Father's Day

It has been a year already since Dad passed away. In the year or two before his death he talked to me often about growing up in Brooklyn, New York and being an Italian teenager in the '50s. We laughed at pictures of him in a pompadour, He told me about working at his uncle's car lot, and about some of the girls that he dated, and places he used to go in Brooklyn. .

One time he and some friends built a boat, Apparently it was fairly elaborate with a nice little cabin.He mentioned a young lady he used to take out on the boat, wondering what had ever happened to her, and told how one of his fellow boat-builders rammed into a rock which tore a hole in the plywood and fiberglass hull and sunk the boat, ending all their nautical escapades.

He told me that they would go to Coney Island  and ride the Cyclone or the Wonder Wheel or take a girl on a ride through "The Tunnel of Laffs" or just hang out by the boardwalk when the weather was hot. Other summer days they would go to Jones Beach and body-surf in the waves. I wish I had taken notes!

Dad was an interesting guy, if I do say so myself. He was interested in Photography, Set Design, Modern Art, Hydroponic Gardening, Wind and Solar Power, just a whole bunch of things that most of his peers weren't thinking about in the '50s and early '60s in the city.

Happy father's day Dad. I miss you.

Learning Italian

I've been trying to learn Italian. Tapes and CD's bought at thrift stores and freeware and free resources from the internet, mostly. I'm trying to get to the point where I can really think in Italian. to that end  I have written a new poem in Italian as well as deconstructed a poem that I wrote many years ago, and instead of translate it, rewrite it in Italian. Here are my attempt:s:


Molto Bene
da Torre DeVito

"Molto bene", ha detto Dio,
"Molto bene", quando ha finito
E tutte le sue creazioni
Sono molto buoni
E tu, piccolo che adoro
Sono un capolavoro!

In inglese:

Molto Bene
by Torre DeVito

"Very good," said God,
"Very good!" when He finished
And all his creations
They are very good
And you, little one that I adore
You are a masterpiece!



Arbusto Pino
di Torre DeVito

C'è stato un tempo, dopo una storia di attenzione,
Abbiamo parlato dei volumi interi con ogni parola
E le nostre conversazioni erano come vaste foreste
Quando ogni sfumatura è stata una grande sequoia.


Quando è successo? Gli insulti iniziato
Incenerire il nostro dialogo, divorando
Verbi e aggettivi in fiamme!Il grande incendio ha smesso di bruciare a lungo
Trasformato in brace e cenere alla fine, ma ...


Quelli che restano sono i seguenti:
Un groviglio di erbacce, luoghi di sabbia,
E un deserto di crescita povero albero.
Per l'osservatore casuale le cicatrici sono oscurati:
Una nuova vita è meglio di ceneri fredde


Ma in questo momento arbusto pino emerso
Quando le sequoie una volta erano potenti.

I don't know if the gramar is very good, but it's Italian.

Rabbit Punches

Besides the chickens, we also have rabbits. I tried to get two does (females) and a buck (male) for breeding purposes. I ended up with two bucks and a doe. One of the bucks is sweet and gentle, and loves water, in fact he drinks it as I fill his bowl by turning his head sideways and putting his mouth in the stream. I named him Slurpee for obvious reasons. The doe is a pretty nice doe too, though she hasn't had much luck kindling (having little bunnies) her first kindle died, and her second mating resulted in a false pregnancy. The third member of the menagerie is a little demon of a buck that lies to box at my hands and bite me. I call him "Tyson" after Mike Tyson. I am contemplating rabbit cacciatore.

People often say rabbit tastes like chicken. I don't think so. The texture is a bit reminicent of chicken dark meat: thighs or legs, but it has its own taste: mild, suckulent,  delicious!


Rabbit Cacciatore Recipe:

One 2 1/4 lb rabbit, cut into 6 to 8 pieces
Salt and freshly ground pepper
4 Tbsp fresh basil leaves
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 chopped medium onion
4 cloves garlic, quartered
1 cup sliced mushrooms
1 teaspoon fresh rosemary leaves
3 cups of chopped, very ripe tomatoes (or canned plum tomatoes)
2 red bell peppers, seeded, cut into 1-inch cubes
1 can of whole black olives, pitted

Salt and pepper the rabbit pieces, rub with the basil leaves, brown in olive oil in a large skillet, Cook for 2-3 minutes on one side until lightly browned, then turn the pieces and brown on the other side for a minute or two more. Remove the rabbit pieces to a dish to set aside. Reduce heat to medium. Add onions to the pan, cook for 1 minute. Then add garlic, bell pepper, and mushrooms, cook for a couple minutes more. Add the rosemary and the remaining basil. Rinse, drain and quarter the olives and add them to the pan. Add the rabbit back into the pan along with the olives. Cover with chopped tomatoes. Reduce heat to medium low; cover the pan and cook for 35 minutes. Increase heat to high and cook until the liquid has reduced by half.

Tyson, you'd better watch out! Revenge might be delicious served warm, and it's Italian!

Torre Catch-a-Chicken

We have chickens! But the darn things aren't laying eggs. There are five hens and a rooster. The rooster is a wyandotte, and the hens are red sex-links (they were bred in a cross producing red females) I'm feeding them laying crumbles, some corn for scratch and supplementing with oyster shells. I leave a light on in the chicken house, and have golf balls and fake eggs in the nesting boxes. If I let them out they follow me around. They come when I call. They seen happy, but I didn't get them as pets! I talk to them, nicely. Even when I threaten to cacciatore them I use a soft tone, and they look at me with their heads cocked making clucking noises. They have pea sized brains, and they often look at my feet as if they've never seen them before and wonder if they might not be edible.

In the meantime I guess I'll have to eat something else for breakfast, maybe I'll have some Farina. According to the OED Farina (fah-ree-nuh) is a noun meaning:
1 flour or meal made of cereal grains, nuts, or starchy roots.
2 (archaic) a powdery substance.
And the source is British, from the latin for grain.

Bull Shtuff. Farina means flour in Italian, and Farina (as a breakfast) came from Italy. In America it is mostly called Cream of wheat.

Here is a recipe "Per la Vostra Salute!" (To Your Health)
2 cups low-fat milk
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup farina (not instant)

Bring the milk and ¼ teaspoon salt to a boil in a small saucepan. Whisk in the farina. Reduce heat and simmer, whisking occasionally, until thickened, 2 to 3 minutes.

Farina, it's Italian!

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Update on the Chickens, We lost a hen a few months ago, and we bought 6 Cochin Hens that will begin laying in the fall, and we get an average of 2 eggs a day right now.


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This just in... black snakes were stealing our eggs, and the hot weather thwarted them. I caught one trying to eat a golf ball. We put golf-balls in the nest to induce the hens to lay, and apparently the heat wave warmed the golf balls up enough to confuse the snakes. I killed the one snake I found with the golf ball stuck in his mouth, I watched him trying to get it back up, but the curve of his teeth prevented him from getting it out, he just couldn't un-hinge his jaw enough. Perhaps he was just re-positioning for another swallow,  but it didn't look like it would end well for him, and a quick death seemed only humane. He was a black snack that I would gladly have relocated, so I felt bad. The next day two other golf balls were gone, and the egg production is now 3 to 4 eggs a day.

My Italian Valentine

Saint Valentine was Italian, well, actually there are several possible candidates for the historical figure that became Saint Valentine, and all of them are Italian. Little is known about the saint other than that he was martyred on February 14.  In fact, the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre seems more likely an event to be associated with any candidate for the real Saint Valentine than would this holiday of cards and candy, with the exception of one account, that has Valentine martyred for performing marriage ceremonies when he was not supposed to be performing any Christian ceremonies. That has something to do with romance, right?

Cupid is Italian, I mean our cupid, the chubby little baby with wings. The Greek Eros was a slender youth, but the Romans sculpted him chubbier, in the renaissance he somehow became a Putto (what we incorrectly call a cherub) a male baby, sometimes with wings, but always carrying his bow and those insidious bolts of desire.

Though Punxsutawney Phil sounds like an Italian gangster the closest thing Italians have to groundhogs day is a proverb that goes "Se San Paol Pe ciar e la Ceriola sciira, De Pinverna no g'o pii paiira Milan" which means "If St Paul('s day) be clear and Candlemas cloudy, we have no more cause to be afraid of winter." (Candelmas is Feb2). This is a pretty obscure proverb, however. Most Italians are more familiar with April 4th as the day of weather prognostication. Another old saying goes "Quattro aprilante, giorni quaranta" or "Quattro aprilante, quaranta dì durant" literally "April 4, 40 days", meaning whatever the weather is like on April 4th it will be like for the next 40 days.

This February has 29 days, leap-year day is an unlucky day in Italian tradition. If a baby is born on Leap Year Day it is said that either the child or the mother will be dead within the year. OK, so maybe that was gloomy, but hey, it's Italian.

An Urban I-talian in Rural North Cackalacky

Karen and I moved into Dad's house in Bear Creek North Carolina in November, but the reality of it is just begining to sink in. I finished growing up in rural New York, so I realy wasn't expecting the big culture shock that is part of every day life here. I went to the small general store in the near-by town of Goldston the other day, where I introduced myself to a fellow shopper, with whom I had struck up a conversation about local amenities. The first time I said my name I could see the gears turning behind the poor fellows eyeballs, so I repeated myself, and through some cultural filter my new aquaintence latched onto "Troy" (a common occurrence in North Carolina) and paired it with a phrase that almost made me laugh out loud. "Ye'r not from arround here, are you Troy?" he asked in a genial way (no, I didn't hear distant Banjos, I'm sure he didn't mean anything by it).

A few minutes later he introduced me to his wife, forgetting the "Troy" he introduced in this fashion: "This here's Danny, he's an I-talian fellow from Neew York" (the "New had an extra long "ew" to it). I understood the "Danny" thing, people hear my last name and associate me with Danny DeVito. Taking no offence I steered him back to "Troy" and found out where I could buy some chickens, and the best place to get Rabbit food and laying crumbles, and all about "The Devils Tramping Grounds" which were in Bear Creek, on the other end of 902 from my house. All-in-all he was very friendly and helpful, but I parted from his company with the distinct impression that he had viewed me as a rare and exotic creature, an oddity of nature that he had to point out to his wife. Don't get too close, honey, he seems friendly, but he might bite!

As to the Devils Tramping Grounds, tradition says that it is a patch of ground in the woods of Bear Creek where plants will not grow within a circular path supposedly tramped down by the devil as he paces arround plotting evil against humanity. Supposedly nothing left inside the circle is there the next morning, and no-one can remain there overnight, though there is much evidence to the contrary since the stories surfaced in the 1930s.

This is oddly reminiscent of a site in Italy not far from the town of Piedimonte Matese where my father's maternal grandfather came from. The name of the place is "Passeggiata Del Diavolo" which translates to "The Devil's Walk" or "The Devil's Footprints". The area is volcanic, and there is a set of footprints in volcanic rock. People used to believe that the devil left them there as he paced or danced around on the lava, but scientists now believe ancient humans left their footprints in ash as they fled the volcano.

So, calling me Troy or Danny, that's sooo North Cackalacky, but imagining the Devil's been pacing arround in your back yard, that's either North Carolinian, or it's I-talian.

Felice Gravy Dad!

Christmas is coming, and soon my wife Karen will be making "Italian Gravy" for the lasagna we will have on Christmas Day.... If she starts with fresh Tomatoes she will first peel them using the method my father taught her, dropping them into boiling water, draining the water and plunging them into an ice bath so that the skin splits and peels away easily, but since this is December she will probably start with canned Plum tomatoes from San Marzano. Either way she will use my mother's version of my Grandmother's recipe for "Gravy" (Tomato Sauce). The main difference between my Mother's version of gravy and my Grandmother's was that mom used a big fatty piece of chuck steak for the meat where "Nana" would use either her Meatballs or Braciola (lean beef, pounded thin and filled with rasins, garlic and pignolli (pine nuts); rolled and tied then browned to seal in all the goodness; and then simmered in a big pot of gravy all day long.) or pork any of these would work for the meat ingredient but usually Nana used all three.

After my mom died, making tomato sauce was like therapy for Karen, and our house would often be filled with the smell of it, and it transported me back to the days of my childhood. The first smell that this wonderful task would emit was that of olive oil and garlic warming in a skillet Karen's version of the task meant cutting the chuck steak up into pieces and dividing out the fat, which che would still brown in the aforementioned skillet with the lean meat, and then she would simmer both in the sauce for several hours before removing the fat and discarding it.