An Italian-American Valentine

Photo: "Montauk Sunset" by Everett Potter

Today is Valentine's Day and what better way to celebrate the holiday by giving you some Italian-American poetry and introducing you to some fantastic national Italian-American associations? 

George Guida is the former president of the Italian American StudiesAssociation (IASA) and the founding treasurer of the Italian American Writers'Association (IAWA). He is a professor of English at the New York City College of Technology and poetry editor of 2 Bridges Review. 

He is the author of recently published Pugilistic (WordTech Editions) and The Sleeping Gulf  (Bordighera Press). Both are collections of poems. He is also the author of Spectacles of Themselves: Essays in Italian American Popular Culture and Literature (Bordighera Press). His previous books are two collections of poems, Low Italian and New York and Other Lovers. He is also the author of Letters from Suburbia: A Novel and The Pope Stories and Other Tales of Troubled Times. 

As SIAMO focuses on preserving Italian American heritage in all ways possible, we wanted to make sure we celebrate Italian American writers as much as we can. Our poets and authors deserve to be heralded as they are a voice for past, present and future generations.

My Montauk Valentine

 by: George Guida

Don’t you wonder sometimes

what to do on Valentine’s Day?

I do, I wonder, I wish I knew

how to honor your love and this saint,

whoever he was, at one time.

 I’m glad you’re not a saint. Then

I would be in love with a saint,

whose cares would not be of this world,

whose queendom and body and piece

of whose soul would not belong to me,

or worse, whose body I would have

to flay or burn or crucify,

to show what true love is.

 I know there have been two

Valentine’s Day massacres, but

I don’t want to massacre you,

unless you break my heart, so

don’t do that and I won’t have to

tie you to a stake planted in my brain

or immolate your image in my fireplace

(though that might be an original way

for a saint to transcend these little

holidays that can be so frustrating

in terms of finding good gifts or

so busy that all the Martini glass-

shaped tubs in the world are booked

six months in advance of good loving).

 But wait, I have an idea: I hear

the seals are in, lying on the rocks

at Montauk, basking in the winter sun.

I know I’m not as cute as a seal, but

you are, so maybe they’ll bark for us

or wave a flipper and say a prayer

to whatever saint seals celebrate

on our Valentine’s Day.

The Length of Your Arms

                              by: George Guida                                 

I wish for arms as long as yours, as years

to touch your shoulder easy as a first

kiss, when I know each one is. Each kiss lives

its fleeting life as pair of livid pillows

on which to rest our burdened, pretty heads,

 with which to smother dread. I wish I’d thought

to say before today that death is dead

with you, but life with you is days without

prayer, paths to flight or hope for other ways.

when hours no longer stand in desperate pools,

 but evanesce like labial dew. You are

my skin, the sheath between the world and my

oblivion, the gift wrapping the world.

You are content to keep it next to yours,

as I am pleased by the length of your arms. 

That we love each other just imagine

by: George Guida 

that we love each other just imagine this

us here in this forest of tinkling glasses

and through the glass lighted trees

over there a cousin

whose life to me just three years back

was as much a mystery as God

and over here a friend who, I suspect,

hoped I’d meet someone—you—

to produce the smile before you now

a wedding photographer a florist a d. j.

more than a promise more than a gift

a second chance to say years from now

I led a happy life I met you

in a city far away over kebabs

and humus you were wearing a black suit

would you believe, you in white

in a black suit? and seeming so impossibly

beautiful and honest and wanting me

to study a philosopher you loved

and sneezing and wanting me to walk with you

for cold medicine and asking to keep in touch

 and just imagine you in this city

much sootier than you’d prefer

but you already have the black suit

and that you ride trains underground

every day you know how to get

to Wal-Mart in the suburbs you know

when it’s time to escape upstate

with the dog that growled at you at first

now showing his belly imagine you

know all these great restaurants,

some of which, after rent, we can afford

imagine you love me, someone

like you whose heart is as full of love

as the city is of steam and feet and neon

and I could say why didn’t I find you sooner

but then I wouldn’t have been properly aged

you would look fifteen years younger than me

instead of ten instead I’d be

twenty years less mature instead of just ten

so you understand how I can barely imagine

how lucky I am to be standing here

in this place I jogged by a million times

and wondered, who goes there,

when I was even poorer

than we are now with you

how lucky I am with all

of these people in formalwear and friendly

staff and you there looking like Minerva

or whatever goddess is the most beautiful

and wise and great on the dance floor

 where I can’t wait for you to take me

The "Carnevale" Has Come to Town

Besides canals and gondolas, chances are that when you think of Venice, you think of its annual Carnevale, a city-wide celebration of masks, costumes and colors that takes place in the days preceding the start of Lent. This year's Carnevale began on January 23 and will end on February 9.
The festival is known throughout the world for its elaborate masks that correspond to different occupations. For example,  in the Commedia dell'arte, Colombina was a maid. Legend has it that the actress who portrayed Colombina did not wish to cover her entire face; therefore, the "Colombina" is a half mask that only covers the wearer's eyes, nose and upper cheeks.
Harlequin or "Arlecchino" is another character in the Commedia dell'arte. He is portrayed as devoid of reason and full of emotion and is usually either a peasant, servant or a slave. His originally wooden and later leather half-mask painted black depicts him as having a short, blunt, ape-like nose, a set of wide, round, arching eyebrows, a rounded beard, and always a "bump" upon his forehead meant to signify a devil's horn. 

According to The Telegraph, the Venetian propensity for hiding behind masks was legendary due to a rigid caste system that allowed opportunities to participate in activities that would make anonymity desirable. In the 13th Century, laws were passed banning masks while gambling and later laws made it illegal to wear masks during religious festivals. The Carnevale tradition rose because of these laws as it was permitted to wear masks in the period between December 26 and Shrove Tuesday.
The French took command of Venice in 1797 and banned the festivities. Carnevale was revived in 1979 as a way to increase tourism to Venice during the winter months. The festival now lasts for two weeks in the run-up to Lent.
A commonly-used saying during Carnevale is "È Carnevale... ogni scherzo vale!" This translates to "It is Carnevale, every joke is allowed." Or, as they say in New Orleans for their Mardi Gras... "Let the good times roll!"

The Shining Stone of West Scranton

Scranton's St. Lucy's Church provides visitors with a lesson in Italian-American history.

Two soldiers lay dying. The Italian soldier beseeches Jesus Christ to take his soul to Heaven while the war rages on behind him. To his left, an American soldier prays the same prayer to the Blessed Mother.
Brothers in arms, now brothers in marble.Every day for more than 85 years, the sun rises and sets on the faces of these two men, etched in time on the front of St. Lucy’s Parish, the Mother Italian Church of the Diocese of Scranton, Pa.
“The history of this parish is really unique,” said Rev. Sam Ferretti, the pastor of St. Lucy’s Parish. “When it was built, this was still basically an immigrant parish with a lot of family members in Italy, and both Italy and the United States were allies in World War I. The parish was dramatically impacted by the war because they were getting death notices here and as well as for relatives in Italy.”
St. Lucy’s is believed to be the first Italian parish in the Diocese of Scranton; formally established in 1891 by Rev. Rosario Nasco, although it can trace its origins back to 1871. Scranton was a major hub of European immigration during the late 1800s and early 1900s because of the prominence of its coal mining industry. Ethnic groups would establish their own parishes and hold services in their native languages. Today, however, ethnic designations of parishes in the Diocese of Scranton refer to the church’s cultural heritage.
“There is no true ethnic parish anymore in this area because we don’t have the immigration anymore of the original ethnic groups and because of intermarriage. The numbers of Italians immigrating into this area is practically non-existent. Because St. Lucy’s started off as an Italian parish it is known as an Italian parish,” Fr. Ferretti said.
Although the shine of the marble exterior of St. Lucy’s is as bright as the lights of the city of Naples, from where most parishioners can trace their ancestry, the interior of the church also harkens back to the madre patria.
As Fr. Ferretti walks down the main aisle of St. Lucy’s, he pauses a moment to talk about the imposing stained glass windows on either side of the church. He points to the windows on the right, which depict various prophets of the Old Testament, except for one of the heroine Judith, who is hardly ever portrayed in stained glass, and says, “Look very carefully at their faces and hands.”
Fr. Ferretti explained that the windows came from Munich, Germany and were executed under the guidance of F.X. Zettler, a master artisan known for injecting humanity into his glass portraits. “You can actually see the lines on their faces and hands,” Fr. Ferretti said.
“But, when Mussolini came into power, this was an anti-fascist parish. On June 10, 1931, the local fascists bombed the opposite side of the church; blowing out the original windows. They were replaced after the war ended in 1947, but if you look carefully at the faces and hands of our patron saints, you can see that the quality is different,” Fr. Ferretti said. “After World War II, the top paid artists, who did the faces and hands, were gone. They are still Zettler windows but not the original quality.”
Other parts of St. Lucy’s Church have undergone a more pronounced metamorphosis since construction was completed in 1924.
     “Unfortunately in the mid 1950s, the mines collapsed underneath the bell tower and, due to bad advice, the church underwent many changes that it didn’t have to,” Fr. Ferretti said, adding that the pastor at the time was told that the church was too heavy and would collapse into a coal mine if most of the marble was not removed from the interior.
“There used to be a marble walk up pulpit that today would be valued between $300,000- $500,000. The bottom of this pulpit had three angels holding a rose garland and the top showed Christ entering Jerusalem with a crowd all around him,” Fr. Ferretti added. “But now the base is outside at St. Ann’s [The Basilica of the National Shrine of St. Ann, also located in Scranton] and the pieces of the pulpit are in someone’s yard, eaten away by decades of acid rain. We offered to buy the pieces but the owners wouldn’t sell.”
Other interior changes included the removal of a marble depiction of Christ’s crucifixion above the main altar and the removal of the church’s original marble flooring.
“This church cost millions in 1927; the cost of it today would be well over ten million dollars,” Fr. Ferretti said. “You can tell the subtle differences in the marble angels around the altar because they are hand-carved. You don’t get that quality anymore.”
One original artifact in St. Lucy’s remained a mystery until Fr. Ferretti became pastor several years ago. To the left of the main entrance was an unmarked statue that he has since identified.
“It took me eight months of searching through books of pictures of saints before I finally identified this statue as Sant’Agnello, one of the co-patrons of Naples,” Fr. Ferretti said. “We don’t know which group brought this statue here but you could tell it is the original because it is burlap with a plaster coating so it would be easier to carry in the processions instead of the solid heavy plaster ones we make.”
 “There are glimpses of our past all over this church, not just our Italian heritage, but our local heritage as well, Fr. Ferretti said.
While exiting St. Lucy’s Church, visitors can see a Latin inscription around the choir loft that translates to, “Awesome is this shrine! It is nothing else but the abode of God and the gateway to Heaven!”
As the sun shines off of the church’s white marble façade, it becomes quite clear that, perhaps, St. Lucy’s church is one of Scranton’s most treasured gateways to Heaven.

La Befana Arriva di Notte (The Befana Comes at Night)

She comes around once a year, after Santa Claus and along with the Three Wise Men. To Italian and Italian-American children, her arrival means the end of the Christmas holiday season; she is "La Befana."
Also known as the "Christmas Witch," the Befana is an old woman who delivers gifts to children throughout Italy on the eve of the Epiphany, January 5. In the United States, the feast of the Epiphany is fluid-- it was celebrated this past weekend. In Italy, on the other hand, the feast is always celebrated on January 6.
According to folklore, the Befana was approached by the Three Wise Men before Jesus's birth, asking her for directions to the manger. Not knowing how to direct them to where Jesus was, she provided them with shelter for the night. The Wise Men invited her to come with them on their journey the next day, but she said she was too busy with housework. She later changed her mind and followed them. To this day, she is still looking for the baby and travels house to house looking for him.
While traveling, the Befana brings Italian children gifts of candy and presents, placed in their stockings, if they are well-behaved. Or, like Santa, she'll give them a lump of coal or garlic if they are bad. In some of the poorer parts of Italy, including rural Sicily, the Befana will put a stick in a stocking instead of a piece of coal. Legend also dictates that the Befana sweeps the floor before she leaves, a sign of sweeping away the previous year's problems.
Instead of leaving out milk and cookies, Italian families leave the Befana a small glass of wine and a plate with some food, usually regional or local specialties.
Like a Halloween-style witch, the Befana will arrive riding a broomstick through the air but, unlike the wicked witches of October, she is kindly and usually portrayed as smiling. 
A well-known poem by Giovanni Pascoli about the Befana reads as follows...

Viene, viene la Befana
Vien dai monti a notte fonda
Come è stanca! la circonda
Neve e gelo e tramontana!
Viene, viene la Befana

The English translation is:

Here comes, here comes the Befana
She comes from the mountains in the deep of the night
Look how tired she is! All wrapped up
In snow and frost and the north wind!
Here comes, here comes the Befana!

Viva la Befana e Buona Epifania, everyone! 

Guardia per Sempre

People often ask me how I got involved with preserving Italian-American history and why on earth I would even want to tackle having my own organization. The response is simple: I'm not doing it for myself.

When I was a little girl, my mother would take me to a restaurant in Clarks Summit called Dino and Francesco's. Every time we'd go, the placemat on the table would have a map of Italy (they still do!) and my mother would promptly-- and proudly-- tell me that her father was from there. One day, she even took a clean placemat  home and sat me at our dining room table, tracing the boot, telling me about my Nonno Joe and how he was never able to go home to Guardia dei Lombardi, where he was born in 1916.

Nonno Joe died in 1973, eight years before I was born, but his story has stayed with me throughout my life. Why was this place so important to him? Why did he want to go back?

As I got older, I began to research my family tree, learn Italian (even graduating from the University of Scranton as an Italian major in 2003) and do whatever I could to learn about my grandfather's homeland. 

When I published "The Italians of Northeastern Pennsylvania" in 2004, I never dreamed it would take me to Guardia, fulfilling my Nonno's dream of going home. I knew I had to do more.

I was involved with several local Italian-American organizations but never really felt that my love for heritage preservation had a "home." I needed to do more, it was in my blood, it was in my heart-- but with my background and expertise, I didn't want to have to keep having my work approved by anyone when I instinctively knew what I needed to do. Passion always makes the difference and I knew my work had that extra "oomph" that couldn't be found anywhere else. 

In December 2014, I was the chair of the "Celebrating Guardia dei Lombardi" exhibit at Lackawanna College in Scranton. This exhibit was... for lack of a better word... my baby. I gave it every ounce of myself that I could, culminating in the formal declaration of a Sister City relationship between Scranton and Guardia as well as the renaming of a city street to Guardia dei Lombardi Way and even a piazza renamed for Scranton in Guardia itself. The exhibit hosted photos of people from Guardia upon arrival in the USA and gave a glimpse of what their lives were like here. In my years of studying immigration history, it seemed as if stories trailed off upon arrival at Ellis Island as an "...and they lived happily ever after." I knew there was more to the immigration story and I hope I told it through "Celebrating Guardia dei Lombardi."

SIAMO wants to continue telling those stories, not just the story of those from Guardia, but also those from Gubbio, Avigliano, San Mango, Felitto, Calitri and any other town that ended up with a large population here in Northeastern Pennsylvania. I fully believe that there are still immigrant voices wanting to be heard.

I ask anyone who wants to volunteer with SIAMO to please contact me at info@siamonepa.com. If you have an idea for an exhibit or event, please share it. In the meantime, you are all invited to participate in our events and activities as they are scheduled.

Every immigrant to this county-- not just Italian-- has a story to be told. Like my Nonno Joe, so many of them never returned home. It is my hope that SIAMO, at least for the Italian community, can bring the stories back to life and, hopefully, inspire other ethnicities to do the same.

Set in Stone

Each gaze at the famed Mount Rushmore tells a story.
For George Washington, his straight-ahead focus depicts him as the Revolutionary War hero who had to keep his troops' concentration on beating the Redcoats.
For Thomas Jefferson, his eyes show someone envisioning an America spread from sea to shining sea following the Louisiana Purchase.
For Theodore Roosevelt, his downward gaze brings his famous "Speak softly but carry a big stick" quote to life as he is all at once pensive yet steadfast.
And for Abraham Lincoln, his eyes are tender but full of concern-- knowing that one wrong move would allow the South to prevail and the union of the United States to collapse forever.
Although he never met these men personally, Luigi Del Bianco knew their stories and knew that the innermost humanity behind these giants of American history would be brought forward through their eyes.
In a 1966 interview with the Herald Statesman of Yonkers, N.Y., Del Bianco recalled when he carved Lincoln's eyes on Mount Rushmore.

"I could only see from this far what I was doing, but the eye of Lincoln had to look just right from many miles distant," he said "I know every line and ridge, each small bump and all the details of that head (Lincoln's) so well."

Luigi Del Bianco, an Italian immigrant from the town of Meduno, about 60 miles north of Trieste, was the principal carver of Mount Rushmore, but, as his grandson, Lou, pointed out, that information is not reaching a wider audience because of a bureaucratic tie-up he intends to fix.

"The National Park Service insists on recognizing him as one of the 400 workers, even though he was documented as a vital part of the project," he said. "We want the NPS to give him his rightful place in history."

Del Bianco's importance to the Mount Rushmore project was highlighted by none other than Gutzon Borglum, who was the monument's designer. Borglum hired Bianco to be the chief carver on Mount Rushmore in 1933, tasked with carving the "refinement of expression" or the facial detail. He was paid $1.50 per hour, considered a high wage for the Depression era.

"I would do it again, even knowing all the hardships involved," Del Bianco said in the 1966 Herald Statesman interview. "I would work at Mount Rushmore even without pay, if necessary. It was a great privilege granted me."

"Stone carving was my grandfather's life," said Lou Del Bianco. "He ate, slept and drank stone. He worked to put food on the table like so many hardworking Italians."

Lou Del Bianco has now made it his mission to get the National Park Service to formally recognize his nonno's contribution to the creation of Mount Rushmore. Through his website, www.luigimountrushmore.com, he hopes to finally set in stone his grandfather's place in American history. He also hopes that his grandfather's story can help start a deeper conversation about Italian-Americans' contribution to the patchwork quilt that makes up "America."

"The importance of family and the many contributions of Italian-Americans is something that needs to be talked about more," he said. "As an actor, singer and storyteller, I feel strongly that my nonno inspired me to follow my passion and go into the arts as a profession."

Lou Del Bianco also created a petition at MoveOn.org at this link. To date, it has more than 800 signatures. The current goal is 1000.

"My nonno was very proud to be Italian," he said. "He went back to Italy many times in his life to see family and friends. Even though he lived in the USA for 50 years, he always preferred opera to Sinatra and Michelangelo to Rockwell."

La Vedova Bianca

One day, a friend of mine and I were having a conversation and it randomly went toward our shared Italian heritage. We began to discuss our grandparents and how we wished we could have known them and we wondered what it might have been like in Italy during the times of immigration, her family came from Gubbio in the North, mine from Guardia dei Lombardi in the South.
As we were talking, she told me the story about a family mystery that shook her to the core.
She was always told that she was named for her grandmother, Emilia. Both Emilia and her husband died before my friend was born. As she dug deeper and deeper into her heritage, she wanted to learn more about her grandparents. She started by visiting Emilia's grave... or so she thought.
When my friend arrived at the cemetery, she saw her grandfather's name on the grave but, buried next to him was not a woman named Emilia but, rather, Rosa. My friend was confused, but she kept digging and discovered that Emilia was a "Vedova Bianca" or a "White Widow," meaning that her grandfather abandoned Emilia and their children in Italy to come to the United States. While he may have intended to send for them, he never did for whatever reason. He met Rosa and ended up with her, though they never formally married.
Emilia's story was not uncommon in Italy during the years of immigration, which saw many Italian men coming to the United States for work and creating new lives and even taking new wives, forgetting the one who was left behind. For a "vedova bianca," she was a social pariah-- people would talk and it was sometimes discovered that the husband, who seemingly disappeared, was actually alive. She wasn't entitled to the black that a widow wore because she was not widowed, but she was alone.
While researching the white widows, I found the following poem by Maria Zaffina, who is from Lamezia Terme, Catanzaro, Calabria. I translated it into English below the original Italian.

Le vedove bianche

Americhe: paradisi sognati

da chi ha poco o nulla

"Vado io a tentare la fortuna, tu resta con i  bambini!"

Varcato l'oceano

Dopo le prime lettere, 

addio famiglia!

E le vedove bianche non si contano.

Che fare?

Ci sono anche i vecchi da mantenere,

loro non hanno la pensione.

Si va alla giornata sotto padrone

o a lavare il bucato 

ai ricchi speculativi

e mai contenti.

Di lui intanto,

più nessuna notizia,

ma il panno rosso rimane,

solo per incutere rispetto.

The White Widows

America: The imagined paradise

Of the person who has little or nothing

"I am going to find my fortune, you stay with the children!"

Having crossed the ocean,

After the first letters,

Farewell family!

And the white widows don't count in this world.

What to do?

There are the also the elderly to take care of,

Who have no pension.

The widows work daily under a boss

or washing the clothes

of the rich people who are never contented.

Of him instead,

no more news,

only the red cloth remains,

to command respect.