the cab that took me to the airport came with a surprise bonus: a cabby’s biography, told in surprisingly broken english from a man who’d been here over 50 years. he came to australia after the war (my father’s family was fascist) without much schooling and worked for many years cutting sugar cane. he spoke at length about garibaldi, politics, and italians living outside italy. he told me italians in italy love america more than americans do, and told an anecdote about visiting his mother in italy in the 60s, surprised to see a framed portrait of JFK hanging next to one of recently-passed Pope John II. he also told me that without my beard i’d look like frank sinatra (why do proud italians all over the world tell me this?).