If you’re waking call me early. For I would see the sun rise upon the new year.
The last time we had a day of sun was back before Christmas. And even though the holidays were calm and stress free, gray, wet cold surrounded us.
Fare thee well, my friend, We’ll meet again When the moon climbs over the trees.
An email came in the new year announcing a second get-together of my novitiate group this coming summer. I’m looking forward to seeing these old friends again; and again the get-together will be in Narragansett.
Good times and rare times, they all fade the same. How gentle are the memories that carry me away.
For one of my old novitiate friends, the new year began with the death of his oldest brother – Jim. A Narragansett memory that has stayed with me all these years is of Jim and his dad showing up unannounced one evening. We were in chapel for Compline. Jim had come to say good-bye to his brother, my friend John, because he was leaving for Vietnam the next day.
Fare thee well, my friend, We’ll meet again On the road just beyond the sea.
When I first heard Ashley Davis sing Fare Thee Well, I focused on the above tercet, because it made me think of Ocean Road in Narragansett. The Novitiate was on Ocean Road and across the street was the Atlantic. It took many listenings before I started to associate other memories, other images with the song.
It has been a brutal couple of weeks – temperatures have been in the single digits and snow-fall has been constant. (the northern and the eastern parts of the state have gotten the worst of the mid-January storms) It seems like it’s turning out to be an exceptionally hard winter and Candlemas – mid-winter – isn’t for another 10 days.
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The Allegheny, traveling some 352 miles southward from Coudersport, Pennsylvania, is covered by ice and snow. The city of Pittsburgh, as well as most of the small towns along its 352 miles, get their drinking water from this shallow, clean river. The ice/snow on the Allegheny suggest a healthy river.
In contrast, the Monongahela – the river at the bottom right – is a working river and any ice on it is quickly broken up to insure safe barge traffic. (the Mon, like the Nile, flows north to join the Allegheny at The Point – the view outside my window)
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I saw The Brutalist earlier this week; the film is set in Eastern Pennsylvania after The War. One of the points it makes is that Pennsylvania, in the 1940s and the 1950s, was the California/Silicon Valley of its day; we were the future. California became the future in the 1960s. (Massachusetts, New York, Illinois all had their turn at pointing to what was coming) I’ve always seen the American states the same way that historians see the countries of Europe – independent but connected. And several states have had their turn at the helm of the country; they have steered the country; they’ve introduced elements that have changed the country forever. And I’m hoping that this independence will help us get through the next four years. And I’m hoping that this state sovereignty will help us avoid the mass-hysteria, the mass-control of fascism.
there comes a time when we must discard the illusions of youth
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This morning a fellow Italian, actually a Cosentino, posted the above image and the following text:
Dovremmo profondamente rivedere un’idea dell’America che ci eravamo costruito ingenuamente in anni in cui era facile innamorarsi. We should profoundly revise an idea of America that we had naively constructed in years when it was easy to fall in love.
I replied with the following:
During the years we were growing up, a love of all things American was necessary. That love, that attraction was extremely important in a post WWII era. That love, that attraction brought millions of Italian immigrants to North America, to Canada, the substitute America.
But that era is gone, and America is no longer the beacon calling to us, guiding us through the darkness. In 2025, America is Rome before its demise. America is rich, America is fat, America is lazy and the modern-day Visigoths – the American tech oligarchs – have begun the sacking.
But hope lies in the fact that America is 50 small counties in a confederation and that the extreme of some is not the path for all. The hope is that the American federal government, with its current administration, is not able to force 50 sovereign states into a Nazi ‘goose step’.
Note: – the featured image is of Joseph-Noël Sylvestre the Sack of Rome – the image above is from John Ford’s 1962 film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Benilde died Saturday, March 5, 2022 He was 88 years old
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I took the picture on Sunday, September 18, 2022. The small stone on the grave-marker came from the dirt road leading to the chapel of La Madonna di Portosalvo in Aprigliano.
Context 1. Sunday, September 18, 2022 An old friend and I drove from Pittsburgh to Narragansett stopping in Scranton to remember Joe Biden, and in New Haven to gawk at the one-percenters. I wanted him to see what I saw, some 50 years earlier, when as an 18-year-old I arrived at 635 Ocean Road, Narragansett, Rhode Island – the Christian Brothers Novitiate.
Also I wanted to visit Benilde’s grave. I wasn’t able to attend the funeral, and it was important to me to make this pilgrimage and visit the grave and to remember a man who helped change my life.
2. The small stone on the grave-marker The first time I saw stones or pebbles on grave-markers was at Père Lachaise; they were on Gertrude Stein’s tombstone. And my friends explained the Jewish tradition of leaving small stones on grave-markers to signify that someone had visited, that someone had come to pay their respects and to remember. I knew that when I got to Benilde’s grave I would put a stone on the grave-marker. A stone I had brought back from the road leading to the small chapel of Portosalvo in the hills of Aprigliano. (Over the years, every time I’ve visited Aprigliano, I’ve always picked up a rock from the chapel-road to bring back home.)
3. La Madonna di Portosalvo La Madonna was very special to the people of Aprigliano. She belonged to our parish and her chapel was an extension of the main church. The rhythms of our hill-top town revolved around the feast-days and festivals associated with the saints in our sanctuary of which La Madonna was the preeminent. (The image below is of La Madonna enshrined in our parish church of Santo Stefano. The other statues (l-r) are of St. Stephen, Our Lady of Sorrows and St. Francis of Paola.)
The feast of La Madonna and its accompanying festival were in mid September. I tasted peanuts for the first time at one of the festival booths; I saw fireworks for the first time at the festival of Portosalvo. And an affinity, a closeness, a reverence for those rhythms have stayed with me.
La Madonna was also very special to my mother and to my aunt – two daughters of Aprigliano. My aunt had passed away a year ago – September 5, 2021 – and my mother had just passed away 3 days earlier – September 15. The trip to the Brothers’ cemetery in Narragansett, with the rock from Portosalvo, became a pilgrimage. I was paying my respects; I was remembering my mother, my aunt and Benilde – two amazing women and the man who was there when I took my first tentative steps forward.
Brother Benilde James Benilde was the Assistant Director of Novices, but in January of 1969 he took over for our Director who was sent to Rome. In that in-between of January and June, Benilde and I became friends; we could laugh together; he could call me out on my nonsense; I could tease him – and I did incessantly. I got to meet his sister, his mother; I was invited along when he went home to visit his family. It was also in that in-between that I began my journey towards adulthood. It was a journey that allowed me to become a spiritual person; a journey that taught me how to make decisions; a journey that coached me in responsibility; a journey that showed me I could fall in love; a journey that revealed the value of teaching. And Benilde, in that in-between, gave me the space, the support, the guidance, the helping hand to start that long journey. Many saw him as too laid-back, as too lenient, but I needed the space that his detachment and leniency provided in order to take those tentative first steps. He was one of the kindest people I’ve ever met and that long-ago time has remained a treasured memory.
As I write this commemorative post, I realize that my past is a vast catalogue of images, impressions, hurts, and joys. Benilde, and my time with him at Narragansett, hold place-of-honor in that catalogue.
(l-r) Stein’s tombstone at Père Lachaise| Chapel of Portosalvo| statue of La Madonna| the road to Portosalvo| Aprigliano
some people bring back souveniers I bring back rocks
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1999 The oldest rock in the above pic is from 1999 and it’s from the Alps. I was traveling with Rick-and-Sarah and Shana and Mimi. British Airways was running a $99 special – Pittsburgh to London – and we went. I saw the commercial while I was having breakfast and I immediately called Rick. We flew Pittsburgh, London, Paris and from there we got a car and drove. – Paris overwhelmed me to the point where I just didn’t talk, because I was taking it all in – in Lucerne, we had the best breakfast and the coffee was so rich and thick and black – we had gotten up and the city was shrouded in fog; the gondola took up above the cloud-cover and there were the Alps – it was the first time I had ever seen real mountains
2006 Seven years later, Derrick, Rose and I went to Calabria. We stayed in Gioia Tauro and did side-trips to Tropea, Martirano, Cosenza, Aprigliano. The rock was from the dirt road leading to the small chapel of La Madonna di Portosalvo. – Gioia Tauro was not a great place – it wasn’t ready for foreign visitors. Tropea, in August was full of tourists and Cosenza was all but abandoned in mid-August. – even though Gioia Tauro wasn’t ready, we had one of our most sumptuous meals in the old town. – the most memorable aspect of the trip was the drive from Gioia Tauro to Tropea – the Calabrian coast was as magnificent as the Swiss Alps.
2011 This was the beginning of my love-affair with Le Marche. Rose had found this lovely farm-house run by an Australian couple – Earl and Suzanne. Set among the rolling hills of Le Marche, this converted century-old house became our go-to home-base for the next three summers. – the summer of 2011 we did side-trips to Orvieto, Urbino and Bologna. – the Cathedral in Orvieto with the Luca Signorelli frescoes, and the Emilio Greco’s doors has become one of the favorite places in all of Italy. – in Bologna we discovered gelato, mortadella and Cafe Lucy; and we’ve returned to Bologna to eat its amazing foods every time we were in Italy.
2012 La Tavola Marche is an agriturismo run by an American couple who have made Le Marche their home. Our week-long stay was OK; it was great to be out in the country away from civilization. The side-trips this time were to local small towns around that area most notably Piobbico and Sant’Angelo in Vado. – Piobbico was for our afternoon snack of espresso and ice-cream; Sant’Angelo in Vado was for take-out.
2015 – Puglia Earl and Suzanne got us interested in Puglia, specifically Martina Franca; they were in the process of buying an abandoned farm-house and renovating it. Puglia is amazing, but it’s not the hype the travel press promises. It’s much like Calabria, worth it if you were born there and returning to see friends and relatives. – Alberobello with its trulli is surreal. – Lecce is claustrophobic.
2015 – San Francisco This was my first trip to California. Rick and I went to see the charter school bankrolled by Qualcomm
Also I wanted to visit Benilde’s grave. I wasn’t able to attend the funeral, and it was important to me to make this pilgrimage and visit the grave and to remember a man who helped change my life.
