{image1}Thanks to the efforts of one young girl, students at Waukesha's Rose Glen School have been carrying on a correspondence with their fellow students at the elementary school XXV Aprile (April 25) in Casale Monferrato, a city of about 39,000 in the northwestern Italian region of Piemonte.
Valentina Degiovanni, who currently lives in Waukesha with her family, has been a student at both schools and suggested the idea. Since early 2003, students have exchanged letters, emails, photos and CD-ROMs with information about their schools.
While the exchange has garnered little media attention here, Casale's newspaper (to which this writer has contributed) Il Monferrato has written a number of updates, including the latest in its June 18, 2004 issue.
According to the article, teachers Alessandra Aceto, in Casale, and Susan Wall, Kate Kennedy and Carol Trovato, in Waukesha, plan to continue to program during the next school year.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
