Happy Name Day to me and all my friends and relatives named Joe, Joseph, Giuseppe, Giuseppina, Guisy, Pina, Pino, Pepe, etc.! This depiction of Saint Joseph has a beard similar to mine!
Name days are a big deal in Italy, where most of my relatives live, especially the ones named Joseph or Josephine. My mom was the first born of my grandfather, Giuseppe, so she was named Giuseppina. She went by Pina.
I was the first grandson of the 28 first cousins on my mom’s side, so I had to be named Joseph too, even though it was the English version.
This was Shea’s first time meeting my brother-in-law. My niece and sister had stopped by months ago when my daughter was visiting from Florida.
Bonnie made herself at home in Rickie’s bed while Snoopy and Rickie played away.
My sister has some of the work my Zia Antonella from Catanzaro, Italy, painted at her house, so I photographed them. I had some of her paintings at my house which I lost in my January fire.
After a visit to Granite Bay, we made our way to Pittsburg to visit Shea’s family. Sadly we forgot to take pictures there.
Thanks to Big Tobacco, today marks THIRTY-FOUR years since my dad has been gone because of his smoking. He was only 50 years old when he died (the same age as his mom from her smoking), so he could very reasonably be alive today at 84.
This is one of my favorite pictures of him with me. He knew how much I hated his smoking and he thought it was funny when I would draw “Cancer Cures Smoking” signs and tape them to his nightstand. One year for MY birthday, he bought a smoking cessation kit for himself, because he knew how much I wanted him to stop, and this was all before his quintuple bypass at age 48.
Even that didn’t stop him from resuming smoking a month later and within two years an aortic aneurysm caused him to hemorrhage to death in rush-hour traffic on Highway 92 here in the Bay Area. He never regained consciousness and it turned my entire family’s lives upside down, including my immigrant mother who was somewhat lost without him. I had no choice but to step up and protect her and her household with my two younger siblings, so I grew up very fast knowing at that moment what I wanted to concentrate on with my activism when I went to law school (I was still in college on the other side of the country).
Had a great weekend when my daughter visited from where she currently lives in Florida. It’s much nicer to hang out in person than just on Zoom. She knows I’ll always lobby for her to move back to the Bay Area though.
Here we are jointly saying hello to our family members in Italy:
