Back on May 20, 2023, an asteroid plowed into Earth’s atmosphere over northwest Queensland, Australia. It produced 1 of the 20 most energetic bolide events reported by NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) since 1988. It also was the most energetic fireball observed over Australia since satellite reporting began in 1988. The Queensland superbolide […]
In 2019, the First Portuguese Canadian Cultural Centre, the oldest Portuguese club in Ontario, came close to closing its doors. The math simply didn’t add up, and the board had the courage to state it publicly: without help, the First would not survive. Leading that difficult decision were Aurianne Fazendeiro and Carina Paradela, who had joined the board shortly before. What followed was a pandemic, painful cuts, and a long process of financial reorganization. Seven years later, the First celebrates 70 years in a stable financial position, with a Senior Daycare Centre at the heart of its mission, the Portuguese school still open, and a clear dream: owning their own home. Today, Aurianne serves as General Director and Carina as Director of Operations at the First, and both truly champion the future of this institution, which they consider their second home. In this conversation with Milénio, they look back at the storm, speak about the present, and appeal to the community so that, together, they can build the next 70 years.
Milénio Stadium: A few years ago, the First Portuguese was close to closing its doors. How did you realize the gravity of the situation, and what led you to say “we are not going to let this happen”?
Aurianne Fazendeiro: When we joined the board in October 2018, we were new to managing an organization of the First’s scale, and initially, we believed the financial situation was more stable than it actually was. Shortly after, we began to realize that expenses outweighed revenues and that there were insufficient funds to continue operating in that manner. In 2019, after seriously analyzing the situation, we reached the point of announcing to the community that without immediate help, the First would have to close. It was a very difficult decision, but we didn’t want to hide reality. We had to tell people clearly: this is the situation, and we need help to keep going.
Carina Paradela: And it’s important to clarify that we aren’t talking about a lack of hard work or dedication from previous boards. For many years, the First was managed essentially by volunteers—people who gave their time and did the best they could to keep this institution alive. We have immense respect for that. What we realized was that an organization of this size required more permanent, structured financial and operational management. At the time we announced we might have to close, a financial solution to resolve the issue didn’t emerge. However, a community organization offered to store the First’s assets while we decided what to do, and we are deeply grateful for that. And, curiously, about six months later, the pandemic hit.
MS: What were the hardest moments of that period? Was there ever a time you thought it wouldn’t be possible to save the club?
AF: Without a doubt. When we announced that we might close, we were genuinely preparing for that possibility. It wasn’t a threat; it was a financial reality. Then the pandemic arrived, and initially, everything became even more uncertain. We had to shut down activities and significantly reduce services and staff. But in a way, the pandemic ultimately gave us time to reorganize house. We gradually resumed activities and were able to benefit from some government support programs, particularly rent-related subsidies.
CP: And that was when we began making a huge turnaround. It wasn’t something that happened overnight. It was a process of reorganization, cutting back where necessary, gaining better control over expenses, and understanding exactly what we could sustain.
AF: Financial management became an absolute priority.
MS: Which decisions were decisive in turning things around? And who stood by your side: members, volunteers, the community, sponsors?
CP: The most important change was undoubtedly the way we began managing the organization’s finances. Aurianne played a fundamental role in that financial reorganization. We started tracking revenues and expenses much more rigorously and making decisions based on what the institution could truly afford.
AF: We also learned to work with what we have, rather than taking on commitments we couldn’t sustain. After the pandemic, we managed to secure support streams that are vital to the First’s survival today, notably through OLG Charitable Gaming and Second Harvest, which allows us to significantly reduce food costs for our Senior Daycare Centre. But we want to be honest: when we were on the brink of closure, there wasn’t a grand community campaign that saved us; the recovery was primarily the result of our internal reorganization and the opportunities that arose during and after the pandemic.
MS: How is the First Portuguese doing today? What has changed in how the club is managed and in its relationship with members and the community?
AF: Today, the First is in a much more stable financial position. We have a small team, but we have a wonderful executive board that gave us the opportunity to remain connected to the institution in a different capacity. Today, we are employees of the First, which allows us to dedicate our daily work to the organization, maintenance, and operation of the house.
CP: The division of responsibilities is also much clearer. Day-to-day management is on us; major decisions and governance rest with the board. This allows us to do what we do best: be here every day, oversee the programs, resolve issues, talk to members, and ensure everything runs smoothly.
MS: Which activities are bringing the most people to the club today? Are the Portuguese school, senior care, and summer camps still the heart of the house?
CP: Today, our main focus is the Senior Daycare Centre. As a registered charitable organization, we want the social care aspect to be truly at the core of what we do. We have many Portuguese seniors who need companionship, activities, and often simply a place where they can speak Portuguese and be around others. The centre is a vital part of the mission we want to keep building.
AF: The Portuguese school is another source of great pride for us. It’s a tradition dating back virtually to the First’s earliest years that we are delighted to preserve. It’s a direct link to our history and to passing down the language and culture to new generations. And the Summer Camp plays a very important role as well: besides serving community families and children, it generates revenue that allows us to continue funding the First’s overall mission.
MS: Aurianne and Carina, you lead an institution with 70 years of history. Does the responsibility of being at the helm of Ontario’s oldest Portuguese club weigh on your day-to-day lives?
AF: The history weighs on us. And it weighs quite heavily. Not just because it’s 70 years of history, but because we are talking about an institution that helped build the Portuguese community in Canada and spans several generations.
CP: And there is another aspect of that responsibility that, unfortunately, we feel too. The name and history of an institution this old come with things that happened before we were part of the First—some even before I was born. And at times, we feel that this influences the support or responses we receive when seeking help. We cannot change the past. We can only do our work, every single day, and build what we want the future of the First to be.
AF: But despite that weight, the First has been a true blessing for us. It’s a home that entered our lives and brought us friendships, people, experiences, and an even stronger connection to our Portuguese heritage.
CP: It is our second home. And we are eternally grateful for that.
MS: How would you like to see the First Portuguese 10 years from now?
CP: We want to see the First with a home of its own. That is our ultimate goal. And that is what we work for every single day. We already have some money set aside specifically for that purpose, and little by little, we continue to grow that fund.
AF: Our dream is to achieve it in less than ten years. Maybe in five. But that will also depend on the community. If there are people and businesses willing to help, we can get there much faster. We want a place of our own, where we can secure the future of the Senior Centre and offer our seniors a better, more stable home tailored to their needs.
MS: On this milestone anniversary, what message do you leave for the community and for those who helped keep the club standing?
CP: Our message is, above all, one of gratitude to everyone who continues to believe in the First and support us. But it is also an appeal. Please help us build a home where our seniors can continue to have a dignified place to be, where our children can learn Portuguese, and where future generations can maintain a connection to our culture.
AF: We are deeply grateful to those who support us, who believe in us, and who keep walking through this door. And our door is open to everyone who wants the best for the First. We cannot change the past. But we can decide what we want to build for the next 70 years. And that is what we want to do: look forward.
Madalena Balça/MS
When the Saturnia docked in Halifax in 1953, it brought aboard the first Portuguese immigrants to arrive legally in Canada. They were mostly men, alone, with contracts to work in agriculture and on the railways. Three years later, in 1956, some of those pioneers founded the First Portuguese Canadian Club in Toronto, the city’s first Portuguese club. For decades, it was there that newcomers found friends, jobs, housing, and a piece of Portugal where their language was spoken.
Seventy years later, the community has transformed. It has grown, moved to other areas of the city or even other municipalities in the Greater Toronto Area or Ontario, and now has children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren born in Canada. Throughout its 70 years of existence, the First went through periods of glory, crises, and moved locations more than once. But its doors remain open.
To understand the role the club played in building the Portuguese community, promoting its culture, and teaching the language, and to ponder what the future holds for it, we spoke with Prof. José Carlos Teixeira, a researcher who has spent decades studying the Portuguese presence in Canada and knows the Greater Toronto Area community like few others. It is a conversation about memory, identity, and the transformations of Luso-Canadians who formed what sociologists call an «institutionally complete» community.
Milénio Stadium: The First Portuguese Canadian Club was born in 1956, just three years after the arrival of the Saturnia in Halifax with the first legal Portuguese immigrants. What led those pioneers, newly arrived and still with so little, to feel the need to create a club so early on? What role did the First play during those initial years of adaptation to a new country?
José Carlos Teixeira: To understand the First, one must place it in its historical context. We, the Portuguese community, are a relatively young group in Canada. In the 1950s, only a few thousand Portuguese arrived (around 17,000), mostly men with employment contracts for agriculture and railway construction, and the majority settled in Ontario. In 1956, the First Portuguese was born in Toronto. That same year, the Portuguese Association of Canada was established in Montreal. Throughout the 1950s, these were the only two Portuguese associations in the entire country, and we are fortunate to still have them with us.
In Toronto, the first Portuguese people settled in the Kensington Market and Alexandra Park area—a working-class neighborhood that had previously been home to Jewish, Italian, Polish, and Ukrainian immigrants. It was close to jobs in the downtown core and had that market, which was then known as the Jewish market. In the 1950s, the men rented rooms; in the 1960s, families began to arrive and rent entire houses. That was the embryo of the Portuguese community. It is no coincidence that the first Portuguese business was a restaurant on Nassau Street, owned by Mr. Sousa, a pioneer who arrived in 1953, whom I had the good fortune to interview more than once and whose conversations I still religiously keep on old cassette tapes. People talk a lot about Augusta, but it was on Nassau Street that the Portuguese community’s very first commercial establishment actually appeared. And it was in that same context, in a Toronto that was already multicultural, that the first headquarters of the First Portuguese Canadian Club also appeared on Nassau Street (Nassau and Lippincott).
What was its role? Beyond being a gathering place, it was a spot where people felt at home. Portuguese was spoken, it smelled of Portuguese culture and our food, and there were cultural activities, sports, and language instruction. People went there because their friends and relatives were there. And we often forget another component: it was at the First that people obtained references to rent a house or an apartment, and it was there that they found work. How many people met someone at the First and, through Portuguese bosses, secured a job! With its multiple activities and services, the First helped many of our people, especially from the first generation, integrate into the host society without having to abandon their roots.
MS: Over these seven decades, how has the First Portuguese contributed to organizing and bringing cohesion to the Portuguese community in Toronto? And how did the club follow the community’s own evolving geography—from the Kensington area and Little Portugal to the relocation of so many families to the suburbs?
JCT: In the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and into the early 80s, the First was the anchor of the community. I would even say, in good English, that «the First was the heart and soul of the Portuguese community». For a long time, there were very few Portuguese clubs besides the First. Let’s look at the timeline: in the 1960s, Casa da Madeira (1963) and Casa do Benfica (1968) emerged; in the 1970s, only a few more were founded, such as Amor da Pátria (1971), Asas do Atlântico (1973), the Portuguese Cultural Centre of Mississauga (1974), and Associação Cultural do Minho (1977). Therefore, between the 1950s and the late 1970s, there were only 7 clubs and associations. It was only from the 1980s onward that we witnessed significant growth in the community organizational movement, with the creation of 10 more clubs/associations. In other words, over the years, we built what sociologists call an «institutionally complete» community. In downtown Toronto, in our Little Portugal, we built an ethnic neighborhood and an economic enclave with a strong, highly visible identity—featuring sociocultural and religious associations, businesses, and media outlets. And the First appeared at the key moment, during the embryonic stage of that construction.
There is another aspect we cannot forget: the standing that the First had with different levels of government. It was a mandatory stop for Canadian politicians during election campaigns and beyond, who went there to present themselves to the community, as well as for Portuguese dignitaries. Politicians respected the First.
Then came a natural transition phase that affected all organizations and the community itself. With the drastic decline in immigration, the First felt the impact deeply. There were leadership and financial crises, which led to the sale of the building where it had established itself in the meantime (at 722 College Street). And here I must open a parenthesis: I admire the vision of Manuel DaCosta, who purchased that magnificent building in the heart of the community. In doing so, he preserved part of our memory, our history, and our presence in Toronto. Today, that complex—which includes, beyond the former First building, Camões Square, the Portuguese Canadian Walk of Fame, and the magnificent Guardian Angel statue—continues to serve as a community anchor.
Meanwhile, the First had to navigate new paths, following the immigrant corridor along Rogers Road and Dufferin, where many Portuguese families had relocated. Today, it is located on Caledonia Road. Over the past four decades, we have witnessed pronounced residential mobility and suburbanization. Our communities transitioned from a degree of isolation to residential, social, and cultural integration. The First had to adapt to this new reality.
MS: Among the many activities that made history at this club—folklore, soccer, events, music, gastronomy…—we must talk about the First’s Portuguese school, which for generations was the place where many children and grandchildren of immigrants learned the language of their parents and grandparents. How important was this work in preserving Luso-Canadian identity?
JCT: We must highlight the pioneering and extraordinary work of the First’s school. I followed its progress for over two decades and had good friends there. If the First was the community anchor for decades, its school was an obligatory reference point. It played an extraordinary role among younger generations in teaching Portuguese, the native language of their parents and grandparents.
I know many young people who went through the First’s school and have gone very far in life. When I speak with them, they acknowledge the importance of having learned Portuguese. Knowledge takes up no space, and Portuguese is one of the most spoken languages in the world. I have no doubt that the First’s school played a crucial role in preserving our language, our culture, and our Luso-Canadian identity. A great deal is owed to it, as a pioneer in this field.
MS: On that note, what challenges does Portuguese language instruction face today in a community where new generations were born and raised in Canada?
JCT: I leave the pedagogical details to those working in education, but the numbers help illustrate the problem. According to the 2021 Census, fewer and fewer people of Portuguese origin declare Portuguese as their mother tongue. That is a fact. In Ontario, the situation is better, and in Toronto—the great heart of the community, where the pulse of our language and culture can still be felt—it is even more favorable. The few Portuguese immigrants who continue to arrive in Canada still come primarily to Toronto, which rejuvenates the clubs, associations, and Portuguese language schools. Concerns over the survival of the language apply more to other provinces and cities, where in the short term—say, ten years—the numbers will be even more concerning.
Today, about half of the Portuguese population in Canada was born here, and we are moving toward the fourth generation. With intercultural marriages, many of these young people no longer speak Portuguese, or speak very little. As their education levels rise—and statistics show clear socioeconomic mobility among the younger generations—it is natural that assimilation increases as well. Many Portuguese people feel that, in Canada, their culture is in transition. But separating them from their native culture and language would strip them of their identity.
We need more studies on the second, third, and soon, fourth generations. What do we know about them? What is their relationship with their parents’ language and culture? As in all ethnic groups, there are youth who reject their roots and others who rediscover them later on. I have seen this a lot, especially among the young people I interact with at the university: they take an interest in Portugal, their parents’ homeland, follow soccer because of Ronaldo, listen to Portuguese music, and travel there. There is a noticeable revival, a rediscovery of their roots.
MS: Many Portuguese clubs and associations today face aging memberships, difficulty in attracting younger people, and the community’s dispersion across Greater Toronto. At 70 years old, what future do you see for the First Portuguese?
JCT: I am not a pessimist, but I cannot ignore reality either. We have only been in Canada for seven decades. The first generation came to stay, and the Portuguese cultural heritage appears well-adapted and integrated into the host society. However, it is not guaranteed that the second and third generations will follow the path of their parents and grandparents, nor that they will be able to preserve the culture and traditions.
Cultural duality—or even cultural conflict—is perhaps the best way to define Luso-Canadian youth, whether of mainland, Azorean, or Madeiran descent. While for some their ethnic identity is a source of enrichment, for others it can be a source of conflict that leads them to reject their heritage. Whether they will be able to reconcile these two parts of themselves in the future remains an open question.
It is in this context that I view the First. The First had a massive historical role, but today, like all clubs and associations, it must adapt to new realities, new needs, and the sociocultural preferences of younger generations who were born in Canada and often do not speak Portuguese.
Madalena Balça/MS
For decades, it was in the classrooms of the Portuguese school at the First Portuguese Canadian Cultural Centre that thousands of children of immigrants learned to read, write, and feel the language of their parents and grandparents. At its peak, it had nearly 800 students, followed the official Portuguese curriculum, and awarded diplomas recognized by the Consulate. More than just a school, it was a gathering place for families and one of the pillars of Luso-Canadian identity in Toronto. It was and still is. Today, with fewer students and classes held only on Saturdays, it continues to carry out the same mission: keeping the Portuguese language alive for future generations.
Few people know this history as well as Celina de Melo. She arrived from Terceira Island in 1971 and, for 49 years, taught Portuguese to successive generations of Luso-Canadians. In the year the First celebrates its 70th anniversary, Professor Celina recalls the packed classrooms, the celebrations, the theater plays, and the trips to Portugal with her students, while leaving a heartfelt plea to families: don’t let the language die.
Milénio Stadium: How did you start teaching at the First Portuguese’s Portuguese school?
Celina de Melo: I arrived here in 1971 from Terceira, and I didn’t even know there were Portuguese classes. They told me there was a school office on Nassau Street. I went there, met with Professor Ferreira, and he immediately told me: «I want Celina to start working at the First.» Since I was already a teacher, they gave me a class right away at Ryerson School, at Dundas and Bathurst, near Augusta. I was there for a long time, then we moved to College Street. Later on, I also applied to the Canadian public school system, where I taught for many years, from kindergarten to grade 8. But I never left the First’s school.
MS: What do you remember about those early days in Canada?
CM: I missed the children I had left behind in the Azores deeply. But coming to Canada was a stroke of luck, a blessing that entered my life. I was doing what I truly loved. Professor Ferreira, who is no longer with us, was very fond of me and we worked very closely together. I always loved what I did, and even today, I would still love to be teaching.
MS: How many years did you teach here?
CM: From 1971 until 2020. That’s 49 years! Besides teaching, I visited all the schools, collected tuition fees, spoke with students and parents, and handled enrollments. We reached nearly 800 students, from kindergarten to 9th grade, and later up to 11th grade. We rented classrooms in Canadian schools. Classes ran from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM, but in the winter, it was already dark by five-thirty. So I suggested to the board that we shift the schedule to five to seven so the children could go home earlier, and that’s what we did.
MS: The students spent their days in Canadian schools and then went to learn Portuguese at the end of the day. Did they go willingly, or because their parents forced them?
CM: They went willingly! The teachers were all young and knew how to welcome the kids. There was always a half-hour snack break; we would talk, laugh, put on celebrations and plays. Teaching Portuguese isn’t just about teaching reading and writing. It’s about teaching how to share, how to live alongside others. I always told our teachers: «We are an extension of the family.» And parents, back then, adored the Portuguese school. The truth is, even today, I go grocery shopping or anywhere else and someone comes up to me: «Dona Celina, you were my teacher!» Sometimes they come with two or three children of their own. Some I recognize, others I don’t. It gives me goosebumps. It’s a profound inner pride we feel when we realize that, as teachers, we left good memories with someone.
MS: What was taught besides the language?
CM: Our culture, and beyond that… daily life, how to carry oneself, how to behave. And then there were the trips. Once, during a celebration, the President was here, and I, a bit nervously, said I wished some of these local-born students, who had never been to Portugal, could get to know the country. The following year, I took 27 students to mainland Portugal, from Porto to Lisbon, with everything paid for by the Portuguese Government. It wasn’t just good; it was wonderful! Later, since I’m from the Azores, I spoke with the Regional Government, and over the next two years, we went to Terceira, Pico, and Faial with 23 students. The parents would drop them off at the airport and say: «Dona Celina, my child is in your hands.» It was a huge responsibility. I would only go to bed when everyone else was asleep. But they were so well-behaved, absolute angels.
MS: Do you think the school helped shape the Luso-Canadian identity of those generations?
CM: Yes, without a doubt. Many students were born here and didn’t know Portugal. The school gave them that. And it was serious education: we followed the curriculum from Portugal, the school became officially recognized, inspectors came to see how we operated, and at the end of the year, students took an exam at the Consulate and received an official diploma.
MS: What advice would you give to those teaching today, when many children are already third- or fourth-generation born in Canada?
CM: Now it’s harder. The school operates only on Saturdays, with two or three classes. Unfortunately, Portuguese was removed from the public schools (integrated language program). It was only half an hour a day—little, but better than nothing. Today, grandparents still speak Portuguese with their grandchildren, but it’s different. In the past, we had meetings, events, and we could see that the school mattered to the Portuguese community. At the end of the day, parents thought: «Let’s put the kids in Portuguese classes, it’s one more language!» Sometimes I feel a bit sad. I no longer run the school, but I offer my ideas: why not open classes during the week as well? We need to support parents. It’s tiring, but when you love the profession, you make the sacrifice. I used to teach all day long and, on Wednesdays, I still had a class of nearly 30 adults. I was crazy! But you know what I’ll tell you… my Portuguese school stays with me until I die.
MS: On this 70th anniversary of the First, what message would you like to leave for former students and families?
CM: To my former students, I ask with all my love: do not let your children lose the language you learned. The more languages we know, the better. Sometimes it takes a small sacrifice to pay for school, but it’s worth it. Education and learning are deeply important for living in this huge country and in this world, where life is becoming increasingly difficult.
Madalena Balça/MS
A Levante questa sera, giovedì 1 ottobre 2026, alle 19, Margherita Furlan dialoga con Franco Fracassi, giornalista d’inchiesta e documentarista, sul volo Flydubai Dubai-Tel Aviv dirottato verso l’Arabia Saudita. Netanyahu ha parlato di «un 11 settembre evitato». Ci chiediamo chi scrive il racconto di una crisi prima ancora che se ne conosca il movente, e a chi giova a cinque settimane dalle elezioni statunitensi del 3 novembre. 
Il volo FZ1073: i fatti accertati e quelli ancora da verificare 
Dall’11 settembre al 7 ottobre: lo schema che ritorna 
L’Arabia Saudita stretta fra Houthi, Washington e Tel Aviv 
Oman, Emirati e Accordi di Abramo: chi perde e chi guadagna 
Verso il 3 novembre: pressioni su Trump e scenari di destabilizzazione 
Cosa significa per l’Italia 
LIBRI DELL’OSPITE 7 ottobre. L’inganno, 2025 Altri titoli: https://francofracassi.com/libri 
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L'articolo 🔴Il ricatto di Netanyahu | FRACASSI A LEVANTE LIVE proviene da Casa del Sole TV.
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David Alm | Longreads | October 1, 2026 | 5,726 words (24 minutes)
I got off Interstate 81 to give my soul a break. The back roads of southwest Virginia wind, crest, and plunge through lush valleys of oak, poplar, birch, and maple trees. It’s easy to lose track of time and distance there. People drive slower. Cows graze in pastures. And there are no placards festooned with Motel 6 and Starbucks logos, flattening the American landscape into a homogeneous blur. Any signs you might see are low to the ground and handmade, protesting a data center, for instance, or thanking Jesus.
I’d gone to this rural pocket of the country for the 90th annual Old Fiddler’s Convention in Galax, an independent city of just under 7,000 near the North Carolina border whose population, for six days in early August, balloons to around four times that. They arrive in RVs and Casitas, camper vans and cars to stake out 20-by-35-foot plots in Felts Park, a 28-acre fairground in the heart of Galax, transforming it into a massive, muddy parking lot sprinkled with portable toilets and a cluster of food trucks, offering loaded potatoes, funnel cake, and blooming onions.
The Old Fiddler’s Convention—or just Galax, as the diehards call it—is the oldest and largest fiddlers’ convention in the world, a place where banjo pickers, guitar players, and other maestros of old-time strings gather to see how they stack up. Founded in 1935, Galax has been canceled only twice since then: once during World War II, due to travel restrictions, and again in 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many Galaxers have been going every year for decades, some for as long as they’ve been alive.
There are scads of rules: If you play clawhammer-style banjo in the bluegrass band competition, you will get disqualified. Same if you play bluegrass-style banjo in the old-time competition. If you break a string while performing, you must stop immediately. Playing time during competition is limited to two minutes and 30 seconds. And, crucially, no electric instruments of any kind are allowed, either on stage or in the tightly packed fairgrounds, where self-described hillbillies, accountants, firefighters, and session musicians pick day and night in blistering, impromptu jams amid the RVs.
One does not merely attend Galax. It’s not a music festival. There are no headliners, and no full-set performances. There is a single stage, and over the course of six days, contestants take it one after another to play one song for a panel of judges and a smattering of spectators. There are more than a dozen categories, little changed in the past century: old-time fiddle, guitar, dulcimer, folk song. Cash prizes for individual players range from $35 to $285; a campsite and contestant pass together cost $175. “The prestige of being judged a ‘winner at Galax,’ and the respect for one’s musical talent that goes along with it, far outweighs any monetary award,” wrote Fred Burton in the March 1984 issue of Bluegrass Unlimited.
In the 1980s and ’90s, cars lined up days before the gates to Felts Park opened. The fairgrounds got so full back then that people slept in the horse stables that used to line one end of them. Once, Elizabeth Taylor made a surprise appearance with her then-husband, Virginia Senator John Warner. Rumor has it that members of Old Crow Medicine Show and Leftover Salmon have shown up at Galax, under the radar, just to jam.
And yet, despite appearing well attended to my virgin eyes, the Old Fiddler’s Convention’s numbers are down from the pre-pandemic years, and way down from peak Galax. Folks say it’s not like it was. Maybe, as one long-time attendee speculated, it’s that more kids are choosing devices and passive consumption over face-to-face activity with other humans, or that more and more young adults are fleeing southwest Virginia due to the gutted coal, tobacco, and manufacturing industries. Or maybe it’s just that people around there are dying faster than they’re being born. Glen Alexander, a 55-year-old fiddler who’s been going to Galax since he was a child, put it bluntly: “We’re all scared to death this is gonna go away.”
Tara Linhardt, a professional mandolin player from Leesburg, Virginia, with thick, curly hair and a determined gaze, has been going to Galax since she was in high school, and was happy to advise me on how to survive my first time. Buy what you need locally, she told me; it was cheaper than New York. It will probably rain, so bring mud boots. Find a high patch of ground, because rainwater pools in the low spots. Afternoon jams were open to anyone, but unless I was dead good, I should just observe the nighttime ones, where the “thoroughbreds” play so fast that a newbie like me would only drag it down.
Tara and her husband, Ian, pulled into Galax late Saturday afternoon, just in time to get a bite before parking their Four Winds RV by the dumpsters behind the Applebee’s at the edge of town. She told me to sleep in my car there, since the church parking lot was already full, and Applebee’s, unlike Hardee’s, doesn’t mind. We’d need to queue up by the gates to Felts Park before seven o’clock Sunday morning to ensure we’d get decent campsites. First-come, first-served.
I’d arrived earlier that afternoon, hours later than Google Maps had predicted, because I forsook the interstate. The day before, I’d left my home in Brooklyn only to spend two hours driving five miles to reach the Holland Tunnel to New Jersey. I was spat out onto I-78, which at some point blended into I-81, hauling me across Pennsylvania to Staunton, Virginia, where I slept in a former sanatorium. I had recently been laid off from a job I’d held for 13 years, editing reports for a geopolitical risk advisory firm, and needed reprieve. I sought my escape on Route 11.
In the trunk were a guitar and two banjos, instruments I was determined to spend the week playing in the Blue Ridge Mountains in lieu of applying for jobs and fretting about AI in my Brooklyn apartment. It was the first long road trip I’d taken alone in a quarter-century, and I’d hoped for a reset. Call it a midlife crisis if you want, but I drove cross-country a lot before I moved to New York, always on back roads. America is best seen up close.
After chatting awhile with Tara, Ian, and a luthier named John Hamlett, who’d also parked his RV behind the Applebee’s, I folded myself into the backseat of my Chevy Trax rental and more or less slept. I awoke at 6 a.m. to a downpour, rain pelting the roof of my car like fingertips on a conga drum.
The four of us caravaned into town, where we waited until almost 9 a.m. to enter the park. We figured it was due to the rain. In fact, it was because of an issue with the gate itself. My source for this intel was none other than the Galax chief of police, DeWitt Cooper, who was directing traffic into Felts Park that day and hails from the Bronx. I’d see Chief Cooper again a couple days later, at Willie’s Food Truck inside the fairgrounds, where we chatted over catfish and collard greens about his philosophy of policing. “Don’t judge based on appearances and treat people with love,” he told me.
I chose a plot on the far side of the fairgrounds, near a fence and a row of portable toilets, with Tara, Ian, and John all nearby. Our little commune wouldn’t last; the next day, Four Winds got stuck in the mud and Tara had to summon a Moose—one of the men of Moose Lodge No. 733, a fraternal organization that’s managed the Old Fiddler’s Convention since the beginning—to drag it out with a tractor. They found higher ground by the tennis courts and I stayed put. That night it rained again, and I awoke at 5 a.m. in a half-inch of water that had pooled in my tent overnight, soaking my sleeping bag, pillow, and clothes.
It’s no fun to wake up in a puddle, but when it rains in your tent, or the fairgrounds get so muddy that you watch a young woman lose a Birkenstock forever to the muck, or you start to stink because there’s only one public shower in Felts Park, it all feels incidental to what matters more: There’s pickin’ to do. You hear it all around, all the time. A lone fiddle at dawn, guitars easing into the afternoon, jams that grow in size and volume throughout the day, until night falls and Felts Park erupts in a surround-sound jamboree of syncopated banjos, arpeggiated fiddles, and bass notes so low and driving that they cut through it all at ground level. When it’s not raining, those jam sessions continue through the night, practically until the early morning’s still air is broken anew by someone’s fiddle.
My first jam came on Day 0, after the rain abated and I’d set up camp. The Old Fiddler’s Convention wouldn’t officially start until Monday night, with the astoundingly good kids’ competitions—the reigning bluegrass fiddle champion herself, Hollace Oakes, was 14 when she won the adult contest last year—but everyone in Felts Park was eager to pick.
Tara wanted to introduce me to Bill and Nancy Sluys, a couple in their early 70s who’ve been going to Galax every summer for some 50 years. We walked to their site, where Bill, a towering figure with a steady voice and a long, white, braided ponytail, emerged from their Airstream to invite anyone who might “wish to partake” to join Nancy and a few others inside. I told Bill I’d thought of bringing edibles to Galax, but the convention website said state laws concerning drugs and alcohol are “strictly enforced,” and Google’s AI bot, Gemini, warned that law enforcement would be crawling Felts Park with K-9 units, even though recreational cannabis is legal in Virginia for adults over 21.
Bill laughed and said that hasn’t been true in more than 40 years, though it used to be, on account of a music festival that happened once, half a century ago, about 15 miles up the road. Stompin 76 featured Bonnie Raitt, John Prine, and other big names from the time. The festival attracted a huge crowd, including a motorcycle gang that allegedly wanted to keep the party going after the festival wrapped, so they rolled into Galax on their hogs, stocked with methamphetamine, moonshine, and guns. Mayhem ensued. The authorities cracked down after that, ostensibly to maintain law and order in fiddleland. By the mid-’80s, they realized that the Old Fiddler’s Convention really was a family affair and let the fiddlers be.
A group of six or seven people had gathered outside the Airstream by this point, all brandishing instruments. Bill, who grew up on Long Island, assumed his position behind an aluminum upright bass from the 1930s, while Nancy, a fiddler and banjo player roughly half Bill’s height who grew up in Connecticut, emerged from the Airstream with her fiddle. She sat down on a folding chair, called “Soldier’s Joy” in the key of D, and kicked it off at breakneck speed. This was an old-time jam, and “soldier’s joy” was a Civil War-era euphemism for morphine. Galax had begun.
An old-time jam goes something like this: Anywhere from two to umpteen musicians gather in a circle, knee-to-knee, and someone—usually the fiddler—calls a tune. Before you know it, you’re carried away by a cyclone of fiddles, mandolins, banjos, and guitars, all locked into a swirling rhythm that can, when it’s good, take you to church.
The tradition dates to the mid-1700s, when Scots-Irish immigrants first settled in Appalachia. Even then, coastal property was for the elite, forcing poorer immigrants inland and south, through the Shenandoah Valley to southwest Virginia, where land was plentiful and cheap. Their music quickly took root. “The Scots brought fiddles and liquor,” Ted McAllister, one of my neighbors in Felts Park, told me. “The Germans brought church music and beer.”
Over time, Scottish fiddle tunes evolved, as oral traditions do, and began to mix with the musical traditions of enslaved Africans, who had brought with them gourd instruments that would evolve into the American banjo, along with rhythms the Scots had never heard before. Old-time music, in other words, is the music of diasporas, fed into a blender and then worked into a froth. A lot of traditional folk songs came out of this period, too. One that I learned at Galax, “Going to the West,” tells the story of a young man who leaves the mountains of his birth, “where labor is in vain,” to seek the fertile plains out west. It’s the story of my own Scottish forebears, who settled in South Dakota before moving to what is now suburban Chicago, and later, Florida.
Bluegrass, by contrast, was born in the 1940s, when Bill Monroe and The Blue Grass Boys took those mountain sounds, combined them with Southern church music and blues, and tightened it all into something you might call an uncle of rock ’n’ roll. There’s a reason that Billy Strings plays to sold-out arenas and pickers from around the world can play classics like “Blue Ridge Cabin Home” at the drop of a one-chord.
Where bluegrass is punchy and clean, designed for the stage, old-time is ecstatic, designed for participation. Bluegrass jams attract spectators who marvel at the players’ pyrotechnics; old-time jams get people on their feet. At Galax, some folks drag big pieces of plywood around the fairgrounds looking for old-time jams, where they’ll lay the board down at the edge of the circle and dance. Flatfooters they’re called: the percussion section.
The New York bluegrass community has a Signal thread, and through it I met Harrison Corthell, a banjo player from Queens who was camping in what he called the “gayborhood” of Felts Park: two tents and a rainbow flag. Corthell offered to introduce me to Tyler Hughes, who was also camping in the gayborhood. Hughes serves as the executive director of the Crooked Road Heritage Music Trail, a nonprofit founded by the Virginia Assembly in 2004 to boost tourism through music. Alsace has the Route des Vins, and Kentucky the Bourbon Trail. Southwest Virginia has the Crooked Road.
I found Hughes Thursday afternoon as he was setting up the Crooked Road’s information booth. Musicians were streaming by for the clawhammer banjo competition, which was set to begin any minute. As we sat on a park bench, I told Hughes that I’d begun to think of its music as the region’s chief international export of the past 100 years. “I think that’s a fair assessment,” he said, but stressed that he resists thinking of Appalachia’s musical traditions like a natural resource such as iron or coal. “We really try to stray away from an over-commodified, over-commercialized vision of southwest Virginia,” Hughes said.
Musical traditions can be packaged and sold, after all. Last winter, an Appalachian folk musician named Murphy Campbell discovered that her videos on YouTube had been used to create AI clones of her voice and banjo playing. Someone then used Vydia, a music distribution platform, to share those clones via streaming services and to make copyright claims on Campbell’s own videos. Campbell described her ordeal on Instagram, including trying to address the matter with “agents” at those streaming services: “I’m telling robots to take down music robots made,” she said. Her posts went viral, causing Vydia to ultimately withdraw the copyright claims and ban the user responsible, according to reports. “It’s the wild west,” Campbell said in one of her posts. “And it can happen to anyone.”
I asked Hughes what percentage of the people in southern Appalachia play an instrument of some kind. He guessed around 70 percent. I’d heard the same number from Daniel, a 32-year-old banjo player I’d met earlier in the week, who works at a sawmill in Grayson County. “It’s kinda the only thing goin’ on around here,” Daniel said. He explained that when the cotton mill in Grayson County closed in the late 1980s, “everyone” started using meth. Then opioids. Within the next 20 years, drug overdoses had become a leading cause of death in southwest Virginia. Getting together to pick, Daniel said, “helps you through real hard stuff.”
The guitar I took to Galax is a 1989 Takamine I’ve had since I was 14, when my parents indulged my desire to learn Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix songs on the condition that I take classical guitar lessons. I spent my first day or two in Felts Park carrying it around like a security blanket, but I was there to play the banjo. Upon arrival, I realized that I might have been the worst banjo player in Galax.
I picked up the instrument in 2024, at age 48, in part because my maternal grandfather played one and I was always curious about it. More than that, I wanted to build a mountain banjo, the rustic kind people in Appalachia made from whatever wood they had nearby, animal skins for heads, and guts for strings. I liked their warm, thuddy sound, totally unlike the piercing banjos of bluegrass with their steel strings and resonator backs. So I learned everything I could about how to build one and called my dad to ask if he’d help. I knew the banjo; he knew wood.
That summer, we spent a week together in his shop in Illinois, building a fretless eastern Kentucky-style mountain banjo out of walnut and ash. Most people in New York ask what it is; everyone at Galax identified it instantly. I’ve since built seven banjos and acquired three more, all different styles. This spring, I carved a neck from a piece of walnut entirely by hand, no power tools, for a 19th-century-style tackhead, the kind played by enslaved Africans on plantations and by Civil War soldiers around the campfire. It’s not just that I’m fascinated by the instrument. As my actual trades—crafting sentences and teaching others to do the same—are increasingly devalued by technology and a society that no longer reads, building banjos gives me one thing that I can hold onto.
Shortly after my banjo obsession began, I started going to old-time jams in New York City, and later, bluegrass jams. I didn’t—and still don’t—actually listen to old-time or bluegrass music; my tastes trend melancholic. But I missed playing music with other people, something I hadn’t done since college and had begun to crave during the endless, isolated days of the pandemic. In early 2025, I started going to a regular jam session at a bar in Brooklyn called Sunny’s, whose owner has turned it into an institution of roots, bluegrass, and folk music. Some of the best pickers in the tri-state area turn up there each week, along with people like me, there to learn. It took me months to lead a song without blacking out. They call it “jamnesia,” and it’s humiliating.
After one week among the pickers of southern Appalachia, I got tighter, faster, as if the place itself does some of the teaching. A fiddler friend from New York, who’d been to Galax in the 2010s, was more succinct: “It seeps from the earth.”
Galax is hardly the first fiddlers’ convention; it’s just the oldest one still left. In the days before the railroad and automobile, let alone the World Wide Web, fiddlers’ conventions brought the people of Appalachia together, allowing songs and picking styles to spread like gossip over those hills. They could get pretty wild, and early-days Galax was no exception. Women and children did not go to Galax back then. It was a place where men gathered to let loose—“outside of the eyes of their preacher and their wives,” Rex McGee, a multi-instrumentalist from North Carolina, told me.
I’d heard of the McGee jams already, where “things get weird,” according to a woman I met Monday morning while I waited in line for the shower. Their camp sits right inside Felts Park, steps from the food trucks, identifiable by a 1974 Ford school bus painted an ominous matte grey. They call it the Muddy Creek Bus, for the band that Glen Alexander’s dad formed in the 1970s and soon became the back-up band for Rex and his brother Ralph’s grandfather, Ralph McGee the First, aka the Old-Timer. The Muddy Creek Boys could party as hard as the Old-Timer; it didn’t hurt that they could pick too. By the 1980s, the real show came after hours. Dozens of people would gather outside the bus to watch the Old-Timer, then in his 80s, fiddle with just about anything he could find: a toothpick, a comb, a “coon dick”—literally a bone from a raccoon’s penis. And it was loud. (For any curious fiddlers out there, you can buy four of these on eBay for $39.95.)
Felts Park is a galaxy of legacy camps like the Muddy Creek Bus. Almost everyone I met told me they’d been going to Galax for 40, 50, even 60 years. Their stories are legion, and they love to tell them: The year it rained so hard that one group holed up in an RV for six days with eight people, an upright bass, and “a little bit of cocaine.” The year a couple of young women got into a fight over a guy, went to fisticuffs in the mud, and ripped each other’s shirts off in front of scores of onlookers—“no one wanted it to stop,” one man recalled with a chuckle. The year several people went mudsliding on the tire tracks, which, for reasons unclear, were composed of raw sewage.
Jimmy Kidd, an 86-year-old Dobro player who’s been going to Galax since he was 29, regaled me with the time he won the guitar competition, in 1969, by playing the Dobro because there was no Dobro competition then. His daughter, Vicky, told me she met Elizabeth Taylor when she came through Galax, in 1977, when Vicky was 12. Taylor was in a wheelchair, Vicky said, and she wasn’t very nice.
Leo Lindblom sat on a low stool cradling a mandolin, his sister Lucy beside him. They’d taken the stage in the kids’ mandolin competition on Monday night, and Leo was focused. With flawless timing and dexterity, the 12-year-old picker dazzled the audience, Lucy accompanying him on guitar, for roughly two minutes. Then he rose from the stool, took a bow, and, with Lucy, exited the stage.
On Thursday, I met Leo, Lucy, and the rest of the Lindbloms—Marina, Jon, and their nine kids, all but one of whose names begins with an L—at their bus in a gravel parking lot just across the road from Felts Park, where it was a little quieter than Galax Central. The Lindbloms first went to Galax in 2021, after discovering bluegrass at a gift shop in North Carolina while on a family vacation five years prior. All nine of the kids responded instantly to the “happy, upbeat” music coming out of the speakers, and mom and dad bought the CD on the spot.
The kids, who range in age from 12 to 28 and were all homeschooled, each chose an instrument and formed their two bands, Headin’ Home and The Brothers Five. Now, when they’re not home in Bloomingdale, Georgia, they’re on the road playing festivals and gigs across the country. I asked what makes Galax special. Libby said it gives them a rare chance to slow down, to not have to be “on” all the time, and just spend time together.
As we sat outside their bus, all 11 of them and me, I asked: Why bluegrass? After all, Marina and Jon met at the Eastman School of Music and played in the Savannah Philharmonic for 10 years. They know Tchaikovsky and Brahms just as well as Bill Monroe and the Carter Family. They could teach their kids classical music, or any other kind. “Our goal, in everything we do, is to glorify the Lord,” Marina explained. And with bluegrass, she said, they are able to give people a bit of happiness, a chance to tap their feet and forget about their troubles for a little while. It’s an act of service.
Then I turned to Leo, the youngest, who was perched on Lucy’s lap, and asked what he likes about playing music that, surely, most kids his age don’t know anything about. “Everything,” he said, before checking my presumption: All the kids he knows play bluegrass or old-time, he said. He’s met them all through places like Galax.
I’d registered for the clawhammer banjo competition a month before Galax opened its gates, but by the evening of the contest, I was so worn out from five semi-sleepless nights, as many days packed with conversation and playing, and a dubious diet of beer, bananas, and cheese sandwiches that I decided to sit it out and trekked up the hill to Main Street for some Chinese food. Besides, I don’t even play clawhammer banjo. I’ve developed a hybrid style: I use finger picks, like bluegrass, but keep rhythm by striking the strings with the back of my middle finger, like clawhammer. After five days of watching virtuosos of both styles create magic on their instruments, I wasn’t about to do my mishmash in front of a panel of judges.
As I sat in my air-conditioned booth, hovering over a plate of garlic chicken, I got a call from Tara. Was I going to compete? I told her I’d spent the whole day interviewing people and was exhausted. “You have to participate!” she countered. “I triple-dog dare ya.” I was just delirious enough to bend. Thirty minutes later I was backstage rehearsing my song with John Garrison, who has gone to Galax each of the past 46 years. After a few runs through an instrumental version of “White Freightliner Blues” by Townes Van Zandt, I checked in, slapped a number on my chest, and took the stage. Tara squatted right in front to take video, smiling wide. Our pickin’ was clean, but we landed way outside the money: I bastardized the form and played a copyrighted song. We still got a big round of applause.
My style served me better in the jams, where more than once people assured me that if it sounds good, ain’t no reason to change it. Some of the best sessions I went to were inside an A-frame tent adjacent to the gayborhood and maybe 100 yards from my campsite. On Monday night, I played fiddle tunes and shared a jar of moonshine in that tent with three young guys who lived just down the road, near the town of Fries, in Grayson County. One of them built a fiddle from scratch; it took him years. I did my version of “White Freightliner Blues” with them, and when we finished, one yipped, “That’s how it’s done!”
Thanks to the moonshine, I forgot about Tara’s advice to sit out the nighttime jams and hopped over to a bluegrass jam that was really crackin’. At least 10 musicians stood in a circle, and the tempo was hot. I asked a guitar player if I could join. “You’ll have to ask him,” he replied, motioning to the only banjo player in the group. They did not expand the circle to let me in, and I hung awkwardly on the periphery for a song or two before going back to my tent.
It was one of only two times I felt unwelcome at Galax. The other came after the guys from Fries learned I was a journalist from New York City. I’d gone back to their tent Tuesday afternoon to jam but ended up talking with Daniel, the sawmill worker, instead. He was without his banjo, so while the other guys picked fiddle tunes, I told Daniel I was there to write about Galax and asked if I could record our conversation. He cheerfully agreed, but after that—and I could very well be wrong about this—I sensed that the other guys looked at me sideways.
Daniel, on the other hand, remained inviting and warm. One afternoon late in the week, I was sitting by my tent when he wandered over to say hello. He wanted to give me a leaf of galax, the rubbery, low-lying evergreen from which the town takes its name. “I thought you’d like this for your story,” he said, and stayed to visit awhile.
I broke camp Saturday afternoon and packed up my car. Before I left Galax, however, I dashed over to catch the “43rd Yearly International Kazoo Championship” a few campsites down from Bill and Nancy’s Airstream, as Tara had assured me it was “not to be missed.” Reporters don’t spend much time at the Old Fiddler’s Convention, and Tara was concerned that I might focus too much on the negatives in my writing—the mud, the gastronomic limitations, the attrition. Like everyone I met in Felts Park, she wanted me to return to New York with a real sense of why they keep coming back, year after year, and of what could be lost if they stopped.
Several dozen people were gathered at the “soup kitchen,” a community tent where, two nights prior, Chief Cooper had served hundreds of Styrofoam cups filled with venison stew, made by Nancy herself, from deer she and Bill had hunted on their property. Now, the ground was muddy and more rain was imminent. The contestants were undeterred, ready to blow their hearts out on plastic kazoos.
I soon understood Tara’s insistence. The International Kazoo Championship pokes a little fun at the rigidity of the main stage. One by one, each contestant was disqualified for breaking at least one of the competition’s 12 rules, which included “No Fun Not Allowed” and “All Participants Must Be Present In Order To Attend.” They were then each invited to perform again, and one by one, each was named the winner. Then all the contestants and judges second-lined through Felts Park in the rain, led by a trumpet and trailed by a banjo, blowing “When the Saints Go Marching In” on their kazoos.
After a quick walkabout to say my goodbyes, I drove north on Route 221, past the Applebee’s and the Walmart where, at Tara’s urging, I did most of my shopping for the week. That night I met up with a friend from New York, who’d invited me to a 40th birthday party at a 19th-century cabin deep in the woods north of Roanoke. We stayed up late, drinking bourbon and talking about music. I’d rather have been playing it.
On Sunday morning, I got in my car and continued north on Route 11. As I wound through the mountains, catching the occasional glimpse of semis and cars streaming by on I-81, I played a recording I made of “Going to the West” through the car’s stereo. Brian Muller, who placed third in this year’s mandolin contest, led us in the jam, his plaintive baritone providing the perfect soundtrack to my drive: I leave you here, in this land that you love, ’mid scenes so bright and fair, where fragrant flowers are blooming and music fills the air. I imagined bringing the song to New York jams, and wondered if it would fly.
Passing through the town of Buchanan, a few hours from Galax, I saw a familiar face. Ted McAllister and his wife, Debbie, were getting out of their car just outside the Buchanan Baptist Church. I pulled alongside them, rolled down my window, and said, “Fancy seeing you here.” Ted, guitar case in hand, told me to come inside.
A few dozen people were gathered in the Fellowship Hall for a potluck lunch to celebrate the Buchanan Baptist Church’s 190th anniversary. A preacher named Bill Hartsfield welcomed me at the door. (“Like a field of hearts,” he said with a firm handshake.) Then he walked with me to the serving counter, where I fixed a plate of fried chicken, cheese casserole, and ambrosia salad. We sat down with the McAllisters and two other local musicians, Alan Berry and Mike Lee. “Galax is a subculture of a subculture,” Ted explained as we ate. Music is woven into everything from Sunday morning church services to holiday parties and family picnics.
We finished our plates and went into the chapel, where, for the next 90 minutes or so, Ted, Alan, Mike, and a banjo player named Kim Wood played bluegrass versions of church hymns for around 20 people. Two little girls danced in the aisle, swept up by the music. Halfway through their set, as I sat in my pew, Ted walked to the pulpit and introduced me. He explained that we’d spent the week as neighbors in Galax, talking, telling stories, picking songs, and he was delighted to show me a little more of “how we do things ’round here.”
I hadn’t been to church in decades, and a couple hours of Southern hospitality won’t make a believer out of me. But hearing Ted and the others play, watching children dance, and meeting people who looked me in the eye and didn’t rush the conversation felt deeply familiar. I may have spent almost my entire adult life in New York City, but I grew up on the Illinois-Iowa border, on the banks of the Mississippi. Church backrooms, potlucks, and ambrosia salad were all part of my childhood.
By 2:30, I really had to get going. For the second time in two days, I said goodbye to Ted, got in my car, and was on my way.
A week later, I was back at Sunny’s Bar in Brooklyn, playing songs with a dozen or so people in the bar’s backroom. I called “Going to the West,” and after a quick run through the chords on my latest banjo build, a resonator back with a dragon fretboard inlay that I’d played on stage in Galax, I started singing. It was a little shaky at first, but by the second verse everyone was locked in.
When we finished, one of the musicians remarked that it was a beautiful song. I agreed and asked if he knew it already. “No,” he said. “But I’m going to learn it now.”
David Alm is a Brooklyn-based writer and editor. His work has frequently been included in Longreads‘ Weekly Top Five and annual Best Features lists. He also teaches journalism at Hunter College-CUNY, where he focuses on feature writing and creative nonfiction.
Editor: Brendan Fitzgerald
Fact-checker: Julie Schwietert Collazo
Copyeditor: Cheri Lucas Rowlands
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/ margheritafurlan555 #Levante #AlessandroVolpi #MargheritaFurlan #CasaDelSoleTV #CaroBollette #EmergenzaEnergetica #GasRusso #Energia #Economia #Geopolitica #Multipolarismo #Italia #Inflazione #SovranitàEnergetica EMERGENZA ENERGETICA: L’ITALIA PAGA IL CONTO A Levante, con Margherita Furlan, Alessandro Volpi (Università di Pisa, analista di economia e finanza) lancia l’allarme su quella che rischia di diventare la vera emergenza sociale dei prossimi mesi: il costo dell’energia in Italia. Bollette fuori controllo per famiglie e imprese, un sistema industriale che perde competitività, un Paese che paga l’elettricità tra le più care d’Europa. Non è un incidente di percorso: è il risultato di scelte politiche precise. Tra queste, l’abbandono delle forniture energetiche russe a basso costo, sostituite da gas liquefatto più caro e da rotte di approvvigionamento più lunghe e più fragili. Una decisione presa a Bruxelles e a Washington, ma pagata dai cittadini e dalle piccole e medie imprese italiane. Nella puntata: perché le bollette italiane restano più alte di quelle dei nostri concorrenti europei chi guadagna dalla sostituzione del gas russo l’impatto sul tessuto produttivo e sull’occupazione il peso di oneri di sistema, speculazione finanziaria e mercato elettrico quale margine di sovranità energetica resta all’Italia Levante: ogni giorno, dal lunedì al venerdì, dalle 19 alle 20. Analisi e approfondimento sulla transizione internazionale in corso. ISCRIVITI al canale e attiva la campanella per non perdere le prossime puntate. Lascia un commento: quanto è aumentata la tua bolletta nell’ultimo anno? SOSTIENI CASA DEL SOLE TV Siamo una televisione indipendente e autofinanziata: esistiamo solo grazie a chi ci sostiene. Iscrizioni al canale (Analista Multipolare €5, Inviato della Verità €15, Architetto del Futuro €25): / @casadelsoletvchannel Bonifico: IBAN IT63P0326822300052392596590, intestato a La Casa del Sole Edizioni, causale “Donazione Casa del Sole TV” SEGUICI Instagram: @margheritafurlangiornalista Facebook: / margheritafurlan555 #Levante #AlessandroVolpi #MargheritaFurlan #CasaDelSoleTV #CaroBollette #EmergenzaEnergetica #GasRusso #Energia #Economia #Geopolitica #Multipolarismo #Italia #Inflazione #SovranitàEnergetica
L'articolo VOLPI: EMERGENZA BOLLETTE proviene da Casa del Sole TV.
11 settembre, va in onda la replica | LIVE LEVANTE
A Levante questa sera, mercoledì 30 settembre 2026, alle 19, Margherita Furlan dialoga con Fabio Massimo Parenti, studioso di economia politica internazionale e dei rapporti tra Cina e Occidente, e Alessandro Volpi, storico dell’economia all’Università di Pisa.
Un volo flydubai partito da Dubai e diretto a Tel Aviv precipita di oltre quattromila metri in mezzo minuto, inverte la rotta e atterra a Tabuk, in Arabia Saudita, con 166 israeliani a bordo. La compagnia parla di un alterco nella cabina di pilotaggio. Nel giro di poche ore il governo israeliano parla di attacco jihadista, di «un altro 11 settembre» e di una pista iraniana. Nessuna indagine è conclusa.
Quattro giorni fa Trump ha respinto il piano iraniano per riaprire Hormuz in sette giorni. Secondo il Wall Street Journal si aspetta di riprendere i bombardamenti dopo le elezioni del 3 novembre. Una settimana fa ha ricevuto Xi Jinping alla Casa Bianca. Le guerre hanno bisogno di un racconto fondativo: stasera proviamo a smontare il montaggio, tenendo fermi i fatti.
Affrontiamo insieme:
Due versioni di un volo: che cosa sappiamo davvero e che cosa ci viene già raccontato come certo
Il silenzio di Riad, gli Accordi di Abramo e il corridoio d’affari tra Israele e il Golfo
Xi a Washington, il tavolo dell’Oman e il no di Trump al piano iraniano
Chi incassa una guerra sospesa fino alle elezioni, dal Brent al gasolio americano che l’Europa rischia di pagare
Un’Italia assente da tutti i tavoli, tra Washington, Pechino e Muscat
Che cosa guardare da qui al 3 novembre
LIBRI DEGLI OSPITI
Fabio Massimo Parenti, La Cina non si USA. Due mondi a confronto, Dedalo, 2026.
Fabio Massimo Parenti, La via cinese. Sfida per un futuro condiviso.
Alessandro Volpi, La guerra della finanza. Trump e la fine del capitalismo globale, Laterza, 2025.
Alessandro Volpi, I padroni del mondo, Laterza, 2024.
Alessandro Volpi, Prezzi alle stelle, Laterza, 2023.
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L'articolo 🔴11/9 SI REPLICA | LEVANTE LIVE proviene da Casa del Sole TV.
As posted by SpaceX, here’s a summary of Starship’s 14th flight from launch to orbit and return to Earth: On Monday, September 28 at 7:48 a.m. CT, Starship lifted off from Starbase, Texas on its 14th flight and first attempt to go to orbit. This was the first orbital Starship flight and the first to […]
The SpaceX Starship Flight 14 onboard camera imaged an interesting, very high altitude “cloud-like” feature. Is it associated with the launch…or? Any ideas from readers, please advise. Video replay at: https://x.com/SpaceX
A Levante in diretta questa sera, 29 settembre 2026, alle ore 19, Margherita Furlan dialoga con Stefano Orsi, analista di armamenti e aree di crisi, e Matteo Bortolon, saggista di debito e governance economica, su una sola grande questione tenuta insieme da due fronti apparentemente distanti. A Oriente gli Stati Uniti mantengono il blocco navale sull’Iran e rifiutano la tregua dei sette giorni offerta da Teheran per riaprire lo stretto di Hormuz. A Occidente, nel Venezuela occupato dal gennaio scorso, si spartiscono diciassette campi petroliferi e sessantacinque miliardi di barili. Il sangue si versa su due fronti, il petrolio scorre in una sola direzione, e il conto arriva alla pompa di benzina italiana. Affrontiamo insieme: Perché Trump ha detto no alla proposta iraniana di riaprire Hormuz in sette giorni, e cosa resta del blocco a sette mesi dall’inizio North American Blue Energy Partners: il Dipartimento della Difesa statunitense azionista al trentacinque per cento senza mettere un dollaro Eni operatore esclusivo di Junín 5 per venticinque anni: politica energetica nella tradizione di Mattei o posto a un tavolo apparecchiato da altri 
Brent a centosette dollari, gasolio oltre i due euro, il tetto Eni sui carburanti: quando un’azienda si sostituisce allo Stato Il calendario elettorale americano come vero orologio della guerra: cosa può succedere dopo il 3 novembre LIBRI DEGLI OSPITI Matteo Bortolon, La gabbia dei trattati. Per una riconquista della sovranità democratica, Dissensi. SOSTIENI CASA DEL SOLE TV Casa del Sole TV è un progetto di giornalismo indipendente autofinanziato. Per donazioni: IBAN: IT63P0326822300052392596590 Intestato a: La Casa del Sole Edizioni Causale: Donazione Casa del Sole TV Membership YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CasadelSoleT… — Analista Multipolare €5/mese — Inviato della Verità €15/mese — Architetto del Futuro €25/mese I LIBRI DI MARGHERITA FURLAN BRICS Scacco Matto (disponibile in italiano, inglese, russo) SEGUI CASA DEL SOLE TV YouTube: @CasadelSoleTVChannel
L'articolo 🔴SANGUE E PETROLIO | LEVANTE LIVE proviene da Casa del Sole TV.
In a recent phone call, Donald Trump urged Volodymyr Zelensky to stop Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries. Whether a request or a demand, this appears, certainly at first glance, fundamentally different from the Biden administration’s policy of restricting the use of US long-range missiles to hit targets inside Russia. The US president has justified […]
The post Trump’s bid to stop Ukraine’s Russia strikes a strategic disconnect appeared first on Asia Times.
This is a wait-a-minute collection of discussion regarding finding life on Mars. A program from William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia took on the questions: Is there life outside of the Earth? This is a fundamental question that will impact all areas of human knowledge and human understanding. Two NASA Viking landers launched in 1975 successfully […]
La guerra ha conquistato il suo ultimo territorio: la nostra mente. A Levante questa sera, 28 settembre 2026, Margherita Furlan dialoga con il filosofo Michele Putrino e con il giornalista d’inchiesta Antonio Mazzeo sulle fabbriche di bot che ci fanno litigare sui social, sulla guerra cognitiva teorizzata dalla NATO e ora entrata nella Difesa italiana, e su come difendere l’unica cittadella che nessuno dovrebbe poterci togliere: il nostro giudizio. Affrontiamo insieme: 
Gli sciami di intelligenza artificiale che fabbricano il consenso e simulano che «lo dicono tutti» 
La mente come nuovo dominio della guerra: dal rapporto NATO del 2020 al disegno di legge italiano del 5 agosto 2026 Il modello di business delle piattaforme: quando la rabbia diventa fatturato 
Hormuz, guerra di comunicati: il sottomarino conteso fra Pasdaran e Pentagono 
La scuola va alla guerra: la militarizzazione comincia sui banchi 
Lo stoicismo come arte di resistere alla manipolazione, da Epitteto a oggi I LIBRI DEGLI OSPITI 
Antonio Mazzeo, «La scuola va alla guerra. Inchiesta sulla militarizzazione dell’istruzione in Italia», Manifestolibri 
Michele Putrino, «Liberi dalla paura. Gli insegnamenti di un’antica dottrina per liberarsi dal controllo del sistema», Uno Editori, 2021 SOSTIENI CASA DEL SOLE TV Casa del Sole TV è un progetto di giornalismo indipendente autofinanziato. Per donazioni: IBAN: IT63P0326822300052392596590 Intestato a: La Casa del Sole Edizioni Causale: Donazione Casa del Sole TV Membership YouTube: / @casadelsoletvchannel Analista Multipolare €5/mese Inviato della Verità €15/mese 
Architetto del Futuro €25/mese I LIBRI DI MARGHERITA FURLAN 
BRICS Scacco Matto (disponibile in italiano, inglese, russo) SEGUI CASA DEL SOLE TV YouTube: @CasadelSoleTVChannel #Levante #CasadelSoleTV #MargheritaFurlan #Geopolitica #Multipolarismo #GuerraCognitiva #Bot #Disinformazione #Stoicismo #MichelePutrino #AntonioMazzeo
L'articolo 🔴IL FRONTE SIAMO NOI | LEVANTE LIVE proviene da Casa del Sole TV.
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