IN THE GARDEN OF PAPA SANTUZZU

Since we’re going to Italy, I am taking the occasion to write about one of my favorite “Italian Immigration Novels”.  This one– IN THE GARDEN OF PAPA SANTUZZU — is more specifically a Sicily to American novel. My daughter will be enjoying Sicily during her spring break. I’ll be drinking wine in Roma and Bari.

“Cu nesci arrinesci” (He who leaves succeeds)

Tony Ardizzone’s novel, In the Garcden of Papa Santuzzu, is an abundant collection of magical stories and magnificent language woven together to create a extraordinary loving novel about not only Sicilian Americans but also the heartbreak and hope of common people who leave a home to begin again somewhere else.  In Ardizzone’s case the people are poor Sicilian farm laborers who endure backbreaking work in the rocky fields of oppressive baruni.  The place they migrate to is La Merica.  The story begins as the character’s father, Papa Santuzzu and his wife Adriana, push their sons and daughters, one by one, to the land of opportunity and promise.

Rosa Dolci, Gaetanu, Luigi, Assunta, Salvatore, Rosaria and Livicedda Girgenti, Teresa Pantaluna, Ciccina Agneddina, and Carla and Gerlando Cavadduzzo all bribe their way out of the poverty of their island–one disguises herself as a man; another gains the help of enchanted eels

Cobra in the Bathroom: Scariest thing that could happen to you

excerpted from Jim Corbett’s story Life at Mokameh Ghat

“One night after my servant had gone into the kitchen I took a small hand-lamp off the dressing table, went into the bathroom, and there placed it on a low wall, six-inches high and nine inches wide, which ran half-way cross the room. Then I turned and bolted the door, which like most doors in India sagged on its hinges and would not remain shut unless bolted.  I had spent most of the day on the coal platform so did not spare the soap, and with a lather on my head and face that did credit to the manufacturers I opened my eyes to replace the soap on the bath mat, and to my horror, saw the head of a snake projecting up over the end of the bath and within a few inches of my toes.  My movements while soaping my head and splashing the water about had evidently annoyed the snake, a big cobra, for its hood was expanded and its

New York City: March 2009

THIS TRIP SUSAN AND I DIDN’T FIND THE TIME TO GALLERY HOP. WE SAT IN OUR FAVORITE RESTAURANT ( NOT ALLOWED TO TELL THE NAME) AND DRANK MARTINIS, WENT TO MY READINGS AT NYU CASA ITALIANA AND THE CORNELIA STREET CAFE.

NYC IS ALWAYS AN EXPERIENCE…

A dragon: firescortched. In the tunnel=tail. The sidewalks=the scale, cracked, broken, catching Betty’s heels. Betty who is 90 wearing her small bone-colored shoes with pussy cat heels and pilgrim buckles. Sky scrapers like hives rise from eating too much. Humans? Professionals are its fuel. Young. Want to be. They’re everywhere. Apparent. Out front. Inside the restaurants at night. Night. Peopling in their going-out outfits, crawling on the dragon’s skin. Filling cracks. Checking text messages that allow them to be late–or not show up–for anything or everything. “I can’t make it. Sorry.”  Fragments of glitter, precious stones, jewels like Jessi whose celebration begins at dinner. Late: 10 or after. A long work day, week. OK. Yellow dresses. Smooth brows.

Love Story Jeans? How About Snow on the Love Story House

 

Every now and then–even 40 year after the fact–groups of Japanese tourists stop on Oxford Street in Cambridge to take pictures of the famous steps, threshold, and doorway of The Love Story house

Now there’s a jean style–”Love Story” put out by Seven for All Mankind. 

 

famous love story house of harvard lovers

The 1970 movie, “Love Story” starred  an artsy Ali McGraw and jock Ryan O’Neill as a lovestruck Harvard couple from different sides of the tracks. The moive–and the book–were tearjerkers with a saccharin tagline: love means never having to say you’re sorry.  

Down the block, Oxford Spa and the laundromat next to the spa were also in the movie and to this day have signs in their windows announcing their participation.

New York’s West Village

It seems only a few years ago that I lived in Manhattan on W 10th Street. And, in what also “seems a snap of the finger,” the West Village changed: from mostly a gay-cruiser & bohemian population with quant streets dotted with specialty shops to a chic clique of wife-of-investor-pushing twins in expensive European prams and streets dotted with the same old

Woodstock Update: Tinkering on Tinker

Woodstock Legends

Every year, when we visit Steve in his upstate bunker, Matt and I make a pilgrimage to Woodstock. It’s a short drive.  Sometimes we take the bridge across the surreal Ashokan Reservoir and drive on winding roads that, for sure, were traveled by Bob, Van, and the guys from The Band.Matt cues up “Ol ‘Woodstock” on his iPod and presses ‘play’ when we cross the town line. I suspect we are one of many of thousands of couples who do the same. It’s our history.

I missed the real thing: the big, mucky, free-loving concert of 1969–maybe I was too young, or my parents too strict. Matt had been in San Francisco during that time, for the Summer of Love, so he missed it, too. I think Steve made it to the concert, as did many friends, who participated with reckless abandon, stripping off their clothes and smoking reefer

Amelia Earhart, Hillary Swank & Wild Dreams (10/23/08)

The Movie

THE MOVIE “AMELIA” COMES OUT 2009
Hilary Swank plays the title character, the legendary American pilot Amelia Earhart, who disappeared while flying over the Pacific Ocean in 1937 in an attempt to make a flight around the world. Ewan McGregor plays author Gore Vidal’s father, the great love of Amelia’s life. Richard Gere plays Amelia’s husband, publisher George Putnam. Virginia Madsen plays the ex-wife of Putnam, a Crayola Crayon heiress.

The Medford Public Library has a plaque dedicated to aviator Amelia Earhart. Carol Albright, editor of Italian Americana, and I are giving a reading this evening in the Medford Public Library. We’re reading from WILD DREAMS: THE BEST OF ITALIAN AMERICANA a compilation of the best of the best from the past 20 years of the journal. It just came out. Fordham University Press “Great American Literature” series.

Last year, while at the Medford Public Library for a lecture, I noticed a big plaque on the wall dedicated to Amelia Earhart and a big black and white photo of Earhart, with her flying googles draped around her neck. ( (WANT TO KNOW ABOUT HER SINUS PROBLEMS? GO TO YOU TUBE    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gl4tgxGGxQ&feature=channel_page)

    

the Book