L'Italo-Americano

22 L'Italo-Americano www.italoamericano.com Dear Readers, More January jottings with an Italian connection: Avanti...Our Italian Heritage New Year resolutions should include becoming more active in Italo-American organizations. Admittedly, some of the sparkly has dimmed due to the fact that many of our beloved leadership lights have been extinguished, but happy memories we have and can continue to have by becoming more active in our clubs and organizations. Berlusconi, Italy's longtime Premier had his faults and foibles but his efforts to get tax relief for Italian homeowners is being appreciated and celebrated. It seems that a person's Main Residence in Italy is overtaxed. Fiscal records list nine kinds of taxes on the primary residence, which bring into the coffers over 44 billion euro (@ $59 billion) a year. The heaviest tax, the IMU (a municipal tax paid to the national government) has, by itself, provided an excess of 23 billion euro. When the IMU was first introduced only a few years ago, it met the strongest resistance from the then Premier, Berlusconi. Today, despite his judicial problems, Berlusconi continued to fight this tax, through his party. This tax is now gone, "Grazie" to Silvio. *** Bagna Cauda (Bagna Caoda in Piemonte), a hot bath of olive oil, anchovies and garlic is eaten all winter long these days, but traditionally when the workers finished picking and crushing the grapes, "la vendemmia", or at the end of the harvest year, workers would share a pot of bagna cauda, set over heat in the middle of the table and dip crisp raw vegetables into a steaming garlicky mixture of oil, butter and anchovies. This rustic dish, is part of an authentic Piemontese gastronomic tradition persisting today. *** Clubs with an Italian Connection, Piemontesi Nel Mondo of Northern California will sponsor a "Bagna Caoda" di Piemonte feast, on February 8, 2014 at 2pm at "Casa de Feno" in Oakland, California. Call a Bagna Caoda Committee member for more information: Claudia (510) 526-8830 or Fred (510) 223-0786. Just as in the "old country", they will be serving fresh vegetables, crusty bread and hot bubbling Bagna. They will also be offering the modern addition of beef, for those who prefer not to live by bread and veggies alone. If you cannot attend this event, stay in touch with the Piemontesi Nel Mondo of Northern California group, they have an excellent "Boletin" and many fun events. *** The Piemonte region, Italy's northwestern corner, bordering the Alps, is often overlooked by tourists except for the alpine resorts that cater to the international glitzy ski set or Torino, with its acres of Fiat factories, executive offices of megafirms (Olivetti), and former specialized firms like Lenci "Bambole di Lusso" on via San Marino. Unlike most mega-firmed metropoli, Torino has an oasis of green, "Parco del Valentino" in the middle of the city. Designed in 1830, the park stretches along the left bank of the Po River, below Piazza Umberto. In the center of Parco del Valentino is the 17th century castle of Carlo di Castellamonte and nearby University botanical gardens, where among the well-tended roses and trees, lovers live up to the romantic Valentino name. At the park's southern end is the Borgo Medioevale and adjacent castle, created for a World's Fair in 1884. *** Piemontesi café philosophers and radical thinkers in the 1830s decided it was time to oust Italy's foreign rulers, forge an Italian state and push for a "Risorgimento" (revival). Almost 30 years later, King Vittorio Emanuele II of Piemonte and his Prime Minister Count Camillo Cavour whipped up a nationalist, antiAustrian frenzy in the north. To get rid of a Bourbon king in Sicily, whose presence menaced the country's unification, the two conspired with (and inspired) Giuseppe Garibaldi who along with 1,000 volunteers called the Red Shirts, journeyed from Genova to Sicily to help the Sicilians oust King Francis II and turn the territory over to Victor Emanuele. *** In 1861 after the war with Austria and much political backstabbing, the kingdom of Italy was established with Torino as its capital and Vittorio Emanuele as its monarch. The capital moved to Florence three years later. However, throughout Piemonte, street signs proudly commemorate the "Risorgimento" and there is a "Museo del Risorgimento" in Torino's Palazzo Carignano. *** Excerpts from Piemontesi Nel Mondo of Northern California Boletin: Believe it or not! On Nov. 5, 1821, General Juan Bautista Bustos, military governor of the Argentine province of Cordoba, granted each of his veterans 1,500 hectare of presumably fertile land. If, however, the soldier in question happened to have a Piedmontese wife, then his allotment was doubled to 3,000 hectares. Which means that in Argentina in 1821 a single piemontesina was worth 3,750 acres. *** Move Over Titanic! Those two immigrant ships immortalized in heart-wrench folk songs, the Sirio and the Mafalda. Both were liners of the Navigazione Generale Italiana, plying the transatlantic route between Genoa and South America. Just as the song says, "il 4 agosto alle cinque di sera" of the year 1906, the ill-fated Sirio hit a submerged rock, "un terribile scoglio" off Cabo de Palos in the south of Spain. The ship went down quickly, stern first. On board were 128 crew members and THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 2014 King Edward VII. A few hours later, the King responded, completing a dialogue that at the time seemed like pure magic, just as our "no hands" garage door openers and "no wire" telephones seem today, to low tech ladies like me. Marconi's experiments of over a hundred years ago paved the way for today's other wireless tools, including cell phones and pagers. Back in 2003, to mark the centennial, members of the Radio clubs staged a weeklong radio marathon, communicating with other amateur radio enthusiasts around the world from an old Coast Guard post no far from the site of Marconi's original radio station. The event culminated with the worldwide transmission of a message from President Bush. Marconi's daughter, Princess Elettra Marconi, was on the Cape, while her son, also named Guglielmo Marconi was at the family's ancestral home in Bologna, Italy, to receive the message from his mother. Marconi, who was 28 at the time of the breakthrough, "had everybody against him", says the princess, who gained her title by marrying an Italian nobleman. "He was so young and all the big Guglielmo Marconi some 800 passengers: 600 Italians and 200 Spaniards picked up in Barcelona the day before. About 300 died. Most of them drowned, but many were crushed to death in the frenzied panic to reach the open decks. "E fra loro un vescovo c'era..." There really was. The archbishop of San Pedro in Brazil, who perished with the rest. The majority of Italian dead were from Liguria, but many were Piemontesi as well. The other traditional song based on a tragic shipwreck, and sung to the exact same tune of Il Sirio, commemorates the sinking of the Principessa Mafalda off the Brazilian coast, between Bahia and Rio de Janeiro, on Oct. 25, 1927. The cause was the loss of a propeller shaft. 314 perished, mostly third-class passengers headed for Argentina. *** Guglielmo Marconi started an era of global wireless communications on January 18, 1903, when he stood on a sandy bluff on Cape Cod, and sent a 54 word greeting in Morse code from President Theodore Roosevelt, across the ocean to England's scientists, like Edison, were saying it wasn't possible. He had the intuition. He knew he could succeed. And he succeeded". Today, the site where Marconi sent his message is under water because of erosion. At very low tides a few remnants of its concrete foundations are visible beneath the surface. The events of Jan. 18, 1903, are commemorated with a small monument high on the sandy bluff. "Every time you dial your cell phone, every time you turn on the car radio and hear a reporter broadcasting live via satellite from Saudi Arabia- all of that was made possible by what Marconi did. Marconi's station on Cape Cod National Sea Shore included four 210-foot wooden towers. He built a similar station in Cornwall, England, and a relay station on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. Marconi had been experimenting with radio transmission for several years, but his 1903 broadcast earned him worldwide praise. He won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1909. *** Club with an Italian connec- tion, the North Bay Italian Cultural Foundation (64 Brookwood Ave., Santa Rosa, California 95404, tel. 707-5919696, www.nbicf.org) founded in 1984, turns 30 this year. My purpose in mentioning "clubs" with an Italian connection "throughout the New Year" is two-fold. "Cari Lettori", I want you to participate more actively in 2014, but I also want to remind those of you who have acquired non-Italian daughter- or son-inlaws to invite them to various club events and in case your own "bambini" have married and moved away from home to other California locations, you can tell them about Italian-American clubs in their new area where they will be welcome and find fun and friendship throughout the New Year. For those of you in the Santa Rosa area, NBICF with its Sunday movies, monthly regional dinners, book group, Coro Allegro, Carnevale, Festa Italiana and much more in Santa Rosa, CA is a club in which you or family members will want to be. *** Fr. Flavio Trettel, left us on January 15, 1994, when he was killed in a car accident caused by the fog on Highway 99, a few miles south of Fresno, California. Fr. Flavio Trettel was the younger brother of Fr. Efrem Trettel, OFM, who currently resides at Alma Via in San Francisco, where he continues to play his accordion and lift senior spirits just as he did for the over 40 year of his Media Ministry A.R.C. Via A.R.C. Radio and later T.V. Programs, Fr. Effrem offered an abundance of joy to the elderly, the sick, the lonely, the shut-ins and to those who liked to discover the richness of their faith. Fr. Efrem also served as the Chaplain for many ItaloAmerican clubs, including the now defunct San Francisco Chapter of U.N.I.C.O. A few days before the fatal accident, Fr. Flavio Trettel had been in Santa Barbara, California at the beautiful Seminary of Saint Anthony of Padua, where 250 Franciscans from various areas were meeting for their Chapter. Prior to his stateside assignments, Fr. Flavio had been a missionary in Bolivia at the Mountain Mission of Misque, in Cochabamba. Father Flavio was born to be a Missionary: he loved to help, to give all of himself, to reach people in need, which often meant sharing the little that he had and often giving up all the comforts if any. Father had many friends who loved him unconditionally because they admired his honesty, his spontaneity, but above all his sincerity; all qualities based on the love of God as taught by Saint Francis of Assisi. At the time of his death Fr. Flavio was returning to his new parishioners in two churches in Nevada, Overton and Bunkerville. ***

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