About me
My family can trace its roots back to the province of Avellino, Italy, about 70 miles east of Naples. My dad’s family (the Iantoscas & Rappas) came from the village of Montefalcione and settled in Revere MA in the late 1880’s. My mom’s family (the Belmontes and Minichiellos) came from the very small town of Melito Irpino, and eventually emigrated to East Boston MA, one of Boston’s historically Italian neighborhoods.
An interesting side note…the name Yantosca is actually a misspelling, as there is no letter Y in the Italian alphabet. A mistake was probably made on the immigration documents when my dad’s father came to the United States. For whatever reason they didn’t bother to change it back, so the name stuck.
Growing up, I used to live in my maternal grandparents’ house in the Orient Heights section of East Boston — we lived on the 2nd floor and my grandparents lived on the first floor. At home I heard Italian (or at least Neapolitan Dialect) spoken every day, and I learned a lot by osmosis. My family always kept several of the old Italian traditions alive, especially during the holidays, so I’ve always felt a strong connection to the past.
I’ve taken several Italian-language courses with John Jordan’s Italian Program and now can speak Italian fluently. I love watching Italian TV and film, and also enjoy Italian pop music and Neapolitan folk music.
In the fall & winter, I spend a lot of time following pro football (Go Patriots!). My brother Tony “The Prophet” is a lifelong NY Giants fan and pro football blogger (@TonytheProphet on Twitter). This football schism between the Patriots and Giants in the Yantosca family sometimes leads to anguish when our teams play against each other (see: Super Bowls XLII and XLVI). But in the summer it’s baseball season (Go Red Sox!) That’s one thing we all agree upon!
Recently, I taught myself how to install a couple of different flavors of Linux onto older laptops. I enjoy the challenge of reviving old machines. The laptop I used to create this page now runs Manjaro and uses half of the memory that it did when it was a Windows 10 PC. They say that “Linux is only free if you don’t value your time”, and maybe that’s true. Nevertheless, I have been able to learn a lot in a very short time by trial-and-error, and researching the Internet for tips and tricks. So I think it is time well spent. See my blog for some of my Linux posts.
Did I mention I am a super-huge Simpsons fan? I can pretty much quote at will from episodes (at least from the “golden years”, up to about Season 20 or so). I have also been known to slip some Simpsons memes into my presentations, much to the delight (or is it annoyance?) of my co-workers. I have been watching the Simpsons since 1990, when I was a college senior. Back in the day, I used to contribute to the old online newsgroups such as alt.tv.simpsons. But as these newsgroups have gone the way of the dinosaur, I am now relegated to posting Simpsons quotes on the various Facebook fan groups.