Columns

The Museum of Modern Art in New York hosted a retrospective spanning the nearly 60-year career of composer Ennio Morricone. The film series took place in December and January and featured more than 35 films with 17 new digital restorations plus 35mm archival prints. “This Ennio Morricone retrospective is the largest MoMA has ever devoted to a movie composer,” said Joshua Siegel, curator of the Department of Film at MoMA. Among the films screened were classics like Giuseppe Tornatore’s “Cinema Paradiso,” Sergio Leone’s “A Fistful of Dollars,” and “Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight.” One archival treasure in the lineup was …

My parents, Cataldo and Santa DeAngelis, emigrated from the small town of Castro dei Volsci in Central Italy. My father came in 1953 with two suitcases: one carrying a few belongings and the other his prized possession, a Scandalli accordion. My mother followed in 1954 with a suitcase in one hand and my 7-year-old brother in the other. They nestled first in Detroit. Possessing little more than the dream of starting a better life in America, they made do with hand-me-down furniture and appliances — hence their Universal brand stove. This heavy-duty white porcelain beauty was the center of our …

If you have dual citizenship, do you have access to the Italian health care system while you’re in the country, even if you don’t live there? No, you don’t. As a dual citizen of Italy and America, you can apply for your Tessera Sanitaria, which is the Italian National Healthcare Card. This card grants you access to healthcare services in Italy and the EU at greatly reduced or no cost, but only if you choose to live in Italy as a permanent citizen. It’s important to note that, for dual citizen living permanently in Italy to use Italian healthcare benefits …

Many Fra Noi readers were born in Italy, or their parents were. They have the easy task of knowing what town the family came from. And then there are the rest of us. When I was much younger, my Polish grandmother told me that her family came from Krakow and my Italian grand-aunt told me that her family came from Bari. Both were close, but no Toscano cigar! Neither one realized that you need to know the actual small town your family came from to adequately conduct genealogical research. The nearby big city is not good enough. Italy managed its …

Another year has gone by and we’ve got a lot to reflect on. One reason we reflect is to honor those who have passed and to create a path for the new year. We also want to consider all the plans we made last year and couldn’t bring to fruition for one reason or another. Now is the time to prioritize those plans and add to them to give us important things to attend to throughout 2024. Of course, that’s easier said than done! It seems the older I get, the more I feel like my get up and go, …

Francesco Patierno’s 2016 documentary “Naples ’44” was adapted from the book of the same name by Norman Lewis, a British intelligence officer stationed there during World War II. It is narrated by British film and TV star Benedict Cumberbatch. The documentary is a strong dose of reality that intermixes archival footage, old cinema clips, dramatizations and the recollections of an officer who witnessed unfathomable atrocities. Patierno’s film is informative, riveting, and at times shocking. “The inspiration to make this film came from my father,” Patierno said in a 2018 interview with Fra Noi. “One day, he told me about how …

The Italian verb dare is most often used with the meaning “to give,”  or literally, “to hand over” something to someone else. When the object “handed over” is a gift, dare may be used to describe this action or the more specific verbs of gift-giving may come into play, such as regalare (to give a gift) and  donare (to donate). To truly sound like a native Italian, learn the quintessential Italian interjection, “Dai!” from the second person conjugation of dare. The Italian verb dare is also an integral part of an important Italian expression, “dare del tu,” which allows  one to …

Before the internet, people at a local bar would argue about who hit more home runs, Willie Mays or Willie McCovey. Since there was no place to look up the answer, the winner would be the guy who had the hardest punch! Once we had internet access on smart phones, we go to Wikipedia and settle the factual debate without anyone getting a bloody nose. Genealogy methods are not as clear cut as looking up sports statistics, but FamilySearch.org has an entire section of the web site dedicated to looking up how to research a particular locality, small or large. …

Christmas is a time for traditions that we’ve held close to our hearts since we were children. Often our celebrations include practices our parents and grandparents passed on to us. Gone are the days of tall, wide evergreens buried in tinsel. Of course, that era was followed by aluminum trees with rotating color wheels. Some of the more daring families would set the wheel to the blue filter and have the only blue tree in their neighborhood. That’s not to say that some folks didn’t go for the green or red filter instead! Many of us inherited the ornaments and …

Imagine you just finished huffing your way up to our floor, the sixth and topmost of our South Bronx tenement, 95 steps above the torrid sidewalk of East 148 Street, late on a summer afternoon of 1958. In the first apartment on the landing, jolly old Maria Torlona the Egg Lady, whose door is open, might well try to sell you a carton of her wares — or even a case — fairly cheap. Next door to Maria and her cache of “farm-fresh” eggs is the residence of blue-haired Mrs. Pugliese and her tall feisty brunette daughter, Gloria. That young …