NIAF on Capitol Hill
At the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF), we believe strongly in supporting future generations of the Italian American community. This is why we created the NIAF Congressional Fellowship; with it, we place outstanding Italian American college students, graduate students and recent graduates in the offices of members of the Italian America...
Rossella and Nonna Romana on the Home & Family Show
Super excited to announce that Nonna Romana and I will do a cooking segment on the Home & Family Show which airs on the Hallmark Channel. The show is hosted by Mark Steines and Debbie Matenopoulos. Monday April 10, 2017. 10:00 AM EST. Hallmark Channel On the show, Nonna and I will be making one of Nonna's recipes from my cookbook. Not telling you...
Jimmy Breslin, a king of journalists, joins the ranks of the immortals
Earlier this month, the literary gods that decide these things sent me a message from the great beyond and said it was high time I finally read, front cover to back cover, Pietro di Donato’s 1939 novel Christ in Concrete. (What, you think we only read Irish stuff around here?) This raw New York story is about an Italian immigrant laborer working u...
Rocco Petrone: A Modern-Day Cathedral Builder
"The Invisible Pyramid" by Loren Eisely contains a chapter entitled "The Spore Bearers". In it the fungus, Pilobolus, is likened to a rocket. The spore which will project the descendants of Pilobolus into the future prepare themselves with a light sensitive capsule to aim ever toward the brightest light. When the right chemical pressures are built...
HBO Took A Page Out Of Netflix's Playbook With This New Series
Elena Ferrante fans can rejoice, their heroine is coming to the small screen. Well, kind of. Though many expected Ferrante to fade from public life after an Italian journalist revealed her real name last October, she's instead continued to do what she's always done: Write things for money.HBO just announced a 32-episode order that will cover all fo...
Remembering Marlon Brando on his 93rd birthday
It can be safely assumed that while Al Pacino definitely became the backbone of Francis Coppola’s The Godfather, it’s Marlon Brando who’s remained the face ever since. Despite all his ranting against the hypocritical glitz and glam of the Hollywood life, he couldn’t help the fact that where he went, the spotlight followed. The actor, who is famousl...
Nostalgia of the Italian Barber Shop
Over the years of ones life, you meet many people and develop friendships on many levels. I say “many levels” because in todays day and age of social media, email, etc., sometimes some of the very best friendships are with people you may never have met in person. Social media and the digital age isn’t ALL bad – in fact it can be very life enriching...
The Frankie Laine Story
I am a child of the 1970’s. I was too young to truly enjoy the music of the ‘60’s (and all the drugs that went with it). Instead, I was ‘lucky’ enough to go through adolescence during that most wonderful epoch of music known as the Disco Era. Unlike many of my peers in high school, however, I carried with myself something they didn’t – an appreciat...
The real story behind 'An American Girl in Italy'
People tend to wonder if the iconic photo of Ninalee Craig was staged.It's the question she hears most often. To some, the scene in the black and white photo from another era is almost too perfect. Craig, 23 at the time, breezes past clusters of men on a sidewalk in Florence, Italy, head held high as if impervious to their ogling as she grasps her...
Suave Italian Designer Stars with Houston’s Best Dressed: Soccer in Cashmere Never Looked So Good
veryday luxury,” the term once considered an oxymoron, has gained international acceptance thanks to the transformative talents of Italian designer Brunello Cucinelli. After all, the man who admits to playing soccer in a cashmere sweater knows his rough sweats from silk parachute pants. His concept was never more apparent than on the catwalk at the...
There’s a reason there are no Italian food versions of Chipotle
It’s a space that’s been conquered by salad bars, burrito chains, bakeries, and burger joints. And yet pasta remains a white whale in the ocean of fast-casual dining. The absence of a large fast-casual Italian food chain is more an issue of complication than choice. To be sure, the fast-casual segment of restaurants remains popular among consumers....
Ma Speaks Up: and a first-generation daughter talks back
Marianne Leone’s Ma is in many senses a larger-than-life character, one who might be capable, even from the afterlife, of shattering expectations. Born on a farm in Italy, Linda finds her way to the United States under dark circumstances, having escaped a forced marriage to a much older man, and marries a good Italian boy. She never has full comman...