2024
March – STC Anniversary
Wednesday, March 20, 2024
On March 20, 2024 the Seattle Trentino Club celebrated its 14th anniversary at Casa Italiana with a lunchtime gathering and afternoon presentation. We were very happy to see some of our long-time members, and to meet new folks who came for the program. Thanks so much to those of you who were able to come!
After lunch, we heard a presentation by our very special guest, Wendy Negley of Portland, OR, who spoke about her wonderful newly-published book From the Alps to the Cascades: The Stefani and Tinetti Families from Italy to America, 1540-1953, the story of the author’s great grandparents from Val di Non and Piedmont. Wendy drew from the extensive research in her book to share stories and photos about their families, their trips to America, their marriage in Michigan and life in Issaquah, Washington. In 2014, Wendy traveled with her sister, Rhonda Peterson (a member of the Seattle Trentino Club) to Sporminore, the town their great grandfather was from.
Wendy, who has also published two books of poetry, opened her presentation with a reading of her poem, “Family Tree,” which appears in the dedication to her family history book, as well as in her book of poetry, In a Heart’s Breath.
Comments from the audience expressed appreciation for Wendy’s detailed research and references. Annie Zadra noted that the maxims Wendy cited of her grandmother [“Don’t sweep only where the Pope walks!” and “Everyone has his own sack of rocks to carry!”] evoked those used by her own Nonna, resulting in a lively discussion of remembered phrases of wisdom.
From the Alps to the Cascades: The Stefani and Tinetti Families from Italy to America, 1540-1953 is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. It is an enjoyable and informative read, as well as a valuable contribution to the story of Trentino emigrants. Wendy donated a copy of the book to the club, which is available for loan. (Thank you!) An Italian-language publication of the book is forthcoming. Wendy can be reached via her website: wendynegleypoet.com
Here is a photo montage from the event (click to enlarge).
January – Annual La Befana Party
Saturday, January 6, 2024
Thanks to everyone who came to our La Befana Party at the beautiful Casa Italiana Cultural Center. It was wonderful having our new members Tanya Bosi and her mother Mirella Bosi join us, along with Tanya’s two sons.
La Befana (Joan Barker) and Babbo Natale (Bruce Johnson) were welcome arrivals. Many thanks to Kelly Nolan Shafer for reading the La Befana story this year!
Here is a photo montage from the event (click to enlarge).
2023
August – Annual Polenta Picnic
Sunday, August 20, 2023, 1:00pm – 5:00pm PDT
Casa Italiana – Italian Cultural Center
WOW, what a day! Folks came from far and wide, from Vancouver, Washington to Vancouver, BC, from California, Italy and … Bermuda to be there! We know there were others who wanted to be there and couldn’t. Please know that we missed you!
Every year feels like the best it has ever been, and this year’s Polenta Picnic was no exception.
The polenta was exceptional! Thank you again to Jerry Mascio (sponsor of the San Gennaro festival) for donating the polenta meal! And kudos to the polenta-making crew: Dan Blood, Sherman Blood, Rich Rotruck and ALL who stirred the pot!
We crowned our first Seattle Trentino Club Tonco Queen, Joan Barker, who has prepared her masterful tonco every year since the club was formed. Most of us have no idea how much work that is, but we appreciate the results!
Thanks to our wonderful hosts, Casa Italiana, for all your support. We could not have done it without you! We appreciate having an Italian Cultural Center so close by. Bonnie Birch’s delightful accordion music filled the air while we waited for the polenta to cook.
We were happy to meet new members Elena (Flaim) and Michael Kenny, and to welcome back Emy DeLuca (granddaughter of Robert Zadoni in California) and her friends. Alyssa McGinniss and daughter Ezianna, joined us for their first polenta picnic. We heard Paolo Antonio, president of the Trentino-Alto Adige Cultural Society of British Columbia, share some heartfelt stories of how Alyssa’s family had helped his own immigrant family in Canada. Pam Allyn, whom we had met during our Zoom meetings, also joined us “live” for the first time! We were grateful to Andrew Tosi for his help – and for later joining us as a new member! We were delighted to have Sofie Pedroni, niece of Jan and Tom Agosti, join us from Mantua, Italy, and to have Joe Castagna join us from California, along with his son Edd. Congratulations to Fino Zadra-Roberson, son of Sofie Fliss-Zadra and grandson of Annie Zadra, who celebrated his 15th birthday!
We appreciate all of you who spoke and shared your heartfelt words. Surely the Ancestors are beaming when we stir the pot and share a meal together, in joy and community.
Congratulations to our prize winners! Ezianna won the ‘Soldi per i popi’ (the jar of coins that is the children’s prize), Renaldo (Joe) Zuech won the book “Beyond the Threshold of Time“ by Alberto Folgheraiter, Sherman Blood won the bottle of prosecco, and Sarah, who was visiting Shawna Gibson from Bermuda, won the beautiful grand prize gift basket, assembled by Jan Agosti.
We so appreciate our long-time attendees who haven’t yet been named here – Grant Rauzi, Laureen and Howard Rogers, Denny Johnson and Patti Corcoran, Colleen Barker, and Roberta Blood. It wouldn’t be the same without you!
Welcome to all our new members! Thanks to ALL of you for your helping hands!
Here is a photo montage from the event (click to enlarge).
March – Film Premiere
Monday, March 27, 2023, 7:00pm – 9:00pm PDT
Online Zoom Event
We hosted a much-anticipated online film premiere on March 27, 2023 of Vincenzo Mancuso’s moving documentary “Trentini Americani: From Seattle to Wallace, The Community of the Northwest.” Vincenzo created this film from more than two dozen interviews he took in the Seattle area in 2017 and in Idaho and Montana in 2018.
Vincenzo joined us from San Francisco and answered audience questions after the film.
Some of the comments we have received:
“We enjoyed it so much. I think it was his best one yet. It really was great!”
“Vincenzo’s work is brilliant and I am so grateful to witness this project.”
“It was very inspiring and moving.”
“I was stunned – not only with the great content, but the beautiful technical quality of the documentary! Several of the photographs I had not seen before. What an amazing accomplishment!”
Vincenzo is working on the Italian-subtitled version of the film before it becomes publicly available.
Thank you again, Vincenzo, for documenting our stories and filming the interviews!
Vincenzo is also working on a longer documentary drawing from over ten years of interviews he has filmed across the US in Trentini communities.
In his update, Vincenzo said: “I would like to express my gratitude for your unwavering support of the project, and I appreciate your patience while waiting for the documentary’s completion.”
Vincenzo will update us on its release by the end of the summer.
January – Annual La Befana Party
Saturday, January 7, 2023, 1:00pm – 4:00pm PST
Casa Italiana – Italian Cultural Center (Burien, WA)
It was great fun seeing those of you who made it to our La Befana celebration in January! We got to meet some of you for the first time, and hope you will come again to our events!
We have not been able to meet for our La Befana party in person since 2020, so it meant a LOT to us to be able to welcome La Befana together, and to invite in the new possibilities of 2023 communally.
Here are some photo montages from the event (click to enlarge).
2022
August – Annual Polenta Picnic
Sunday, August 28, 2022, 1:00pm – 5:00pm
Casa Italiana – Italian Cultural Center (Burien, WA)
THANK YOU to all of you who came to our Seattle Trentino Club Polenta Picnic! It felt especially wonderful, since we haven’t cooked polenta together since 2019.
The weather was beautiful, and Casa Italiana, our host, was warm and welcoming in their hospitality! Some of you traveled very far to get here (Paul Antonioni from Vancouver, BC; Sallie Sprute from Wallace, Idaho; and Dan Zadra from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho) and we appreciate that! We know that there were many others who wanted to come this year and could not. We missed you!
As the words of the commemorative button/badge, designed by Anne Zadra, say: “We go on together!” And indeed, we do. Our memories are of folks who are grateful to be together, sharing food, friendship, and fun. We so enjoyed meeting those of you who were there for the first time, meeting new members, and seeing dear long-time members. We hope you will join us as members and return to future gatherings!
The beautiful accordion music of Bonnie Birch really added to the festivities. Thank you to our anonymous sponsor!
The polenta was delicious and seemed to cook in record time. For all of you who wanted to help stir the copper pot and didn’t get a chance, please come again next year!
It wouldn’t be a polenta picnic without the “tonco” or meat gravy that is ladled over the polenta. MANY THANKS to the hard-working and talented Tonco Team of Laureen Rogers and Anne Zadra. Well-done!
Congratulations to our grand prize winner, Sherman Blood! And to all the “Soldi per i popi” penny-jar winners: Fino Roberson; Kai, Luca, and Lilla Lenzi.
Here is a photo montage from the event (click to enlarge).
August – ITTONA Convention
International Tyrolean Trentino Organization of North America
August 4, 2022 through August 7, 2022
Albany, NY
This was the 24th convention of Trentino clubs throughout the US and Canada, with representatives from Trentino in attendance. The formal presentations by Ivo Finotti, Lynn Serafinn, and Mary Beth Moser were recorded and may be viewed on the ITTONA Facebook site:
https://www.facebook.com/ITTONAAssociation
March – STC Anniversary Celebration
Sunday, March 20, 2022, 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm PDT
Casa Italiana – Italian Cultural Center
13028 1st Avenue South, Burien, WA 98168
Our beloved STC was formed on March 20, 2010. On Sunday, after a two-year delay due to COVID, we finally got the opportunity to celebrate our “10th” anniversary. This was our first gathering at Casa Italiana, the new Italian Cultural Center, which was a wonderful venue for this event.
Thanks to everyone who came and who were with us in spirit, and to all of you who offered your congratulations from afar! It was great to see each other again!
We have added some photos from the party at the end of the anniversary video. CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE VIDEO ACCESS PAGE.
January – La Befana Party
Thursday, January 6, 2022, 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm PST
Online Zoom Event
Our annual La Befana Party was an online gathering this year. It was an informal social gathering, just to see each other and hear each other’s voices again.
Guests were asked to bring something meaningful to share related to our heritage: an item, a story, a remembrance, a song, a special food. . . . The stories were fantastic. Thanks to everyone who shared and who attended.
2021
April – Online Event “Meet the Filmmaker! An Interview with Vincenzo Mancuso”
Monday, April 12, 2021 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
(Online Zoom event – recording available to participants)
Vincenzo Mancuso, our invited guest speaker, is the documentary filmmaker who conducted twenty-seven interviews of our members in 2017 and 2018 in Washington, Idaho, and Montana.
Vincenzo talked about a project near and dear to our hearts, his Trentini Americani memory project that features the immigration experience of Trentini in the United States. www.italoamericani.org/support.html
Vincenzo brought us up to date on the project and showed us a moving six-minute clip featuring some of the interviews he filmed in Wallace, ID. We are so grateful to Vincenzo for his work to document our family stories! Our memories are in the hands of a caring, passionate, and professional person.
From a meeting participant:
Tonight, I have the most profound feeling of connectedness with you all through the sacred stories of our ancestors – their pain, their courage, their resilience, their great love of their homeland and nature that I feel almost as if I have been initiated into a new and special tribe. A tribe that respects and carries on those traditions that are filled with the essence of what it means to be human. A tribe that collectively helps each of us to better understand and imagine the lives of those whom we may not have even had the chance to know. Vincenzo, thank you for seeing the importance and necessity of collecting our people’s stories and of seeing their inherent worth and beauty. Bravo!
Just being in a tribe like this, I feel so much less alone. I am not one to join clubs or socialize much; but this experience is so much more than a club – it’s more like a sodality whose mission it is to pay tribute to and better understand the never-ending story of human migration. It gives us a chance to study what those who leave the “old country” in search of a new home are truly made of, and to hope, that maybe, just maybe, a remnant of their courage abides within each of us. Thank you for a beautiful evening. Angela Branz-Spall
January – La Befana Party
Wednesday, January 6, 2021, 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Online Zoom Event
Our annual La Befana Party was an online gathering this year. We saw a video of some of the Christmas Markets in Trento; Babbo Natale (Bruce Johnson) shared some of the Christmas traditions in Trentino; Joan Barker (piano) and Maria Johnson (voice) shared a beautiful rendition of Silent Night; Anne Zadra read us the beloved story of La Befana told and illustrated by Tomie de Paola; and Bruce Johnson sang La Montanara, which he kindly translated into English. Although we could not audibly sing together, given the way that the Zoom online-platform works, we watched some spectacular YouTube videos of evocative Trentino songs. (You can find the music and videos on the Culture section.) Thanks to Pat Penaranda, Alexia Cortes-Johnson, and Sofie Fliss for helping the bambini to be there! La Befana gave us all a great gift that night: being together.
2020
STC Family History Hour
Mondays, October 26 – December 28, 2020, 7:00 – 8:30 pm
Online Zoom Event
A ten-part series focusing on the family history of some of our Seattle Trentino Club members.
From October 26 to December 28, 2020, we hosted a ten-week series: the Seattle Trentino Club Family History Hour. It was a great opportunity to get to know each other better and to meet some of our geographically distant members for the first time. Jan Agosti, Annie Zadra, Joan Zadra, Dan Zadra, Clete Boldrin, Fernanda Say, Dorothy Whitney, Mary Beth Moser, Angela Branz-Spall, and Santina Branz each shared interviews of their family history, supplemented by photos and a question-and-answer session. The stories we heard each Monday night were inspiring. It was a truly meaningful way to spend time together, especially over the span of the holidays, during which time many of us were isolated. You can read some of these stories in the Family Stories section. The Italian magazine Trentini nel Mondo published an article about our gatherings in their November/December 2020 Issue. A copy of the article in Italian and in English is posted in the News and Notices section. Thank you to everyone who was able to participate for making this such an enjoyable experience!
From Anne Zadra, STC Board Member, on our weekly Family History Hour gatherings:
The unstable and frustrating times that we are in right now require solutions for peace-filled hearts and spirits. Seeing each other and relating the knowledge and memories of our ancestry and our past through Zoom has provided a great reminder of precious and courageous moments in our family histories that I think gives hope for better times.
Eleventh Annual Polenta Picnic
CANCELLED DUE TO COVID-19 PANDEMIC
Sunday, August 16, 2020, 1:30 pm – 6:00 pm
Des Moines Beach Park – Founder’s Lodge
Our annual club picnic at which we make polenta together, share great food, and celebrate summer.
24th ITTONA (International Tyrolean Trentino Organization of North America) Convention
CANCELLED DUE TO COVID-19 PANDEMIC
July 30, 2020 through August 2, 2020
Albany, NY
CLICK here to see the ITTONA 2020 Convention Flyer
This is a great opportunity to meet members of clubs throughout the US and Canada, plus representatives from Trentino.
Seattle Trentino Club 10th Anniversary Celebration
CANCELLED DUE TO COVID-19 PANDEMIC
Saturday, March 21, 2020, 3:00 pm
Frankie’s B Town Bistro
653 SW 152nd St., Burien, WA 98166, 206-946-1334
It’s our anniversary! A big one!
Come celebrate. It would be wonderful to see you there!
Annual La Befana Party
Sunday, January 5, 2020, 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Angelo’s of Burien, Burien, WA
The annual party of the club to celebrate the arrival of La Befana, Babbo Natale, and the beginning of a new year.
2019
Annual La Befana Party
Sunday, January 6, 2019, 1:30 pm – 5:30 pm
Angelo’s of Burien, Burien, WA
(Due to a power outage, this event was held at Round Table Pizza of Burien.)
The annual party of the club to celebrate the arrival of La Befana, Babbo Natale, and the beginning of a new year.
Tenth Annual Polenta Picnic
Sunday, August 11, 2019, 1:30 pm – 6:00 pm
Des Moines Beach Park – Founder’s Lodge
Our annual club picnic at which we make polenta together, share great food, and celebrate summer.
2018
Annual La Befana Party
Sunday, January 14, 2018, 1:30 pm – 5:30 pm
Tyee Yacht Club, Seattle, WA
The annual party of the club to celebrate the arrival of La Befana, Babbo Natale, and the beginning of a new year.
23rd ITTONA Convention
International Tyrolean Trentino Organization of North America
August 2, 2018 through August 5, 2018
Westin Hotel, Downtown Cleveland
Cleveland, OH
This a great opportunity to meet members of clubs throughout the US and Canada, plus representatives from Trentino.
Ninth Annual Polenta Picnic
Saturday, August 18, 2018, 1:30 pm – 6:30 pm
Des Moines Beach Park – Founder’s Lodge
Our annual club picnic at which we make polenta together, share great food, and celebrate summer.
2010
Seattle Trentino Club Founding Meeting
Sunday, March 20, 2010
Cafe Revò, Seattle, WA
The club founders gathered and officially formed the club.