Dear Readers,
January notes with an Italian Connection: Augusta Group, an Italian maker of premium sport motorcycles, was recently acquired by Harley-Davidson in order to boost its presence in Europe. MV Agusta makes a line of premium sport motorcycles under its name brand and a line of lightweight motorcycles under the Cagiva brand.
The deal will help Harley-Davidson expand into the European market as sales slump in the United States, where consumers are pulling back on spending. Performance, or sport, bikes account for about 80 percent of sales in Europe. The MV Agusta acquisition gives Harley-Davidson a chance to go after European sport motorcycle riders, who tend to be younger than U.S. motorcycle riders.
The heavier weight bikes are more popular in the United States, but worldwide, sport motorcycles account for half of all sales. It’s a big market for Harley-Davidson to enter. MV Agusta is considerably smaller than Harley-Davidson, which has nearly half the U.S. market. MV Augusta will keep operating from its headquarters in Varese, Italy.
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Bugatti showed up in fifth place, on a recent Mensvogue.com list of the 25 most influential cars ever built in the world. The Bugatti Type 41 “Royale”, built from 1927 to 1933 was one of the most expensive cars on the planet, and in 1987 brought an unbelievable $8.7 MILLION AT AUCTION. The Lamborghini Miura “Fighting Bull” took the 11th position as the “original super car” and “one of the most beautiful cars ever created.”
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Chocolate may be the despair of dieters, but it also contains a class of chemicals that might help lower the risk of heart disease, according to wine researchers at the University of California at Davis. Wine chemists have long studied the possible health benefits of compounds called phenolics. These chemicals are abundant in red wine and are believed to help prevent so-called “bad” cholesterol from clogging coronary arteries with fatty substances known as plaque.
Many doctors have written about the medicinal values of wine, including Salvatore Lucia, M.D. Reports published in medical journals suggest that the phenolics in chocolate might also be beneficial. Although cholesterol is found in animal fats, it is also made by the body and is needed to help build cell walls as well as many hormones. But before cholesterol can be transported through the bloodstream, it must be combined with fats and proteins into particles called lipoproteins.
Low-density lipoproteins, or LDL, are known as the “bad” cholesterol, and they are the artery-blockers. The “good” high-density lipoproteins, or HDL, are believed to scavenge excess cholesterol from the bloodstream and carry it to the liver for excretion. Phenolics, according to current thinking, are among several compounds in foods that prevent oxygen from combining with low-density lipoproteins – a process called oxidation.
This minimizes the ability of LDL to damage artery walls and contribute to the buildup of plaque. Research has found that the phenols in cocoa strongly inhibited the oxidation of low-density lipoproteins taken from samples of human blood. So, dear readers, forget the drugstore and rush to the candy store. Buy your Valentine some nice chocolates, then enjoy a glass of red wine together and drink to your health. Buona Salute!
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Documentary DVD, “5,000 Miles from Home”, how World War II transformed Chicago’s Italian community, starring Mario Avignone and 25 other Chicago Land Veterans, was produced by Forward March Media and is now available. The DVD benefits the Italian American Veterans Museum, 3800 Division St., Stone Park, Illinois, 60165. Call Fra Noi for more information (707)338-0690.
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Each Day is like a lovely rose. We can complain about the thorns, or we can rejoice in its beauty. Let us rejoice each day we get out of bed on our own two feet, “senza aiuto” (without help), during 2009.
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Find a computer savvy family member and get thee to www.theradio.com for an “abbondanza” of musical joy. There are no pictures at the site, but inside the space provided on the tape deck logo, just type in a singer’s name and sometimes before you even finish typing in the name, their music is playing. Some singers are so well known, just a last name i.e. Sinatra is all that is necessary, however, with Louie Prima and Lou Monte you need to type in a first name too.
Here are some Italian American and Italian singers that I was instantly able to enjoy: Tony Bennett, Bobby Darin, Vic Damone, Lou Monte, Mario Lanza, Al Martino, Domenico Modugno, Luciano Pavarotti, Louie Prima and Frank Sinatra. There is also a place where you can type Italy in the worldwide category and hear the music of singers “molto popolari” in Italy but relatively unknown in the U.S.
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Gifted Authors with Italian surnames were often urged by their publishers to anglicize their names if they wanted their work to see the light of the printed page. Ed McBain, author of “The Blackboard Jungle” and inventor of the police procedural novel, has written 94 novels with 100 million copies in print in many languages. He was born in 1926 Salvatore Albert Lombino and grew up in New York’s East Harlem and North Bronx. Early in his career, publishers warned him that Lombino was too hard to pronounce and might hurt sales. He used several pen names, the most familiar being “Mc Bane” for his detective stories and “Evan Hunters” for his more literary works. Frances Winwar (1900-1985) a novelist, translator, and biographer of poets, statesmen, and heroes, including Joan of Arc and Napoleon, was born Francesca Viniguerra in Sicily. She came to the U.S. at the age 7. She later anglicized her name on the advice of her editors.
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Health, Education and Welfare Secretary, under the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations was Anthony J. Celebrezze. He was the first foreign-born mayor of Cleveland, Ohio and the first non-native to be appointed to a U.S. Cabinet post. Also a judge to the U.S. Court of Appeals, he was born in Potenza, elected Cleveland’s mayor in 1953 and reelected four times, the last time with nearly 75 percent of the vote. He was the only Cleveland mayor elected five times. He died in 1998 at age 88.
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Italians and Italian Americans tend to enrich the quality of life in communities where they reside. So which states have been blessed with an “abbondanza” of Italians? According to the last count there are 2,737,146 Italians in New York, 1,503,637 in New Jersey, 1,450,884 in California, 1,418,465 in Pennsylvania, and 1,003,977 in Florida. Other states with a large percentage of Italians, 860,079 in Massachusetts, 744,274 in Illinois, 675,749 in Ohio, 634,364 in Connecticut, 450,952 in Michigan, 363,354 in Texas, 257,129 in Virginia, 267,573 in Maryland, 224,795 in Arizona, 201,787 in Colorado, and 176,209 in Missouri. The states with the lowest number of Italian Americans: 50,729 in Kansas, 40,401 in Mississippi, 38,835 in Vermont, 34,553 in Idaho, 28,031 in Montana, 17,944 in Alaska, 15,286 Italian “cowboys” in Wyoming and 5,328 Italians in North Dakota.
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Jesuit Priest, Alessando Valignano, born in Chieti (Abruzzo), Italy was the first priest to travel extensively in Japan (1579.) His travels extended to the Far East and there he introduced Christianity. He was a forerunner of and later an assistant of Jesuit Matteo Ricci, who in 1582, was an early visitor to China and was the first to gain entrance to China’s interior which at the time was closed to foreigners. He was a pioneer in his attempts to foster better understanding between East and West. Matteo Ricci’s map of the world printed in Beijing (Peking) in 1602 was sold at Christie’s Auction house in late 1989 for over a quarter of a million dollars.
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Kublai Khan, ruler of Mongolia and China, apparently had a welcome mat for Italian travelers. In 1338 a Franciscan Friar called Giovanni dei Marignolli (born in Florence) became, after Marco Polo, the second great world traveler. He was the first to stay at the Court of the Mogul Emperors and become a notable traveler to the Far East. Marco Polo (born in Venice) started on the journey to the Far East in 1271.
He was the first great traveler and explorer and wrote the first travel book (Il Milione) in French. Niccolò, his father and his uncle Matteo Polo had started out ten years before him. Marco Polo belonged to a Venetian family of merchants and diplomats and as a result of his travels, after his father and uncle had left with him on their second expedition to the Court of Kublai Khan, the ruler of Mongolia and China, he was away from home for a total of 25 years. With his father and uncle he spent nearly 17 years in the service of Kublai Khan.
His book made an enormous impression at the time and it alerted Europe to the existence and importance of the East. Its writer remained throughout his life very much a merchant and a traveler. He was one of the first to introduce cashmere wool to the West.
He brought back to Venice the famous cashmere ring shawls, which he had obtained during his travels to the East. These were so called because it was claimed that they were so fine that they could be drawn through a lady’s finger ring.
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