There’s something about the festivals in the North End that always reminds me of those 1960s Italian movies that take place in small towns with warring families or some other such thing at their center. There is always this dramatic music playing in the background and people are always upset about one thing or another.

My favorite movie for that era is “Divorce Italian Style” where a man does all kinds of things to get a divorce from his wife in Catholic Italy and ends up, well, you gotta see the movie to find out how it ends. It is incredibly funny and full of all of these cliches but has this atmospheric Italian-ness about it.

Yesterday I went to the Santa Lucia festival, where a dollar covered saint is carried through the North End. The people carrying the saint stop at different places in the North End for people to be able to place dollar bills on the saint. Mostly they stop at the homes of the old citizens of the city and they help them place money there. It is a sweet kind of a ritual that reminds you of another time when the young took care of the older people. I also loved the two women bringing the babies over to bless the saint.

To Santa Lucia: