by Harry Reinert | Sep 5, 2019
Dante Alighieri Society English Language Meeting Dominic Minotti Dominico Minotti Famous Women of Italian Descent Kicking off this year’s schedule will be a presentation by Domenico Minotti (Nick) on “Famous Women of Italian Descent”. This will be the basis for this year’s Festa Italiana quiz that Nick has been creating for the past few years to use at our booth. For Festa, reference information will be available to help visitors pick the woman who fits the description. The names of folks with successful entries (8 out of 10) will be entered into a drawing for a free dinner at one of our Dante events. The September 11 presentation for Dante, however, will be a straightforward talk about these 10 women, 6 well known, 2 less known and 2 probably new to most Dante members. In the late 1920s, Nick’s parents emigrated from Sant’Angelo, Limosano, a small hilltop town in Molise. The population at that time was about 1000 but is now 345 as Nick learned on a visit this summer. The family spoke their dialect at home. Nick studied Italian at Columbia University and Perugia and gotlots of practice while on Fulbright study grants in Milan in the mid 60’s.Nick returned to the states and to his first love, medicine, at Georgetown University and came to Seattle in 1976 to work at the US Public Health Hospital on Beacon Hill, better known as the Marine Hospital. He and his father Pasquale would attend Dante meetings back then but took a break until retirement a few years ago. Nick serves as a Consigliere for our Dante group.
by Joyce Ramee | Sep 5, 2019 | Notices
Welcome back to another year of Dante gatherings, dinners and Italian language classes!
Kicking off this year’s schedule is a presentation by Dominick Minotti (Nick) on “Famous Women of Italian Descent”. This will be the preview of the Festa Italiana quiz that Nick has been creating for the past few years to use at our booth. The September 11th presentation at Dante, however, will be a straight forward talk about the 10 women – six well known, two less known, and two probably new to most Dante members – that Nick will be featuring in this year’s Festa quiz.
Nick is a longtime member of Dante and for the past few years has served as a Consigliere on our Board. He’s been a speaker at Dante for the past several years, always entertaining and engaging.
Joyce Ramee will be our cook so the evening promises to be delicious as well as informative.
As usual our Pre-Dante Pasta Dinner will be ready at 6:30 and the program will start at 7:30. Please feel free to bring an antipasto, dolce, or vino to share. The cost of the dinner is $8 per person or $15 per couple.
If you plan to come for the dinner as well as the presentation, please make your reservation by 5:00 pm Monday September 9 by:
- clicking on the DINNER RESERVATION button below or,
- calling our Reservation Line at our NEW number, (206) 289-0419 or
- emailing your request to our NEW reservation email, reserve.
Let us know how many are in your party. This will help our volunteer cooks know how much pasta to prepare.
The meeting will be in the Parish Social Hall at St. Patrick’s Church, 815 E Edgar St., Seattle.
To reach St Patrick’s from the North, follow I-5 S. Take exit 168A for Boylston Ave toward Roanoke St. Merge onto Boylston, turn left at light onto E Roanoke St. Turn left at the first cross street onto Harvard Ave E.
To reach St. Patrick’s from the South, follow I-5 N. Take exit 168A for Lakeview Blvd E. Turn left onto Lakeview Blvd E, and continue onto Boylston Ave E. Turn right at the light onto E Roanoke St. Turn left at the first cross street onto Harvard Ave E.
The parking lot will be on your right off Harvard. And the door to the Social Hall is located at the parking lot level in back of the Church.
Feel free to come early to help set up the room and start visiting. And, in any case, please come.
A presto –
Dan DeMatteis,
President, Dante Alighieri Society of Washington
by Joyce Ramee | Oct 22, 2018 | Notices
Ciao tutti –
Please Come to a Good-bye to Garden House Get-together
on Wednesday, October 24
Usually at our second meeting each month we have a speaker, who makes a presentation in Italian. And for the October 24 we had booked Claudio Mazzola from the UW Italian Department to present an overview of the films to be presented at the SIFF CInema Italian Style Festival, November 8-15. Unfortunately SIFF has still not announced the lineup of films for the Festival, so our speaker has been unable to put together material for his presentation.
Since this is our last meeting at Garden House and since so many of you had asked for a chance to make suggestions for a new meeting place, give your feedback and have your questions answered – we decided to throw a Good-bye to Garden House Get-together in place of the scheduled Italian presentation.
So here’s the plan:
- meet at 6:30 as usual. Please bring along an antipasto, vino or dolceto share
- 6:30 – 7:15 food and informal conversation preceded by a toast to Garden House
- 7:15 – 8:30 information and feedback meeting: where do we go from here?
Please join us on Wednesday, October 24 at 6:30 at Garden House. You’ll remember that it’s located at 2336 15th Avenue South in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Seattle.
Avoid the traffic! The Garden House is a short walk from the Beacon Hill Light Rail Station.
As a special incentive to attend, I’ll be giving away 12 pairs of vouchers, good for free admission to any of the SIFF Cinema Italian Style films at the Festival to the members at our Good-bye to Garden House Get-together. Please come for a chance to win.
And as usual feel free to come early to help set up the room and start visiting. And, in any case, please come to say good-bye to this old friend, to this special venue that has hosted our Dante meetings for the last 40 or so years.
A presto –
Dan DeMatteis,
President, Dante Alighieri Society of Washington
by Joyce Ramee | Oct 10, 2018 | La Voce, Notices
Ciao tutti –
I am sorry to report to the Dante Alighieri Society membership some disheartening news about the Garden Club, where we have been meeting for the last 40 years or so.
We received this morning an email from the President of the Washington Federation of Garden Clubs (WSFGC) informing us that the Garden House was sold as of October 10, 2018 and that we, that is Dante, are not able to have our meetings there after October 31, 2018 at which date the lockers we rent there have to be emptied as well.
So we’re looking for a new meeting space, both in the short and the long term.
We have not yet spoken with the new owners and are trying to find out who they are and how to reach them. It may be that they will be willing to rent to us, at least in the short term. We’re trying to contact them.
Short term I am particularly interested in finding a location for our November 14th meeting. I would welcome suggestions from the membership. Please email them to me and to the Board rather than to the membership at large. I don’t want to fill up everyone’s inbox with emails.
At the next meeting on October 24 – at the Garden House – the Board is planning an Q and A / Feedback Forum before the presentation. I hope as many of you as can make it will be there.
I know that this is discouraging news but I’m sure that as a group we can come up with a solution that will enable us to continue to enjoy our gatherings and presentations.
Forza e Coraggio!
Dan DeMatteis,
President, Dante Alighieri Society of Washington
by Joyce Ramee | Oct 5, 2018 | Notices
Ciao tutti –
NEXT MEETING of the 2018-2019 PROGRAM YEAR IS
THIS COMING WEDNESDAY, OCT 10
Our speaker this evening will be Professor Mary O’Neil, an Associate Professor of History at the University of Washington, who will be presenting “Niccolò Machiavelli on Politics, Religion, and War”. Machiavelli served for a time as political advisor to the Borgia family and immortalized the amoral warlord, Cesare Borgia, by dedicating his book, “Il Principe” (The Prince) to him. Machiavelli was excommunicated in his own time but remains a seminal figure in political thought even today.
Professor O’Neil received a BA from the University of Chicago and PhD from Stanford University. She has been a University of Washington associate professor since 1981. She also studied at the University of Bologna with Carlo Ginzburg, the Italian historian who has been a pioneer in the use of Inquisition trial records to study popular beliefs.
She has taught courses at the UW on Medieval and Renaissance Italy since the 1980s, including a course on “Rome: the City in History from Romulus to Mussolini”, which was designed as a basic introduction for students going on Study Abroad programs at UW Rome Center.
So come along and get to know more about another fascinating Italian from the Renaissance.
As usual our Pre-Dante Pasta Dinner will be ready at 6:30 and the program will start at 7:30. Please bring an antipasto, dolce, or vino to share.
If you plan to come for the dinner as well as the presentation, please make your reservation by 5:00 pm Monday Oct 8 by clicking on the button below, calling our Information Line at our NEW number, (206) 289-0419 or emailing your request to our NEW reservation email, reserve@danteseattle.org.
Let us know how many are in your party. This will help our volunteer cooks know how much pasta to prepare.
Cost is $8.00 per person or $15.00 per couple to be paid at the dinner. Cash, check, credit or debit cards accepted.
Our meetings are held at the Garden House (formerly Headquarters House) located at 2336 15th Avenue South in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Seattle.
Avoid the traffic! The Garden House is a short walk from the Beacon Hill Light Rail Station.
Feel free to come early to help set up the room and start visiting. And, in any case, please come.
A presto –
Dan DeMatteis,
President, Dante Alighieri Society of Washington
Gabriella Vagnoli was born in Pisa, Tuscany, home of the famous Leaning Tower. She grew up in a multicultural family thanks to her Brazilian mom and remembers teaching Italian for the first time as a child to her Brazilian cousins. She obtained a Laurea in English and Spanish Language and Literature at the Università degli Studi di Pisa and during her college years spent a year in the University of Reading, UK, studying mainly the works of Shakespeare. After obtaining a Certificate as a Teacher of Italian (DITALS II) at the Università per Stranieri di Siena, she has taught in a full immersion school in Florence, a children's full immersion program in Chicago and a Community College in Illinois.
Tiziana was born and raised in Sardinia, a beautiful Italian island in the Mediterranean Sea. She has always been passionate about foreign languages and cultures, and studied French and German at the Scuola Superiore Interpreti e Traduttori in Milan, where she obtained her first Foreign Languages and Interpreter BA degree. She then pursued her MA in English and German Language and Literature at IULM, one of the most prestigious universities in Milan, Italy for Language and Communication studies.
Nicla is a native of Napoli, Italy. She has a Laurea in Materie Letterarie (degree in humanities) and a Laurea in Pedagogia (degree in Education) from the Università degli Studi di Cassino. She earned her M.A in Italian and her PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Washington. She has published articles and book chapters on gender and theater as well as politics and religion in Counter-Reformation Italy and in the last years, has been teaching Italian literature, language, and culture in different institutions. In addition to teaching in our program, Nicla is authorized to cover the role of esaminatrice and intervistatrice in our PLIDA Examination Board.