Dina Horwedel
- Location
- Colorado, USA
- Birthday
- October 23
- Bio
- I spent the first 20 or so years of my life spelling my last name for teachers. I always knew that it was my turn for the roll-call when a teacher’s face would contort. My last name was not difficult to pronounce because it was Italian, but rather, because it is a German moniker that I inherited from my father. My first and middle names came from my mother, who named me after a World War II Italian resistance fighter.
I always felt like a square peg growing up in Northeast Ohio: huggy in a place where the staid German and English descendants didn’t show much affection; effervescent where most people were quiet; and loving a good party where most people’s definition of a good time was watching Wheel of Fortune. My Italian family gatherings could be heard several miles away. I always thought I was weird because I was nothing like the people in my town who said Eyetalian instead of Italian; where they made grilled cheese sandwiches with Velveeta. My grandfather was teased as a boy for eating pizza, which was called “Dago food” and we were outsiders in a town with no Catholic Church.
I spent a summer in high school living in northern Europe. It seemed so familiar… threads of the Germanic culture that were woven into that of my hometown. But I never felt the desire to go to Italy. I had heard my great-grandfather complain so much about the grinding poverty in “the old country” that I didn’t see the point. Why would I ever want to go to Italy? After all, he escaped.
After I went to college, where for the first time I was exposed to many Eyetalian-Americans outside of my family. At one of my first jobs as a journalist, I was surrounded by Eyetalian-Americans, and it was one of the best jobs of my life: laughter filled our offices, we lunched together, invented and wrote and edited and dreamed together. After law school, I moved West, then overseas, working in Afghanistan, Africa, and Armenia, combining a journalism and communications background with a law degree. I used my overseas work as a launch pad for visiting other countries, and eventually found myself in Italy.
I wish I could say it was love at first sight. I fought it at first. I never saw the point of stiletto heels on cobblestones. The echoes of Vespas bounced off of ancient stone buildings droned like swarms of wasps. And how productive could a country be when everything shut down in the afternoon? But over time Italy seduced me… the rolling fields of Tuscany, the terra cotta roofs of Florence, the purplish hues of the ocean in Cinque Terre, the slapping of water on the canals of Venice, and the simple mindfulness and presence I felt as I sipped cappuccino or ate and ate and ate some more, that for the first time in a long time I wasn’t mindlessly scurrying about, but was seeing and tasting and living.
I understand why my great-grandfather came to America. There was opportunity for his family and there still is. But I realized after visiting Italy that I wasn’t weird, I was just Italian! I didn’t have to leave la dolce vita back in Italy. I am learning how to live the sweet life (while still bitching about it like a real Italian), right here in the land of Velveeta.
MY RECENT POSTS
- Identity
July 03, 2012 07:37PM - Lunchtime with a Warlord at
the Intercontinental Hotel
July 01, 2012 06:25PM - Kony 2012 Unmasked
March 10, 2012 05:36PM - Truth in Writing
February 07, 2012 09:50PM - All Saints Day 1985
October 18, 2011 06:43PM
MY RECENT COMMENTS
- “Greg, I just learned of
this effort and I wish you all
the
best! I enjoy your
wri…”
December 31, 2012 11:10AM - “Jeremiah, wow. When I
first read about Frank I
thought, "Oh,
I hope this
isn…”
July 03, 2012 06:55PM - “Patty, I am getting back
to reading after a hiatus
here. I
take umbrage with
your…”
March 16, 2012 11:50AM - “Jeremiah--getting back
to reading again and wanted to
let you
know this is such
a…”
March 16, 2012 11:48AM - “Here is an interesting
story that shows Ugandans'
reaction to
the Kony 2012
video…”
March 15, 2012 11:15AM
Dina Horwedel's Links
Identity
“How was your day?” my husband asked.
“I realized today that I am a real asshole,” I replied. “I have been oblivious to other people’s pain, despite all of it over the years. I have seen the patterns, but I ignored them. Human beings are hurting. There… Read full post »
Lunchtime with a Warlord at the Intercontinental Hotel
Our driver Abdul
Creeps along
Jockeying for a favorable inch
In the mayhem
Smoke from cooking fires
Fueled by plastic bags and garbage
Mixes with the dust spewed
By so many centuries
Finally, a gap appears… Read full post »
The Kony 2012 video, created by the fundraising group Invisible Children, has gone viral, and has touched a nerve with millions of people around the world.
Unfortunately the video is misleading on many levels and possibly violates the Better Business Bureau’s standards for… Read full post »
Truth in Writing
All Saints Day 1985
I got the call around 6 a.m. on Sunday morning. I picked up my clothes from where I had dropped them a few hours earlier and put them on, no time for a shower. They still reeked of cigarette smoke from last night’s Halloween celebration at the bar.… Read full post »
Those bin Laden Pictures
Not everyone wants to see the pictures of the dead bin Laden. There are those that believe in keeping them confidential so as not to martyr him further. Giving him a burial at sea made sense, because there would be no gravesite at which to mourn, no large crowds of demonstrators… Read full post »
Racism Against Native Americans Is Not Dead
A column written on behalf of American Indian College Fund President Richard B. Williams
In February there was a tremendous uproar about the racism and classism inherent in an advertisement run by Groupon during the Super Bowl, in which the plight of Tibetan people was minimized by saying they make &… Read full post »
Racism Against Native Americans Is Not Dead
A column written on behalf of American Indian College Fund President Richard B. Williams
In February there was a tremendous uproar about the racism and classism inherent in an advertisement run by Groupon during the Super Bowl, in which the plight of Tibetan people was minimized by saying they make &… Read full post »
Zen and the Art of the Boda Boda
On the plane from London to Africa, I saw a man wearing a cowboy
hat. I approached him and asked, “Are you from the American
West?”
“Yes, Montana originally,” he said. “I live in
Seattle now.”
“I live in Colorado,” I said. “That’s why I
asked.… Read full post »
Mom's Gold and the Plastic Jesus
I have been gone awhile. Working on editing and finishing that darned book! Here is an excerpt from a chapter.
My mother, who always said I couldn’t write about her until she was dead, also told me repeatedly that she was giving me all of her gold and diamond jewelry when… Read full post »
Halfway There: What You've Lost Along the Way to Middle Age
Sitting in a Midwestern cafe in mid-summer in midlife under the mean shade of locust trees, cast by the pretense of their spare leaves which makes shadows dance across a white linoleum table top, you begin to wonder, “Where the hell did my life go?”
You are at the halfway… Read full post »
After hearing the news of the al Shabab bombings in Uganda during the World Cup finals, I wondered if Africa would ever be free of violence. I thought back to my time in Africa in 2006, when I visited Congo from Uganda during the Africa Cup, and the sense of hope… Read full post »
This is a piece from my manuscript in progress "What's A Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?" about my time in Afghanistan in 2004.
There is the American belief that a single person can change the world with a small action and the greatest intent. I believe… Read full post »
I grew up with a woman that was more like an older, more beautiful, exotic, experienced, funny and popular sister. My mother was 16 when she married, 17 when she bore me, and still not healed from the loss of her own mother who died when my mother was 13. (“I… Read full post »
Eulogy for My Mother
A long time ago, my mother told me, “You were always my first love.” I think she was telling me a white lie. I think this town was her first love, and although I may have been her first child, I believe she loved her family, equally, with a passion, pride… Read full post »
Clan
Roxanne Swentzell, a renowned sculptor from the Santa Clara Pueblo, speaks with a group of 26 women on a weeklong rafting expedition. We are standing on a mesa looking at petrographs and a granary in Cataract Canyon along the Colorado River. Roxanne says that the petrographs were often used to commun… Read full post »
I’m Not Nuts. I’m Italian!
Some people achieve greatness, others have it thrust upon them, then there are those that are born Italian - Holly and the Italians
For most of my life I had never been to Italy, although my great-grandfather arrived at Ellis Island by boat from Calabria, the southernmost, mountainous region… Read full post »
The Religious Musings of a Drunken Monkey
I was reminded of my awakening to my own mortality by a note from a college classmate who shared comments her young son was making about death, followed by another friend’s note that her husband’s musings about whether Buddhists in Tibet decorated their homes with crucifixes as some Ameri… Read full post »
Dad Was An Unlikely Role Model
I wrote a column in honor of my mother for Mother’s Day. I glossed over doing the same for Father’s Day—not because my father didn’t impart me with some valuable life’s lessons, but because I was wondering how, in the era of political correctness, I could write abo… Read full post »
Not Quite A Widow
I was married to a photographer, a man who spent his life behind the lens seeing the beauty and potential in the world—in war, in nature, in tragedy, in daily life. As my former husband spoke to people behind the black metal and plastic camera bodies—innumerable camera bodies as far as… Read full post »
Truisms from My Mother
Ah, Mother’s Day. Who among us is not grateful for the wisdom handed down to us from our mothers, generation after generation? I have gleaned some valuable wisdom about life from my mother—and grandmothers.
If it weren’t for my mother’s admonition that I must never stick anyt… Read full post »
Everything I Need to Know About Myself Is On A Facebook Quiz
Facebook quizzes are incredible time-wasters. I am not immune. In the past few weeks I have learned that if I were a Beatle, I’d be Paul. I am a lemon yellow crayon, with an outgoing, sunny disposition. My aura is orange, according to Facebook, and I am an adventurer. It’s true,… Read full post »
Westamorphosis
Moving West holds a place in American mythology as an escape, a running away from old things and a running to new things, a fresh start. It can also be a homecoming, a return to self. Deliverance.
I had glimpses of this place, snapshots preserved from vacations, stolen glances at… Read full post »
Why the World Needs a Peasant Great-Grandfather from Italy
I was taken aback when Americans were shocked by the economic crisis. It was akin to everyone's reaction when Rosie O'Donnell revealed she is gay. Why the big stink? Are people really that clueless?
It wasn’t New York University professor and famed economist Nouriel Roubini’s predictions… Read full post »
What is Real in Our World?
What is real? It’s hard to tell whether the song of the wind is here today, if it can be heard above the rumble of cars stampeding through the valley to beat the morning rush hour. I cannot hear birdsong, although I suspect birds might still exist here in the palms,… Read full post »
Patty Kane Horrigan
profkeck
Miriam M
Denise (Bo) Boehler
Ernesto Che Guevara
Lon Horwedel
Salon.com