon, Saint Lawrence (intimate friend and companion of the martyr-Pope, Saint Sixtus II) we learn that Ippolito was born and reared a pagan. At age twenty-one, he enlisted in the Roman army and so distinguished himself as a soldier that he was soon promoted to the ranks of an officer, probably that of Centurian.
A short time after the persecution of Valerian broke out, the Deacon Lawrence was arrested and cast into prison on account of his religion and placed in the custody of the young officer, Ippolito.
The deacon and his guard became friends. Lawrence lost no time, he instructed the young man in the doctrines of the Catholic faith and in a short time baptized him in his prison cell. The young neophyte, had a Catholic priest instruct his entire household and soon each member was received into the church. Upon hearing this, the outraged prefect of the city had Saint Lawrence roasted alive on a grid iron (August 10, 258 A.D.) and Ippolito imprisoned.
The prefect ordered Ippolito and members of his household to renounce their Catholicity under pain of death.
They refused, preferring death to apsotacy whereupon they were immediately sentenced to be torn alive by wild horses. They accepted the sentence on August 13, 258, and received the palm of martyrdom in the presence of the Roman populace who clamored for their death.
Saint Hippolytus became the patron Saint of Calabrese who emigrated to the USA in the 19th and 20th century from Santo Ippolito and other small villages near Cosenza.
The village of Santo Ippolito was originally called Napoli Piccola or “Little Naples” because of its natural resemblance to the city of Naples. This little city was about half the size of Naples both in population and territory.
A typical agricultural city, it boasted many beautiful churches.
In the 18th century, a terrible earthquake shook the city killing one-third of the population and destroying all of the churches, except the Church of Santo Ippolito. When the survivors saw that not one stone of the little church had been touched in the disaster, they accepted that as a Heavenly sign and immediately changed the name of the city to Santo Ippolito vowing to pay the Saint special honors annually on his feast day if he would pray for them and deliver them from other catastrophes.In agricultural communities throughout Italy, times were difficult and families were large, so for economic reasons many of the Calabrese sent their young adults to explore the possibilities that existed in America.
Many settled in the larger cities on the east coast. Others came, via Canada, to Michigan, settling in the center of the state where the small towns reminded them Calabria. Several came to Lansing and found it a fine place to live.
In the early 1920's a new Catholic parish was beginning on the east side of Lansing. Fr. John Gabriels welcomed the Calabrese as members of the Church of the Resurrection. Their descendants are among today's parishioners.
Before the turn of the Century, a few St. Ippolito emigrants came to Michigan.
They came not knowing the language or customs and settled in Lansing. Others followed. They survived the worst Depression in the history of the United States.
Their descendants became teachers, entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers, businessmen and businesswomen, priests, nuns, representatives in government, and served with honor in World Wars I and II, Korea and Vietnam.The Society of Santo Ippolito and their annual celebration with prayer, picnic, family, food, games and lots of fun continues in Lansing, Michigan.
Past President, Paul Spagnuolo, 92 years of age, unable to be as active on the day of the St. Ippolito Festival (the 2nd Sunday of August) as in the past, rests easy knowing that his cousin, Frank Spagnuolo, now president of the Santo Ippolito Society and his co-workers will continue the celebration, in the spirit and policy set in 1938 by founder Emil De Marco, nearly seventy years ago.Anyone visiting in the Lansing, Michigan area is welcome to attend.
For more info:
Society of Santo Ippolito
3429 Overlea Drive
Lansing, MI 48917
Ph.: 517 321 2941.
10631 Vinedale Street, Sun Valley, CA 91352 - Phone (818) 767-3413 - Fax: (818) 767-1410
