How often do we hear about Italy’s abandoned villages? Inhabitants moved away for work, to larger cities, to the north or abroad. In a frazione of Fiumara, a group of townsfolk decided that they didn’t want to move away from their “neighborhood” in the foothills of the Aspromonte Mountains overlooking the Strait of Messina in the Province of Reggio Calabria. …
Is There Anything to See in Calabria?
Many of my readers and followers have roots in Calabria – Calabrian-Americans, Calabrian-Canadians, Calabrian-Australians, Calabrian-South Americans, Calabrians living in other regions of Italy and throughout Europe, and then there are just plain Calabrians. In Italian, that would be calabresi-americani, calabresi-canadesi, calabresi-australiani, etc. Many have visited the more famous spots of Italy and a few have visited Calabria, often just one …
Proverbi Calabresi, A Few Expressions from Calabria
Calabrians have an infinite number of sayings and proverbs, and with all the different languages, dialects and neighborhood variations, I cannot begin to scratch the surface of the verbal expressiveness. So here are just a few proverbi calabresi to whet your linguistic whistle. Animals are the common thread.
A Dream in Terracotta, ARGHILLÀ l’arte delle terre of Nicola Tripodi
Ironic, folkloristic, playful, engaging—the images of Nicola Tripodi’s terracotta sculptures jumped out of the computer screen as I scrolled through my Facebook timeline. “Like,” most definitely. I have pondered, reacted to and shared numerous of the artist’s works, and this past week decided it was high time to view them in person at his studio and shop, ARGHILLÀ l’arte delle …
Wisdom on a Sugar Packet: Calabrian Proverbs
I recently came across a handful of photos I had snapped a couple of years earlier in a bar in Bova Marina. At what I had anticipated to be a routine roadside coffee stop in a locale at the very tip of the Italian boot, I stumbled upon entertaining sugar packets stamped with traditional Calabrian proverbs. There’s nothing like a …
Curiosities: The Easter Hand
THE COSMOS We’ve all read our horoscopes whether or not we actually believe in them. Could there really be something to the positioning of the stars, the alignment of the planets, the lunar cycle? Nowadays we have so many facts at our fingertips, but are we any closer to understanding where the individual fits in with the tides or the …
Calabres, Calabrese, Calabresi??
CALABRESE VS. CALABRIAN When people ask me what my book’s about and I start talking about Calabria, the word calabrese often comes up. “So does it have something to do with calabres?” At first I was surprised that many people seemed to have more of a familiarity with an Italian form of a word than its English translation. I then came …