And what is this Diamantina da Brescia name, anyway?

Funny you asked. It's not my given name, obviously: too florid, too much the romance-novel heroine name, n'est-ce pas? And, despite what some people have thought, I have no known Italian ancestry. (My father's people were Prince Edward Island Acadians and Québécois: my mother is of New Mexico Hispano and Irish descent.) But the name does symbolize two aspects of my life.

Diamantina is a city in Minas Gerais, Brazil. I visited it two years ago for the centennial of the birth of its most famous native son, Juscelino Kubitschek (the 1950s Brazilian president who ordered that Brasília be built in the middle of nowhere in five years flat). It's a lovely 18th-century colonial town (the name "Diamantina" comes from the fact that it was a center of diamond mining), isolated and hilly. Although Diamantina's most famous native son was Kubitschek, two of its native daughters may be even better known: the 18th-century Afro-Brazilian folk heroine Chica (Xica) da Silva and the 19th-century child diarist Helena Morley.

da Brescia refers to the city of Brescia in northern Italy, which I have not yet visited (though I would like to, given enough money and time). St. Angela Merici spent most of her life in Brescia, and Giovanni Battista Montini — Pope Paul VI — grew up there.