Author Archives: dagostinokm

Unraveling a Family’s Legacy in Silk City:  I like to imagine my great-grandma, Anna, at 37 walking home from the silk factory in Paterson, New Jersey, during the late 1930s. Her long, gleaming black hair, never once cut, would be coiled into a bun—sweaty tendrils escaping around her temples. Her olive cheeks would be flushedContinue reading “Bound by Silken Thread”

Libor Havlicek is accustomed to bleeding on the job. After 10 years of making mosaics, the Brno artist no longer bothers with Band-Aids; he just wipes the blood from his fingers and continues to glue broken bits of tile to his latest work. As for wearing gloves, he dismisses the idea with a snigger. “MakingContinue reading “Mister Mosaic”

Anyone with a taste for the arcane has heard of Kutna Hora, the medieval town 70 kilometers (43 miles) east of Prague, with its assortment of esoteric treasures – the Gothic cathedral of St. Barbara, the underground labyrinth of silver mines and the ossuary, or bone church,” in the nearby town of Sedlec. But ifContinue reading “A Mystical Quest”

Some would say that Salem’s Italian neighborhood began in a small room next to a fish market at 27 Front St. in the year 1914. It was then that Rev. Pietro Piemonte began the city’s first Italian Mass with a group of immigrant families who didn’t speak English. According to city records from 1910, aboutContinue reading “Salem’s Little Italy”

A Real Life Winnie the Welder Recalls Her WWII Adventures

“Secrets of the Vespa Sisterhood” was written for The Boston Globe, 2004 and is available at archive.boston.com