The earthquake that struck the Messina Straits on December 28, 1908, was Europe’s most powerful catastrophe in modern times. It claimed the lives of approximately 200,000 people, including some American diplomats and tourists. The Great Earthquake: America Comes to Messinas Rescue
provides important insight into many aspects of the calamity and its subsequent impact. It also lends us some perspective on more recent natural disasters, such as the Indonesian tsunami of 2004 Historian Salvatore LaGumina describes the remarkable responses of various nations and people that was an impressive display of cooperation and brotherhood among competing nations. This study constitutes the first comprehensive volume that specifically explores the extensive and admirable role played by the United States in aiding Italy in the wake of the distressful time. It is an important book that should be of interest to the general public and to people in many fields, including philanthropy, Italian American studies, military/naval history, Italian history, disaster studies, gilded age history, twentieth-century America.
I have been meeting too many quaquaraquà lately (especially the ones gravitating around public money) and I am tired of them to put it mildly. Here is how Sicilian writer Leonardo Sciascia in a famous passage of his novel The Day of the Owl
defines these parasites…
Mankind, and we fill our mouth saying that beautiful word made by the wind, I divide it into five categories: men, half men, wimps, and (with respect) buggers and then the quaquaraquà….very few men, few half men, and I would happily stop here as far as mankind is about… But no, you go deeper down, to the wimps, which are like toddlers believing they are grownups, monkeys imitating the adults… and even deeper down: the buggers, who are becoming an army….and at the end of it all the quaquaraquà: they should live like ducks in a puddle, since their life has no more meaning and expressivity of that one of ducks…
L’umanità, e ci riempiamo la bocca a dire umanità, bella parola piena di vento, la divido in cinque categorie: gli uomini, i mezz’uomini, gli ominicchi, i (con rispetto parlando) pigliainculo e i quaquaraquà. Pochissimi gli uomini; i mezz’uomini pochi, che mi contenterei l’umanità si fermasse ai mezz’uomini. E invece no, scende ancora più giù, agli ominicchi: che sono come i bambini che si credono grandi, scimmie che fanno le stesse mosse dei grandi. E ancora più in giù: i pigliainculo, che vanno diventando un esercito. E infine i quaquaraquà: che dovrebbero vivere con le anatre nelle pozzanghere, ché la loro vita non ha più senso e più espressione di quella delle anatre.
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A friend sent me an article about this video and I googled it… Here is the video. The band is from Palermo and is called Combostamastas. They just won a special prize for their message against the Mafia. The video is in Sicilian dialect (with subtitles in Italian). Bravi ragazzi!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb_0DcqcQ1c
Pino Maniaci has created a family business through his miniature version of CNN. The ‘longest news program in the world’, with its 150, 000 viewers, is a mini-broadcaster fighting against the local mafia, the Cosa Nostra…
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And this is the place where I come from…
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