Ron was born in the summer of 1952, and was declared to be "clinically retarded" from pretty early on, due to an "ill formed skullcap". The doctors said it was all but certain to be due to his father Edgar's genetics, because Audrey already had 3 children from a prior marriage, who were all healthy.

This is my father, Kyle.

Audrey gave birth to Kyle in the summer of 1955. As you can see from the photos, he looks really nothing like Edgar or Ron, both of whom look similar to each other. Audrey and Edgar were each half Irish (Scots-Irish, actually) and half German. Audrey passed this noticeable discrepancy off as some "dark Irish" ancestry coming through, that her darker hair, and some residual genetic "recombination", had resulted in Kyle's darker features, including his "perma-tanned" skin.

Kyle seemingly grasped onto this "dark Irish" explanation pretty strongly... The main explanation used in America for the "dark Irish" phenomenon is that sailors from the Spanish Armada that sunk off the coast of Ireland in 1588 ended up marrying into the Irish population and contributing their genetics to subsequent offspring, resulting in people of noticeably Mediterranean features.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Irish_(folklore)#Spanish_Armada_origin_myth

The lone language my father spoke aside from English, was Spanish, which he took in high school. One of the most beloved pop culture characters to my father (and a few older brothers) was the famously Spanish Zorro, namely the 1940 film and later Disney 1950's TV series (Guy Williams, star of the Disney series, was born Armando Joseph Catalano, to emigrants from Sicily, for what it's worth. To digress further: his surname indicates his paternal origins in Catalan, Spain, a significant number of Spanish emigrants settled in Southern Italy at one point... So a man with origins in Spain, took an American stage name, only to become famous for playing a Spaniard) . My father played guitar, and favored a Classical, otherwise known as a Latin, or Spanish guitar.

By all accounts, he saw the 1963 Jason and the Argonauts film, and this also captured his imagination. The Argonautica became his favorite story, and he would later name his first son, Jason, after the main character, "Jason, the Hero of Thessaly".

Within a couple years he was married to the person I would know as my mother. I remember a fascination, and high regard, respect, for Greek and Roman culture. There were numerous books detailing the history of each of these phenomena that we owned. Books such as Aesop's Fables, The Iliad, The Argonautica, etc, lined the shelves. Even a couple books of Latin phrases and their English equivalents, one of which contained the phrase "Praestat silere quam male loqui", attributed to Seneca, and later Sallust, as early as the 1st century BCE. This phrase means "Better to be silent than to speak ill", and I recognized it as a more succinct (and proper) way of stating something my mother loved to quote, from the Thumper character in Bambi, "If you can't say something nice, don't say nothing at all". Of course the word "silere", was noticeable as being remarkably similar to the word "silent", a loanword from Latin, obviously.

My father was a computer programmer, back in the '80s and '90s, despite never having attended college. To my knowledge, there is still code he wrote while under contract for 3M that is being used in commercially available pacemakers, heart monitors, to this day. 

My oldest sister would make Greek dishes such as Spanakopita and Baklava, from scratch. I especially remember the "Greek lamb" we'd have every Easter. This was my favorite dish. My favorite sandwich for years and years has been the muffaletta... I found out in February of 2025 that this is an Italian-American creation, invented by a Sicilian immigrant in New Orleans in the early 20th century. Another sister learned to play the violin, the Italian violinist Paganini was her favorite. We listened to quite a bit of Italian classical music in particular. Italian cuisine, although generally the Americanized version, featured prominently at our dinner table. There is no doubt in my mind, that outside of Germany and Ireland, which my father was aware of as his genetic heritage, Spain, Italy and Greece were of greatest significance to him. I would even state that the cultural milieu of these countries together shone quite obviously as more significant in my childhood, and to my father, than Ireland and/or Germany. Germany, especially, was so far peripheral that it's barely proper to bother mentioning.

Early October 2001, he would have a stroke, from which he would never recover.

A few years later, after it became obvious that my mother was not able to handle any parenting or caretaking role for her children, a couple of my sisters called CPS, and we got placed initially with a foster home, and then later, early November 2006, with this foster family, the Siler's. I had only recently turned 13.

Within 6 weeks or so of being placed with them, our foster father took us to see Rocky Balboa, which hit theaters for the '06 Christmas season. It was the first film I saw in a theater. The next day probably, after finishing up watching some football game, my foster father asked me something, and ended the statement by referring to me as "Noah Balboa". I don't know if my face lit up or what, but I thought of this nickname positively, and it stuck. As recently as the last 5 years, I was still "Noah Balboa" in my sister's contact list on her phone.

Within the next year, we also saw the film Evan Almighty, which starred Steve Carell as the "Noah" character. He was easy to identify with, as he also shared some similar features, as did Stallone, with my father.

At this point, I was about 14 years old. And I started writing my name seemingly with my foster parents last name, mostly on homework at school. But I thought of myself as Italian, and Roman. I recognized the similarity between their last name, and the word in that Latin proverb, "Praestat silere quam male loqui". I could use their last name, from my own "foundation", and let people think whatever they wanted. My foster mother, for the birthdays of people she cared about, would make their dish of choice for dinner. And I always requested something Italian. Hard to go wrong with lasagna, spaghetti and meatballs, pizza, especially homemade, that isn't just mountains of cheddar cheese on bread.

When I turned 16, in 2009, I was finally allowed to have a Facebook account. I remember coming across social media posts being shared, that compared the likeness of Stallone, and McCartney.

The fact that the two of these men looked so similar to each other, and quite a bit like my father, in my mind, made the distinction much less meaningful. Stallone's father emigrated from Puglia, near Bari, in Italy, near the heel of the boot. McCartney's family moved to Liverpool from Ireland proper. I knew which place I preferred, which place I thought of more fondly. 

I ended up using a picture of Stallone as my profile pic on Facebook. There weren't a whole lot of pictures of me. Which was fine by me. Italy is the shit. It's literally called "It" "-aly".

Years later, I ended up sleeping with my high school girlfriend, or the closest I had to one. My foster father found out, trouble is he was incredibly conservative Christian. I didn't broadcast this information, it was a private matter, between her and I. It was all good things, in my mind, nothing he should have had a problem with, or any business knowing. Besides, this, it was private, protected, consensual, heterosexual. But because it was outside of marriage, and I was supposed to be representing him and his family, this was unacceptable. I was threatened with disownment. Later I was actually formally disowned. This after being legally adopted without my knowledge. Why did they feel they could legally adopt me without my knowledge? Probably because I had seemingly started using their last name. In any case, after being disowned, I thought of legally taking the last name Sicuro. I have no idea where I first came across that surname, but it meant I wouldn't even have to change my signature. I would find out later it originated in Puglia, near Lecce. This is also close to one of the remaining colonies of Greek speakers in Italy. 

I couldn't go through with changing my last name. I couldn't just publicly start cosplaying as an Italian. I'd already started using the "che cosa vuoi" "pinched fingers" gesture, in place of flipping people off, especially in traffic. I had adopted a somewhat sarcastic Italian identity, which was founded in some sincerity to me, but of course there was a limit to how sincere I could be about that fondness to other people. I really started to wonder, is something wrong with me? Why do I care so much about Italy? Rome? Latin? 

I didn't have good answers. It started to feel somewhat counterfeit. I really was trying to be honest. One of the best things about Roman milieu, is that it took from everything it came into contact with, things that came before, and things neighboring it. These people didn't have a sense of genetic hierarchy. If a cultural phenomenon in one place seemed superior, or a better way of doing things, that would be adopted, or adapted, and also become Roman.

I spent two or three years doing little else with my free time aside from playing guitar. I played A LOT of guitar, especially with other musicians. I ended up recording, and playing some festivals, and touring at a small scale. My sense of self became extremely convoluted. I didn't feel any sense of affinity with or for "Ireland". The portrait of the "Irish" as happy-go-lucky, fate-reliant, bumbling drunks (from American popular culture) was nothing I cared for. 

Trying to take on that part of my "heritage" or identity, felt even more like cosplay than being "Italian". What being "Italian" means, I'm still unsure.

Music was becoming clear to me as a distraction. A nice escape, but certainly no way of making a living. I had moved to the PNW, recorded an album or two, played a few minor shows, and I was getting sick of it. And sick of myself, as a musician... I moved back to Wisconsin, to Madison, planning to enroll at the university. One of the first things I did when I moved back to Wisconsin, was to reacquire some warmer clothes, a few jackets, sweaters, etc. I found a blue Puma Italia hoodie on the rack for like $7 I think.