Bill Giovinazzo 11/3/23 Bill Giovinazzo 11/3/23

Pineapple on your pizza, sure. Anchovies, no.

You want pineapple on your pizza? Sure, you could get that anywhere. But try asking for anchovies! Nowadays, you get anything on your pizza, from barbeque chicken to kimchi. What is happening to pizza?

Bill Giovinazzo 10/19/23 Bill Giovinazzo 10/19/23

Tony Bennette

This past July, we bade farewell to Tony Bennett, one of the all-time great crooners. Tony Bennett, an artist of whom Frank Sinatra said “is the best singer in the business.”

Bill Giovinazzo 10/9/23 Bill Giovinazzo 10/9/23

The Iconic, Columbus

Bill Giovinazzo 6/13/22 Bill Giovinazzo 6/13/22

Did Bambi Call his father on Father’s Day

Bill Giovinazzo 4/25/22 Bill Giovinazzo 4/25/22

The Godfather, The Offer, and Disinformation

Bill Giovinazzo 3/15/22 Bill Giovinazzo 3/15/22

Ukraine & Partisan Flowers

Bill Giovinazzo 9/6/21 Bill Giovinazzo 9/6/21

In Praise of Labor

Bill Giovinazzo 8/31/21 Bill Giovinazzo 8/31/21

Canto 1: Midway On The Journey

Midway upon the journey of our life / I found myself within a forest dark / For the straightforward pathway had been lost. These first three lines to The Divine Comedy are so well known that even many who have never read it know them. However, I have discovered that the deeper meaning of things that are well known often escapes us. Such is the case with these opening lines.

In one Dante class, the students who were in their late teens and early twenties wrote these lines off as Dante having a midlife crisis without much further consideration. There it was, a tidy little package all wrapped and labeled. Let’s move on to the good stuff of seeing people tortured in hell. I must admit that the first time I read The Divine Comedy, I did the same thing, missing the entire setup to the poem. I did not repeat the error in subsequent readings later in life.

Bill Giovinazzo 8/23/21 Bill Giovinazzo 8/23/21

100 Days of Dante

This September 14th will be the seven-hundredth anniversary of the death of the greatest poet of western literature, Dante Alighieri.

This claim of Dante’s position in literature, is more than the assertions of an Italophile. Eric Auerbach, the author of Mimesis, said that there is Dante and then all others. Michael Dirda notes that in the early part of the twentieth century, “one important writer after another argues strongly for Dante – even above Shakespeare – as the central figure of European literature, the linchpin of the great classical and Christian tradition of learning and culture.” For Italians, Italian-Americans, and Italophiles Dante bears even greater importance than the rest of the Western World.

Italianità