Dear Readers,
An Italian minestrone of Italian Connections: “Arlisti” is what Italy’s Harley Davidson motorcycle aficionados call themselves. Italy’s Harleys are not so much motor bikes for people who want to go from punto A to punto B, but transport vehicles for those who financially have already arrived and can afford to show it. Italy’s Arlisti, most of whom are 30sh to 40sh professionals, are not cast in the American “Hell’s Angels” mold.
At ten to twenty thousand dollars for some models (nearly twice the US price), before you even start to customize it, most Arlisti are not just bying a bike, but a dream, an image built on “Easy Rider” of freedom, a symbol of liberty, of leaving everything behind and for some Italians of emulating the slick big-screen American remembered from youthful yearnings. Bit of advice. “Chi va piano va sano, chi va sano va lontano.” A proverb remembered by reader Carlo Zanassi. His father Giovanni added, “Chi va forte va alla morte...”
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Brunelleschi Filippo, who built the Duomo in Florence, was a beautiful synthesis of artist and engineer because he designed not just buildings but the tools, the machines and scaffolds with which to build them. Brunelleschi has inspired Italian architect Renzo Piano ever since he was a little boy. Now the Italian architect, who co-designed the iconic Pompidou Center in Paris, additions to museums in Atlanta, Chicago and Los Angeles, skyscrapers in New York and the academy of Science in San Francisco, has himself become an inspiration to young architects all over the world.
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Cal Alumni (University of California at Berkeley) especially, but fans of retired banker Roland Bianchi, who has authored such gems as the Migration of Moro, Tales from a Tuscan Guitar and Delivery Boy (his first job was delivering groceries after school for his uncles Guidi Bros. New Rainbow Market on Filbert and Octavia Streets in S.F.) will find Roland Bianchi’s latest book “ReCallections of a Bear” (the Cal mascot) a delightful read.
My “marito,” a Cal graduate, was laughing aloud when reading about the fraternity pranks, but I personally found the chapters infused with more “Italianità;” i.e., Poghettino, The Signature Card, and Il Giardino more delightful. There is a lot to like in this book. Robert Calonico, director of Bands, UC Berkeley, wrote these words of praise for Roland Bianchi’s new book: “We all probably have stories and observations worth capturing for others. This author has done it.
Underneath the staid banker’s exterior there was a witty bon vivant! The brief chapters offer glimpses of a life well lived. Readers get stories varying from innocent childhood to nasty fraternity pranks, to the reflections of a life at sunset.
Many of the stories involve the author’s time at UC Berkeley from 1948 to 1952. Having attended every Cal home game for over 60 years, the author bleeds blue and gold. I really enjoyed reading Roland Bianchi’s memories of Cal... We love our fans perhaps even more than they love us... Roland (wrote) about the tuba chant and the baton toss bet, two traditions that still exist today...”
To order copies of RECALLECTIONS OF A BEAR, send a check in the amount of $24.57 each ($19.95 plus $1.85 sales tax and $2.77 shipping) to author Roland Bianchi, 520 Clark Drive, San Mateo, CA 94402 and be sure to include your name and address too.
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Census Bureau estimates indicate that there were more Italians living in New Orleans than in any other U.S. city during the period from 1850 to 1970 (and we thought that all the “paisanos” were in Brooklyn or the East Coast). After the Civil War (1861-1865) Italian migration to New Orlean changed dramatically.
The well-established Italian community in the “French Quarter” was involved in a wide variety of enterprises. When the Sicilian peasants from places like Ustica, Contessa Entillina and Palermo arrived, they found employment in those businesses, in the food industry and in the docks of New Orleans.
In contrast to other Italian enclaves in the United States, more than half of the Sicilian immigrants arrived prior to 1900. Most moved into the French Quarter, which soon became known as “Little Palermo.” After the Civil War Italians often replaced Blacks on the sugar plantations.
Labor agents in Sicily, clan chain-migrations and labor padroni in America felicitated the transplantation of the Sicilian workforce to Louisiana, The developmentof direct trade between New Orleans and Sicily in citrus fruit, figs and olives further enhanced the economic power of Italians in the “Crescent City.” The Sicilian migration was so successful it triggered racial and ethnic prejudices in newspaper articles, cartoons and, ultimately, violence against the Sicilians.
Unofficial sources cite about 30,000 Italians in New Orleans in the 1890s. By the end of the 1890s, more than 2,000 Italians were arriving in the city each year. Many of the immigrants were “birds of passage” who returned to Italy after a season or two of hard work. Many of these “reimpatriati” became involved as trading partners with Sicilian merchants in Louisiana.
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Camporelli Ernesto is the author of Indomitable (that cannot be subdued or overcome, as persons, pride, courage, etc.), a book I recently saw advertised in the pages of L’Italo-Americano. I ordered a copy ($16.00 ppd, sent to author Ernest Camporelli Jr. at Box 854, Sonoma, California 95479) and was quite pleased with Camporelli’s slim volume recounting eight decades of his sometimes turbulent life.
His warm memoir begins in San Francisco, where he was born in 1927 in a hospital (immigrant women usually gave birth at home assisted by a midwife) near his family home on 20th Street, between Connecticut and Arkansas Streets in the Potrero District, then a bustling blue collar neighborhood peopled mostly by Italian, Russian and Irish immigrants. Camporelli’s parents had immigrated to the United States from Oleggio (some 40 miles west of Milan) in the region of Piedmont.
Little Ernesto attended a kindergarten on Potrero Hill and enjoyed the childhood warmth of Italian family life and special attention given to little boys for six years. Then abruptly, his mother Anna Maria, a garment worker at Levi Strauss, died from peritonitis. His father Ernesto Sr. decided to return to Oleggio with his young son; his paternal Nonna Rosa took good care of them.
As a teenager, he harvested rice in the Po Valley’s Vercelli region and later worked at the Savoia Marchetti Aircraft factory at Sesto Calende near Lago Maggiore. By 1944 the Allies were bombing Northern Italy, the Nazis were taking all the corn, wheat, chicken, eggs and young men they could find in Oleggio, and Ernesto and other young men between 17 and 25 were doing their best to join the Italian Alps underground partisan movement. After the Allied liberation, he returnedto the United States and, still a youth, he served in the 69th Infantry U.S. military during the Korean War.
Humor of Italian village life and challenges stateside intersperse with memories of ‘salad days,’ building of a home and family and years of public service. Ernest retired as a Fire Department Captain, but his story does not end there. Nestled in California’s Sonoma hills is the Lacrimae Vitis (Tears of the Vine) family vineyards, the later-life marriage of Old World knowledge and New World opportunity.
Indomitable’s warmth will evoke identification in all who have experienced the tribulations and joys in the blending cultures. Order a copy now.
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HE that does good for good’s sake seeks neither paradise nor reward (Wlliam, Penn).
10631 Vinedale Street, Sun Valley, CA 91352 - Phone (818) 767-3413 - Fax: (818) 767-1410
