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Dear Readers,
July jottings with an Italian Connection: Army General Peter Chiarelli said, "I dropped the d word. That word is a dirty word." 
The general explaining why the military prefers to use the term post traumatic stress rather than post traumatic stress disorder, arguing that disorder unnecessarily stigmatizes soldiers' natural response to the emotional and violent experience of battle.
Unlike a rose, a disorder by any other name would not smell as sweet nor extinguish the emotional anguish.

Bocce, played initially in the Italian Alps over 2,000 years ago, consisted of the underhand tossing of stones.  It was then exported to Germany in the form of Bowling at pins, circa fourth century A.D. and was a precursor to Bowling.

China's Communist revolution in 1949 sent an influx of Cantonese speakers into New York's "Little Italy", where they gradually became the dominant group in Transfiguration Parish, the oldest Catholic church building in New York City built in 1801, which served mainly Italian immigrants.  Although many of the priests at the church were Italian, as Mary Knoll Brothers (and Sisters at the school adjacent to the Mott Street Church), many spoke fluent Cantonese as they had worked in China.

E.S.L., the English as a Second Language category is where many of our parents and grandparents found themselves when they first came to America. As I recall, many of them still did not speaka the English so good forty years later.  I mention this as a gentle reminder, because many of our churches now have priests and seminarians for whom English is a second language. So have a little "compassione".

Geraldine Ferraro, left us earlier this year (March 26, 2011) at age 75. I met her several times when she was in California after she accepted the nomination for vice president at the 1984 Democratic National Convention in San Francisco as Walter Mondale's presidential nominee's running mate. Geraldine Ferraro's acceptance speech, a moment in history as the first woman on a major party ticket, was the highlight of the 1984 Democratic Convention.  She charmed audiences and initially polls showed the Democratic ticket gaining ground on President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H.W. Bush.

Geraldine Ferraro, a three-term Congresswoman from Queens and the first woman vice presidential candidate on a major ticket graciously accepted the decision of the voters, however, she was disappointed that major voices in our National Italian-American community remained silent when ethnic slanders surfaced.  In her book Changing History (1994), Women, Power, and Politics, Geraldine Ferraro recalled the bruising, often repeated but undocumented reports that she had family ties to organized crime.
Ferraro says she did not worry much about the charges when they surfaced in her 1984 vice-presidential campaign for two reasons:  She knew they weren't true and she knew that leaders of the Italian American community had a history of standing up against slander.  She was half right.
"But I was wrong about the second part.  In fact, for those four months, most of our community rolled over and played dead.  When the New York Post published story after story suggesting that the Zaccaro family was connected with organized crime, with no data to support the claim, our community was silent...When the Wall Street Journal, in one of the most irresponsible articles of the campaign, tried to link my father-in-law to the mob, never did our community rise up and say Enough!".

Why did so few stand up for her, she wonders.  Because she was a woman?  Her politics? If these were the reasons, why didn't anyone say so?  Ferraro notes that at the time a few journalists corroborated her suspicion that gender had a lot to do with it.
They reported that whenever major American publications mentioned an Italian-surnamed man in the same story with the words "organized crime", they evoked an immediate reaction from Italian American community leaders.  Not so with Ferraro.

In so many words, she charged those who were silent with collaboration against the many hardworking, decent Italian American families who suffer the tired ethnic jokes and whispered suspicions.
She was clearly angry and hurt, but gutsy and resolute, as she explained why she could never let such slurs go unchallenged.
"About eighty years ago, my grandfather was a street cleaner for New York City.  He had finished sweeping the street and a woman came up and threw garbage where he had just swept.  He only spoke Italian, so he yelled at her in that language. She screamed at him, "I'll get you fired, Wop". And so she did and he is one of the reasons why I will continue to speak up against bigotry, for dignity...for us all...
In 1996, NOIA (National Organization of Italian American Women) organized Concerns for Women in the 21st Century, a conference and tour with stops in Rome and Palermo for "A Dialogue for Italian and American Women".
My daughter Caterina and I flew over and since Geraldine Ferraro and Matilda Cuomo were keynote speakers, following the all day conference, an evening reception at Villa Taverna, home of the U.S. Ambassador to Italy, was held for all us attendees.  During the week it became clear that Ferraro's time spent teaching in the classroom, prosecuting for the Queens District Attorney's office and caring for her widowed, ailing, elderly mother had given her insights that shaped her votes and legislation as a U.S. Representative.  May she rest in peace and not meet any of those "Silent Signors" in heaven.

Jefferson, our third U.S. president (1801-1809), was an Italophile.  Thomas Jefferson's home, Monticello, reflected his love of Italian architecture, but it was Jefferson's love of Italian food and wine that he brought back to America and shared with his contemporaries.     
Jefferson traveled extensively through northern Italy and brought back the finest Italian wines and introduced the new nation to some staples of Italian cuisine. 
In 1768, at the age of 25, Jefferson began working on the project of designing and building a house for himself. 

The name Monticello, meaning "little mountain" in Italian, is certainly apt, for the magnificent home sitting atop a small mountain and overlooking picturesque Albemarle County, Virginia. Jefferson borrowed many stylistic techniques for his home from Italian architect Andrea Palladio.  It is clear that many of Palladio's country homes in northeastern Italy's Veneto region served as a source of inspiration for Jefferson's own hilltop estate.
Thomas Jefferson's interest in Italian culture did not limit itself to architecture.  Jefferson sought to bring all that was good to the new Republic. This included fine Italian wine. 
To ensure that there would always be fine wine on his nation's tables, Jefferson sought to grow the classic European species, Vitis vinifera, on American soil.  This and other wine growing experiments were performed on his 5,000-acre plantation at Monticello. 
For this cause, he solicited the aid of a  Tuscan viticulturist named Philip Mazzei.
Mazzei, born at Poggio a Caiano, near Florence, would become Jefferson's closest tie to Italy as well as a dear friend.

When Mr. Mazzei stopped in at Monticello, the Italophile within immediately offered him, 2,000 acres of land on which to carry out his planting experiments.  Mazzei accepted the generous gift and quickly set to work building his house which he would call Colle.
The planting experiments at Monticello and Colle were all but abandoned during the Revolution.  Both Jefferson and Mazzei turned their enormous energies toward helping the colonies fight their way from beneath the yoke of England.