Pictures form our day off....

Of friends and enemies.

The day started out slow, as in relaxing. We all met over at Alba's for breakfast, ate well, again, and sat and chatted for a while. The plan for later was for my older brother and I to drive up to the Burlington Mall, he was meeting a friend there for lunch and I was going to look for some books for the flight home. It wasn't until the 80's that hanging out at the mall became a way of life for kids, so there wasn't any big flood of memories walking around the mall. But I did have some good pizza in the food court and got the books I needed. After an hour or so, I picked up my older brother, said hi and bye to his friend and we headed off to Lexington, to see things that would bring back memories.

Now picture this; it's kind of a sleepy neighborhood, we'd just had a heavy rain so everything was wet and it was cloudy and a little drizzly out. Two minivans pull up and 4 adults and 2 kids get out. They start walking around pointing, talking and taking pictures. One of the adults gets into the white minivan and leaves (to get gas and use the facilities, but the neighborhood didn't know that). Little brother and I are taking a picture of the old Fire Alarm call box, (9-1-1 of the 60's), on the telephone pole at our property's edge when a lady comes out of the house next door and asks "What are you doing?" Now, every neighborhood had one, the crotchety old lady that's always telling everyone what to do. You know, the one that without any conscious thought evolves into the focus of all the kids scorn and harassment. This was her, the voice, the words and the tone, struck a chord in my soul and I knew. I said something about having lived next door and when she said she had lived in the house for a long time I said "Mrs. Carbone? I'm Steve Rossi, I used to live next door." Instantly her demeanor, her face, changed completely. With almost a smile she looked at my little brother and said "This must be Danny, the baby?" We confirmed it and she said "And Alex, the older one?" Face change again, tone gets a little bit stern, kind of like she's sharing a serious secret with us. "He and I had a few altercations before." Uh, yeah. He tried to drive you crazy, he even admitted that when we got back in the van to leave. Well, just about then he came back from filling up the van and we did the introductions. From there on in the conversation was great, she seemed sincerely happy to see us all again. She told us about everyone who was still living there (just her and Mrs. Marble), all the people who had moved away or passed away. We heard about her son, who was a coupel years younger than me, and how he was running a farm up in New Hampshire, and how her daughter was getting her PhD at Harvard (and we thought the son was the brainaic). She was going out to lunch with Mrs Marble, but she invited us to go around back of her house so we could see our old back yard. It's amazing how different people are when you grow up. So we got up the guts to go over to our old house and knock on the door, introduced ourselves and got to see the inside. Big changes, they'd knocked out 3 walls, swapped the kitchen and the dining room and built a second level deck off the dining room. The owner then invited us to go ahead and look in the back yard. It was so green and so different, but we could still see the foundation that the rabbit hutch had sat on, and had burned to the ground on.

Finally we decided to move on. My older brother and I drove around checking out our old haunts, including the Middle School we went to (William Diamond, named after a drummer boy in the revolution) and our elementary schoool. After that we met them again, this time at Alexander's Pizza, a small pizza place around the corner from our house that has been there since before we moved there in '64. We'd just had lunch an hour or so before, but had to have something here also, so I ordered a small meatball sub. Now, small ended up being what you call big at Subway or one of those other chain sandwich shops. But, I was still on vacatrion so I ate it. Then we headed back to the Cape, each hitting a few more haunts on the way.

My older brother and his family moved back to Lexington in the 80's and lived there for a few years. We decided to go around and look at a couple of the houses they had lived in. Found the first one and took a couple pictures and then went to the second one. We pulled over to get a picture of the house and just after I snap the picture I hear "Pervert" yealled from inside the garage. Sorry kid, I wasn't taking a picture of you, we hadn't even noticed you there, or that the garage door was even open. We just looked at each other, laughed, took another picture of the house and left. Man, you can't do anything these days without being accused of something. From there we went to the golf course to check out the huge hill we used to sled down in the winters. I've been in Utah too long, it looked all but level.

From there we headed off to Providence, where we were going to spend the night so we wouldn't have far to drive for the plane in the morning. It was really nice to get home, and get dry. For the entire weekend I'd been in the Boston area I had felt somewhere between damp and wet. It was beautiful to visit there, but I was happy to be home.

Getting in trouble in class....

So I'm zoning out in class, and looking up "Blogs of Interest" from bmy blogger dashboard. I came across this one; Fake Interviews with Real Celebrities, and started snickering while the professor was lecturing. I had to quickly save the URL for later and close it. Here's a little taste of the humor:

Other Foreign Policy Experience Cited On Sarah Palin's Resume

• While at friend's house, enjoyed a cup of General Foods
  International Coffee
• Got French manicure for Senior Prom
• Huge fan of Eva Longoria
• Almost drove into Canada once while lost
• Watched Fawlty Towers on PBS -- didn't "get it"
• Stretched round globe-thingy into proper flat shape,
  accidentally caught a glimpse of Africa

And now - A word from my foreign corrospondent....

Why Congress should not vote for the $700B Bailout as Amended

I want to express my frustration over this process of attempting to pass the $700B Bailout legislation. Congress demonstrated none of the integrity of past legislative bodies when a serious subject required quick but thoughtful action for the benefit of all. Instead we get childish voting and self serving additions to the legislation that just continue the pattern of putting friends before the country.

As I understand it the legislation to help financial institutions make their daily commitments and allow some borrowers to keep houses where they can’t make the payments was presented for a vote on Monday. It included what I considered reasonable safeguards including reduced payouts for CEOs for these companies, some conditions on the funds provided and the retention of some interest in the company in exchange for the loan.
These are all sound business practices that any good lending institution should insist on if they are loaning money to a floundering company. This is not a question of whether the money should be loaned – I think we need to do this to prevent a financial disaster bigger than the one we already have – but how should it be loaned.

Then on Tuesday the legislation went to a vote in the House and Senate and was defeated. The only reason I have heard for this defeat is that the senators and congressmen/women felt they had to express the frustration they felt from their constituents. This is a childish response to some heat that is well deserved. The financial markets responded in a predictably fearful way and fell more in one day than at any other day in their history.

The proposal now is to reintroduce the legislation with some addenda. The bill will include tax breaks for businesses and guarantees by the government for depositors of funds from $101,000 to $250,000. How is this going to help these financial institutions? These addenda are just sweets for the rich so they won’t be so mad. This again is a childish response to deserved criticism.

It seemed that in past times when a crisis befell the American people everyone pitched in, the Congress put aside their differences and worked to solve the problem for the benefit of all. Today’s lack of integrity and unwillingness to put the country first is just one more shameful act of greed in an extravaganza of greed that has preceded it.

And where is our President in all of this? He has done nothing to reassure us that things will be better, that he is working to create a solution. He appears to be asleep at the wheel - again. This is a sad day for regular Americans – or is it just another sad day in a long line of sad days?

Send an email to your congressman/woman and senator encouraging them to go back to the drawing board and do the right thing. Tell them they must do this, not just for themselves and for their friends, but for the country. Tell them they have an obligation to the American people they need to fulfill. Also tell them you expect a higher standard of conduct from our national representatives and that you will do your homework when election time comes around. Tell them not to allow this shame to continue and to show the American people that our governing body does care about everyone. Tell them to get it right this time.

The Family Reunion.

You ever get completely lost, beyond help, here in Salt Lake? Not me, I can always tell which way I have to head to get home, even if I am unable to find my original destination. No matter where you are in the valley, you can always see the mountains and figure out where you are in the valley. Directions here are easy, if I have a good address I don't even need directions. 4625 South 300 West can only be in one place. You see 4753 So, you have to head north, you see 4434 So you head south. Our coordinate system makes directions easy, I worked in pizza delivery for a decade and the drivers rarely couldn't find an address. Finding the place we had the family reunion in Needham was a completely different experience. We got lost. Bad. Passed within a block of the place several times and still didn't find it. "Get off Rt 128 at the first Needham Exit, turn right. Follow that road until you see the Exxon station, right across from the small Dunkin' Donuts. Turn left, you should be on Hollyoak Road. Follow that past the A & P, until you get to the big yellow house on the hill..." Yeah. They finally had to set off flares so we could find the place. They tried to light a tree on fire for us, but it was raining too hard. But we made it, an hour after it started.

The reunion itself was great. I haven't seen a lot of these people for over 2 decades and I have to admit I had a hard time keeping track of who fit where in the family tree. There were a couple of people I recognized right off, my dad's cousin who is my age was one. I recognized her across the room and we had a great talk, going over all the old times, watching the kids running around playing and remembering when that was us. And the food. Ohhhhh, the food. From the picture you can see it was quite a spread. At least 4 different types of lasagne, several other pasta dished, ribs, meatballs, sausages and salads. Mmmmm. And other than the Papa Gino's pizza at the front of the table, it was all homemade. Oh, and desserts. Tons of them. I missed out on the canoli, they were gone by the time I made it there, but there was still a lot of awesome homemade desserts. We were there for about 5 hours, eating, talking, laughing. One of the younger parents organized a kids talent show for us, where the little ones came up and sang a song. The show ended in the entire group singing "Happy Birthday" to my great aunt, who turned 100 earlier this month. Overall it was an awesome evening, I'm going to have to make it back there more often than every 20 years. I did miss the big day for my great aunt; on her birthday she was invited to watch a Red Socks game from the owners box. She said that she had never been that close to the game before, she felt like she could just reach out and touch the players. They also invited her out on the mound to have a picture taken with the team mascot. Yeah, that would have been awesome.