Heavenly pie

Ever have a piece of Torretta's ricotta pie? I've never tasted anything like its sweet, tangy, rich and creamy filling and chewy crust. For $13, it may be the best pie of any kind I've ever had. Torretta's, which offers desserts and other Italian food, is at 652 Winthrop Avenue in Revere's Beachmont neighborhood.

Darkness visible

Burning with fever and on the run from enemies real and perceived, Michelangelo Merisi collapsed near the Italian coastal town of Porto Ercole and died soon after on this day in 1610. He was just 38 years old, but his artistic brilliance had already produced some of the greatest paintings in Western art.

Known by the name of the town outside of Milan that he hailed from -- Caravaggio -- the artist was, by the start of the 17th century, known as the most famous painter in Rome, as much for his reputation of drunken outbursts, street brawls and habit of chasing women of various social strata as for his dark and wonderful canvases.

I've seen some of Caravaggio's work in Rome and at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, and I may get to see more in Naples this year. I haven't seen in person his masterpiece The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist (image above from Wikipedia), but it is has some of the features that one expects in his work -- darkness, imminent violence and some of the grit of real life.

Eastie's continued significance

Alvaro Uribe, the president of Colombia, was in the US last week to attend the opening session of the UN General Assembly. While in the States he took a side trip to Massachusetts and spoke to about 500 of his countrymen and countrywomen yesterday at East Boston High School.

The Globe described the event as a "town meeting" and said that Uribe (pictured during the playing of the Colombian national anthem) spoke for more than an hour. Most of the people who came out, the story says, expressed support of the conservative president, who has sharply reduced the violence in his country. There were some protesters outside and at least one angry questioner inside, as Uribe's law-enforcement crackdown has apparently gone hand-in-hand with human-rights violations.

The appearance of a South American president in our neighborhood reaffirms something I realized a couple years ago: East Boston is the New England capital for Latin American immigrants. This may be old news to some and surprising to others; I'm just saying it's interesting to me. The regional Salvadoran consulate is in Eastie, as is the New England Gallery of Latin American Art. Recent May Day and immigrants' rights marches have started or ended in Central Square.

I recently wrote a piece on the importance of East Boston to the Jewish immigration experience, and before that the Irish -- including the beginnings of the Kennedy clan -- came here to flee famine and build ships. Between the Jews and the Latinos, the Italians came and made the neighborhood their own. Today the significance of our little dollop of land continues.

The eyes have it

An astute reader points out a small ad on Page 8 of this week's East Boston Times:

Chiromazia
La Signora "Filomena" & "her Grandmother"
Back from Italy
57 Years Experience

I could find no translation for the first word -- "chiromazia" -- with a quick check on the Internet, but add one letter -- "chiromanzia" -- and the word is translated as "palmistry" by Google Translate. The ad goes on:

Helps in reuniting lost love, finding true love,
trouble in marriage, success in business,
in-law & family problems.

The ad specifies that the duo have "Never failed a case" and, most importantly, they are:

100% guaranteed to remove Maloccio (bad luck)

The malocchio (usually spelled with an h) actually translates, of course, as "bad eye" or, more commonly, "evil eye." If you've grown up in an Italian-American household, you've heard the term many times. You never wanted to get the malocchio; in fact, you'd wear the red horn around your neck to protect you. If you had a stretch of bad luck or illness, it was commonly assumed that someone had given you the evil eye.

Seeing the ad reminded me of one of the more bizarre and frightening episodes of my childhood. When I was perhaps 10 years old, my mother had a string of painful headaches. At some point, as I looked on, my grandmother performed the ritual that chased away the malocchio and I was a bit freaked out by it. In the kitchen of our apartment on Chelsea Street, my grandmother placed drops of olive oil in a bowl of water and chanted something in Italian and then she tossed the contents of the bowl out the second-floor window.

My mother's mother was a rather practical woman who was born, I found out later, in Jersey City. I can't recall ever hearing her speak Italian except in this instance -- probably words that she had been taught by her own mother. There may have been more to the ritual, but that is all I remember. (It's quite possible that I ran out of the kitchen at that point.)

I just returned from two weeks in Italy and one of the gifts I received was a small plastic figure of a man with a blindfold on his eyes and the horn below him. I was told to hang it on my door. I'm not superstitious, but ... you know ... it was a gift, and so the giver's instructions have to be honored, right?

Was feast killed by politics?

The web site Change for Boston has a lengthy post on the cancellation of this year's Italia Unita festival. The site claims that the annual East Boston feast was, in essence, squashed by the mayor in a case of political retribution. Here is the key paragraph:

Long time East Boston resident and talk show host Michelle McPhee says the real story is the festival organizer Pasquale Capogreco, president of Italia Unita, is a Michael Flaherty supporter for the Boston Mayor’s race. Menino told Richard Lynds – executive director of the East Boston Foundation, a trust that supports community organizations – to pull the plug on the funding. Lynds had multiple weak reasons not to grant the festival the its annual $15,000 commitment.

Now, Change for Boston seems to be expressly devoted to unseating Menino in the coming mayoral election. The posts on the site are written by "ADMIN," so for all I know it could be part of Councilor Flaherty's campaign, and I can't find any other references on the Internet to McPhee breaking this story.

I have no other information on this issue, but I thought I'd point out the allegation.

Feast canned

Our friends at East Boston Online have posted a statement from Italia Unita announcing that this year's feast has been canceled "[d]ue to the current economic climate..." The group has run a three-day festival celebrating Italian culture for the past 14 years.

Update (6/5): The Gl0be weighs in.

Dumb as a ... Post-Gazette

The insipid, homely, narrow-minded weekly fishwrap known as the Post-Gazette claims to be "The Italian-American Voice of Massachusetts," yet a number of recent issues have had front pages dominated with anti-Obama screeds written by a Lebanese-American syndicated columnist who lives near Washington, DC.

My first beef is that the columns by Paul Ibrahim are full of fabricated issues, misrepresentations and out-and-out lies. His piece titled "Fifty Reasons to Vote Against Obama" -- available here at his syndicator's web site -- takes the same few topics and pummels the reader with senseless drivel. Ignorant loudmouth Rush Limbaugh has said good things about Ibrahim, which affirms that he's a moron.

The second problem is that this front-page space should be given over to articles about Italian-Americans in Massachusetts. Isn't that the publication's mission? Are there no stories to be told about the lives, accomplishments and culture of those who share my ethnic background that the Post-Gazette can give us? The current manifestation of the paper is a joke -- a bunch of cranks grumbling about the same stuff each week.

If they insist on publishing right-wing rants, the Post-Gazette should at least toss it on the inside and label it as commentary. And do us another favor: try varying the layout a little bit. I've seen junior-high newspapers that look more interesting. The front page is a travesty. Give us an Italian-American voice that we can be proud of.

Hero or villain?

Around two in the morning on October 12, 1492 -- 515 years ago today -- Rodrigo de Triana, a sailor on the Pinta, sighted land in the distance. The three ships that left Spain about 70 days earlier arrived in what is now the Bahamas, and the name of the voyage's leader -- Cristoforo Colombo in Italian -- became engraved in history.

Italian-Americans have long held Christopher Columbus to be a hero, and Americans celebrate Columbus Day -- though now on a Monday to preserve the three-day weekend -- but should we celebrate it at all? The arrival of the famous navigator in the "New World" led to the subjugation of the indigenous peoples, to the spread of deadly diseases, and to the violent conquest of many advanced cultures.

Glenn Spagnuolo, the director of a group called Progressive Italians Transforming the Columbus Day Holiday, has said, "The Italians ... didn't want it to be used as a tool to bring tourism to [Genoa, Italy -- Columbus's birthplace], so they shut down the town. So, in Italy, he's viewed as the scoundrel that he is. And then, being raised as a Catholic and looking at Christian ethics, there's nothing that Columbus did when he came here that supported any kind of Christian moral background. I mean, he stole. He murdered. He was greedy; he raped people. I mean, it was ridiculous. So, to see them now say that this is a celebration of Italian pride or of Christian ethics, it's a false assertion, and it's really used to support, like I said, colonialism, the exploitation of this country from its indigenous population, and to continue the view of white privilege that exists here in the United States."

Columbus himself wrote of the Taino people, who were in the Bahamas when he arrived: "It appears to me that the people are ingenious and would be good servants, and I am of opinion that they would very readily become Christians, as they appear to have no religion." He also noted: "I could conquer the whole of them with 50 men, and govern them as I pleased."

Thoughts on Italia Unita

I stopped by the Italia Unita festival on each of its three days, and I saw a number of people that I hadn't seen in years, as well as all four of the candidates for the open House seat. The weather was nice, so it was the perfect weekend for such an event. I do, however, have a few items that I'd like to point out:

1. The food was much too expensive. I bought very little to eat at the feast because I decided not to pay more than I would regularly pay for something. A bowl of ziti for $8? Are you serious? A street festival is not a license to rip people off, but that's what happens. My understanding is that vendors pay $800 for a booth at Italia Unita, which makes it difficult for them to break even, never mind make a few bucks, during this relatively small-scale feast. It's too bad. I would have liked to try a sausage, some pasta or a slice of pizza, but I'm Italian American, so I eat those all the time. I'm not going to pay a ridiculous amount because it's a feast.

2. The bocce court was a dangerous place. In past years I remember seeing old Italian men playing bocce all weekend, but this year all I saw were kids throwing the balls around. At one point Saturday night there were a handful of youngsters wantonly heaving the solid spheres back and forth. The group I was with moved away for fear of being clocked. Here's a suggestion: Have someone on hand to supervise the court and to give bocce lessons. It'd be nice to see those same kids learning the rules and technique of the game. Now that would be spreading Italian culture, wouldn't it?

3. The featured musical performer was annoying. Why were Frank Stallone and his band playing loud rock and roll? How does that connect me to my heritage? I'm sure it's difficult to line up and pay for quality, interesting entertainment, but I just wasn't feeling it this year.

Having said all that, I'm glad there is a feast in East Boston, and I give credit to the Italia Unita organization.

Italians in Boston

East Boston's Italia Unita will hold their 13th annual Italian Festival this coming weekend in the neighborhood's Central Square area. Having been away from the city for a few years I missed recent incarnations of the festival, so I plan to attend and take some photos this year. As in the past, I'm sure that most of the food prices will be outrageous. Unfortunately, many vendors see this as an excuse to rip people off. However, the fun is seeing people I haven't seen in years.

In today's Globe, Kevin Cullen notes that former Boston mob boss Jerry Angiulo will be in for quite a surprise when he returns to the North End in September after completing a 24-year jail term. Fewer than 30 percent of that neighborhood's residents are of Italian descent, according to census date that Cullen cites. The North End, by virtue of its European-style street layout, plentiful restaurants and short walk to downtown and the financial district, is extremely desirable to young people with money. (Photo above is from the North End celebration of Italy's World Cup victory last summer.)

Eastie, if I remember correctly, is around 50% Italian American. This neighborhood also presents convenience to the city via car or subway, as well as a killer view from Maverick or parts of Jeffries Point, so we have our share of young professionals, but this community's bread-and-butter has always been immigrants looking for a foothold on a better life. English, Irish and Jewish immigrants came in waves before the Italians, and now waves of South and Central Americans follow the same path.

For a look back at the impact of Italian culture in this city there is The Boston Italians, a book written by Stephen Puleo that was published earlier this year. I have not read the book -- and I was unable to attend Puleo's reading at the Orient Heights Branch Library -- but I've read good things about it.

There was a time when it seemed that all of the political leaders in city and state were of Irish descent and that South Boston had an unfair amount of influence, but recently we've had an Italian American governor (Cellucci) and senate president (Travaglini), and we still have an Italian American mayor (Menino) and house speaker (DiMasi), and the Globe and Herald seem to be filled with stories about East Boston. The winds do shift, and there will come a time in the not-too-distant future when Latinos will hold many of the key political offices. That's the way of the world.

Ciao.

Paesani of Letters

Stephen Puleo, an Italian-American from the Boston area, has written a book called The Boston Italians, which is discussed in today's Globe.

The book is subtitled A Story of Pride, Perseverance and Paesani, from the Years of the Great Immigration to the Present Day. There are some excerpts on Puleo's web site. He's also written about the infamous North End molasses flood in a book called Dark Tide.

Puleo will be reading from The Boston Italians tonight in Wakefield (7:30 at the Wakefield-Lynnfield United Methodist Church, 273 Vernon Street) and on May 17 in East Boston (7:00 p.m., Orient Heights Branch Library).