When I was a kid we used to go to Canonsberg out side of Pittsburgh to visit relatives. Almost all of the elderly women were born in Italy, spoke, at best, broken english, and wore black. However, I don't remember that any of them were fat. I don't remember the men that well.

I will be going but just on lift day. I will meet my cousin Rosie there. Rao's is closed on that day. But we got the entrance to the place to sit there in the shade. Normally I rent an apartment for a week this week. Expensive you can't rent a three bedroom place a block a way for less then $5000 for the week. Kids are in NJ my Henry is back in Germany. My other grand daughter is not allowed to see my son because the Gold digger ex wife wants more money. Every time my kids get mad at their ex's. They tell me to do a drive by on them to they calm down my wife told me to do it to a dentist who gave me two black eyes when he worked on my teeth. I did not feel anything when he did it. Then my kids said it. So some minority guys mugged him when he left his office. I needed to find a new dentist I heard he can't be a dentist anymore.

Rosie I told you the story how we all went to the clay Cole show and the kinks were performing live. Ray Davies thought she was hot and grabbed her ass. I saw it and rapped him. Started a little riot at the studio just before it was going on the air. She is not hot anymore she is 70 now

I like going on Saturday because the kids lift the little giglio on that day. I did it when I was a kid.

My mother was heavy set from Naples. My dear departed father was not Italian and skinny about 140 lbs all his life loved a bigger women. Some of his brothers lived in Pittsburgh. Too bad he had an uncontrollable urge to hurt the people he supposedly loved.

God I am listening to an oldie I love. Love, Peace and Happiness by the Chambers brothers. The song never gets old to me.

Just saw tickets here at the amphitheater here in Coney Island. Temptations, four tops, Mary Wells and Martha Reeves on the 24 of this month. Before that Gargiulo's maybe I will meet the Bishop there they have a ton of catholic clergy that dines there.

I was at Coney Island last week. Honestly me and my lady had a really good time. I'm 32 shes 29 and the music on the boardwalk and all the different types of people had us in a good vibe. They have that section where the graffiti walls are... Really dope (I'm dating myself with my slang sorry) were doing gargioulo's next week or the week after when we go back. It's a day without the kids where we can really do our thing Ya know? Good time. Enjoy.

Just got back from the feast. Had a nice time talking to my cousin for the first time in over 40 yrs. it was fun a beautiful day. They were short tall lifters for the back of the Giglio. I told them to call DeBlasio he is tall. It would have been fun to see a guy lift the Giglio in a suit had a lot of fun telling stories.

Very nice, Foots. Did you record it? I'll have to look at YouTube. Last year there was a really nice vid someone took.

Yes but I only recorded six minutes in the church and the lift. Got to figure out how to you tube it. No fireworks displays this time. Too bad I love the smell of gun powder in the afternoon.

I am talking to an older women sitting with us at Rao's. She is a Harlem girl about 83 yrs old I started talking about when they made west side story the movie here. She told me she was an extra in the movie. I asked her did they give her the 50 dollars a day. She said yes that is what they offered us we told them no. Our rent in the tenements at that time was 30 to 35 dollars a month. So that was a lot of money back in those days.

I saw only a small video of the lift as yet on you tube. The one you saw might be the 2017 Brooklyn lift.

We were joking around at the feast yesterday I said a lot of names in our family sounded a like. There was Aunt Fannie, my mother Annie, my uncle funzi , and my Godfather Nunzi. So you had Fannie, Annie, funzi and Nunzi my cousin Rosie was funzi daughter

Went to the concert last night it was ok. I was not feelin good yesterday , but went any way want to know why? I knew my wife would not go with out me. Why I can not understand I would have went without her if she did not feel well. I told her when we got home. What will you do if I die before you not go any where? Saturday we are going back near there to An Italian restaurant near there for her annual reunion with her Brooklyn friends. I like her friends but we have to split the bill with them. I am not used to not picking up the check when I go with them.

A movement to abolish Columbus Day and replace it with Indigenous Peoples Day has gained momentum in some parts of the U.S., with Los Angeles in August becoming the biggest city yet to decide to stop honoring the Italian explorer and instead recognize victims of colonialism.

Austin, Texas, followed suit Thursday. It joined cities, including San Francisco, Seattle and Denver, that had previously booted Columbus in favor of Indigenous Peoples Day.

But the gesture to recognize indigenous people rather than the man who opened the Americas to European domination has also prompted howls of outrage from some Italian-Americans, who say eliminating their festival of ethnic pride is culturally insensitive, too.

"We had a very difficult time in this country for well over a hundred years," said Basil Russo, president of the Order Italian Sons and Daughters of America. "Columbus Day is a day that we've chosen to celebrate who we are. And we're entitled to do that just as they are entitled to celebrate who they are."

Mayor Bill de Blasio appointed a committee to evaluate whether monuments to certain historical figures should be removed, prompting a backlash from fellow Italian-Americans who vowed to defend the Columbus statue that has stood over Manhattan's Columbus Circle for more than a century.

Many Italians who migrated to the U.S. initially had a rough time. In 1891, 11 Italians were lynched in New Orleans by a mob that held them responsible for the death of a local police official.

At the end of the 1800s, Italians began to link themselves more with Columbus. Italian-American businessman and newspaper owner Generoso Pope was among those who worked to get Columbus Day recognized as a federal holiday in 1937.

In Akron, a city with few Native Americans and a large Italian-American community, an attempt to rename Columbus Day as Indigenous People's Day on Sept. 11 split the all-Democrat city council along racial lines. Five black members voted to rename the holiday and eight white members voted against it, following a debate that devolved into shouting.

But Councilman Jeff Fusco, who is Italian-American, said, "It's a celebration of Italian heritage. It's very similar to other days throughout the year that we celebrate for many other cultures."

States and municipalities aren't legally bound to recognize federal holidays, though most do. Columbus Day is already one of the most inconsistently celebrated. Places that choose to replace it with Indigenous Peoples Day may give their own workers or schoolchildren a day off, teach in schools about Native Americans instead of Columbus, issue proclamations or mark it in other ways.

Columbus is celebrated in Latin America, too. A massive monument to the explorer, the Columbus Lighthouse, opened in 1992 in Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic. Puerto Rico commemorates Discovery Day on Nov. 19, marking the day Columbus landed there.

Ralph Arellanes, chairman of the activist group Hispano Round Table of New Mexico, said that as a Hispanic, he supports Columbus Day. "It was the marriage of two peoples creating a new people, in a new land," he said.

There celebrating it in DeBlasio territory NYC the German needs the Italian vote. If he did not he would stop it.

He is using his Italian first name again to be re-elected. No Italian is going to vote for him now. He wants people to look into changing the parade name and Columbus circle the communist hump. I think I am going to live somewhere else definately not New Jersey or anywhere on the west coast.

To avoid celebrating a genocidal rapist, we tell our kids it's Columbo Day. We just finished lighting candles on our Peter Falk memorial.