My, oh my!
You hear the words of a poet and they soothe like warm sunshine after hours in a cold, dank cellar.

“In blameless quiet, he buried himself in his work, steam-bending veneers or hand-threading table legs with a chisel, and his happy absorption floated up from the workshop and diffused through the house with the warmth of a wood-burning stove in winter.”
Donna Tartt, “The Goldfinch.”

Let’s return to our recap of that marvelous book.

Our hero, Theo, recovered now from the museum of Art's bombing that killed his mother, she a single parent, is trying to find his way. While staying with his friend Andy’s family, the Barbours, is better than going to live with Grandparents who don’t want him, he is not ‘happy.’

Andy agrees to cover for Theo for another protracted visit to Hobie’s, In Greenwich Village, where he hopes to find Pippa, to whom he feels a strong attraction.

At Hobie’s, Theo discovers that Pippa’s aunt, Welty’s half-sister and closest kin, is taking Pippa to live with her in Texas.And Aunt Margaret also took the ring Welty gave to Theo to give to Hobie.
Theo and Pippa share a kiss.
Theo discovers he’s gotten to really like Hobie and his antique-dealing house.
Pippa doesn’t want to live in Texas.
Theo doesn’t want to live with his Grandparents who don’t want him, anyway.

It’s 12:07 am and the next two days in Boston are and will be brilliant: 86 and sunny.

I’m at my desk.
Dinner is Roast Chicken. I brushed it with Baking Powder last night and put it in the slow oven (200) at 5.30 this morning.
According to recipe on Web Site it will take 28 minutes per pound at this phase.
It weighs 4.23lbs x 28 = 118 minutes, just short of 2 hrs.
At which point I’ll take the chicken out of the oven and let it wait until it’s 45 minutes before dinner time; that's when I’ll finish it.
So smooth and easy.
Note that.
Smooth and easy.
Who devised that recipe?

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SHORT TAKES 

Today’s post is from Dom's, An Odyssey.
If the Italian immigrants to the United States had an at-bat to convince Americans they were not violent, the Sicilian Vespers were strike one.
Today’s post chronicles Strike Two.

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Reminder:  Today I entered some tweaks to the Bouillabaisse recipe on the Web Site, including reducing the water and increasing the potato.
I also posted a couple of pretty images.

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And a comment from one of our Southern readers, and I don’t mean South Boston:
“I would love to take a wine-tasting course from you. I took one at the University of South Carolina in the 70's. The instructor was French/German. I drank too much of the wine to retain much information - much less understanding and knowledge. At that point in time, we didn't have money to waste and I couldn't stand the thought of wasting the wine. Sickest I have ever been other than pregnancies. 😎”

Tommie Toner

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Today’s quiz:
The Pilgrims were early European settlers of the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts, United States.
The Pilgrims' leadership came from the religious congregations of Brownist separatist Puritans who had fled the volatile political environment in England for the relative calm and tolerance of 17th-century Holland in the Netherlands.
They arranged with English investors to establish a new colony in North America.
The colony was established in 1620.

Were they the first English settlement in North America?
If not, who?

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Roseanne Cherrie Barr (born November 3, 1952) is an American actress, comedian, writer, and television producer.

Barr began her career in stand-up comedy at clubs before gaining critical and popular acclaim in the television sitcom “Roseanne” (1988–1997; 2018).
She won both an Emmy and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for her work on the show.

Barr sparked controversy when performing "The Star-Spangled Banner" at a nationally aired baseball game on July 25, 1990.

After singing the anthem in what many perceived to be a deliberately disrespectful manner, Barr grabbed her crotch and spat.
This performance was met with condemnation from baseball fans and sportswriters, and was called "disgraceful" by then-President George H. W. Bush.

Barr has been active and outspoken on political issues. She won nearly 70,000 votes for president in the general election of 2012, as the presidential nominee of the Peace and Freedom Party.
After Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president in 2015, Kelly Weill of The Daily Beast wrote that Barr "veered right" in her politics.
She has frequently defended her support of Trump, and has been criticized for her extensive use of personal attacks, conspiracy theories, and fake news.

“Roseanne” was revived in 2018 on ABC.
Trump called her to congratulate her on her show's ratings and thank her for her support.

Valerie Jarrett served as the senior advisor to President of the United States Barack Obama and assistant to the president for public engagement and intergovernmental affairs from 2009 to 2017.
Prior to that, she served as a co-chair of the Obama–Biden Transition Project

Roseanne attacked Valerie Jarrett, with this tweet: “Muslim brotherhood and planet of the apes had a baby=vj.”
Many called the tweet "racist" and the show was abruptly canceled on May 29, 2018.
Roseanne later called the tweet a "bad joke".

Edited from entries found on Wikipedia and other Internet sources. Mostly from Wiki.
Thank you, Wikipedia.

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“In Cold Blood” is a 1967 American drama film written, produced and directed by Richard Brooks, based on Truman Capote's book of the same name.

It stars Robert Blake as Perry Smith, Scott Wilson as Richard "Dick" Hickock, and John Forsythe as Alvin Dewey. The film follows the trail of Smith and Hickock; they break into the home of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, kill all four members of the family who are present, go on the run, and are found and caught by the police, tried for the murders, and eventually executed.
The film was nominated for four Academy Awards: Director, Original Score, Cinematography, and Adapted Screenplay.

Some scenes were filmed at the locations of the original events, including Garden City and Holcomb, Kansas; Kansas State Penitentiary, where Smith and Hickock were executed; and the Clutter residence, where the murders took place.

In 2008, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
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MOVIE REVIEW
“In Cold Blood” is a 1967 American drama film written, produced and directed by Richard Brooks, based on Truman Capote's book of the same name.
It stars Robert Blake as Perry Smith, Scott Wilson as Richard "Dick" Hickock, and John Forsythe as Alvin Dewey. The film follows the trail of Smith and Hickock; they break into the home of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, kill all four members of the family who are present, go on the run, and are found and caught by the police, tried for the murders, and eventually executed.
The film was nominated for four Academy Awards: Director, Original Score, Cinematography, and Adapted Screenplay.

Some scenes were filmed at the locations of the original events, including Garden City and Holcomb, Kansas; Kansas State Penitentiary, where Smith and Hickock were executed; and the Clutter residence, where the murders took place.

In 2008, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

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Answer to quiz:
The colony in Jamestown, Virginia founded in 1607 was the first successful English settlement.
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TODAY’S POST

Despite their knowledge of the historical violence endemic throughout the Mezzogiorno, Bostonians and many other Americans for that matter, were enamored of Italy. A great many of the more educated Americans spent time in “bell’ Italia” to drink in Italian culture and the Italian mystique. 

The love affair with Italy influenced the way many Americans spent their professional and personal lives.  Longfellow translated Dante's Divina Comedia into English. Boston’s dominant architect, Charles Bulfinch, designed buildings in a neo-classical style that he honed over time studying Italian architecture.  The very wealthy and socially prominent, Margaret Fuller, fell in love with an impoverished Italian nobleman-patriot and supported the short-lived Roman Republic of Garibaldi and Mazzini.  For their safety, the couple fled Italy when the revolutionary government was overthrown.  On the trip back to America they lost their lives, along with their infant son, in a shipwreck off Long Island.

America’s direct knowledge of Italians prior to the fifty years of the great migration of Italians into America was all positive.  In the persons of Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, Giovanni da Verrazano, Giovanni Cabotini and a goodly number of others, Italians discovered, explored and mapped America before the Anglo-Saxons and French were well-established here.  Filippo Mazzei’s writings and conversations with his friends, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson influenced the latter’s writing of the Declaration of Independence, including the declaration that all men are created equal. Constantino Brumidi completed his famous frescoes in the Vatican then left Italy as a political exile.  Arriving in America in 1848, he was commissioned to paint the much-admired, heroic historical frescoes in the Capitol Building in Washington.  Throughout early American history Italians contributed to America, in positive, substantial, and well-appreciated ways.

Boston’s first experiences with Italians on American soil were also quite positive. By 1850 a few literate, commercially successful Genoese had settled I the North End  around North Square.  By 1880, 1200 Italians lived in Boston, many of them in the North End. 

The Marquese Nicholas Reggio of Genoa by way of Turkey immigrated to Boston to establish an American presence of his family's maritime business and became an important importer-exporter merchant. Eliza Biscaccianti was born in Boston in 1824 to Luigi Ostinelli, the Director of the Musical Society of Boston, a native of Como, and Sophia Henrietta Hewitt of Boston.  Eliza studied her music in Italy and became a world-famous diva.  Count Lorenzo Papanti of Tuscany settled in Boston and found a place as a violinist. In 1827 he opened a dance studio that was an important part of Boston's cultural scene for 75 years.

Nicholas Alessandro, son of Italian immigrant parents, was even selected in 1854 as Boston's City Registrar, a position he held for forty years.

These established, mostly Northern Italians, might have helped Boston prepare for the needs that their newly-arriving countrymen would have.  They might have mobilized translators and other social services.  They might have publicly extolled the strengths of the new immigrants, thereby encouraging Americans to extend their well-known penchant for generosity and understanding. 

Instead and contrarily, they who had preceded the massive immigration from the South, sowed hatred and contempt among Americans for their modern-day countrymen; and by emphasizing the superiority of Northern Italians, they impregnated the American population with a prejudice against Southern Italians that grew, blossomed, and lived on for the hundred-plus years since. 

To many Nativists, the waves of Italian immigrants that lapped ashore in ever-increasing numbers in the 1880s and 1890s grew to alarming numbers in the following thirty years.  How Americans treated the immigrants was greatly influenced by their attitude before the first of them stepped ashore.  If the violent reputation of the Mezzogiorno was strike one, the repulsion of them expressed  by their well-accepted Northern Italian brethren was strike two. 

Post Scripts
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Be good.
Be well.
Love you.