I imagine most web sites have a story. For this web site to make sense, you likely need our story a bit more than usual. For just the facts, though, there are writings here for sale. Each is described as to its purpose for easy browsing. A standard shopping cart enables you to purchase whatever strikes your fancy. Now to the story…
Casa Andolini is all about the dream of America, as seen through the eyes and felt in the hearts of Southern Italian immigrants through the generations. In our land, despair feels like the burden of the centuries. We learn, well, how to live in the moment, for we have so little grasp on the future. When come to America – and this is why we do – we’re able to lift up our eyes to the heavens and shaking our fists with joy proclaim, I will have my share of the future, too! Somehow, the gravity here in America seems to pull us down with so much less force.
My own people come from Calabria, but we Calabrese are often confused with our Sicilian cousins and I don’t think anyone can be quite sure about the difference. Both of us are a tragic lot; our family histories punctuated by the rhythm of disaster and misfortune. We’re not Northerners, after all, who live lives of wealth and comfort. Florence and Milan are distant and mostly mythical cities to us. When we’re rich for a minute or two, it tends to be because of a wonderful orange, a lovely hunk of bread or the smile of a beautiful woman. These are the type of treasures we talk to our accountants about, for the most part.
And yet we are a people of dreams and dreaming never-the-less. If you look inside any of our tragedies, you’ll find a hero who survives, still dreaming a new dream, one often built right up out of the raw material of loss and agony.
My own grandfather was just such a soul. His name was Pasquale Scopelliti, and I’m blessed to carry his name as my own. He immigrated around 1920, from a small hill town outside Reggio, the largest city in Calabria.
It is to him that this web site store front is dedicated. And here’s a picture of both of us, taken around 1963 or so.
My grandfather’s smile shows you what happens to an Italian peasant when he finds good work, enjoys his freedom and family, and invests all that joy into the little form of his beloved grandson and namesake. That is the dream of America.
Looking at the picture above, I always notice my grandfather’s hands. They were so strong and capable, and whenever we walked anywhere together, my hand in his hand, I was as safe and happy as a boy could be.
So why then the name Casa Andolini? It comes from fiction, from Mario Puzo’s epic saga of The Godfather. This too is the dream of America. Andolini was Vito Corleone’s childhood name, changed on Ellis Island to the name of his family’s town in Sicily. So it is Vito’s original family name that this web site employs. You see, my beloved grandfather died when I was only 11 years old, so I never had the chance to learn from him in adulthood. It was thus that Puzo’s work in the book, and Coppola’s work in the movies, became a type of bible for me, about how to face the adult world.
The writings you find for sale here are the documentation of all I’ve learned over the decades and in its own way, each document has the spirit of both men, my grandfather and the Godfather.
I’ve been writing, as an element of my practice as a coach, every day since 2001. So, as you’d imagine, the collection of offerings has coalesced chaotically and does not offer an easy sequence as a whole, such as read this 3rd or this 4th, etc. I can assure you still that there is a best place to get started. My core article The Switch is freely available at my basic website: www.TheConsigliori.com. You’ll be very happy you read it, if you do, simply by inputting your e-mail address there.
Here, below, you’ll see that the featured manual is its sequel, The Switch For Everyone. This is the best place to get started here. I’ve found that when people study both the original free white paper as well as its sequel, they far more than double their ability to master the material.
Then, as to all the other documents, each somehow swirls around the following goal. The term that best captures the spirit of the goal is: DREAM-FORCE. Look at any of your heroes or role models and you’ll see, just beneath the surface or maybe even bursting outward for all to see, that when they set mind, heart and soul upon a dream, they end up succeeding. If you call that factor by my term, Dream Force, you’ll be able to see how some people demonstrate it in spades where others not so much. Each and every one of us has it, though, even if quite locked up inside and inaccessible.
Well that’s my goal for each of the documents you find below. Each in its own way has been created to help you access and release your own personal Dream Force. I hope you find the support to be the greatest source of reward any such purchase can offer.
The best of good shopping to you. The best of good progress, and absolutely, as we always say here in Casa Andolini, the very best of good hunting.