Page 1 - Italina-American Herald - January 2025

THE CHEF’S
PERSPECTIVE
Start the new year
with a warm bowl
of homemade comfort
PAGE 18
FOLLOW US ONLINE!
Find the latest Italian-American Herald features as well as
an archive of back issues at our newly updated website,
ItalianAmericanHerald.com
Add us to your favorite browsing sites and come back often!
@ItalianAmericanHerald @HeraldItalian
SUBSCRIBE
S C A N M E
JANUARY 2025 $3.00
Vol. 12 / No. 1
A MONTHLY NEWSPAPER SERVING THE ITALIAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITY
To master mason
Giovanni Sassone,
the past and future
are carved in stone
By Ken Mammarella
Master stonemason Giovanni Sassone
wanted to be a doctor or a police officer, and
he has a kidding personality that would work
in standup comedy. But his masonry career is
in his blood.
“I am honoring my great-grandfather,”
stonemason Salvatore Giovanni Cantera, who
when arriving from Abruzzo in 1898 brought
with him 20 stonemasons, some blood
relatives and some cousins in the paesano
sense. And he’s honoring his grandmother,
Esther Martha Cantera, a businesswoman
successful in multiple sectors, including
construction.
Sassone, a 63-year-old also known
as Jonny, has taught the business to his
son, Bryan, and he hopes that his four
grandchildren continue in it. “They’re going
to be involved,” he said, acknowledging that
“It’s very, very, very, very, very hard, physical
See SASSONE - page 7
WWW.ITALIANAMERICANHERALD.COM
Italy 2025: What travelers should know
Jubilee year brings more visitors, major renovations, new regulations
To enter the burial site of Italy’s royal family, Raphael and other renowned artists, you’ll need a timed ticket which costs 5 euros.
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
By Jeanne Outlaw-Cannavo
Buon Anno from Italy. Happy New Year
to all! If you are planning to visit il bel paese
in 2025 for the first time or are returning for
another taste of la dolce vita, be prepared for
some recent changes across the country and
a major event in Rome which could affect
your travel plans.
Italy hosts around 65 to 70 million
tourists a year, but this year will be even
more crowded with approximately 35
million believers expected in Rome for
the Jubilee 2025. The Holy Year calls for
Catholics to come to Rome to visit holy sites
and participate in rites of reconciliation so
they can receive plenary indulgences which
forgive all sins.
The first Jubilee was announced in 1300
by Pope Boniface VIII and is believed to be
based on a Jewish tradition which instituted
a year of rest for the earth every 50 years. To
mark the beginning of the Jubilee, a ram’s
horn, or yobel, in Hebrew, was blown, from
which the Christian term Jubilee comes.
See ADVISORY - page 4
The new Ken Burns documentary
about da Vinci rises to the occasion
By Richard Sasso
One could hardly hope for a better
coming together of talents: Ken Burns, one
of America’s most talented documentary
filmmakers, takes on arguably the man of
the last millennium: Leonardo da Vinci.
The nearly four-hour result is among Burns’
very best work and a brilliant introduction
to one of the most fascinating minds in
Italian – and perhaps world – history. It also
marks the first time Burns has dealt with a
non-American topic.
The documentary traces Leonardo
da Vinci’s life, showing him to be the
epitome of the Italian Renaissance: an
artist of prodigious talent, a relentlessly
curious scientist, and an inventor of such
imagination that just the images of his
devices captivate the mind. Burns’s team
Leonardo da Vinci’s illustration “Vitruvian
Man” is a study in human proportion
and anatomy.
See DA VINCI - page 10