Long time no write

I have been consumed by school the last year almost two years and nearly forgot I had a blog. Ha!

But, picnic is planned up and ready again for this year Aug 29th Phillip Arnold Park in Renton. Which brings us into our third year. My intentions as my search begin in early 2007 was to find family members, and family friends who all came here late 1800's early 1900's from Mattie and Susa Italy. After seeing that our last name was spelled in so many different ways Anarde/Anardi/Ainardi- it has proved to be difficult to find everyone, and has been even harder to find how we are related even though we all share a common name (that is an usual name at that!) we can't find our connections in family trees.

My theory is the connections are really far back. As I can only pin my tree to 1700. Susa and Mattie were towns with populations no bigger then 20,000 at any point really in history and that was in the hay day when the Romans took over. And now they hover around 2,000 to 5,000 in population. So very small. Even more puzzling in my search is I found even more Ainardis/Anardis/Anardes in South America then in North America. Being limited in Spanish, communication has been small. But I have gotten that they are decedents whose grandparents or great-grandparents as well came from Northern Italy. Which again makes the tree of our surname even bigger.

To make a long story short I believe I have gotten more questions then answers in my search on my family background.

For the confusion I caused my family & friends. I was born with a made up name "Anarde" I didn't know this. This was my fathers name, and my grandfathers before them I didn't know. I married into a simple name , Smith:) This got boring, I wanted to reconnect with my Italian name- but this time with the correct spelling.

A story I found

goes very much in line with a entry I made a few below"the theory"

It should be interesting to see what kind of information I get from the people I'm interviewing , on the topic of post war.


Italian Memories

By Cookie Curci

http://www.italiansrus.com/articles/subs/ethnic_images.htm

----As an Italian American growing up in a post war America, it wasn’t unusual to experience some prejudice. Like many, whose grandparents emigrated here during the great migration, my family was second generation. Because Italy’s tyrant Benito Mussolini had joined Germany’s forces against the United States we were viewed with some suspicion. For that reason we never spoke our native Italian language outside the home and, even then, we would reprimand our parents and grandparents for speaking it to each other. Because of this, we lost a good deal of what should have been our inherited second language. In order to fit in with our peers we concealed much of our Italian heritage. Public opinion was formed quickly against all those whose former country sided against the U.S. Italian Americans were often ridiculed, even though our fathers, uncles and brothers had joined America’s Armed forces and were fighting these hated oppressors.

The Italian American image had suffered greatly during these years. Name-calling was common and I, like many Italian American kids, was called unfaltering names such as "Wop" and "Dago." We responded in kind with this verse, " If I’m a Dago and I’m a Wop, I eat spaghetti and you eat slop!" Ethnic and racial epithets can be painful and damage the spirit for years to come.----