Highlights

When I chat with a new friend or someone I just met and mention my fig trees, they almost immediately shake their heads and ask, “Did you just say fig trees?” Living in the Midwest as I do, it comes as a surprise to most people that we raise figs. And believe me, keeping these beauties alive in this region is truly a labor of love. I have vivid memories of the 22 fig trees my father kept when I was a kid growing up in Chicago. We all know the size of a city lot, but my parents owned …

With a notable diplomatic pedigree and multinational roots, Thomas Botzios brings a global perspective to his role as the Midwest’s new Italian consul general. If anyone was born to be a diplomat, it’s Thomas Botzios. The Midwest’s new Italian consul general pursued the same career path as his father and uncle, Elias and Christos Botzios, both of whom served in the Greek diplomatic corps, and was raised to view the profession as a noble one. “My father always told me that being a consul is not only a matter of diplomacy, it’s a matter of service, to be of help …

From the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, as case numbers multiplied with each passing week, it was apparent there would be only one solution to this global health crisis. The answer fell in the domain of what I believe is the single greatest advancement in modern medicine — vaccination. Over this last year, we all witnessed what our world looked like when a vaccine didn’t exist for this highly contagious illness. Worldwide, there have been nearly 200 million cases of COVID with nearly 4 million lives lost, more than 600,000 of these in the U.S. alone. I received my first …

The tide is turning in New York and across the country as Italian Americans mobilize to counter a jaded political formula. The strategy was straightforward: To score political points, all one needed to do was remove a Columbus statue, look the other way when one was illegally toppled or simply rename Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day. The formula worked for years, the blowback was containable and many media outlets, sympathetic to the anti-Columbus movement, didn’t kick up much of a fuss. But quite a bit has changed over the past 12 months, as Italian-American organizations have continued to mobilize …

Columbus’ voyages challenge our concept of history. On the one hand, we have the heroic notion of Columbus sailing the ocean blue to discover a new world. On the other, we have the revisionist interpretation of Columbus as a perpetrator of genocide. In between is a full range of facts, questions and interpretations that make history the fascinating discipline it is. First and foremost, Christopher Columbus was a man of his times. And like all of us, he was an imperfect mortal. He embodied the spirit of enterprise then emerging in Europe, but his pursuit of material gain had a …

In 1819, English poet John Keats wrote a series of odes celebrating such things as a nightingale, the goddess Psyche, autumn and most famously a Grecian urn. Two years later, he died at the age of 25 in the midst of a pandemic that caused a quarter of the deaths across Europe in the 19th century. Here we are today — 100 years after the Spanish flu ripped through the world killing 50 million people — in the middle of our own pandemic: COVID-19. I first became familiar with odes in 1994 while watching the Italian film “Il postino” (The …

Saturday, Feb. 20, 2021, will be remembered as one of the most historic dates in Italian-American history. It’s the day that representatives of 354 Italian-American organizations from across our country joined together to participate in the first-ever National Italian American Summit Meeting. From New York to California to Hawaii, from Michigan to Louisiana, and from nearly every state in between, Italian-American leaders did something they had never done before: They joined hands in a show of national unity. The idea for the summit meeting stemmed from a discussion I had with Frank Maselli, president of the American Italian Museum in …

Crediting the JCCIA with setting him on his life’s path, Ron Onesti is looking to return the favor as the organization’s incoming president. At awards ceremonies, it’s not uncommon for recipients to well up as they recall those who helped them earn their place at the podium. Installations of officers tend to be more stoic affairs, but there Ron Onesti was, fighting back tears as he accepted the presidency of the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans at a Jan. 24 meeting at Club Arcada in St. Charles. “At that moment, it came full circle to me just how much …

The first Italian American to be ordained a bishop in Chicago, Fr. Bob Lombardo has served the poorest of the poor and resurrected a church close to the heart of our community. In the hush of Holy Name Cathedral, with hundreds of Catholics in attendance, the former Fr. Bob Lombardo knelt before Cardinal Blase Cupich in a Nov. 13 ceremony to receive an anointing with oil, a ring, a miter and a staff. That day, amid many joyous congratulations, Lombardo became the first Italian American, and the first Franciscan, to be ordained a bishop in the Archdiocese of Chicago. Bishop …

Jan. 14, 2021, was a landmark day for the Chicago-area Italian-American community. That’s when we took a quantum leap forward in our efforts to undo the false narrative that threatens to permanently sweep Christopher Columbus from the local landscape. We’ve had great turnouts at press conferences, strategy sessions and rallies, but this was the first time we “entered the lion’s den,” and we comported ourselves admirably. The occasion was a Zoom meeting sponsored by the city of Chicago to field input regarding the future of the city’s many statues, Columbus’ among them. With key decision makers from the city slated …