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That Ginger, Anna

That Ginger, Anna

Tag Archives: manhattan

OSCARS+Lent

04 Sunday Mar 2018

Posted by That Ginger, Anna in Media, Personal and Fun

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Tags

catholicism, lent, lenten fast, manhattan, New York City, NYC, off the grid, oscars, twentysomething

So, I gave up social media and texting (my phone in general except for emails, video+audio, finance stuff, and calls) for Lent.

So far I’ve messed up on the texting thing once when I had to respond to my brother about something, but except for that I have been good. Only about 27 days to go!

I’ve looked at WhatsApp and my texts to make sure anyone who didn’t know hadn’t messaged me…but alas, of course, they hadn’t, HAHA!

I was using my phone as a security blanket at times when I should have just been facing the uncomfortable situations around me and it got to be too much. I was checking my phone constantly and using it for everythinggg.

I chose to give this up a week or so before Lent but I went to my favorite bar on Mardi Gras and some grumpy, drunk old man was loudly making fun of me and this middle-aged lady sitting next to me about being on our phones…she told him off but I just sat there wondering why people have to be assholes–and bathing in the irony of the fact that I was set to give up my phone in a few hours and he had no idea. *I still think people are assholes…

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I’m legit dying tho. It’s super isolating and lonely not being able to reach out to people. I miss Instagram the most, by FAR! I find myself wanting to send people memes so bad 😛 I don’t miss Facebook at all, oddly, although I did realize all of my news was coming from there. Not like, I was reading news from people’s likes or my timeline, but I follow all of my favorite news outlets on there so without that platform I’m not reading any news. I have since fixed that by shifting completely to BBC and radio news shows/podcasts. Also, watching TV without Twitter/IMDb is certainly overrated, tbh…

That said, I have been sleeping better (it’s definitely affected my dreams!) and have been more productive at work. I have been better about getting exercise and grooming too. Not that I wasn’t doing that stuff before but I am more focused and have more energy to dedicate to those things now. I’ve also taught myself some new skills in my free time too: logo making on Adobe Illustrator as well as creating and enabling “canned messages” and filters in Gmail. Worked on more Adobe stuff too. I’ve been reading more as well. I definitely hope to keep my phone usage to a minimum after all this.

I keep forgetting and eating meat on Fridays so I guess it’s all kind of pointless anyway, haha >_<

I’m going to a concert on Friday and that’s probably going to be the most challenging. I will take some pictures to share on IG at Easter.

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As is tradition, here are my picks (first and second) for all of the categories in tonights OSCARS! What are your picks?

BEST PICTURE

  • Call Me by Your Name
  • Darkest Hour
  • Dunkirk
  • Get Out
  • Lady Bird (1)
  • Phantom Thread
  • The Post
  • Shape of Water (2)
  • Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

  • Timothee Chalamet (2)
  • Daniel Day-Lewis (1)
  • Daniel Kaluuya
  • Gary Oldman
  • Denzel Washington

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

  • Sally Hawkins
  • Frances McDormand
  • Margot Robbie (1)
  • Saorise Ronan (2)
  • Meryl Streep

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

  • Willem Dafoe (1)
  • Woody Harrelson
  • Richard Jenkins
  • Christoper Plummer
  • Sam Rockwell (2)

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

  • Mary J. Blige (1)
  • Allison Janney (2)
  • Lesley Manville
  • Laurie Metcalf
  • Octavia Spencer

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

  • The Boss Baby
  • The Breadwinner
  • Coco (1)
  • Ferdinand (2)
  • Loving Vincent

CINEMATOGRAPHY

  • Blade Runner 2049 (2)
  • Darkest Hour
  • Dunkirk
  • Mudbound
  • The Shape of Water (1)

COSTUME DESIGN

  • Beauty and the Beast
  • Darkest Hour
  • Phantom Thread (1)
  • The Shape of Water
  • Victoria & Abdul (2)

DIRECTING

  • Dunkirk
  • Get Out
  • Lady Bird (1)
  • Phantom Thread
  • The Shape of Water (2)

DOCUMENTARY (FEATURE)

  • Abacus: Small Enough to Jail
  • Faces Places (2)
  • Icarus (1)
  • Lost Men in Aleppo
  • Strong Island

DOCUMENTARY (SHORT SUBJECT)

  • Edith+Eddie
  • Heaven Is a Traffic Jame on the 405
  • Heroin(e) (1)
  • Knife Skills
  • Traffic Stop (2)

FILM EDITING

  • Baby Driver (1)
  • Dunkirk
  • I, Tonya
  • The Shape of Water (2)
  • Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

  • A Fantastic Woman (1)
  • The Insult
  • Loveless
  • On Body and Soul (2)
  • The Square

MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING

  • Darkest Hour (2)
  • Victoria & Abdul (1)
  • Wonder

MUSIC (ORIGINAL SCORE)

  • Dunkirk
  • Phantom Thread (2)
  • The Shape of Water (1)
  • Star Wars: The Last Jedi
  • Three Billboards outside Ebbing Missouri

MUSIC (ORIGINAL SONG)

  • Mighty River
  • Mystery of Love
  • Remember Me (2)
  • Stand Up For Something
  • This is Me (1)

PRODUCTION DESIGN

  • Beauty and the Beast
  • Blade Runner 2049
  • Darkest Hour (2)
  • Dunkirk
  • The Shape of Water (1)

SHORT FILM (ANIMATED)

  • Dear Basketball
  • Garden Party (1)
  • Lou
  • Negative Space (2)
  • Revolting Rhymes

SHORT FILM (LIVE ACTION)

  • DeKalb Elementary (2)
  • The Eleven O’Clock
  • My Nephew Emmett (1)
  • The Silent Child
  • Watu Wote/All of Us

SOUND EDITING

  • Baby Driver (1)
  • Blade Runner 2049
  • Dunkirk (2)
  • The Shape of Water
  • Star Wars: The Last Jedi

SOUND MIXING

  • Baby Driver
  • Blade Runner 2049
  • Dunkirk (1)
  • The Shape of Water (2)
  • Star Wars: The Last Jedi

VISUAL EFFECTS

  • Blade Runner 2049 (2)
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
  • Kong: Skull Island
  • Star Wars: The Last Jedi
  • War for the Planet of the Apes (1)

WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY)

  • Call Me by Your Name (1)
  • The Disaster Artist
  • Logan
  • Molly’s Game
  • Mudbound (2)

WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY)

  • The Big Sick
  • Get Out
  • Lady Bird (1)
  • The Shape of Water (2)
  • Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri

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Contemporary Lessons from La Serenissima’s Eastern Borders

14 Tuesday Feb 2017

Posted by That Ginger, Anna in history, School and Work

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

columbia, history, italian academy, italian history, italiano, manhattan, New York City, NYC, storia, that ginger anna, thatgingeranna, venetian, venetian history, venezia, venice

First, Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! I hope you guy have a lovely day with someone you love and if not, drink some wine and eat some food and it’ll feel the same! 🙂

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Second, if you want to work with me, I’ve added a new contact page to my blog with links to my CV and resume. Check it out and let’s collaborate!

Anyway, last night I went to another lecture (read about the first one here) at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia. This one consisted of 4 speakers who talked about various topics including architecture, music, economy, and religion as it related to the Venetocracy or period of Venetian rule in what is today modern Greece and Eastern Europe. East of Venice: La Serenissima as seen from its eastern frontiers showcased scholarship from Patricia Fortini Brown, Larry Wolff, Molly Greene, and Daphne Lappa.img_3170

Patricia Fortini Brown spoke about policies and ideas that influenced Venetian defensive architecture in its colonies. This presentation was fascinating because while I have obviously seen copious amounts of Venetian architecture in my travels, one seldom things about the civic ideals which influenced it (at least I don’t). Brown points to the idea of Munire et Onare or the dual concept of protection and ornamentation. She also related her work to scholarship presented in Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference and The Kings Two Bodies. She mentioned that Venice governed in its eastern (SN: I ALWAYS WANT TO CAPITALIZE DIRECTIONS) colonies by using local elites as middlemen between the Venetian state and the local population. This was a common practice for all successful empires, including Venice. She also explained that the ornamentation of defensive structures was often tripartite: it featured the Doge, St. Mark, and God the Father and could either be directed inward or outward-conveying different ideas of civic identity in each case.

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The crowned lion and archways were mentioned in her presentation as well.

Gates and fortresses were the most commonly built structures in the colonies and they focused on points of egress and ingress. A few interesting things I learned from this presentation: the longest continuous siege in history occurred between Venice and the Ottomans (21 years), Corfu remained a Venetian colony until the Republic itself collapsed in 1797 (knew about this but forgot), and in 1567 Venice finished building an 11-point star fortress with each point being named after a noble family.

 

The second speaker was Larry Wolff. His presentation covered the presence of Ottoman subjects in Venetian and European opera, as subjects of both tragedy and comedy. He presented samples of the music which was a really nice touch, but the presentation seemed rushed. He did introduce a fascinating concept: the triplex confinium or the axis between Venice, Austria, and the Ottoman empire. This was especially interesting to me because a large part of my research focused on the cultural influence of Viennese nobility on Venetian economic patterns. I am ignorant of art and music history in all capacities so I definitely learned the most from this presentation. He explained that the first opera about a Turkish subject emerged in 1689 but references to Turks were completely erased in the 1800s. I think this is an especially interesting topic because it provides a way to connect contemporary issues to the past. The portrayal of Ottoman subjects in Venice could easily be extrapolated to contemporary portrayals of Muslims in Europe today. There is definitely room for some fascinating comparative scholarship (he just wrote a book so maybe he talks about it?)! Something else that was especially intriguing was the fact that Naples seems to have been a more popular cultural center than Venice. Once of the operas he spoke about debuted in Naples in 1820 and then in Venice in 1822 with a revised ending (counter-factual, as he said). When one considers the north-south divide in contemporary Italy and the idea of Italian culture as it relates to this divide, one wonders how this divide affected opera and music history on the peninsula. Something else for me to look into!

The third presentation was the most interesting to me and connected most directly to my own past research, although I was disappointed because Molly Greene didn’t include any information about the Jewish influence on the Venetian-Ottoman economic relationship. This was especially surprising because she directly addressed the fact that many Venetian subjects in the Ottoman empire were Cretans-and there has been a lasting community of Jews on Crete which I believe played an important economic role as intercessors between Venice and the Ottomans. She did introduce an idea that I hadn’t ever heard about: the economic network between Alexandria, Istanbul and Venice. I have studied Venetian trade with the Levant, but didn’t ever consider the centrality of Alexandria in its economic history. I am also interested to know how Jerusalem factored into this economic network, if at all. She also introduced something I had absolutely no clue about-the fact that the majority of Venetians in the Ottoman empire were Greek and the fact that Greek merchants ran the Fondaco de Turchi in Venice! Her first book, A Shared World: Christians and Muslims in the Early Modern Mediterranean covers the transition from Venetian to Ottoman rule on Crete so I definitely want to check it out and see if there is any mention of Jewish economic networks on the island or in either of the metropoles. She also mentioned the Venetian retreat from maritime trade, which connected directly the last chapter of my thesis. This is also a great place to connect Larry Wolff’s triplex confinium to changes in Venetian economic patterns because Venetian nobles looked to Vienna for ways to move away from the stato da mar.

Finally, Daphne Lappa presented part of her work on borderland religious practices and the blending of Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholicism in Corfu. This presentation was by far the best organized. She presented the time period, location, and subject clearly and she used primary sources (both textual and artistic) as evidence of her thesis. Again, I think this topic also opens up new areas to be explored relating to Judaism. She explicitly stated that Orthodox practices influenced Roman Catholics and vice versa. It would be interesting to see what the relationship was between Roman Catholics, Orthodox believers, and Jews in Venice’s eastern colonies. I think the most fascinating aspect of this presentation was the idea of double churches, or churches built for Orthodox and Roman Catholics to worship simultaneously. Her presentation was also extremely interesting for me because I know scholars who study borderlands in the context of Texas-Mexico and I would bedsc_0245 interested to see how borderlands religion in Texas has been influenced, especially in relation to Protestantism. Another fascinating aspect of this presentation was the role of calendars in Orthodox and Roman Catholic division. Lappa explained that Roman Catholics celebrated Orthodox Easter and didn’t follow the calendar change that occurred in the Roman rite.

SN: One of the presenters also mentioned that on the Hapsburg-Ottoman border, Hungarian was spoken on both sides.

While Molly Greene’s scholarship connected more closely to my own than the others, each presenter taught me something I didn’t know and definitely helped me expand and complicate my knowledge of Venetian history as it relates to the orient and occident. I think Venice proper was an economic and religious borderland in many capacities. As Muslims, Christians, and Jews worked and lived together in the city and its colonies, they created a unique economy and citizenry which helped forge a thousand-year-old empire. In the end, I think this topic is extremely relevant to our current time. Of course, history is cyclical. Not only can we explore the localisms of past European borderlands and adapt those lessons to our own southwestern borders, but Ottoman religious and economic relations with Europe are especially pertinent in contemporary times.

I don’t know when the next lecture is, but I’ll definitely keep you guys posted. I’ll be here learning more Venetian history!

 

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Contemporary European Identity, Music, and La Serenissima

02 Thursday Feb 2017

Posted by That Ginger, Anna in Commentary, history, School and Work

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Academia, carnegie hall, columbia, columbia university, europe, european identity, european union, euroscepticism, history, identity politics, italian, italian history, italian studies, italiano, jordi savall, la serenissima, manhattan, music history, New York City, NYC, political history, political identity, politics, populism, storia, venezia, venice

Tonight, I went to a roundtable discussion entitled “La Serenissima: The Millenarian Venice” at The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University. The speaker was Jordi Savall, a Catalan musician who has been recording, performing, writing, speaking and otherwise informing the world about ancient, medieval, renaissance, and baroque music (from both the orient and occident) for over 50 years. img_3167
I originally thought to attend the lecture because I have studied Venetian political history but know very little about music from Venice. I (very nervously and poorly) presented a paper at a conference in West, Texas in 2012 and was exposed to some Medieval Spanish music there, but I otherwise have no experience with music history (you can peep that paper on my LinkedIn profile). To my pleasant surprise, Savall went beyond the discussion of music history and touched on the two things I am most passionate about: Jewish history in Venice and European cultural identity.
Savall is in New York to perform as part of a Carnegie Hall series about Venice. He has constructed a 1 hour and 50 minute (whittled down from 4+ hours) performance which covers Venetian music history. The auditory history begins in 828 when Venice was only a cub in the Adriatic and ends in 1797 when Napoleon slaughtered the sick lion.

Savall specifically mentioned the importance of Sephardic Jews to the commercial history of Venice and the first of two pieces he played was a Sephardic melody: Por Que Llorax Blanca Nina. He explained that the piece had been played from the Expulsion in the 15th century to World War II. He brought up a great point about radio which plays into Benedict Anderson‘s ideas about shared language and print culture. Up until the 1920s and 1930s music was very much a community affair. Not only was it passed down from generation to generation orally, it also had to be played by members of the community. It could never be replicated exactly and it was not a shared experience outside of the memory of those who witnessed the live performance (still true to an extent hence the unique experience of concerts). With the invention and permeation of radio and recording, people were then able to share a common experience and simultaneously ingest audio content while also interpreting it differently. People were able to do this with vernacular language and print much earlier, but it wasn’t until the 1920s or 30s that people were able to have this shared auditory experience (then shared and simultaneous visual experiences with cinema+TV). Similar to the evolution of print culture and its relation to modes of power, Savall also touched on the idea of folk music and its relationship to the two main sources of power in European history: the king’s court and the Church. I’m interested to look into this more and it definitely reinvigorated my curiosity about ways in which European identity were and are created. While his discussion of Sephardic Jewish music in the Venetian diaspora was especially fascinating, he also discussed something much more contemporary that has always intrigued me: cultural preservation and European identity.

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I have always thought that regionalism, separatism, and local governance are the best ways to preserve cultures, heritages, and languages. Savall, as a proud Catalan, voiced a different belief. He thinks that unique cultures and heritages should be preserved, but he does not see that as a separating factor between Europeans. He specifically stated that he is not only Catalan but also a citizen of Europe. He says he speaks Spanish, but talks to his friends and reads in Catalan, yet feels at home in London, Venice, and all of the other cities in Europe. This brings up something at the heart of my second Masters essay: the hierarchy of one’s cultural and political identities. He didn’t talk about referendums or separatism at all, but he made it clear that he does support European unity while maintaining a strong Catalan identity-with music being the meeting place of those identities. This expands and adds nuance to a model I used for my essay. Here is an excerpt:
“Sébastien Dubé and Raùl Magni-Berton provide a theory which directly correlates  one’s income and national GDP to Euroscepticism. Their model outlines four specific differences in European political identity. The first model is poor people living in poor EU member states, the second is poor people living in rich EU member states, the third is rich people living in rich EU member states, and the last is rich people living in poor EU member states. In general, each of these socio-economic situations produces a different hierarchy of transnational, national, and regional identities. Poor individuals living in poor states often elevate their religious identity above that of the nation, assuming the pre-nationalist identity that Anderson outlined above. Poor individuals living in rich countries are more likely to identity with their particular culture or nation. Rich people living in poor countries often elevate their transnational identity above their national or cultural identity, valuing diversity above most other qualities. While rich people living in rich countries are often concerned with improving their aesthetic environment, maintaining their material well-being, as well as pride in their nation and personal economic status. Dubé and Magni-Berton conclude that wealth, and in turn European identity, denotes support of deeper EU integration while those poorer citizens that possess a strong national and cultural identity are often against EU expansion.”

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I don’t necessarily think Savall’s opinions contradict the above model (I don’t know how his ideas of European integration have changed over time), but he did introduce some intricacies which I haven’t considered. In my work, I presented art and entertainment (as it was presented to me) as tools used to build national and transnational identity. There is a wonderful book called Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice which touches on the importance of entertainment and placation of the public as a tool to create shared experiences among citizens of all classes, build a singular identity, and mold people in to allowing the state to govern them. Modes of entertainment owned and operated by elite forces (the king, the Church, wealthy European politicians, etc.) have been used as tools to sculpt the political identity of the masses since Ancient times, but I have never thought about how folk music (and music created and performed on the local or regional level) helps to shape and bolster one’s political identity. I am very intrigued to know how other folk musicians from different regions and socio-economic backgrounds think of their music in relation to European integration. I will do further research, but I am also very happy to see ideas of cultural preservation come to the forefront, without some of the xenophobic ideas that often accompany that conversation. We can and should work together to help preserve the unique music, language, art, culture, and history that we each represent in the modern world. As Stavall said, cultural conservation does not have to denote separation!

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SN: The theme for the 2016-2017 year at The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America is “Conservation and preservation of heritage and the contemporary destruction of art and architecture”. The brochure presents one particular scholar and her work, which seem to tie in directly to my ideas about cultural identity and transnationalism: “Public indifference to the loss of cultural heritage and identity” by Roberta De Monticelli. I have yet to read her work (as I just learned of it this evening), but I would argue that the public (generational intricacies are super important here) is actually not indifferent to the loss of cultural heritage and identity at all. In fact, I think a majority of people who support Eurosceptic and populist political movements (beyond economics) are doing so in a desperate attempt to reclaim both national and regional cultural heritage and identity. Now, finding a singular definition of said cultural heritage and identity to “reclaim” and from whom to “reclaim” it is where the difficultly arises (which often manifests as fear, exclusion, xenophobia, racism etc.). Rather than addressing the root cause of these fears, many just scream “Fascist” or “Nazi” and go on about stripping away or militantly reshaping those very identities people are so scared of losing. I think the preservation of cultural heritage may be a great way to change some of the sentiments which lead to the support of populist and Eurosceptic political movements (againnn, just to be clear that I don’t have my head in the sand: I do think economics trumps cultural heritage and without economic changes people are going to continue to reject transnationalism). When national and transnational governments fund the protection and preservation of these local identities, they are showing citizens that in the face of globalization and economic/social/religious/linguistic integration, their personal identity matters to the success and heritage of the European Union. And we all know people just want to matter!
Anyway, tonight was FREAKING AMAZING and I can’t wait for the next discussion on the 13th: “East of Venice: La Serenissima as seen from its Eastern frontiers“! One of the criticisms of my second Masters essay was that I did not adequately situate Italy between the orient and the occident. I wasn’t thinking about this when I wrote the paper as I’ve never read any scholarship touching on Venetian history from the perspective of the East (beyond my short foray into Jewish merchants as middlemen between the Ottomans and Venetian Republic), so I am stoked to finally learn some stuff about that! Come back and join me then.

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Un Duplice Omicidio: Murder, Politics, and Immigration in the Bronx

12 Saturday Nov 2016

Posted by That Ginger, Anna in history

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Tags

american history, bronx, fascism, fascismo, history, immigration, italian american, italian history, italiano, labor history, little italy, manhattan, New York City, NYC, political history, political identity, politics, social history, storia

Early one Monday morning, less than half a mile from his apartment, a 38-year-old Army veteran named Joseph is stabbed to death in the Bronx. A 22-year-old man, identified as Nicholas, comes to his rescue and is stabbed 8 times in the back. They were both part of a group which had been invited by the American Legion to march in the annual Memorial Day parade downtown. All of this takes place within yards of one of the oldest hospitals in New York City, yet they both perish. Their deaths make it into the New York Times and a world-renowned attorney agrees to defend their accused murderers. He succeeds and no one is ever imprisoned for their deaths. Their funerals draw 10,000 mourners and newspapers as far as Texas and Kentucky publish their obituaries…

So, Anna, here we go again with those weeks-long gaps in writing. Why you’re absolutely right, but I have a good excuse this time: I was researching for this next piece. Now, this one is not going to be an opinion piece and there is going to be no resolution at the end, but if you are interested in history, then I think this might grab your attention. Also, it does have a tangential connection to Donald Trump (just hold your horses-it isn’t commentary on current politics…that’s for another time) and there will be lots of pictures and a few mysteries! Now, let’s get down to it.

Back in the Spring of 2015 I took a required class at NYU and the final assignment was a primary source research paper. Well, if you’ll remember, even my first M.A. thesis was based mostly on secondary sources. So, I had very little experience working with primary sources, outside of some transcription I did for a professor one year. For this paper, I went to two research libraries and a courthouse archive here in the Bronx. The result was a 20+ page primary source research paper about two murders in the Bronx and Italian political history in New York City. A few posts ago I mentioned that I “spider-webbed” a lot of my work in graduate school so that I could expand upon the same topic and do more research on one subject. That semester it was Fascism. I was also enrolled in a Nazi Germany/Fascist Italy dual-taught course. Instead of working on two separate things I wrote this seminar paper for one course and a historiography over a similar topic for the Fascism+Nazism class. I am terrible at writing historiographies so that one didn’t turn out great, but my seminar paper was much better. I got a B on the paper and I was really upset about it, but a few months later a click-bait article from BoingBoing about Donald Trump’s dad being arrested as part of a KKK brawl came across my Facebook timeline.boing-boing I didn’t plan to click, but then I saw the funeral announcement for the two men who were murdered! I clicked and realized their deaths had been a much bigger deal than I initially thought and I also picked up on some inconsistencies from my paper.

I’m not going to summarize 20 pages of writing in this blog, I just want to talk about the two guys who were murdered. If you want to know more about the Italian diaspora just read this. I was researching Fascism in the Italian-American communities in NYC and how Italian’s organized their Fascist groups abroad. In Italian Fascist Activities in North America by Gaetano Salvemini, he mentions the case of two men who were murdered in the Bronx in 1927. Clarence freakin’ Darrow defended the men accused of their murders pro bono and got them off (here is his correspondence from the trial). Despite this, the murders were only discussed in a page or two and the discrepancies regarding the accused and the victims were never addressed. I have been researching for a year and a half now, on and off, and I have yet to find another book or historian who has delved into this case. I obviously can’t travel to Italy and I can’t go back in time to know what really happened, but I will present you with the evidence I’ve found. I have used ancestry.com, the Bronx Country Courthouse, familysearch.org, and a few archival websites in Italy.

Here is the profile I’ve put together of the two victims:

Michele Ambrosoli was born on 9 September 1906 in Rionero in Volture, Potenza, Italy.birth-record His father was a farmer named Giovanni Ambrosoli. He was born at #13 Via Processione. In my research, I found a Via Ambrosoli in Melfi, nearby. When you search the street on Google it’s called Via Michele Ambrosoli, but Google maps only lists it as Via Ambrosoli. I know the Fascist government renamed many streets in Italy, so it would be interesting to know if they named this street after this Michele Ambrosoli, when, and who took Michele off of Google maps and why.

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Also, Via Processione no longer exists in Rionero, but I know it existed before because other people traced their relatives to the same street on some genealogy blogs. I have searched and searched for an old map of Rionero with no success, but I will keep trying. Michele immigrated to the United States in July 1920 aboard the S.S.Patria. He was 14, traveled alone, gave no destination, and no relatives back in Italy. He was held by immigration at Ellis Island for 2 days and ultimately released on 2 August around 3:45 PM. Michele Ship.jpgI haven’t been able to track him any further until 7 years later when he is killed on the corner of 183rd and 3rd in the Bronx around 8 AM. He is then misidentified in every newspaper that reports on his death. The court records also misidentify him and the accused are tried for the death of Michele. The Fascists hold a funeral for him in the Bronx and 10,000 people attend. A new Fascist club was created in his honor in Brooklyn under the name Michele Ambrosoli.

While this information may seem trivial, we need to talk about naming and name changes. Initially, Michele Ambrosoli was identified by the New York Times as Nicola Amoroso, then Nicholas Amoruzo, Nicola, Amorosso, then Nicholas Amoruzo D’Ambrosoli. The Ambrosoli was only mentioned in one of the last stories about their funeral in Naples. His death certificate is listed on Ancestry under Michael Ramibrose. I have yet to figure out how or why he was identified as Nichola(s) Amoroso. A new Fascio was commemorated in his honor in Brooklyn and it was called Fascio Michele Ambrosoli, so the Italian community knew his real name. He was also listed as a Fascist martyr as both Michele Ambrosoli and Michele D’Ambrosoli. I am currently trying to get ahold of a funeral announcement from Mt. Carmel Church, but all evidence points to the fact that he was not going by an alias. I believe he lived in Brooklyn and was only visiting the Bronx, but I have no evidence so far. I don’t know where he worked, where he lived, if he ever traveled back to Italy, nothing. The list of Fascist martyrs says that he died trying to help a comrade who had been attacked by “subversives” and I can only assume that was the first victim that day: Giuseppe Carisi.

Now, for the other guy. I’ve had a LOT of success finding information about him. Similarly, his name is listed in various forms: His birth name is Giuseppe Carisi but he signed his name and is listed as George Carisi, Joseph Carisie, Joseph Carrisi, Joseph Carisy, etc.

Giuseppe Carisi was born on 10 February 1889 in Reggio Calabria, Italy. Pietro Carisi was his father. An unnumbered house on Via Santa Caterina is listed and Vittoria Mesiano is also listed on his birth certificate.

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I have been able to track him to a home at 124-126 Thompson street in Manhattan in 1910. He was boarding with a Carmelo (twenty years his senior) and Philomena Mesiano, who I can only assume were relatives of Vittoria from back in Calabria. Carlo was making watches in his home and Giuseppe said he was an operator at a coat shop.

652In 1913, Giuseppe moved to the Bronx and according to the 1920 census Carmelo and Giuseppe were living 500 feet from one another at 502 and 552 East 187th Street. Carlo now owned a jewelry store and Giuseppe was a tailor at a factory. Giuseppe was now living with his younger brother Pietro. As of 1918, he was working at Eclipse Cloth(es) Company on 328 Church Street (which now appears to be a Post Office). In 1890 this factory had 22 employees and is listed as specializing in foodstuffs, leather, and general merchandise. During World War I, Joseph (he was signing this name now) was drafted into the U.S. Army and sent to Fort Hancock, Georgia for six months.

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He became a naturalized citizen there. Upon his return from the Army, he applied for a passport in 1919 and traveled back and forth to Italy at least two times in the early 20s. It appears he intended to bring his family back to the United States.

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While his brother appears to have been here with him in 1920, his assets were probated in 1928 and all of his family is listed as resident aliens in Staiti, Calabria-including his brother Pietro Jr. I am unsure as of yet if he was able to bring his family back from Italy. Tragically, his father died just 18 days after he was killed. Giuseppe had over $2000 in assets which appear to have been given to his family, although it appears the legal proceedings took over a year to complete.

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One of the most interesting things to note is that Carmelo Mesiano moved from 124-126 Thomson street to 502 East 187th street sometime between 1910 and 1920. I do not know when or if any of these men became full-fledged Fascists, nor what that process entailed, but he was living next door to 506 East 187th street which was the headquarters for Fascists in this area and the location of the Fascio Mario Sozini. fascist-meeting-houseThis Fascio is featured in Carlo Tresca’s memoirs as an especially active Fascio and most of the accounts I read said that the men gathered there that morning before leaving to go to the parade. Perhaps Pietro joined the Fascists first, maybe Carmelo invited Giuseppe to join for economic or social reasons. Maybe Giuseppe wasn’t Fascist at all and just hung out with his friend and neighbors regularly. People shifting their identities is nothing new, so it is important that we realize these shifts in the political and national identity of immigrants have existed for centuries.

The two men were murdered here (the train station has since been demolished)

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One reason history is so fascinating to me is because we are often able to pin down the exact time and date certain things happened, but other than the occasional diary it is impossible to know how people felt. I will never know how a World War I veteran that died with a $2000 estate in 1927 became a Fascist. I will never know why a 14-year-old boy traveled to a new continent alone, became a Fascist, was murdered while trying to aide Giuseppe, was misidentified by the national media, and doesn’t show up in any extant records. But one thing is for sure, two men who were able to gain the attention of national and international media and drew 10,000 people to the Bronx for their funerals are worth talking a look at.

I think this case is incredibly relevant to current political discourse. Veterans, immigration, Fascism, identity, diaspora, allegiance, and the importance of documentation are all as important today as they were on Memorial Day 1927.

So, this is where I leave it for now. I will probably continue to research this for years to come and hopefully one day I will be able to visit Southern Italy armed with these records. I don’t know what I can do with all this stuff since I’m not in academia anymore, but I’d love to make a vlog of the significant locations, write a biography, or even a historical novel.

**I am in the process of ordering the two men’s death certificates (they are sequentially numbered which really helped with making sure I was researching the right guys) and will update this when/if I find out anything new!

Until next time, y’all!

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#40for40NYC : Closing out the Summer!

23 Wednesday Sep 2015

Posted by That Ginger, Anna in Personal and Fun

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#40for40NYC, 40 for 40 NYC, boogie down bronx, bronx, budget, budget travel, bx, cheap, college, culture, female friendly, female travel, film review, foodie, forty for forty nyc, fun, giglio, graduate school, harlem, irish, irish american, italian, italian american, italiano, manhattan, Metro North, movie reviews, mta, new york, New York City, NYC, pleasant avenue, san andreas movie, singles, southpaw, the bronx, tourism, tourist, trains, trainwreck, Travel, woman, woodlawn

So, as I wrote in the last installment, I have to extend this into the Fall because I unexpectedly ended up working two jobs and taking a class this summer, which meant I could not take any trips and I only had Sundays to do activities. Even so, I have done several more activities and have a few other things in the works, so we will get to 40 eventually! So far, there have been 4 posts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 in the city. I am over 20 things now: I went to Central Park, Battery Park, Times Square, the Puerto Rican parade, the Pride parade, Tuff City Tattoos, Little Italy, the 9/11 Memorial, the New York Botanical Gardens, Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, the Waldorf Astoria, Coney Island, Galanga Thai, Social, Lille’s, Uva, Junior’s Bakery, Emilia’s, saw some sailors during Fleet Week (even though I didn’t get to go to any events), saw Junior Brown at City Winery, Stone Street, Wave Hill gardens, Grand Central Station…

I have exhausted Arthur Avenue and Little Italy! I have been there several weekends because it is so convenient and there are so many reasonable places to eat. I’ve checked out: Emilia’s, Pasquale Rigaletto, Cafe Parisienne, Domenick’s, Artuso’s Pastry, Palombo Cafe, Bronx Beer Hall, and Blue Wave! Each of these places is worth taking a trip up to the Bronx. I still have a couple of restaurants that I need to visit (specifically, Zero Otto Nove), but I will update when I get to check them out. I am going to dedicate a whole post to the restaurants on Arthur Avenue because I don’t want to use too many restaurants as activities!

Since I last wrote, besides chillin’ on Arthur Ave, I went to my first Italian festival and visited Harlem for the first time, went to Wave Hill, went back to Coney Island, took a ride on Metro North, went to Little Ireland, and saw 3 movies!

The Italian festival and visit to Harlem was definitely the highlight. With just the cost of a metro ride to and from the Bronx and a few dollars on refreshments, I had an awesome day of fun and culture for $25!

The dancing of the giglio on Pleasant Avenue is definitely something to check out. It is hosted annually by the Giglio Society of East Harlem! According to Wikipedia the Giglio weighs three tons! It was so interesting. There was signing, eating, dancing, socializing, all in a suprisingly spiritual and prayerful environment. I thought the statue would be lifted and walked from its resting place to the Church of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel just once. Little did I know, it would be “danced” up and down the route many, many times, with each lift being dedicated to a certain person! It was such a fun thing to see and the mood was wonderful with people coming into the neighborhood that grew up there, but had since moved away. There are dozens of booths with games, coffee, drinks, Italian foods and desserts! Obviously, to keep it below $40 you’ll have to pay attention, but I got a small bag of pastries, a drink, and espresso, for around $15!

   
    
   
   

After the parade I went with a group to Patsy’s Pizzeria for a late lunch. It is a little costly if you go in and sit down and have a full meal, but there is a window out front where you can buy pizza by the slice for super cheap! Going to the parade and having a slice or two will give you an ENTIRE day of fun and a meal for around $25!

I work and live in the Bronx, so Wave Hill was kind of a cheat activity. I’ve been several times this summer. I have a friend that is a member, so I used their guest pass, but entry is only $8 on regular days!

It’s a gorgeous, historic location to watch the Hudson River, picnic, get some sun, look at some pretty flowers, and just relax in the Bronx! There is a cafe/restaurant, but I didn’t try it out. There is also a gift shop and the gardens also host numerous activities year around-which you can view on their site!

   
    
    
 I also returned to Coney Island ($10).

I took the train down, bought a drink and some chips at a bodega, got some sun on the beach and took the train back home. It is obviously INSANELY crowded during the summer, so this isn’t a great activity to do alone because you can’t swim if you have stuff to leave on the beach, but it was stilll nice to get outside and people watch!

  
Metro-North is also a bit of a cheat activity, but then again, if you like trains and scenic views (or if you have children that like trains), I highly suggest it. There is a station close to Wave Hill too! I believe rides are at most $10 each way (depending the time you get on the train and your ultimate destination), but it is definitely worth it. I am partial to the Hudson Line to Croton-Harmon. If you want to check this out, I suggest going during the early afternoon because there are peak hours and off peak hours (which fall between rush hours) and you are charged less during off peak times! Going along the Hudson River there are nice views of nature and architecture. I’ve gotten off at a few stations and think the Yonkers station is really neat! It is totally old school, with wooden benches, a waiting room-it’s like an old movie-and you are in Yonkers so you can walk to shops or restaurants and then hop back on the train into the city! The Harlem Line is also great-there is a station called Wingdale that lets you off at the abandoned State Hospital, which is a great piece of spooky architecture! So, for around $20 you can explore the suburbs of NYC or travel hours away and really get into nature!

  
I know one of my 40 activities was going to the movies and I’ve done it…times 3…but I don’t feel like any of the movies I saw were worth rave reviews. I saw San Andreas, Trainwreck, and Southpaw. I am NOT an action flick fan, but I thought I’d check out San Andreas because a friend wanted to see it. I laughed the ENTIRE movie-I’m lucky I live up here in NYC now, because people all freely make noise during the movie. Of course, The Rock was as hot as ever, but the supporting actresses were horrible and the story is SO unrealistic. I did like that Paul Giamatti was in the film. I have a soft spot for award winning actors that act in random movies for fun (and a pay check, haha)! 

*Spoiler Alert*

The part where the boat is able to go through sharp ass debris, speed over bodies and metal, go through a building, and then his daughter is unconcious for like half an hour after drowning and then magically comes back to life had me DYING! So 2/5 for effort and sexy Dwayne Johnson!

Trainwreck was meh too…sorry, not sorry…I was SO excited because I havevn’t seen a good comedy in forever, but I wasn’t impressed. I LOVED Bill Hader and his character-he was by far the best part-and I did like the other story lines with Lebron and the father, but I didn’t think the movie was very funny, at all…3/5 for casting/production budget!

Finally, I saw Southpaw. While this was the best of the three, it was still underwhelming and lackluster. Cinematography and casting were GREAT, but the writing and pacing were NO good. Rachel McAdams, 50 Cent, and Forrest Whitaker’s characters had like zero development even though they were major parts of the plot. It was also extremely predictable! If you’ve seen one boxing movie, you’ve seen this one.

*Spoiler Alert*

McAdams and the character Hoppy each had two or three scenes before they were killed off! I am so confused why you would have two characters that are supposed to have such important impacts on the main characaters of the film and really move the story foward, yet writers give like 5 minutes to develop said characters. Makes zero sense. The production was good, not excellent, but good. I did notice that it was produced by Chinese companies, which I haven’t seen before. That was interesting and did have an influence on the film (especially the fight scenes), but I would love to know why this particular film was a Chinese-Hollywood coproduction. 3/5  for casting and production once again.

I was really hoping to see a movie like Foxcatcher that would inspire a great review, but I didn’t. I have high hopes for Black Mass, so check back in a few weeks!

Lastly, I’ve been to Little Ireland in Woodlawn several times. There are tons of pubs and restaurants to check out and it is definitely a cultural experience. I thought there were no more native Irish communities in NYC (I thought they all disappeared last century), but I guess with the economic downturn in Ireland a lot of young Irish people have immigrated to Woodlawn. Accents and beer! An old lady also gave me a bunch of free Catholic swag when I was up there! Definitely worth a train and Uber ride north to see an old/new side of New York history!

   
   
I’ve started back to school, but I am back down to working 4 days a week, so I have some more time to explore. I am going to a big concert in October and am currently looking for 10 or 15 more activities! I will write another installment after my concert! Talk to you guys then!

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