Today I was able to attend the first annual Bonassera family reunion. It was held at the parish cemetery of Tosca, which is a small “frazione” of a town called Varsi, in the province of Parma, Italy. It is a small simple cemetery with a beautiful view of an appenine mountainside for its inhabitants, but an arduous steep climb up a narrow road for it’s visitors.

The reunion was preceded by a solemn funeral mass for the graveyards newest arrival, my uncle Guido. He was injured in an accident and broke his back.

But that was almost 30 years ago. He went on to do more in the last 30 years than most people do their whole lives, without the aid of a pesky working lower body.

He joined his parents, Fortunato and Domenica, and my father Quirino, who have been residents there for quite a long time.

His two sisters Pierina and Lina were not able to attend as it’s hard for them to get away from their respective graveyards.

I hope wherever they may be they can all be together and comfort each other, there are a few people left here that miss their company.

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Paula Deen’s English Peas

Dhcp6? Router autodiscovery? 6to4?? bleh, I think the world will move back to appletalk before adopting this new setup.

In 1984 my family moved to Italy.  There we lived in a pretty rural area, and unlike today where cell phones and the internet provide constant access to everything, things were a bit different.  In our little village of about 3-4 families (depending on the season), my Aunt and Uncle were the only ones who had a phone.   As you can immagine, along with many other cultural differences,  no more baseball.  For a few months another Aunt of ours in Boston would send me the Sunday Boston Globe, but as the weeks went by I suddenly began to think less and less about the Red Sox, Bruins, and Celtics.  The Pats were a joke then so no big loss.

In the summer of 1987, American relatives from New York came to visit one of our neighbors, one was a boy about my age.  Along with a chance to speak English and catch up on things in general, eventually we started talking about baseball.  As clearly as I can remember what I had for breakfast 5 minutes ago, I remember asking “Hey how have the Red Sox been doing?”

He suddenly looked at me with a huge grin and a look of stupor at the same time.   “How can this idiot have not yet known?” must have been his first thought.   So he began to tell the story.

The Red Sox had been in the World Series!  And against his favorite Mets!  He tells me that the Sox are about to win Game 6, then proceeds to mime playing first base and re-enacts the famous gaffe seen and talked about by every baseball fan for probably a year until that point.  I was speechless.  I decided not to ask about the Bruins.

Wow.

Why not just raise taxes? We are now going to have to go to the store to buy special bags at $2 each. I think it will turn the already dirty city into a dumping ground. I currently have to pick up one 5 gallon trash bag full of trash people kindly throw in my front yard every week, now I will have to pay to throw away other people’s trash.

That crazy Cousin Leo…