Good morning everyone, today is Wednesday March 24, 2021. Sorry guys it looks like a cloudy one today but on the bright side it is hump day already. It is truly amazing the older you get the Time just seems to go faster even though you don’t have as much to do.

The trip yesterday to the cemetery was uneventful and Justin joined me as he always does. I guess someday it will be his job. Of course he had to bear with a million stories but I don’t think he really minds after all the protest. Of course there is a bit of nostalgia on these visits there has to be. On our return home we passed the Presby Iris Garden, that is a well known place in Essex County and has been there for years, I guess someone donated the land and when they bloom there are thouseands of iris to see in every imaginable color, it really is quite beautiful, people photograph them, set up easels and paint them, it is like a painting itself, I think the garden club of Montclair might run it now. You can even buy the bulbs of the different varieties. As a child I used to like to run up and down the aisles of flowers as my mother and grandmother walked through. Now my mother of course was a member of the Garden Club so she bought many bulbs to do the perimeter of our house. It always looked nice. I still don’t know where she got the time to do the things she did , being a nurse and working and doing a million other things. I guess she worked 11 to 7 shift so she would be home with us , take us to school, cook , have dinner and when we went to bed she went to work. I guess god realizes he would call her home very early in her life so he just let her cram as much as she could in her time. Now my mother was a severe asthmatic, but the doctors of ythe time could never figure out what caused the asthma so they speculated on it and our life changed all the time. Once she had such a bad attack she was in the hospital for a long time, responding to no asthma medicine of the time. The doctors this time felt it was spring and maybe the flowers blooming had something to do with it, so she had to quit the Garden Club, my father hearing this was so frustrated because nothing seemed to help her one Sunday while she wa in the hospital took the lawn mower and mowed down all the iris near the house actually any flower near the house and ripped up the bulbs, they never grew again. When she returned home I will never forget her disappointment. So we never had flowers again. The thing is it did nothing she was sick a few months later. Now almost 60 years later and all the medical advances and given my own lung issues I tend to think she didn’t have asthma at all but suffered the same affliction I had.

I think that is why I try to stay positive most of the time and enjoy my life. I guess when you get a lemon you have to make lemonade . So today I don’t know what it will bring but I will try to have some fun, I expect the same from you, life is just too short to waste time. Have a great day enjoy . Til Tomorrow!

Good morning everyone, today is Tuesday March 23, 2021. The weather again will cooperate today with temperatures near 60. I enjoy these kinds of days they just make you feel better and want to get moving

Yesterday took me to two stores, Shop Rite which is really my home away from home, and Bed Bath and Beyond. Now I am a person who really does not like to complain, I feel people are doing their best and who needs people complaining about them especially now when everyone really is working to capacity. In Shop Rite on the window they have their COVID plan for cleanliness and disinfection. In the store it is really evident everywhere ther are always people cleaning. This to me now is commonplace, something I thought should always have been done. But when I went to get a cart almost everyone had used wipes in them, masks, paper and debris in them. Now of course I am not saying everyone because there are hundreds of them but I kept pulling a new one and they were dirty. I thought to myself what do you care mind your business. But then I thought we’ve played this game already and look where we are, I’m not saying cleanliness or lack of caused the pandemic but it did not help, people have become very lax with hygiene before the virus. So I went to the curtesy desk and told them, she thanked me and when I was leaving there were people cleaning them out. We can’t go back to the ways of before, we must keep vigilant on ourselves, to prevent escalation.

Today, I will make my pilgrimage to the cemeteries to lay Palm Crosses on the graves. Sometimes it depresses me to go but then I realize I get to spend time with them and in my mind reminisce of days gone by. This is an obligation that I feel must be done, I always talk about not being forgotten so they should never be forgotten either. There lies our heritage our family history . I am what I am because of them and I can never forget that.

Now enjoy this beautiful day anyway you want . Just make sure you derive some peace and happiness today because later in the week it might rain. Have a great day Til Tomorrow!

Good morning everyone, today is Monday March 22, 2021. The weather once again promises to treat us well today with temperatures reaching almost 60 degrees. It makes you want to get out of the house and enjoy yourself.

Amanda went for her first vaccine shot Friday, in preparation to return to school on April 12.the Newark board of Education has set that day to reopen schools. We all must realize schools across the nation have to reopen and reclaim the business of teaching children. This was inevitable, schools cannot stay shuttered indefinitely, as it is we will see the residuals of remote learning for years to come. Children need to interact with teachers and other students to develop properly. However, I can only pray that the administrators and top educators again across the nation stay vigilant on the protocols needed to create a safe environment. Something I believed they were very lax on in the past. After all these are our children and grandchildren we are talking about, as it is they are returning to schools different from their experiences at home than we have ever seen. So the top must be held accountable for their safety and well being. I am not only talking about the students , I’m also talking about the adults in the building, I was an educator in the city for over 30 years and a union representative. Again the teachers unions must watch what is going on in the buildings, I have seen all the problems with overcrowding, closets for classrooms, over expectations for the teachers. I want to make sure this pattern does not happen again, now we are talking about our lives. Teachers please listen to what the union tells you, yes I agree sometimes it seems they do nothing but they ultimately are there to protect your interests and it does work believe me, but don’t start giving in and doing what is not required of you.

I will miss Amanda in the morning over our coffee sessions, she has been here a long time already first the maternity leave for Dario and then the lockdown, but it is time for her and all her contemporaries to return to teaching normally. After all that is what they went to school for, we educated them so they would not stay at home like the women of the 40’s and 50’s. I am not degrading that in any way but that was the world then and this is a very different word today especially now. Also remember I come from a time when women were technically becoming equal with men and could hold any job they chose, something I believed all my life I didn’t need any women’s movement to teach me that.

Now today enjoy life don’t waste this beautiful day. Remember the saying yesterday is gone, tomorrow is the future live for today. We will talk soon Til Tomorrow!

Good morning everyone, today is Saturday March 20, 2021. The sun and warmer days will be returning to us once again this week. I hope everyone enjoyed their St. Joseph’s Day, and your zeppole were good. I truly enjoyed mine it is something I look forward to all year long. And my wonderful wife once again amidst protest, seeing no point to a gift gave me a beautiful vest to match the scarf she is making. So that sweet tradition continues. Well at 5:57 this morning our Winter of Discontent came to an end replaced by the Spring of York. This line has been used by Shakespeare and Jon Stienback and even The British Government over the years. Our miserable winter of COVID is over and now we are looking ahead to a brighter future with the vaccines and doing the right protocols. We are not out of the woods yet but there is a brighter horizon ahead. Thank God our prayers are being answered. We all children and adults have suffered greatly over the last year, the residual I feel will last a long time to come.
Fifty years ago today I embarked on my first trip to Europe, Paris to be exact. This is something I had wanted to always do and when the opportunity arose I asked my parents to allow me to go. There was very little resistance, they both actually thought it would be a good experience for me. Little did we know those two weeks would actually change the course of my life and affect me 50 years later. Now you know I believe things happen for a reason and we don’t always know why. But this trip gave me a new perspective on life, I began to look at things differently and set a course of doing things differently, maybe it was exposure, which again teaches us everything. Exposure to history, beauty, culture, refinement, These all made a great impression on me. The beaches of Normandy and the endless cemeteries there made me realize what it meant to be a true American, remember at the time back home we had protests everyday for something especially the war in Vietnam, but here I saw what the Americans actually did to help save the world from fascism. Exposure to spirituality when I visited Lisoux the home of St. Theresa, who was always a favorite of mine, but seeing and learning of her life created a life long devotion. I rarely go without thanking her and a list of others and asking them to intercede with our lord on my behalf. I gained an appreciation for art and artists that you will find no where else in the world. My fear of height kept me off the Effel Tower but a print of it has woken me for 50 years, it is the first thing I see every morning. It still give me motivation. Now we have all heard about one thing changing history or the shot heard round the world and I’m sure at some point in time someone will say the pandemic changed the way we live. But in reality one event can change your life, a wedding, a birth the are all life altering. Those two weeks altered my life, I can truly say it opened my eyes to be the person I wanted to be and the way my life would evolve.
Well it is once again Saturday and I will give you my advice Enjoy a beautiful day and find something to make you glad that spring is here and the weather will cooperate so be happy. We will talk again. Til Tomorrow!

Good morning everyone, today is Friday, March 19, 2021. St. Joseph’s Day. I think he may give us a blessing by granting us no snow today as earlier predicted. So we get to celebrate without that worry.
Yesterday I spoke about the name Joseph and it’s meaning and what it ultimately means to me . Today I want to relate how happy I have always been on St. Joseph’s Day. It was mine, yes I shared it with my father so it was a bond we had together. Now I have mentioned it before but my father was real product of the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s, he was not a hugggy kissy kind of man I don’t think many were back then. But he was my father and a good father and on St. Joseph’s Day we celebrated it together and I enjoyed that. Sometimes we don’t really realize what we have til we no longer have it. Now in my home we followed all the traditions, the day is always in lent so there is some kind of sacrificing especially if it fell on Friday we could not eat meat now the chuch grants a dispensation and it is allowed today.
St. Joseph’s Day is Father’s Day all across Europe and father’s are celebrated, it makes sense St. Joseph was the greatest father of all humanity. Even if you are not catholic most religions recognize Jesus Christ as a major prophet and this was his earthly father , the man who raised him. Of course it is a major holiday in Spain and Italy, Portugal and others but in Sicily it is of major proportion. Legend goes in I believe the fifteenth century such a drought and famine descended on Sicily that thousand were dying, the people began to pray to Joseph to end this and they would honor him forever, he answered their prayer and from that day they have venerated him with food of all kinds on a St. Joseph’s table. Now my grand mother being Sicilian followed all the traditions, me being her sidekick learned them all. Of course we will have today some kind of food with breadcrumbs to represent the saw dust from the carpenter, that was Joseph’s profession so he is the Paton saint of them. Also, the day would never be complete without Zeppola San Guiseepe a pastry filled either with ricotta or cream another Sicilian creation to pay homage to the St. so he is patron saint of bakers.. so a lot goes on today. Years ago out of respect we would bring zeppolas to anyone named Joseph or a dirivative. At Wilson Ave I always recieved them from my colleagues, and even from other schools. This was always a treat, so I will once again thank you for them , I love each and every one of you. Before I continue I want to take a moment to wish one of my dearest friends a Happy Birthday, I will not mention her by name because I don’t do that without permission but she has always been a person who had my back and always in my corner. So I am sending you the biggest zeppola I could find.
Now my father and I always got a present today from my mother and for fifty years I’ve been saying that and the answer is for what I don’t get a gift in may, the month of Mary. But I never fails there is always something there. I have gone on once again but I want you all to know you are getting a virtual zeppole from me with love, enjoy it. In the St. Joseph prayer I say everyday I want to send this to you is my favorite part: Jesus asleep in your arms: I dare not approach while he reposes near your heart press him in my name and kiss his forehead for me and ask him to return the kiss when I draw my dying breath. I prayed that so often in hospitals it became part of me . Please enjoy today along with your zeppole and we will talk tomorrow. Til Tomorrow!