Sunflowers adorn just about anything in Italy.... tablecloths, plates, vases, tiles, handbags, shoes, pillows, and even scarves and guitar picks!
The real mystery is that no one really knows why the flowers themselves follow the Sun. Perhaps they just like the feel of the Italian sun on their faces.... In Italy, this is no surprise. Everyone there is always a bit chilly and in need of a good dose of sun... --Jerry Finzi You can also follow Grand Voyage Italy on: Google+ StumbleUpon Tumblr Copyright 2016 - Jerry Finzi - All Rights Reserved
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Phillis is a good friend of mine, even though we never met in person. You see, Phyllis is one of those great people that you make a bond with online by reading her words--Phyllis is a writer and blogger and lover of life. She writes with passion about taking up a new life in Italy and how she's adjusted to This Italian Life, as she calls it in her book of the same name. It's a great read. We learn what it was like for her when she first traveled to Italy, when she was an "illegal" for a short period and how she came to make Italy her home. She tells of the frustrations, the pleasures, the hardships and the wonderful people she met during her evolution into becoming one with Italy. After a long career as a freelance writer in the U.S. (Washington Post, Women's Wear Daily, Conde Nast, Chicago Tribune, etc.), she penned her own life's experiences in her book and on her blog, This Italian Life. I suggest to all Italophiles who dream of living the Italian life to take the time and visit Italy through Phyllis' stories... take the time to go back and read all her articles on her blog. And you can read her book, available on Amazon. But sadly, for about a month or more, Phyllis' blog has been quiet. Too quite. The sad truth is, this wonderful purveyor of Italian tidbits of life has been ill... very ill. Phyllis is now fighting her biggest battle yet--with cancer.
I wanted to write this blog post to bring people's attention to Phyllis and her heartfelt writings. You can visit her page on Facebook HERE and read the links to her articles. You can leave a message of thanks to her for all she has shared with us. Let her know we love her words, her remembrances and most of all, her humanity. For that's what I've always felt when reading her stories. She has truly lived La Vita Bella. She has become Italian. She has become our friend and mentor and travel companion. Thank you, dear, grand lady. You've made our lives a bit more Bella by sharing yours with us... We're praying for you, Phyllis... and waiting for more of your wonderful words... --Jerry Finzi Saverio Finzi. That's was--and still is--my Dad. He was called Sal by most, Sally Boy by his buddies growing up, mistakenly called Xavier on his immigration papers, Daddy by my 3 sisters, but I just called him Dad. As he got older, once in a while I'd call him Pop, but he said he didn't like it. It made him sound too much like an old man (he was in his eighties at the time). I always thought it was cute the way he referred to other people his age as "those old people". He was always a man of the "dirt" as he called garden soil. He taught me how to love and appreciate Home Grown Tomatoes. I still grow Heirloom tomato varieties every year and my son Lucas already knows how to start seeds in the cellar in February, how to plant the young plants deeply for strong roots, and how to prune side shoots off the plants for bigger fruit. Dad taught me a lot about gardening. Some day I plan to have a grape arbor like he had in our little city back yard growing up. He loved nature too. As he got older he loved to sit on his patio and just "watch the boidies" (as he called them) at his bird feeder. He was the one who started bringing home box turtles from "The Lake" when we were kids. At one time we had 15 or them in our little back yard. He loved dogs and cats and rabbits, too. He had a rabbit hutch that he kept his pet rabbits in... one was a huge lop-earred bunny with a powerful kick. And Lord, did he love the trees and the flowers. He once said to me "I love plants, I love trees, I love the sky, I love the birds... but I hate people". He wasn't a man who ever hated anyone, but I knew exactly what he meant. Nature was pure and simple. People can be overly complicated. He loved to fish and go crabbing. We used to break through the fences and trespass onto the old piers on the Hudson River where I grew up. He'd catch a bucketful of "Jersey Blue" crabs, as he called them, those colorful treasures the East Coast is famous for. He fished with a pole, surely, but he also used a simple string drop line, with a little screw-springy-bell gizmo that he'd screw into the wood at the edge of the pier. When an eel was "on" the line, the jingle bell would ring and he'd pull up the string line by hand. He prepared the eel Pugliese style... fried in olive oil and served in cut up little chunks with lots of lemon, like little oily fishy sausages. One day he caught a huge crab on the drop line and a big "Mama eel" (as he called the huge ones) in the crab net. I'll never forget that. He also caught the biggest catfish I've ever seen come out of Oak Ridge Lake, where we used to go when I was young. Dad was more Italian in his ways than I realized when I was young. He knew how to speak the Southern dialect of Molfetta in Puglia, but never spoke it at home. But one time he ran into a "girl" that he grew up with in Hoboken, New Jersey--hadn't seen her in 50 years. It's amazing that they recognized each other in an instant. The Molfettese dialect flowed like thick honey from his mouth as they spoke. He also had a habit of eating only de-constructed sandwiches--that is, he preferred to tear pieces of bread and eat the cold cuts, cheese and tomatoes laid out on a plate--and this was a deli man who made great sandwiches at work. He loved glasses of cheap or home made wine--often drank with ice cubes or even with some 7-Up added to mimic Prosecco. He told stories of his own father making wine and keeping the large damigiana (a "demijohn" is a very large teardrop shaped bottle) in the cellar while it fermented and aged. He is the one who taught me how to make polpette (meatballs) bigger than my fist, and baked Virginia ham at Christmas and how to make roast turkey and roast beef. He always loved a "nice piece of meat", as Italians do, all on its own on a plate. He loved his ice cream and would eat out of the box--as I still do. He was a simple man with simple pleasures. He love saving little sayings and poems out of books and newspapers... I found a bunch of his clippings in his wallet after he passed away. As he got older, I'd go over and spend Saturday afternoons with him--Mom and Dad and I would sit at his picnic table a peruse books or magazines on gardening, cooking, old National Graphic magazines about volcanoes or exotic far off places... we'd look at the pictures, talk, have a soda and a peach for a snack and dream of going to Italy someday together. Dad never made that trip with me... No. He was with me, and Lucas and Lisa. He was the reason we went on our Grand Voyage. Lucas and I blessed ourselves in his honor in the waters in his home town of Molfetta. I remember saying "Dad, we made it." I felt him right there next to us...
Thank you for being my Dad, Sally Boy. And on this Father's Day while I look at my beautiful son, Lucas, I know that I wouldn't have learned how to become --as Lucas calls me--"The Best Dad ever", if you didn't hold the same title before me. He was more than my father. He was my best friend. We miss you, but you are with us in everything we do in life. Happy Father's Day, Dad. "Mamma Mia! American's adore Italy and have a very romantic picture of it. It's is one of Americans' favorite countries and a favorite place to visit--if they win the lottery. Italy lives in the minds of Americans through such things as spaghetti, Romeo and Juliet, Al Pacino, Al Capone, Sylvester Stallone, Lamborghini, The Mona Lisa, Leaning tower of Pizza, pasta and pizza. They love everything about us, until they visit here... then they complain that it's too hot, cars are too small, there's no ice in their drinks, everything closes in the middle of the day, everyone smokes, and no one can speak English!"
The heat of la citta... the rough cobbles under my tired feet... another hill in this place... Ahh... alla fine! Perfetto! due gusti, per favore!
(Well... not really. Too much caffeine. Too much sugar. Addictive chemicals in the recipe. Not good for kidney stones, prostate or diabetes. It does taste much less sweet in Italy, though... )
--Jerry Finzi The wonderful photo above, by Alessia Pignetti, shows her grandmother using the iconic o'panar, a basket or bucket lift used to bring groceries up to apartments in and around the Naples area. Old apartments MINUS elevators PLUS a bucket PLUS some rope EQUALS Italian Ingenuity at its best. Italians have all sorts of roadblocks in their way as they live their Vita Bella, but still find ways to get around their problems. That's being a true, furbo Italian! The o'panar (also called a Panaro - bread basket) is an especially great tool for elderly nonnas, living in an un-airconditioned top floor apartment, in the heat of the City of Naples or Sorrento or other towns in Campania. Their legs perhaps failing from a lifetime of walking the many hills in their environment, o'panar is used daily to lift up deliveries of milk, cheese and eggs, produce, a fast food delivery, or other supplies brought to them by their never-too-far-away offspring. You can imagine how dangerous it can be when Nonna loads a couple of sharp knives or scissors into the bucket to send down to l'arrontino--the knife-sharpener--on his weekly visits! Instead of traditional wicker baskets, many nowadays use plastic buckets, but in a bright blue color--perhaps for visibility so that unaware passersby on the street below can see it coming down (often just dropped) and avoid being smashed in their testa. So, if you're even in Campania visiting Naples or Sorrento or Salerno... look up, or should I say, heads up! --Jerry Finzi Please, stop by our SURVEY and spend 60 seconds telling us how we could make our blog better! Grazie! Copyright, 2016, Jerry Finzi/Grand Voyage Italy - All rights reserved You can also follow Grand Voyage Italy on: Google+ StumbleUpon Tumblr You Americans disrespect your parents and grand-parents. You want to move as far away from them as soon as you leave school. When they get old and sickly, you put them into old age homes with strangers. We Italians stay with our parents until we are married--often into our 30s or 40s. No matter. We are famiglia. We take care of our parents when they get old and we are still young and strong. After all, they fed and clothed us when we were young, correct? We usually live a short distance from our parents and might even live in our parents house. When our parents pass on we will inherit and live in the Casa di Famiglia, and our children will own it someday. The famiglia is important to us. Our parents and nonne and nonni are the most important and deserve our respect.
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