Nonna's Knickknacks

They're tchotchkes. They're sentimental. They're junk. They're home. They were Nonna's knickknacks, and I've decided to pull them out of obscurity and share them with the world.

Welcome to my tour.

Nonna, as I've shared in a previous post, is my paternal grandmother. She will turn 100 years old on November 27th. "Nonna" is Italian for Grandma. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, there is no Italian word for knickknacks. Or worse, there is no Italian word for "Italian-American knickknacks." Come se dice, "Somewhere Jonathan Adler's head is exploding?"


Exhibit A. That old familiar Italian-American standby, plastic fruit. What you can't see in this photograph is that there is a small plastic bug on one of those apples. 'Cuz that makes it look more real. Even more curiously, check out, if you haven't already, the Brady Bunch tiki idol pencil cup to the left. And for those of you kids under 10, that white thing coming out of the phone is a cord.






The perfect complement to plastic fruit: plastic flowers...

Continuing on the bad pencil cup theme, check out the plastic Labatt's guy. My grandfather was employed for years by Mr. Carbone, who owned a liquor store. My grandparents, for some strange reason (perhaps all too obvious) enjoyed keeping alcohol-related knickknacks around the house.

Three staples of any nonna's home: pictures of the family, palms from Palm Sunday (maybe Palm Sunday, 1973?) and the Infant of Prague. The Infant of Prague is an odd, usually plastic, icon of Jesus-as-King-of-the-World-but-Still-a-Baby. He has a ring on his right hand and the whole world in his other. From left: my father, me, my uncle Jimmy and my cousins, Jimmy and Joey (back when they were still called Jimmy and Joey). My siblings and two other cousins apparently did not warrant a place in this display, leading me to the obvious conclusion that Jim, Joe and I were the favorite grandchildren.   Footnote on this particular Infant of Prague: Alicia and I sold it at the Salem Common Association yard sale for $10. We sold it to a lovely young Latina woman whose eyes lit up when she saw it. "Oooh," she said, "the baby Lord Jesus. He's so beautiful." We knew that Nonna's Infant of Prague was going to a loving home. I still regret having taken that woman's money.

Not all of Nonna's stuff was crap (and who said it was, anyway?). This art deco aqua ceramic horse lamp/planter was a huge hit among visiting art lovers and homosexuals for years. At the height of its popularity, it had a large, pleated, rectangle shade, and on either side of the base, two small square bowls that served as planters. Outrageous, I know, but that's what made it sooooo freakin' fabulous.



Some of the glass on this hutch is beautiful, too. I'll admit it's a screaming sea of blue, but the dark blue pedestal candy dish in the front is lovely. The 'I Dream of Jeannie' vase in the back? Not so much. To the far left? Another alcohol bottle. You know, from Carbone's.



"L'Ultima Cena di Jesus."
This bas relief in pewter is absolutely stunning in person, if a little over-the-top. When we cleaned out Nonna's house, this was the first thing my sister and I tried to "call." Unfortunately, it was promised to Yvonne, my grandmother's incredibly devoted niece and our first cousin once-removed who took Nonna in when she was 95 and Yvonne was 70. How could we begrudge her this? Although if Yvonne leaves it to one of her kids and they try to sell it on ebay, heads will roll.





Viola! Nonna's girly bathroom. My grandparents didn't buy their first house until my father was 21 years old. After having lived in an apartment with her husband and two sons, Nonna was adamant she have some "girl space." Pink, pink, and more pink. She even had fluffy, hot pink throw rugs on the floor, around the toilet and of course, covering the toilet lid! One time, Alicia took those rugs home to launder, and upon returning to Nonna's and pulling them out of her car, held them out to us and said sadly, "How many Muppets had to die??"

"And a partridge (that used to be) in a pear tree."

Actually my grandmother didn't own a pear tree. She didn't even decorate a Christmas tree. She decorated a cactus. When I was little, in order that his grandchildren be able to reach the kitchen light, my grandfather hung this partridge from the cord. Both practical and attractive, this photo does not do justice to the amount of its glitter. We loved that partridge. Last year at Christmas, I sent this photo to my siblings and cousins with the caption, "A Very Ghetto Christmas." Still, however, we really find that partridge to be beautiful.

For all their eccentricities of interior design, my grandparents' home was one of the most loving spaces I've ever spent time in, and while I'd love to wax poetic about home being where the heart is and how they were poor but generous (all true), I won't get into it here. You can love people and still speak the truth about them, and the truth about my grandmother was that her knickknacks were horrifying.

Taste the Rainbow

My friend Kevin, a 40-something (whoops, I mean 30-something), gay man, never ceases to be amazed by the idea that today's teenagers can be openly gay in high school with few, if any, repercussions.  He's also awed by the fact that they would have the "presence of mind" to own their own sexual identity at such a young age.  For teenagers today, sexual orientation is largely a non-issue, and even students who are uncomfortable with homosexuality, at the very least, ignore it.

It wasn't like that for Kevin, and it wasn't like that for me, a 40-something-who-looks-30-something, straight ally.  Kevin would have sooner died than come out in high school, and I would have sooner died than have openly supported him for it.  Of course, in the early 80s when we met, you literally could die for being openly gay.  Before the era of AIDS, "gay bashing" was likely the second cause of death for gay people, after suicide.  

I'm here to tell you that things are different now, especially here in Massachusetts where gay people have had full civil rights since 2004. What I want you to understand is that things are different at the grass roots level. Things are different with the kids.  

This is not your gay friend Kevin's public high school.

One of the main reasons for this change is the Gay-Straight Alliance.  GSAs are after-school clubs which offer a supportive environment for gay students and their straight allies to meet, socialize, vent and educate.  The first Gay Straight Alliance in a public high school was formed at Newton South in Massachusetts in 1987.  How safe your school is and how big your GSA may be dependent on both geography and rulings of your local district courts.  I don't think that it's a coincidence that Massachusetts was the first state to allow GSAs in public schools and that we were also the first state to allow gay marriage.  (It's also worth noting that there are GSAs in Salt Lake City, so keep your fingers crossed for gay Sealing Ordinances in our lifetime.)

The GSA at the high school at which I work is less than ten years old, and I became a co-advisor of it this September.  My involvement with the BHS GSA, also called Spectrum, came about through a series of coincidences. Last year, two of my co-counselors and I decided to attend a Spectrum meeting to show support from the guidance department.  We meandered down the music hallway and found the meeting taking place in the In-School Suspension room.  Huh?!? The In-School Suspension room is an ugly, faded room, curiously lit by dull fluorescent lights. It's not well-maintained and for good reason:  it's where kids are sent to be punished.  But why were the gay kids and their straight allies living the gay man's nightmare by meeting in a room with no paint and bad lighting?  

We counselors were concerned.  I immediately offered the conference room in our department as an alternate space, and they leapt at the offer.  Our new boss, much more gay-sympathetic and 30 years younger than our previous boss, barely blinked an eye when we ran this by him. (Though our former boss had been a counselor and was respectful of all students, he came from a don't ask/don't tell generation, - ironically comprised of hippies and flower children - and would not have supported this move.  Our former principal, also 60ish, was of the same mindset:  tolerant only, but not openly supportive or encouraging.) Because my office was next door to this new meeting space, I often checked in with the students, especially if John, the advisor, had drama rehearsal after school. 

Despite my years in theater and being the daughter of a gay man, I confess I didn't always know what to make of these kids.  Well, I knew what to make of them:  they were the same fringe element that you'd find in the social margins of any high school, half of them "misfits" and half of them in the band and/or drama club, i.e. "talented misfits." But I didn't always like their attitude.  I couldn't abide their continually self-identifying as victims.  I sometimes got the impression that they were reveling in the idea being outcasts and got a palpable sense of annoyance when they talked about how unpopular the club was.  "One kid told me," a student said, "that she'd join GSA if it weren't social suicide."

Social suicide? I thought to myself.  Why are they buying into this mindset?  Gay people pave the way for all things cool in this country:  fashion, music, movies, advertising, hair styles and theater.  (I include theater, not because it's considered "cool" but because it's generally an accurate predictor of social change and where you will find the most cutting edge ideas about politics and cultural issues before they become mainstream.)  In any case, I didn't understand the paradox of why coolness in the real world is considered to be "social suicide" in high school. I believe, with every fiber of my being, that negativity only buys you more negativity.  If you decide you live in a hostile universe, it will be hostile. If you choose to live in a friendly universe, it will be friendly. As the saying goes, "If you want a friend, be a friend," and if I may add a second part to it, "If you don't want any friends, be an asshole."  It's your choice.  But you can't preach to teenagers.  (Duh!)  You can't "tell" them how it should be or God forbid, tell them how they "should" be.  So I let them vent and gently tried to challenge their internal beliefs, hoping that eventually the collective energy of the club might shift. 

Then came "Day of Silence," and everything did change, but from the outside in.

"Day of Silence" is a national "student-led day of action when concerned students, from middle school to college, take some form of a vow of silence to bring attention to the name-calling, bullying and harassment -- in effect, the silencing -- experienced by LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) students and their allies"  (www.glsen.com).   Yes, the act of students' not speaking in school is frustrating to teachers (no more frustrating to anyone than the GSA advisor, John, who teaches frickin' chorus).  Parameters were drawn up by the GSA, in cooperation with the principal, to help facilitate written communication between students and teachers in class, if need be. I was cautiously optimistic about how the day would go, mostly because there had been no backlash or questioning at the faculty meeting when the principal informed the staff about the upcoming event. Still, it was anyone's guess.  With only a handful of students in the GSA to begin with, they were truly in the minority of minorities.

With the encouragement of this new and more enlightened school administration, Day of Silence was held.  Students put up signs, made announcements and about 10 of them pledged to be full, silent participants.  The kids had also made about 150 rainbow ribbons, and I offered put some in the teachers' room for staff to take and wear.  The rest would be distributed to students who might want to support the effort.  We were not overly optimistic as to the response but had our sights set on merely raising awareness. The Spectrum students were happy that they were going to be allowed to have a Day of Silence, regardless of the level of its success.

But something happened that changed the gloom and doom predictions of the students who'd assumed they'd be made fun of/harassed/ bullied/teased/embarrassed, etc.  WE RAN OUT OF RIBBONS.  Despite an emergency run to a craft store, and the creation of 100 more, we still didn't have enough ribbons for everyone in the school who wanted one.  Can I say it again? We ran out of ribbons.  Because more people supported these students than we'd anticipated.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when our high school held its annual Activities Fair. This is an after-school event during which all the clubs in school set up tables in the cafeteria and let the freshmen, newly enrolled students, and curious upperclassmen explore what the clubs are all about.

I stood at our table with my co-advisor, John, and about 5 students.  There was no missing the Spectrum table.  John and the kids had hung a giant rainbow banner on the wall which was visible from across the entire caf.  They'd also hung a glitzy "Mystic Players-esque" tube of colored streamers from the ceiling that fell right in the center of the table.  We had a basket of Rainbow Twizzlers and fun-size Skittles to pass out to students.  The kids had made yet another 150 ribbons to distribute as well. The principal took a ribbon and wore it on his lapel. The superintendent of schools took a Mass Equality bumper sticker and immediately hung it in the window of his office.  Despite the support of these school leaders, what we really wanted was the support of more students.  Optimistically, we were ready with a sign-up sheet for any students who might want to join our club (should they be brave enough to put it in writing).

There's an interesting phenomenon that occurs around the Spectrum table at an Activities Fair. Prospective members look at our table curiously, and then when they realize what the club is, turn away.  Avert their eyes.  Blush and look to see if anyone noticed.  After 10 minutes, I got fed up with this, so I decided to meet these prospective members where they were at, meaning I was going to embarrass them even more.  I acknowledged that they didn't want to come over by throwing Rainbow Twizzlers and Skittles at them and then eventually, to them.  "You don't have to join our club," I said, " but you can still have our candy."  Soon the kids joined me and began throwing candy to their peers saying, "Taste the rainbow! Taste the rainbow!" (Witnessing my lobbing candy directly into eager students' hands, John said, "Wow, you're good at sports."  Sardonically, I replied, "Well, someone in this club has to be.")  John and I then stepped back and let the students work their quirky, charismatic, artsy magic with their more reluctant classmates.

Much to the horror of conservative right-wingers, our recruitment tactics have worked. I'm happy to report that 36 students signed up to join the club, email addresses and all.   About half of them have been showing up to meetings on a regular basis.

It's still not as easy to be "out" in a politically moderate, suburban, 'bedroom community' as it is on, say, West 44th Street between Broadway and 8th, but it's easier than it used to be.  And more often than not, it's just fun.

Moroccan Style Chicken Phyllo Rolls

This recipe is dedicated to my aforementioned friend, Kevin, who first showed me how to work with phyllo dough in 1990.  Though this recipe isn't mine, it rocks. At your next cocktail party, it will make you a hit among your gay friends and/or straight allies.  Difficulty level for Kevin and me: easy peasy.  Difficulty level for everyone else:  potentially challenging and time-consuming but worth it for its fabulousness.  Click on recipe to link to Epicurious.com.

Nonna's Advice for a Bad Economy

In these days of economic uncertainty, I wish my grandmother were "with it." You see, if Nonna had better hearing, better vision and a better memory, I would love, love, love to hear her expound on the mortgage crisis, the bailout, "the Wall Street fatcats," the maroons in Congress and the ordinary Americans who spend more than they earn. All equally to blame in her eyes, I'm sure, for this big, bad economic mess.

Nonna is 99 years old. She'll be 100 in November. She was sharp as a tack until about three years ago, and since then has begun a slow decline. Because of her compromised hearing and sight, she is not really able to keep up with current events, and if you ever knew Nonna, she kept up with current events and was not afraid to share her opinion(s) around her kitchen table.

Nonna was a first-generation Italian American and one of six children. After high school, she was employed as an Italian translator and then as a bookkeeper. Nonna was 21 years old when the stock market crashed, and in part because of the Great Depression, she did not marry my grandfather until she was 27. Like my maternal grandparents, who were engaged in 1927 but did not marry until 1937, couples in the 30s tended to postpone marriage until they were able to save any amount of money. (They sure as hell did not go into debt for the wedding reception either.) She and my grandfather had two boys, my father and my uncle. My uncle was trained as a plumber and my father was a lawyer. He worked to pay his own way through law school, through Boston College (as a cater waiter) and even more shockingly, through Matignon High School (as a dishwasher). If my grandparents were able to help him financially, I'm sure they weren't able to offer much. When Nonna was middle-aged, she became a "salesgirl" at Sears and Roebuck until she was forced to retire in 1973 when she turned 65.

For 27 years, we visited Nonna every Sunday at her house just outside Davis Square in Somerville. For my siblings and me, and for our cousin Rob, visiting Nonna was a constant in our lives and was especially meaningful because on those Sundays, our respective fathers, no longer married to our respective mothers, took us to hang out with their side of the family. It was our Italian family connection, and around that table was where we learned where our family stood regarding any issue of the day: economics, saving money, marriage, food (and more food), cooking, drinking, racism, romance, etc. We didn't always agree, but that was half the fun.

I have been thinking about those days a lot lately and wishing I could "go to Nonna's" these past few Sundays. Ironically, I'm not being sentimental about this. I would just love to hear her go off! In fact, I spent so many Sundays at Nonna's, I can tell you the lessons she'd likely want to impart about this economic mess if she could.

Know Who You Are

Nonna was extremely intelligent, and only graduated from high school after a concerned teacher begged my great-grandfather to let her stay in school. My great-grandfather hadn't believed until then that girls should go to school beyond the eighth grade, but for Nonna and because of her teacher, he made an exception. Nonna used her 'formal' education as a starting-off place for the rest of her lifelong learning. She did not assume that "everything she needed to know she learned in high school," and I don't think she'd blame public schools for the financial mess we're in. She continually educated herself. She read the newspaper every day. She went to the library and read voraciously. She was a whiz at crosswords. She double-checked her receipts and counted the change that the clerk handed back to her. She understood her bank statements. She wrote letters of complaint when she was displeased with products. And she never replaced anything that still worked just because it was out of style. She relied heavily on her common sense, and unfortunately even the best teacher in the world can't teach common sense.

Nonna knew that a person's life was worth more than the "stuff" we own, although Nonna did have a lot of stuff (another blog for another day). Having a roof over one's head, friends, family, a glass of wine (or scotch), making really great gnocchi, tending a garden of cacti and succulens which would have impressed Martha Stewart, and babysitting the grandkids were all she needed. Oh, and did I mention that she knew how to break the neck of a chicken for dinner?  This was a skill she had learned around the age of 8 or 9 growing up on a farm.  She didn't know much about acquiring wealth, but she knew a lot about not going into debt, about breaking even, taking advantage of offers, paying back, and most importantly about the concept of "choosing not to afford" things. Her values were in tact, and her spending habits reflected those values. She was all about personal accountability.

Trust your instincts

On a recent Oprah Winfrey Show, and while explaining the current economic mess we're in, Suze Orman and CNN correspondent Ali Valshi criticized banks for having assured home buyers that they "could" afford to buy more house with less money, thus setting the stage for thousands of foreclosures. I can see how people would have been seduced by an offer of a larger loan, I really can. I'm just not sure my grandmother would have been one of them. She would have gotten out a pencil and pad, recalculated the interest, measured it against both her and my grandfather's wages (note, I wrote wages, not salaries) and decided it was too risky. The end. Nonna would have suspected that the bankers had something to gain by offering her a loan with more interest. I believe she would have said, "Thanks but no thanks. We'll stay in our apartment until this is less risky."

Take the Butter and Run

When African-American comedians like Bernie Mac and Chris Rock talk about government cheese in their standup routines, you will hear chortles of laughter from the my siblings and me. Why? Because we, upper-middle class white kids, enjoyed our fair share of government rationed butter and cheese during our teen and college years.

You see, just after my grandfather died when I was 19, my grandmother transferred the deed to her house to my father and uncle so that she could eventually qualify for senior housing. Despite the fact that she still lived in a house, Nonna was technically considered poor. Not po', but poor. And in many ways, she was. The house was all they had. Davis Square was still a pit of despair, and my grandmother was living off of Social Security. (I believe my father paid a lot of her bills as well.) As result of this slightly unethical deed transfer and of Ronald Reagan's trickle-down theory of economics, Nonna qualified for free butter and cheese from the government. Yum!

Each 5 pound brick of butter or cheese was about the size of, well, a brick, and she got these bricks once a week. 5 lbs of butter plus 5 lbs of orange imitation cheddar cheese is way too much for one old lady, so she very generously offered much of it to her college-age granddaughters. (If you ever came to a cast party at 591 Beacon, you may have sampled said cheese on a cracker, paired, I'm sure, with wine from a $3.99 jug of Gallo chablis.)

Nonna was not afraid to stand in line for her free butter and cheese. She didn't look at it as a handout; she looked at it as something she had earned. She had worked hard all her life and raised two sons. She paid her taxes, voted, and left a very small carbon footprint by never learning how to drive.

I'm sure she also looked at the opportunity to live in senior housing as something she'd earned, too, but when the day came and she was offered an apartment, she turned it down, preferring to stay in her house until she was 95. During the final years that she lived alone in that house, she took advantage of subsidized services from various agencies: a part-time home health aide, a part-time health care worker and a pick up and drop off service from the Somerville library. She did not, however, get Meals on Wheels. For someone of Nonna's calibre as an Italian chef and cook, Meals on Wheels would have brought shame and disgrace, not to her family, but to her palate.

Learn from her example(s):

Family legend 1: In the 1950's, Nonna bought a canned ham from the Hormel Company. When she opened it, she was dismayed by how much fat was on the ham. She wrote a letter of complaint to Hormel, and by way of apologizing, they sent her a giant box filled with Hormel products. Lesson: if something you've paid for is not of good quality, let the company know.

Family legend 2: During World War II, all families got food rations. Somehow, my grandfather and his "associates" always managed to get more than their share of steak and roast beef, than their rations allowed.  Sometimes the rations were, um, "rationed" from the trunk of a car. My father loved to say that his family ate better during World War II than at any other time of their lives. Had the meat been stolen from somewhere? Probably. Would other people have taken advantage of this opportunity? Probably. Lesson: If your country is in a world war, take the free meat.

Memory: Nonna was taking Alicia and me on the bus somewhere, maybe to the Museum of Science, I don't know. I was probably only 4 or 5. We got on the bus and paid our fare. I noticed that Nonna only paid a dime, but I knew that my mother paid a quarter. Concerned that she might get in trouble, I whispered, "Nonna, you only paid a dime!" And she looked at me, pleased as punch, "I'm a senior citizen!" Cool! Nonna's old and she only has to pay a dime. Way to score, Nonna! Lesson: Nonna enjoyed her discounts.

Ah, yes, the coupons. Clip coupons. And then actually bring them to the store and use them.

Traumatic memory: OK, here goes... the coupons and the receipts from Star Market. Nonna did all her grocery shopping at Star Market in Porter Square. She was an infamous character there, not quite Ebenezer Scrooge, but close. You see, Nonna had a reputation for cross-checking her receipt with the advertised specials. She also double-checked the math on the receipt, the change and the price per pound. Then she went back to the store for the difference.

"You charged me $.69 per pound and the flyer said $.59 per pound. You owe me thirty cents." By the time we were young adults, a Sunday visit to Nonna's often included a run to Star Market, and every visit was twofold: to buy groceries and rectify a mistake from a previous transaction. Nonna did not want us to simply give her the missing money. She wanted the store to be held accountable for each and every penny, literally, and she did not think we should be embarrassed about it.  My cousin Joey's sad response to my uncle after returning from one of these trips was: "What did I ever do to you?!?"

In addition to checking her receipts, Nonna clipped coupons like a nutcake, and don't kid yourself, Alicia and I would rifle through those coupons and help ourselves to $.40 off here and $.75 off there, especially back in the good old days of "double coupons." Occasionally, the conversation around Nonna's kitchen table sounded like this:

Alicia: Nonna, this coupon is for $.20 off a bottle of New Coke.

Nonna: Can I use it for another tonic?

Alicia: No, just New Coke. Oh, wait, it expired in 1986.

Stephanie: 1986? Nonna, it's four years old!

Nonna: Oh. In that case, you can throw it away.

Rob: Damn! There goes $.20 down the drain!

Peter: Jesus, we'll have to go on welfare.

(Laughter, laughter, aaaand "scene.")

Great Christmas present for Nonna: new coupon file. "But I already got Nonna a new coupon file!" "No, I got it first!" "Oh, God, what am I going to get her then?"

A lot of the above is written with humor, but if you stop to think about it, there is a scary undercurrent to this: the Star Market Company apparently made a mistake EVERY SINGLE TIME my grandmother shopped there. How many people do not check their receipts and ask for their thirty cents back? Or are embarrassed about handing over a coupon for a dollar off?  Are you sure you're not currently being ripped off by your grocery store? If you took advantage of sales and specials and cents off here and there, how much money would you have saved by now? There's a saying, "Take care of the minutes, and the hours take care of themselves." I like to paraphrase it as "Take care of the nickels, and the dollars take care of themselves." And that, my friends, is pure Nonna.

Stephanie's Federal Government-Issued Cheesy Pasta
I created this dish in college out of necessity. You can update it with whole-wheat pasta and low-fat cheeses and it will taste fine, but not as good. You can also use name brand ingredients, and it will taste even better.

2 C pasta (whatever's on sale)
1/2 C ricotta cheese
1 thin slice federal government-issued butter
1/4 C grated orange federal government-issued cheddar cheese
Sprinkle generously with parmesan cheese.

Take cheeses and butter out of the refrigerator before putting the water on to boil. Boil pasta and drain. While pasta is still hot, add the butter and cheeses and mix well until it's a bowl of melted cheesy deliciousness. You can microwave the pasta again to make it even hotter.