Mary Pledges Allegiance

Lamborghini Gallardo on Palm

ART FOR TODAY

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY

TO STRONG AND LASTING MARRIAGES!

Today's featured article, Do You See Me? reminds us how important it is to try to see our spouses' hidden sacrifices, and to say thanks. The article's author learned a lesson when she realized how much she wanted her husband's appreciation.

For a biblical reminder that It's the Little Things That Count, join Rachael Phillips as she recognizes some of the unsung spouses of the Bible and nominates her own husband for an Unsung Spouse Award.

Mob rat squeals no more

Dies in protection

By JAMIE SCHRAM, JOSH MARGOLIN and DOUG AUER

Last Updated: 3:58 AM, January 25, 2012

Posted: 2:36 AM, January 25, 2012

A mob turncoat whose testimony helped doom the New Jersey crime family that inspired “The Sopranos” has died while hiding in witness protection, The Post has learned.

Stool pigeon Anthony Capo, 52, dropped dead Monday after suffering a heart attack.

“There were more people celebrating this on Staten Island than the Giants’ win,” said one source.
The death of Capo, who once stabbed a mob rival in the eye with a fork at a Staten Island club, was confirmed by his onetime lawyer, Joel Stein. Read more......

Death, Italian Style

It’s not quite as final as you may think.
by Judy Bachrach

Death has an interesting character in Italy. It’s not always evil. For example, if you die anywhere in Italy, which I highly recommend, you get to lie in state in either an embellished hospital room or else the prettiest room in the family house, often air- conditioned, which for your benefit will be converted into what they call here “una camera ardente.”

What this means is that the room, starring you in your best outfit, will be stuffed with little candles, placed elegantly all around your body. Hundreds of chrysanthemums, the traditional flower for the dead, will be settled in large vases, brought by scores of grieving visitors, all of whom will say they remember you fondly because it is polite to do so.

Debbie Collins, a British acupuncturist whose father-in-law was laid out within minutes in just such a companiable way, recalls her grieving mother-in-law “alternately slapping her husband’s face, berating him for dying, and weeping over him and telling him how much she loved him and was going to miss him.”  This is normal behavior in much of Italy, a country that reveres its dead a whole lot more than it admires the living.

(Note to tourists: About the most vulgar and offensive thing you can say in Rome is “Mortacci tua!” which means basically “Damn your dead ancestors.” I know it doesn’t sound like much, but trust me, it is incendiary. So if you hear it, don’t repeat it.) Continue >

JANUARY 2012 IN VERMONT