A Pilgrim's Story

 It was a brutal Atlantic Ocean crossing; bad weather almost every day for two weeks it took for the crossing. Our ship was the Italian Cruise Liner, Saturnia.  The stormy sea was so bad that one day many of the dishes in the ship's kitchen were thrown down and broken.  We were all sea sick.  It was the first time we had seen the ocean and the first time on a ship.  By the time we arrived in New York Harbor, I could not remember getting off the ship.  We headed straight for the train station that would take us to Los Angeles; with a stop to change trains in Chicago.  The entire train trip to Los Angeles took three days.  The food they gave us on the train was unfamiliar to us so we ate sparsely.  We had never seen mustard, for instance.  In all, we were in transit for 18 days.

A typical overcast Southern California sky appeared as we approached Los Angeles;  I had never seen such a sky.  Where we were from in the north central mountains of  Sicily, it was either foggy or sunny.  Upon arriving at Union Station in Los Angeles on March 18, 1956, we were met by my father's sister, our sponsor,  and another Italian-American couple of whom my mother knew, since the woman had lived in my hometown of Geraci Siculo for part of her life, even though she was born in New York. We got into my aunt's 1946 DeSoto and headed to our rented duplex in the Leimert Park section of Los Angeles.

I knew not a word of English.  Although I was 12 years old, Angeles Mesa grammar school in Los Angeles where I enrolled, put me in the 5th Grade.  I was the only foreign student in the entire school.  My 5th grade teacher, Mr. Fox, was a wonderful man.  He just left me alone at the back of the class.  This was actually a brilliant move.  I learned how to speak English from listening and playing with my classmates.  They treated me wonderfully. Within six months I was speaking English fluently.  By the fall of the same year and the start of a new school year my parents enrolled me at  St. Brigid Catholic School,  which was near the corner of Western and Slauson in Los Angeles.  Soon after our arrival, my parents met some Italian Americans of the area.  They gave us instructions on how to be Americans.  Before I knew it I had an American name.  All of my siblings got a new name.  My sister Francesca became Frances, my brother Giacomo became Jack; my mother, Nunziata, became Nancy.

Los Angeles in the mid-fifties was a wonderful city to live in.  Good  and safe transportation, no crime to speak of; no gangs.  I would equate it with the Mayberry of the hit 1950s TV show, the Andy Griffith Show.  We had the Fili bus, an electric bus that was very efficient.  Unfortunately, in the early 1960s, they ended the Fili bus, in one of the most bizarre decisions that I could think of.  I quickly adopted to my new environment.  Within a short time after arriving, I got a job delivering the Los Angeles Mirror News, an afternoon paper of the day, one of four newspapers in Los Angeles. My first day delivering the paper as a 13-year old I had a tough time finding addresses.  A new challenge that had to be overcome, which I did.

Baseball was one of the first American sports that my brothers and I learned to love.  In 1958 the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles.  I attended many games at the odd shaped baseball diamond of the Los Angeles Coliseum.  We acquired a transistor radio, which we used to listen to games.  Listening to the master baseball announcer, Vin Scully, was a delight.  Not only his mastery of painting word pictures with his descriptions but by listening to him I learned to master English.  Vin was not only a good baseball announcer, he was also a master storyteller.  I learned the history of the Brooklyn Dodgers.  I could not help but feel sad that they left Brooklyn.  They were so much a part of that city.  In 1959, the Los Angeles radio station, KFWB,  re-broadcast the famous 1951 playoff game between the Dodgers and the New York Giants which they lost in spectacular fashion with the walk-off, three-run home run by Bobby Thompson in the 9th inning.  Just last night I was watching the fine baseball documentary by Ken Burns called "Baseball." This game was highlighted as one of the greatest baseball games of all time.  In 1961 when Los Angeles was awarded a new American League team, the Angels, we attended games at the old Wrigley Field in Los Angeles.

Van Ness Park was within a couple of blocks of our house.  There I had my first Coca Cola out of the red Coca Cola vending machine. Drop a ten-cent coin in the machine and out thundered a cold glass bottle of Coke.  Along with my two brothers, we quickly made friends there.  One of our friends was the groundskeeper, who took us under his wing and looked after us.  We would go to the park daily.  It was where we had community with others there.  It was there where I learned how to play the board game of caroms.  Not only did we polish our English but we familiarized ourselves with our new culture and environment.  Those were nostalgic days.  

Our two-unit, one-bed duplex at 5151 Third Avenue in Los Angeles had a vacant lot next to it.  Since I had loved being a  sheep shepherd with my dad in Sicily, I had a  natural connection with animals.  Obviously we could not have sheep or goats so my brothers and I built a ramshackle pigeon cage adjacent to the vacant lot and raised pigeons.  No one complained, to my amazement.  We had tumblers, rollers and fan-tails.  I don't think this would fly anywhere today, but in those days this was not out of the question.  This activity introduced us to other people in the area who had pigeons; another way of connecting with people.  This was a very satisfying experience.

It did not take us children long to adjust to L.A. living.  We quickly made friends with people on our block and hung out with other children in their homes.  We would frequently ride our used bike that I don't recall how we got.  One day I personally drove my bike  on Western Avenue all the way to Griffith Park.  On the way back, I got hit by a car as the car was making a left turn into a market parking lot.  the angles were looking out for me, for I was not injured, as I fell to the ground and ended up within a couple of inches of the rear tire of the car that hit me.  A passing off-duty policeman noticed the accident and came to help.  He personally drove me back home with my wrecked bike.  I still remember the look on my mother's eyes as this policeman knocked on the door to deliver me home.

My parents, were not educated but were wise.  Their education was dealing with life and its challenges, hardships and overcoming them.  My dad was a shepherd with only two years of school, first and second grade.  The same with my mom.  Both of my parents started working immediately.  My dad at a cheese company in Compton,  and my mother as a seamstress at a women's clothing manufacturer in the Hyde Park section of Los Angeles.  Before going to work, mom had to feed her six children, the youngest being less than one year-old.  Two busses had to be taken to get to work.  She was never late. We had no financial help from anyone, not the government and not from any individuals.  My parents had survived the depression of the 1930s and World War II so they knew survival skills.   The American and allied invasion of Sicily came within five miles of our home town in Sicily.  My mother was pregnant with me in July 1943 when the entire town was evacuated as the powerful allied armies swept by this part of Sicily, chasing the retreating German forces.  The Allied armies consisted of the best American and British combat units, led by the best American Generals like George Patton, Lucien Truscott and Omar Bradley. The  British units were led by Generals Bernard Montgomery,  Harold Alexander, and Admiral Andrew Cunningham. A Canadian army also took part.  Many of the small towns in Sicily were leveled by allied bombing.  Since our town was not on the favored route to Palermo, it was spared destruction.  The roads, though, were heavily bombed.  In those days there was no welfare and no assistance from anyone.  Everyone was on their own.  I never heard of anyone ever going hungry, though.  "Sicily '43" by James Holland is a fine book detailing the allied invasion of Sicily.  Highly recommended reading.  I just finished it.

War is Hell on Earth

 Man is a war-like being.  War has been a constant in human history.  I was born during World War II.  My father was in a war, and I was in a war (Vietnam 1968-69).  Since WW II, we’ve had the Korean War, 1950-53; the French Indochina War ending in 1954 with their defeat at Dien Bien Phu; the American Vietnam war of 1959 to 1975; the Falklands War between Argentina and Great Britain in 1981, Grenada, Somalia, the Gulf War of 1991, The Ukraine war of today, and on and on.  Now we have a new war between Israel and the Palestinians.  What other war have I missed? War makes men like animals, with no moral compass in some cases.  Most, if not all wars, have atrocities.  We had them in WW II and we had them in Vietnam., e.g. the My Lai massacre.  The Russians were, probably, the most prolific at atrocities.  They would execute their own soldiers if, for instance, they were captured and escaped.  Upon their return they were executed.  Russian soldiers in some cases were ordered to charge an enemy position in the open field; a sure death sentence.  If they refused they were killed by their commanders.  Most German prisoners did not survive to return home.  A German commission found that over three million German soldiers were taken prisoner in Russia; over one million died in captivity through 1950. 

I’ve just finished a book on the invasion of Sicily in July of 1943; “Sicily “43, the First Assault on Fortress Europe,” by James Holland. I was born there in November of the same year.  Atrocities were committed there by the US.  The book lists at least two cases where American soldiers killed surrendered Italian soldiers.  In one of those two cases, an American soldier, takes it upon himself to execute multiple surrendered Italian soldiers just because he was mad at the loss of fellow soldiers.  Many small towns were levelled by Allied troops, killing innocent civilians.  Hundreds of tons of bombs were dropped by allied troops.  In the town of Gangi, one town next to my home town, in today’s local web site called “Madonie Press,” the town commemorates eight innocent civilians who were killed as allied troops swept by the town.  This is a beautiful small agricultural hill town of less than eight thousand people.

 

One thing that made an impression on me when I arrived in Vietnam in May of 1968 as a US Army soldier, was how soldiers went about their business as if their moral compass was absent.  The sad fact is that, in most cases, soldiers who commit war crimes do not get punished.  The American soldier mentioned earlier in Sicily faced no punishment.  During the Japanese American concentration camps (I know, I know, people refer to them as “relocation camps”).  They were concentration camps.  US soldiers shot dead Japanese Americans at the Manzanar camp, of whom they feared were trying to escape the camp, or who had just gone mad from the harsh conditions.  I visited Manzanar, which is in the harsh California desert a few years ago in July.  The wind was so strong that I could not stay outside of my car.  The nearest town was about 100 miles away.  No one ever paid a price for such actions, as far as I know.  In one case, the murdered Japanese American’s family was charged for the cost of the bullet that killed him.  These stories are chronicled in the fine book called “Infamy: The shocking Story of the Japanese American Internment in World War II; by Richard Reeves (2015). Another fine book on this subject is called “The Eagles of Heart Mountain” by Bradford Pearson.  Heart Mountain was another concentration camp in Wyoming for Japanese Americans. For a fine documentary on Heart Mountain see this ABC TV Los Angeles documentary by David Ono. Click here to view it.

Why Celebrate Columbus Day

 Our modern culture is in a history destruction mood.  In the last couple of years statues of American heroes and important historical figures have been destroyed or removed.  One of the most reviled historical figures is Christopher Columbus.  Why is this so?  Most of the people who want him erased from history probably know next to nothing about him.  American heroes such as Thomas Jefferson or George Washington are being tarred and feathered by clueless people who are history illiterate.  They only know what is parroted by those who hate America.

In 1991 PBS broadcast a seven-hour documentary in commemoration of the 500th anniversary of Columbus' discovery of America.  A two-hour summary of this brilliantly done documentary is still available from Amazon, entitled "The Magnificent Voyage of Christopher Columbus." Click here to buy it.  You can also find this summary film on YouTube.  Click here to watch it.  You will learn more by watching this documentary than in taking a one-year course in a college class.  One of my favorite sayings is from the Spanish philosopher, George Santayana:  "Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it."  Most people who express any animosity toward Columbus could not answer one question about him.  It is true that he was reviled even during his lifetime.  After making four trips to the new world and bringing back treasures to Spain, his reward was to be put in chains and jailed. At his funeral no one from the Spanish government or any official attended. 

I often see young people wear a  Che Guevara T-shirt.  I would bet that if I asked any of these folks what they know about Che no one could tell me.  Che was a brutal killer.  If you look at the list of pieces I've done on this blog, I have one on Che with many facts about him.  To read this article on Che: click here.

In 2015 PBS aired a very nice documentary on the history of Italian-Americans in the early part of the 1900s.  Discrimination was out of control.  Even the Catholic Church discriminated against Italians.  You could not attend the same Mass as Anglos; you had to go in the church basement to worship.  Irish priests would refuse to marry an Irish-American to an Italian-American. Even in the 1960s, some law firms would not accept Italians or Jews in their practice.  Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, was one example.  The most celebrated American singer, Frank Sinatra, was frequently linked to organized crime figures.  Whether this was true or not, it was meant as a slam against him because of his ethnicity.  To view this documentary click here.

Parager University has just done a five-minute video on why we must celebrate Columbus.  Click here to watch it.

 

Jackie Robinson: A light on a Hill

“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden." Mat 5:14

 I came to America at the age of 12.  One of the first American passions I quickly developed was the love of baseball.  Before I realized his greatness, I used to listen to the voice of the Dodgers, Vin Scully.  He is perhaps the reason I developed my baseball passion.  The year was 1958, the same year the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles from Brooklyn. No one could paint word pictures better than Vinny.  As an example, and before I learned all the baseball lingo, when Vin would say, "sharp grounder, through the hole, into left field." I thought there must be an actual hole in the infield.  I heard Vin tell stories of the great Dodgers Brooklyn teams of the late 40s and 50s. Within a short time I had a complete history of the  of the Brooklyn Dodgers.  I idealized the Brooklyn Dodgers and thought it was a shame they moved out of there. No team has ever had a connection with the city they played in as the Brooklyn Dodgers.  I also heard many stories of the 1951 playoff against the New York Giants, when Bobby Thompson hit the historic home run to beat the Dodgers and go the World Series that year.  In 1959, a Los Angeles radio station, I believe it was KFWB, re-broadcast that game and I heard the entirety of it. Here is a six minute YouTube summary of that famous game.

The undisputed leader and the most consequential Dodger of that Brooklyn period, and perhaps the last 100 years, was the great Jackie Robinson; the first black player to play in the major leagues. There is no doubt in my mind that what Jackie did was instrumental in finally ending the vicious discrimination against black Americans years later. He paid a heavy price for it, but it was his dignity, despite brutal discrimination, that showed the world the evil of discrimination. He was the first step, followed by Martin Luther King, which eventually ended the horrors of discrimination. 

As a recent immigrant, I had no idea of the terrible discrimination American blacks were going through in other parts of the country. In Los Angeles where I lived I saw no such discrimination.  I lived in an integrated neighborhood in the Leimert Park area of Los Angeles.  Jackie, on the other hand, could not stay at the same hotel or eat at such hotel as his team mates; he had to go to a private home or elsewhere. He had to put up with racial epithets and control his rage.  In Matthew 5:14 Jesus tells us believers that we are the light of the world and that we must show such light so others can see it and glorify God.  Jackie was such a light.  He should be a saint.

For a fine history of Jackie Robinson, I highly recommend a book called "True, the Four Seasons of Jackie Robinson" by Kostya Kennedy.  The book covers his rise from the Negro leagues and his hiring by Branch Ricky of the Brooklyn Dodgers, his first year in the minors in Montreal to his famed Dodger career, ending in 1956 and the period after his baseball career.  Click here to see the book.  

War and Man's Inhumanity to Man

 When I arrived at my US Army post in Nha Trang, South Vietnam in May of 1968 I saw a sign that read :  "Though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for I am the evilest son of a bitch in the Valley" (a bad reference to Psalm 23).   Welcome to the hell of war, I thought.  Don't think I would say such a thing here nor anywhere. I could not believe anyone could say such a thing.  I learned later that war makes people lose their moral compass.  Ordinary men become monsters.  On an outing in town one evening, as I was returning to base a drunk GI was trying to grab people passing on motorcycles so he could throw them down and possibly injure or kill them.

Today I read a sad story in the Wall Street Journal of a Russian Wagner group, private army recruit.  Click here for the story.  This man was recruited out of prison with the promise of freedom if he survived after six months of war.  He did not know what he was getting into.  He surrendered to the Ukrainians and was later turned over to the Russians in a prisoner exchange.  Now, the Ukrainians knew that this would be a death sentence; yet they did it.  The Russians brutally butchered the man upon his arrival into their hands.  How can men be so brutal to each other?  Life means nothing in such circumstances. 

The Wagner Group is brutal in their treatment of their own soldiers.  You do what you're ordered to do even if it means a suicide charge of enemy positions.  If you retreat, you're shot by your own people. Welcome to the hell of war.

The Failure of the United Nations

 The United Nations (UN) was originally established after World War II to promote peace in the world.  It's no secret that it has been a complete failure at this.  Let's start with the present and go back.  Last year the Russians invaded Ukraine for the purpose of conquering it and re-establishing the old Soviet Union.  Have you heard any condemnation from the UN about the Ukraine invasion?  If they have, I've not heard it.  The Russians are committing horrible war crimes against humanity in Ukraine.  Where is the outrage?  The Russians have bombed hospitals, children centers and leveled most of Ukraine.  Where is the outrage from the UN? 

The UN has a big microphone; they could make use of it regularly but yet it's silent.  This is par for the course.  When have you heard the UN make any attempts to stop a conflict?  Oh, yes, they have sent some soldiers to hot spots such as Lebanon and the former Yugoslavia, but what has been the result?  

China has recently made it known that they want to conquer Taiwan.  Did you ever hear the UN raise a fuss about it?  No.  Silence.  This is the MO of the UN.  See no evil, hear no evil.  Now they do make their voices heard at times, such as for global warming, for the "woke" agenda and the like, but for world peace?  Nothing.  Stalin was famous for asking the question, "how many divisions does the Pope have?"  The same can be said of the UN.  They have no power and they refuse to use the big pulpit that they have to promote peace.  

When I was studying Public Administration in college there was a saying that once a bureaucracy is established its impossible to get rid of it.  This can be said of the UN.  Even-though they're useless, we can't get rid of it.  I would propose that we stop paying any of their costs.  In business, if you fail, no one will give you money; the same should be done with the UN.

The Importance of Helping Ukraine

 As a conservative I'm amazed at some of my fellow conservatives' animus toward helping Ukraine win their war against Russia.  The other day, one of my friends mentioned that he had heard that there are a lot Nazis in Ukraine.  What?  Where did he hear this from?  This is the false propaganda put out by the hallucinating Putin, as one of his delusional reasons for invading Ukraine.   I've heard similar false fantasies similar to this from other hard-right followers.  Few countries have had a more devastating and murderous history than the Ukrainians. If we just go back to World War II, the Soviet leader Josef Stalin starved four to seven million Ukrainians so he could force them into his farm collectivism.  Click here for the history of this.  After Stalin, the German Nazis came in and invaded the Soviet Union;  devastateing Ukraine, killing millions.  The Nazis were especially adept at getting help from the local population in killing Jews.  In Kiev alone, over 30,000 Jews were murdered by the Nazis.  The Nazis MO was to surround a big city such as Kiev and starve it to death.  A method they repeated in Leningrad.  After the Nazis we had 60 plus years of Soviet Union oppression. For a more detailed history of the Nazi invasion of Russia see the book, "Kiev 1941 Hitler's Battle for Supremacy in the East" by David Stahl, Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Many Ukrainian deniers of our day will say such things as what do we have to do with a "border conflict" that does not affect us?  What?  This is akin to what Neville Chamberlain said when he made "peace" with Hitler over the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia in 1938.  When the Ottoman Turks were conquering the world, the Europeans had the same "I don't care" response.  It does not affect us so we will ignore it.  Well, the Ottomans were not satisfied to conquer the Byzantines, nor the Balkans, they wanted the rest of the world.  They finally reached the door of Europe.  First in the Siege of Vienna in 1529 and again,  the second Siege of Vienna in 1683.  So, a war far away from your border is not your problem?  Wait until they reach your back door.  Europeans today have the same "not interested" attitude.  Sure they're providing some weapons to Ukraine, but their heart is really not there. I recently saw an Instagram video by an Italian politician criticizing the NATO leader Jens Stoltenberg for his support of Ukraine.  When I commented that I agree with the NATO leader, I got some ad hominem attacks.  One (an Italian) responded to my comment that I would be sent to war and then "I would cry for my mommy."  I never mentioned that I was a soldier in a war - Vietnam.  This clueless person exemplifies the malicious nonchalance of the "if it's not in my backyard, I don't care crowd." This attitude has had deadly effects in history.  If the Europeans had been more involved during the Ottoman Turks conquests, Turkey today would not occupy the former Eastern Roman Empire, aka, Asia Minor.  I often hear criticism of Americans in regard to our helping others militarily.   Europeans owe their life to American help.  Without it, Europe would have been under the Nazis after WWII.   The French still do not understand this, after being rescued by Americans twice in 20 years. WWII was far away from America, but America responded to save their European brethren, with little appreciation to this day.

If Russia conquered Ukraine, they will demolish, as they have already done, much of the country and slaughter the Ukrainian population in the process.  Even if you're one of the "not in my backyard" crowd this alone should awaken you to a moral peril that affects every one of us.  Second, Russia will not be satisfied with Ukraine.  They will go after Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, the Baltic states and others.  When will you awake?  When rockets rain down on your city?  Third, a Russian victory will embolden China to conquer Taiwan.  They will not be satisfied with Taiwan either.   Do I have to draw you a map? Was Hitler satisfied with the Sudetenland?  Was he satisfied with occupying most of Europe?  After he accomplished all of this he attacked Russia.  What more examples can I give?