10.28.2008

The Italian Lesson - A Family of Sicilians

Turns out it's more than just a childhood nickname!



Ant,

In Sicily if your name is Antonio or Gaetano, you become Tanuzzu, which in English boils down to Tanoots or Tonoose. The "tan" part is pretty much the middle of Antonio and Gaetano. The 'uzzu" suffix means "dear one."

My name in Sicilian is "Sarbaturi," so they take the end of it "turi" and add a suffix so the name becomes "Turiddu," or "Little or Kind Turi." In America we dervive knicknames from the first part of our names; they do so from the last part and often add endearing suffixes. Sometimes these suffixes indicate size as in "Michelino," little Michael, which they called my father, the last of his siblings. If they add "one" or "oni" to the name, the size is BIG.

Sal
What brought this on? THIS:




A Family of Sicilians: Stories and Poems
by Salvatore Buttaci

A beautiful memoir of Sicilian culture through the collected writings of Salvatore Amico M. Buttaci.

(198 pages) Paperback: $14.92 plus Handling & Shipping

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COMMENTS ABOUT A FAMILY OF SICILIANS...

Professor Antonio Ciappina, treasurer of America Oggi, the biggest Italian American newspaper in our country, in 1998 said this:

"Your work is wonderful! You really have the soul of Sicily in the book. You have living portraits of life in Sicily. I've never read anything so forceful about Sicily. Really, when you start reading, you do not want to stop, you want to go to the end and no page tires you out. All told, your work brims with life on every page. With your trips to Sicily, you got hold of its soul, mind, heart. All my heartfelt congratulations, Professor Buttaci. God bless you!"

Erin Wright, Editor-in-chief of Buon Giorgo! Magazine in Columbus, Ohio, said,

“This is the book that no Italian-American should be without.”

And this from Herb Berman, Publisher of V.I.A. (Voice of the Italian American), Tamarac, Fla:

“You don’t have to be Sicilian or even Italian to appreciate the warmth, humor, and love of family and life, portrayed by Salvatore Buttaci in his book A Family of Sicilians…”

From A. J. Parisi of the Village Gazette of Ridgewood, Franklin Lakes, NJ.

“Its passages evoke the same kind of insightful images of charact and locale found in the best of Umberto Eco and Italy’s most passionate novelist and short story writer Alberto Moravia. The characters found in Buttaci’s prose are truly the voice of immigrants, their hopes, and their aspirations.”

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READ WHAT HAPPENS WHEN

Crazy old Uncle Tanoots works his best miracle since healing four sick pigs in San Cataldo, Sicily...

A spirit from the next world visits Grandma and asks her to help save a life...

A Sicilian nobleman marches off to war, leaving behind his wife and her two sisters walled up safely in his castle tower...

Grandpa asks his brother-in-law Vincinzu to get his donkey back...

A man accused of murder hires a lawyer who has nothing to say...

A Sicilian bricklayer comes back from the dead to appear live on the Jay Leno Show with a message for the world...

The author interviews the real Archimedes whom he has tracked down on the Internet...

A ten-year-old boy in 1900 time-travels to a Benito Mussolini rally in 1922...
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See also: Tonoose the childhood nickname

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Copyright © 2008 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Photos and content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

10.21.2008

Dog hair everywhere

"Here's something about dog hair, it's like pollen. You don't ever see it moving on a breeze until it gangs up on you and forces an explosion in your nose.

Sometimes you can move a piece of furniture and find yourself asking your dog, "Is there another dog in here? One that's been vaporized except for his fur?"

Don't expect your dog to answer you unless you say one of the magic words such as cookie, treat, knot chewy, walk or ride in the car. And of course, no matter how smart your dog is, he won't be answering your question. All he wants is another biscuit.

There are ways to deal with dog hair here, there and everywhere..."

Continue reading
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Copyright © 2008 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Photos and content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

10.19.2008

Paying to park, a day earlier

Back in the day when some of these parking lots were free to park in, you could simply buy your pass and go. Now, you have to buy a parking space, too, for the month and hope it's still there when you show up.

The solution to the parking space scrim is to make the monthly passes available a day earlier so that the people who don't read these press releases will be surprised when they can't get a space. Perhaps the ticket machine knows how many parking spots it can sell?

Continue reading

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Copyright © 2008 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Photos and content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

10.14.2008

Who Knew?

Rating:98% positive over the past 12 months (237 ratings.) 1101 lifetime ratings.

Shipping: In Stock. Ships from CA, United States Expedited shipping available International shipping available See Shipping Rates

Comments: SIGNED w/INSCRIPTION by Author on Title Page! 1st Edition (Stated), 1st Printing 1991 Cherry Blossom Press (Nutley, NJ) Trade Paperback; text clean/UNMARKED; color cover surface near mint/mild edge + corner wear; spine strong + uncreased; NOT x-library; No remainder mark; Not book club; 153 pages + 6 preliminary pgs; 3 sections: Prose (26 pieces), Reviews (2), and Fiction (7 stories); most of this collection previously published in Belleville Times, Bloomfield Life, Independent Press,+ New Jersey Monthly; wrap-around color cover photography + design by Thomas Francisco; gift quality inscribed collectible copy of 16-year-old out-of-print paperback.


If I didn't write the book myself, I'd want to buy it!

Why would anyone want to buy an old book when they could just as easily download it to their computer or Kindle?

I guess if I knew that, I wouldn't be writing the books I'd be helping other people sell theirs.

Copyright © 2008 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Photos and content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

10.09.2008

Joyrides to Monk's Castle and Albino Village

"... First of all, the cars were all bigger back then. Plus a lot of them had things in them called seat belts, which some of us even wore on the occasions we remembered they were there.

This, of course, I would explain to my daughter as learning to drive in the dark ages when I was a teenager in the 1970s.

"Yes, dear, we did have cars when I was in high school. . . . No, dear, it was long ago, but there were no dinosaurs around when I learned to drive . . . except for the Sinclair dinosaur. No. Never mind. There were no real dinosaurs when I learned to drive.”

In the early 1970s, it was fun to drive. The speed limits were 60, 70 m.p.h. and higher on some roads. We could pile into the car and go to the drive-in restaurant, or the drive-in theater - where they showed a movie on a giant screen and you watched it from your car.

Then you could go to the food shack and pay an enormous amount of money for some lousy food - no, there were no video tapes then, or VCRs. If you wanted to see a movie without commercials, you had to go to a theater..."


Continue reading

Kip's Castle brochure by Essex County, N.J.


Copyright © 2008 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

10.08.2008

Westerns don't always make grade for TV

A version of "Westerns don't always make grade for TV" - by Gail Pennington, ran in The Star Ledger's Today section yesterday. (Monday to you, actually, under the headline: TV fans aren't going West anymore.)

The story reminded me how much I loved to watch the Ponderosa map burn at the open and close of Bonanza. And I could almost remember the words to the Rawhide theme song.

Oddly enough, the anti-hero Paladin was my hero. Go figure. So was the cowboy in Marty Robbins' song 'El Paso'.

Roy Rogers always seemed to be the best. But I suppose I was weaned on the Saturday morning reruns of the prime time show. After all, I watched him in the early 60s and the show aired in the early 50s.

TV in those days was black & white. Once in a while you'd be visiting someone with a color TV on Sunday night and watch the fireworks on the Wonderful World of Disney.

The Westerns gave over to war shows like Combat and The Gallant Men. Those gave over to detective shows and, what? How could we watch drama, and movies, with commercials?

Until people started to pay for TV - via cable - there were only a few TV channels (and nothing on. ha ha) We had ABC, CBS, NBC WNEW WOR WPIX PBS and some fuzzy Spanish channels on UHF. Only Dick Tracy talked into a wrist phone and spacemen had TV screens. (My jetpack is on backorder.)

We've come a long way, baby, from those simpler times. Simple, at least on TV.

I can't believe you've read all the way down here and I haven't made my point yet.


Well, here it is, in a previously unpublished poem:

COWBOY

All I ever wanted
was to be a cowboy.
When I dreamed,
I dreamed of horses
in our one-family
house’s garage
in Belleville, New Jersey.
Alas, the only horses
I’d ever seen
were at the 6th Street
pony rides across from
the Newark City Subway
station
where we caught
the trolley
to shop
at Bamberger’s
department store
in downtown
Newark, New Jersey,
on Saturday mornings.

(by Anthony Buccino)
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Copyright © 2008 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Photos and content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.