Frank Viviano Writes   June 2000 - Barga - Italy   Sommocolonia ...........When a massive German assault was launched on this windswept mountain village in December 1944, a scant two platoons of American infantrymen were dug in here. Their own commanding officers expected them to throw down their guns and run. But for twenty critical hours, the tiny complement of seventy G.I.s -- all of them black, from the U.S. Army's segregated 92nd Infantry Division -- held out against an offensive that might have changed the course of World War Two. Then they vanished, almost completely, from the war's official records....... read the full story here   barganews staff reporter F.Viviano May 2001 - Paris - France   What me worry ? Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers + Fritz the Cat + Fat Freddy's Cat. ......... Farrrrr Out! Highbrow Europe marks its twentieth anniversary as the home-in-exile of San Francisco's most famous underground artists this year -- and both parties still regard the arrangement as a honeymoon. The first to settle in was cartoonist Gilbert Shelton, creator of such memorable hippie-era Haight Ashbury characters as the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Wonder Warthog and Fat Freddy's Cat. Shelton and his wife, literary agent Lora Fountain, decamped from the Haight two decades ago to take up residency in Spain, then moved on to France, with frequent jaunts to the country homes of fumettisti friends in central Italy. Shortly after them arrived former San Francisco underground luminary Robert Crumb, who fathered Fritz the Cat and Mr. Natural. Shelton and Fountain are expected to make an appearance in Barga later this year, according to barganews sources in the comic book industry...........read the full story here  more about this book   more about this book   more about this book   more about this book back to the weekly columns index page     back to