Santa Lucia Italian Festival, in its 92nd year, celebrates the red, white and green
Members of Omaha's Little Italy community cheered and cried Sunday as family and friends celebrated the final day of the Santa Lucia Italian Festival at Lewis & Clark Landing. The four-day festival concluded with members of the Italian-American community walking with an ornate and decorated statue of Santa Lucia through the streets of down...
Italian-American Heritage festival going on downtown
The Italian-American Heritage festival is taking place in Western Gateway Park. Attendees can enjoy Italian food, entertainment and live music. This year, a staple restaurant in the metro for 59 years, Mama Lacona's, won the award for best sauce after entering the competition for the first time. "I'm not at liberty to give any ingredients...
Saint's relics headed to Detroit, maybe to a prison
By Patricia Montemurri The remains of a Catholic virgin martyr saint revered for forgiving her attacker before she died were on display today in a Philadelphia church visited by Michigan's papal pilgrims. And the relics will soon be coming to three Detroit-area parishes. The relics of St. Maria Goretti, an 11-year-old killed in 19...
Emilio Degrazia to read at the Bookshelf
Emilio DeGrazia is a first-generation Italian-American who grew up just this side of the "wrong side" of Detroit. On the opposite side of DeGrazia's childhood street, he described, was "a land of no return." His side led him to decent schools and prolific career as a writer of prose and poetry. On Tuesday, January 5, DeGrazia will share some of tha...
Letter: Keep Columbus Day
By Eileen Mosco State Rep. Joe Salazar (D-Thornton), self-appointed censor of holidays, introduced HB1135 to change Columbus Day to Indigenous People's Day. He and his followers blame Columbus for all the ills imposed on the indigenous people. How absurd. Italian-Americans celebrate the day because: 1. Columbus was Italian. 2. H...
Honoring Kansas City Italians! Dr. Dominic M. Nigro
Dr. Dominic M. Nigro was born in Cosenza, Italy in 1893. As a child, Nigro's family moved to the United States and settled in Kansas City, Missouri. He attended the University of Notre Dame, earned a medical degree at Creighton University, and went into practice as a doctor, treating Harry Truman before he was President. In the 1930s, he served as...
MIA Tours series: Italian renaissance art guided tour
Join us on Thursday, December 10th from 7:00 to 8:15 PM, for a guided tour of Mia's collection of Italian Renaissance art. Our Mia docent will guide our small group through a number of paintings and other art pieces that are part of Mia's permanent collection. The tour offers a great opportunity to learn about this period of history and ask questio...
Festa Italiana returns to Harriet Island this weekend
by Jaime DeLage After a year off to reorganize and a year away in Shoreview, the fledgling Festa Italiana is returning to Harriet Island this weekend. The first Festas were held on Harriet Island in September 2011 and 2012, but miserable weather the second year convinced organizers to move their event to midsummer. The lack of sum...
Italian immigrants settled in Greenbush
Many American cities have areas famous for their large populations of Italian immigrants. In New York it is Little Italy, in Boston the North End and in St. Louis the Hill. It was only natural that those seeking a new life in a foreign land would settle among family and friends. Here it was in the southside Greenbush neighborhood, affectionately ni...
In defense of Christopher Columbus
Another Columbus Day came and went this week, although not as such in Minneapolis, which voted this year to honor Indigenous Peoples' Day instead, a time to reflect on the price American Indians paid for the greed and ruthlessness of my European ancestors. Yet it is ironic that Columbus should take the blame, for he was our first "multicul...
House committee rejects bill to abolish Colorado’s Columbus Day
By Joey Bunch Columbus Day will live on in Colorado after legislation to abolish it was voted down Monday night. Rep. Joe Salazar, a Democrat from Thornton who sponsored the bill, originally sought to have Oct. 12 renamed Indigenous People's Day. He dropped that part of the proposal with an amendment during the committee hearing. The four...
Make & Take class: il VOV (Italian holiday drink)
The holidays are the perfect time to enjoy a traditional Italian cold-weather drink: VOV, a delicious egg-based beverage infused with Marsala wine. Born in the city of Padova in 1845, the drink quickly gained scores of aficionados in Italy and abroad, due to its delicate taste and energizing properties. On Thursday, December 3rd from 6:30...