Ultime ore per votare dall’estero per elezioni politiche italiane

Ultimi due giorni per votare per gli italiani residenti all’estero. I voti dei connazionali, infatti, dovranno arrivare nei Consolati entro le 16.00 (ora locale) di giovedì 1° marzo. Le schede votate saranno quindi inviate in Italia, dove saranno scrutinate – insieme ai voti degli italiani in Italia – domenica sera a partire dalle 23.00 alla chiusura dei seggi.

 

Source: Ultime ore per votare dall’estero per elezioni politiche italiane

Elena Ferrante: ‘Yes, I’m Italian – but I’m not loud, I don’t gesticulate and I’m not good with pizza’

love my country, but I have no patriotic spirit and no national pride. What’s more, I digest pizza poorly, I eat very little spaghetti, I don’t speak in a loud voice, I don’t gesticulate, I hate all mafias, I don’t exclaim “Mamma mia!” National characteristics are simplifications that should be contested. Being Italian, for me, begins and ends with the fact that I speak and write in the Italian language.

Source: Elena Ferrante: ‘Yes, I’m Italian – but I’m not loud, I don’t gesticulate and I’m not good with pizza’

A Guide to Franciacorta, Italy’s Most Chill Wine Region

Here, vines heavy with chardonnay, pinot nero, and pinot bianco grapes yield Italy’s most delicate sparkling wine, the namesake Franciacorta. With a second fermentation process similar to that of Champagne, Franciacorta is drier, yeastier, and more complex than Italy’s better-known bubbly, prosecco. Yet unlike France’s Champagne or Italy’s own Tuscany, the Franciacorta region is, in wine years, young; the first bottle of sparkler was corked in 1961. Perhaps because of its relative new-kid status, there’s a refreshing casualness to its wineries.

Source: A Guide to Franciacorta, Italy’s Most Chill Wine Region

Amarone Is Italy’s Great Meditation Wine: Its New Release Is For Thinking Livelier

In 2014, throughout Italy the summer never quite got up to speed. Instead of grape-ripening sun, northern vineyards especially were covered in clouds and rain, a lack of light and warmth that hit red wine places like Veneto’s Valpolicella hard. With the cool dampness came vine damage, destructive downy mildew and flavor-changing botrytis, the “noble rot” that’s a boon to nutty, honey’d wines like Sauternes and to be avoided for most makers of Valpolicella’s best known wine, hearty Amarone — a fermentation not of fresh grapes but of ones that undergo appassimento, the Italian winemaking technique of months-long air-drying harvested grapes that dates back to at least Roman times.

Source: Amarone Is Italy’s Great Meditation Wine: Its New Release Is For Thinking Livelier

The political Italian vocabulary you should know ahead of the 2018 election

Because the Italians like to keep things interesting (read: confusing), this year’s election will take place with a never before tested electoral law (legge elettorale). It’s called ‘Rosatellum‘, taking its name from Ettore Rosato, who leads the Democratic Party in the Lower House and drafted an early version of the law. This replaced an old electoral law, which was called ‘Italicum‘, and was only valid for the Chamber of Deputies.

The system is anything but simple: it’s a mixed voting system with some seats allocated proportionally (using ‘un sistema proporzionale‘) and the others using first-past-the-post (uninominale secco). Another key bit of vocab is the ‘soglia di sbarramento‘ or ‘election threshold’: the minimum share of the vote every party and coalition must achieve in order to get any seats.

Source: The political Italian vocabulary you should know ahead of the 2018 election

Christopher Columbus statue deserves landmark status, Italian-American group says | am New York

“We don’t want anything to happen to the Christopher Columbus statue,” said Angelo Vivolo, president of the Columbus Heritage Coalition, adding that immigration of Italian-Americans would not have happened if Columbus hadn’t connected the two worlds. “It talks to us about courage, discovery, about all the positive things — the meting pot that Americans believe in.”

Source: Christopher Columbus statue deserves landmark status, Italian-American group says | am New York

Il fascino eterno della lingua italiana sugli artisti stranieri

Che l’Italia nel corso dei secoli abbia ispirato tanti artisti, scultori, architetti, pittori, è cosa nota, ma negli ultimi tempi sembra si sia prepotentemente riproposta sulla mappe della musica globale. Viviamo questa paradossale situazione in cui molti artisti nostrani si cimentano con le lingue straniere e si scontrano con le difficoltà del produrre musica in inglese nella nostra nazione mentre, ad altre latitudini, il parere sembra esattamente l’opposto.

Source: Il fascino eterno della lingua italiana sugli artisti stranieri

Italian-Americans want to make Columbus statue a landmark

A coalition of Italian-American groups are trying to thwart Mayor de Blasio’s bid to alter the Christopher Columbus statue at Columbus Circle by asking a city commission landmark it.

Last month, Hizzoner said the statue would soon be joined by historical markers that tell the fuller story of the explorer, warts and all.

But that plan doesn’t sit well with members of the Italian-American community, who revere the explorer as a cultural icon.

Source: Italian-Americans want to make Columbus statue a landmark

The Axeman of New Orleans Preyed on Italian Immigrants

By August of 1918, the city of New Orleans was paralyzed by fear. In the dead of the night, the Axeman of New Orleans (as he came to be known) broke into a series of Italian groceries, attacking the grocers and their families.  Some he left wounded; four people he left dead. The attacks were vicious. Joseph Maggio, for example, had his skull fractured with his own axe and his throat cut with a razor. His wife, Catherine, also had her throat cut; she asphyxiated on her own blood as she bled out.

Source: The Axeman of New Orleans Preyed on Italian Immigrants

Italian American groups call for renaming of holiday formerly known as Columbus Day

San Francisco Italian American groups launched a referendum campaign Thursday to reclaim the former Columbus Day as “Italian American Heritage Day” following a Board of Supervisors decision last month to rename it as Indigenous Peoples Day.

The board voted 10-1 in January in favor of the name change. The national holiday was named in honor of Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, who is credited with discovering the Americas but also with contributing to Native American genocide

Source: Italian American groups call for renaming of holiday formerly known as Columbus Day

THE HOLY NAME Art of the Gesù: Bernini and his Age

 

This landmark exhibition, organized to commemorate Fairfield University’s 75th anniversary, features artistic treasures from the Roman church of the Gesù never before seen in America: Bernini’s bust of Roberto Bellarmino (patron saint of Fairfield University), Gaulli’s monumental painted wood model of the apse, a gilt bronze altar sculpture by the versatile painter, draftsman and sculptor Ciro Ferri, the sumptuous jeweled cartegloria from the altar of St. Ignatius, and the magnificent embroidered chasuble of the church’s great benefactor, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. These masterpieces are joined by more than fifty paintings, sculptures, rare books, precious objects, drawings, prints, and historical documents by Bernini, Domenichino, Gaulli, Ciro Ferri, Carlo Maratti, and Andrea Pozzo, among other Italian Baroque masters, on loan from American museums and private collections.

Source: THE HOLY NAME Art of the Gesù: Bernini and his Age