Columns

The wild rollercoaster ride that was the 2021 real estate market packed a thrill a minute for buyers and sellers alike, and it isn’t quite over yet. All parties need to remain seated and buckled in at all times! This year might not have as many twists and turns. but it’s definitely maintaining its own momentum. While sellers still remain at an advantage in 2022, according to experts the market is beginning to ease up for first-time buyers. We have identified eight trends that we believe will continue to shape the market, and paying attention to them will help you …

Potere means “to can” or “to be able to,” and is classified as a modal, or helping verb. This means that potere provides information about the ability of the speaker to “be able to” complete the  main action described in a sentence. When used in this way, potere is conjugated to reflect the speaker and the action verb follows directly after in its infinitive form — that is, the action verb is not conjugated! (Remember that Italian verbs are categorized into three infinitive forms by the following endings: -are, -ere, and -ire, and that English infinitive verbs are preceded by …

Once again, we’ve seen a summer come and go and, as usual, we get to look back on what we DIDN’T manage to get done, or attend, or see, or listen to. But let’s look at the bright side and focus on what we actually DID accomplish! Summer in Pullman began its countdown to the always festive Labor Day Weekend with the annual Pullman Family Picnic. It was the first blazing hot Saturday in August, so it wasn’t as well attended as we had hoped. However, that didn’t stop attendees from having a great time. The smaller crowd actually allowed …

Celebrating its 79th year, the Venice Film Festival ran from Aug. 31 to Sept. 10, 2022. To mark the occasion, let’s take a look at a heartfelt documentary that premiered at the festival in 2016. “Franca: Chaos and Creation” is the story of Vogue Italy’s former editor-in-chief, Franca Sozzani, who passed away from cancer just a few months after the film’s premiere. Directed by her son, Francesco Carrozzini, the film takes us through Sozzani’s life as a child to her reign at the magazine, exploring her talent for finding innovative photographers to whom she completely handed her trust in creating …

Screenwriter and director Cesare Zavattini was truly ahead of his time when he organized the 1953 film compilation “L’amore in città” (Love in the City), a collection of seven short film essays directed by Zavattini, Dino Risi, Michelangelo Antonioni, Carlo Lizzani, Francesco Maselli, Federico Fellini and Alberto Lattuada. The New York Times did a beautiful article on the collection in 2014 referring to Zavattini as “a pioneer of documentary fiction (sometimes called ‘hybrid cinema’), in which non-actors essentially play themselves, dramatizing their particular situations.” With the exception of Fellini’s short, in which he narrates something that happened to him but …

In the past year or so, I’ve been telling people that I’ve been writing Petals From Roseland for 12 years. Now that September has rolled around, marking the first month I took over from Mario Avignone, I stopped to do the math and realized that I’ve actually been writing the column for 14 years! It was September of 2008 when I was first introduced as the author of Petals from Roseland. I personally paid my thanks to Mario by visiting him in the Manteno Veterans’ home a few times. I also attended the premiere presentation at Casa Italia, along with …

Combining the Imperfetto with the Passato Prossimo   Choosing an Italian Past Tense Let’s start our blog about how to combine the imperfetto with the passato prossimo by reviewing some general rules of Italian grammar. We learned in “Picking an Italian Past Tense” that the circumstances surrounding the event will determine which Italian past tense to use. Luckily, imbedded in many Italian sentences about past events are certain words and phrases that will  indicate whether the imperfetto or the passato prossimo is needed.  The intent of the speaker will be signaled by these phrases, which will then trigger use of the correct …

A delegation from the Conference of Presidents of Major Italian American Organizations (COPOMIAO) recently concluded a historic trip to Rome, Italy. It was extremely important to embark on this initiative because our ties to our homeland have become weaker with each passing generation. It was time to reconnect with our roots. We were fortunate enough to meet with important leaders of both the Italian government and the Vatican. The primary goals of our delegation were twofold — first, to establish strong cultural and economic bonds between the Italian-American community and the Italian government, and second, to acknowledge the significant role …

When the pandemic first hit, there was a surge of home buying driven by a desire for bigger properties. Research today reveals that homebuyers are now looking for quality over quantity. With functionality and sustainability now driving decisions, amateur and professional interior designers are transforming underused spaces before our very eyes. Here are some examples of how dead space in your home can be put to better use. As more and more people work from home, they’re discovering that office spaces don’t need to be bedroom sized. Ever hear of a “cloffice?” Yep, that’s right, closets are being converted into …

Imperfetto or Passato Prossimo? Previous blogs in this series have discussed the basics of how to conjugate and use the imperfetto  and the passato prossimo to speak about the recent past.* As we’ve mentioned before, the conjugation of these verb forms is fairly straightforward; the tricky part is knowing which past tense to choose to describe a particular event.    To make matters more complex, a compound sentence can be created using only the imperfetto, only the passato prossimo, or a combination of both. And in many situations, the same event can be described in Italian using either the imperfetto …