• Pandemic 2020

    100 years

    Often, when Italians raise a glass of wine, they say “Saluté,” and then sometimes add the words, “Cent’Anni,” a traditional toast. Loosely translated, it means “May you live 100 years.” Pronounced in some regional dialects as “gen-DAHN,” the phrase is meant to imply a hundred years of health. We should all be so lucky. My mother would have turned 100 today. Not sure what she’d make of becoming a centenarian, but you can bet she would be flabbergasted that her youngest child was 60. Elia Marie Guella was born September 30, 1920, in Biella, a small city in the northern Italian region of Piedmont, about 50 miles northwest of Milan.…