Dear Readers,

January jottings with an Italian Connection continues:
Italian American Teachers never lose their class. Refreshing Resolutions recalls that many first and second graders don’t even know what New Year’s resolutions are and because of San Francisco’s polyglot society, New Year’s resolutions have a cross cultural flair: New Year is a Chinese Festival and a dragon flies overhead instead of a reindeer.

On Christmas Santa comes, but New Year’s day also celebrates “Hanuka”.

A six year old after confirming that New Year’s day comes after Christmas said he would do good stuff, like help clean all the house and put away knives and scissors. Mixing in the customs of Chinese New Year, a festival which comes later in the year, a seven-year old explained that New Years is a time when people give out money in red envelopes.

Young resolutions included, “Help my mom to make a cake, help around the house and in the restaurant, get an A on my spelling test every Friday, help my brother talk English and help my brother read, play with my baby sister, she is three, make more friends. I got Sami and Henry.

Oh, I forgot Richard and Arthur.”
A number of youngsters resolved not to be benched. Benching is when you have to sit on the bench until the bell rings because you did something bad.

A six year old said she knows what it’s all about because she is been benched three times during her school career; one time for jumping on a play structure, the second time, she said, she still doesn’t know why she got in trouble, and the third time was when she unintentionally walked off with a classmate’s hat.

The “Italian Connection” hopes 2007 will be a healthy and happy one for all, especially the “bambini”.

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January has been a busy month for delivery by stork throughout the years. “Buon Compleanno” to all my Readers with a birthday in “Gennaio”.

Many “stars” were born in January, including Mario Lanza, born January 31, 1921 and Umberto Nobile, born January 21, 1885, who patented and then piloted the first dirigible over the North Pole. However, none shines so brightly as the Recognition Resistant Signor A.J.R. who will be blowing out 75 candles on his birthday cake this year.

A longtime member of UNICO and retired engineer he now enjoys performing “magic” for his nieces and nephews and kids in the neighborhood when a little cheer is needed.

Tis said that the richness of life lies in the memories we have forgotten so here is a nostalgic look back in time seventy-five years ago.

In January 1932 Herbert Hoover was president of the United States and Charles Curtis his vice president. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of the State of New York, opened the Winter Olympic Games at Lake Placid, New York, then in November was elected the 32nd president of the United States, defeating Herbert Hoover. U.S. Route 66 opened, as did Radio City Music Hall in New York City, the Walt Disney Art School was created and the tenth Modern Olympic Games opened in Los Angeles.

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If it’s January, it must be time to renew my subscription to the “Lanza Legend”. A newsletter, (quarterly) which contains photographs, honest information and collected memorabilia from personal family archives; co-edited by Damon Lanza (Mario’s only living son) and Bob Dolfi longtime friend of Damon and the late great tenors parents Tony and Maria.

Mario took the masculine form of his mother’s maiden name Maria Lanza when his career zoomed, but was born Alfredo Arnold Cocozza in Philadelphia, January 31, 1921, (the year the legendary Enrico Caruso died).

Mario Lanza left us in 1959, at the young age of 38, but his memory and music continue to live on in our hearts, recordings and videos of his films i.e. The Great Caruso (1951), Serenade (1956), The Toast of New Orleans (1950), The Seven Hills of Rome (1957) his first foreign film.

Mario was born in Philadelphia, but Mario’s father Antonio C. Cocozza, came to America at the age of 12, from Filignano, Italy. He served in the U.S. Army in World War I and received a medical discharge after being wounded in Argonne forest. He married Maria Lanza (ten years his junior) whose father Salvatore Lanza, had come to Philadelphia from Tocco da Casdauria, in Abruzzo region of Italy, to open a family grocery store, imported food business.

If you want to subscribe to the “Lanza Legend Newsletter”, send $20.00 ($25.00 foreign) to Lanza Legend, P.O. Box 6742, San Pedro, CA 90732. Also available is the book “Be My Love – A Celebration of Mario Lanza”

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Attenzione everybody, especially current officers and Board Members of Italian American organizations. It is time for all of us to make the “3C” New Year Resolution.

Ken Borelli, author of “The Calabrese Kitchen” and San Jose, CA, I.A.H.F. tri-decade cultural catalyst has some timely thoughts on “Networking Amongst Italian American Organizations” that I want to share with you: Networking and the “3C’s”: Coordination, Cooperation, and Collaboration cannot be overlooked in our fast changing world. For Italian American organizations this is especially so, given many of the new demographic realities of our changing and assimilated Italian American communities.

Ethnic organizations that evolved in response to the dynamics of the “great migration” (1880’s – 1924), also laid the foundation for many of the organizations that are in existence today.

Little in these organizational structures modeled much grass root networking and inter organizational support. In many ways the structures themselves tended to resemble the fragmented Italy of the renaissance rather than today’s modern republic.

Many groups are specifically focused and revolve around an Italian region, locale, or given set of traditional events and purposes. An organization’s traditional focus does not have to lose out to changing times, but does require mutual organizational support, coordination, cooperation and collaboration. The goal of these efforts would be to provide services, events and projects designed to engage the growing assimilated Italian American community.

Embracing the “3C’s” our I.A.H.F. cultural committee’s outreach projects with other organizations and support of Opera San Jose, the Marin Italian Film Festival, Il Museo Italo Americano, the American Italian Historical Association and now the Italian Educational Institute, has revitalized our organization.

For many this task may provide a challenging vision; however, networking, mutual support, sharing resources, and coordinated community functions will not only enhance specific goals, but improve upon the original purpose and vision of many of these groups.

“Networking” amongst Italian American groups would bring us full circle regarding one of the traditional purposes of these organizations: mutual beneficenza not just for individuals, but for the cultural life of organizations that support our diverse community, for they too need to be nurtured.

 

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