If you’ve been following my escapades so far, it probably won’t surprise you to learn that my impressive record of failures in reconnecting with my ancestry only made me want to do it more. But I did realize I’d need…
Tag: San Demetrio Corone
The family was getting a little ragged around the edges after a full afternoon of clueless window-shopping for relatives. Now, we pulled up in front of a large three story house in San Demetrio Corone, and the owner came out…
With confidence in the full, beautiful day ahead of us, we hit the road at 9:30am. Of course, on the way to the place that was sort of on the way to our destination, we had to make a stop—it…
“We left at 9:30 this morning for THE TRIP to Macchia Albanese.” Those words are from my travel diary of 21 April, 1998. We hadn’t been back to Italy or any part of Europe in well over a decade, confining our…
After the sobering experience of coming so close to seeing what Macchia was like, I knew we needed to know more stuff: more about the area, more of the Italian language and more about my actual family. More about the…
With a couple of clicks of the mouse and a decent internet connection you can find nearly anyplace on earth. But that wasn’t true in the early 1980s. Trying to find Macchia Albanese—the town I had reason to believe was…
When my great-grandmother died in 1978, I was heartbroken. Even at the age of 92, the woman I called Nanny had remained formidable, sharp as the proverbial tack—a character, people always said. I missed her and I had to face…
I was born in the United States, second generation Italian-American on my mother’s side and third generation on my father’s side. I didn’t realize until much later, though, that I was not only an American citizen, but a citizen of…