Women are from Venus and Men Eat Peach Pie

Maybe you remember a while back I posted about a very nice peach pie that James brought home that I could not face due to peach overload many many years ago. The Great Western NY Peach Glut of 1965 (give or take) completely turned me off to any sort of peach jam, pie, crisp etc.  And I blogged about it.  And I talked about it. 

So, when we stopped at a diner famous for its breads and pies I sent James in to get "whatever you want" (there was my mistake) confident we'd have some delicious sweet bread for morning coffee and a yummy pie for Easter dinner.  Out he comes with rye bread and peach pie.  Rye bread that we could get at any bakery and peach pie that I can't face.  Really???  I'm thinking mostly about how little attention he pays when I talk.  It must be like the Charlie Brown teacher with the blah-blah-blah that he hears.

Then I remembered the CNN article that has given me new and valuable insight to the differences between the male and female brains.  This article states some of these differences very clearly in ways that have saved several tense discussions (some might call them arguments).  Makes me wonder if your mother or grandmothers shook their heads in similar dismay.  Not that your mother or especially your grandmothers would ever even consider stopping at a diner to pick up homemade dessert!  They'd be shaking their heads in dismay at that very act.  Such is life today, right?

Ryan's baseball season has begun and the game schedule is keeping us pretty close to home during this vacation week.  He had a great outing for the second game of the season:  a win as pitcher and going 4/5 with 2 RBIs! 

Happy Birthday Wednesday to Nick, Friday to Thomas and Saturday to Lindsay!!  I've made contact with one of the "long lost Coffarelli cousins" and plan a visit later this week.  I hope to have some good information to share about some of your Coffarelli great aunts and uncles.  Stay tuned!!

Happy Easter!

I hope you are all enjoying the glorious day and have a great Easter!  You can see how I tortured poor Ryan in his youth with new outfits (but it was so much FUN!) Drew looks uncertain.  So does Ryan for that matter. Just look at Drew's legs then!!!  17 years ago.

Easter 1989.  Your Mom looks happy!

Salute to Your Brother

This is a very nice letter that appeared in the Press Sun Bulletin this week!  I thought you might like to see it. 

Interestingly, I also found your great grandfather John Coffarelli listed in the City of New York Law Department Report for Year ending Dec 31 1907  If you put Coffarelli in your internet browser Edit/Find feature, you'll see that he apparently won a judgement against the city for overtime wages.  A few lines further down there was a case  about "Personal injuries due to the neglect of the City to remove dead horses"!!  I'm sure there are other gems in there too. 

You never know when your name might appear in print....Happy Birthday today to new Mom Danielle and to Robert on Sunday.

Oh, What a Wonderful World!

Sometimes I forget to be grateful for the wonders of the internet and today's capacity to obtain information.  And when I do forget, I get reminded the way I did this week.  What you see here is Lena Coffarelli's marriage certificate.  Lena was your grandfather James older sister (he was the youngest so they were all older, but that's another blog post) making her your Grand Aunt.  I found some Fierro names in your mother's address book which led me on this merry chase.  Notice that Elizabeth Coffarelli is one of the witnesses--she was one of Lena's older sisters.

So the "wonderful world" part of how I came to obtain this marriage certificate isn't the fact that I was able to find a record of Lena's marriage on one internet site then use another NYC government site to order it online without ever letting my coffee get cold.  Amazingly enough there's more wonderfulness to be grateful for.

My genealogical eye was looking for new information on this record when it arrived by old fashioned snail mail and I noticed right away that Lena's place of birth didn't look familiar to me.  If you look closely at it, perhaps you will see something similar to what I saw:  that she listed her place of birth as Sholden Island.  I had never heard of Sholden Island before so I jumped online and did an exact term search.

Bingo here comes the miracle--or nightmare depending on your point of view.  The Bing search for exact term Sholden Island returned sites for "Staten Island"--which made me do the dope slap to the forehead.  Of course, Staten Island makes so much more sense so I felt relieved that little mystery got solved so quickly.

But then I got thinking how did Bing "know" to return Staten Island results to me when I asked for Sholden Island????  A little bit scary even as grateful as I am for the easy avenue to the information.  It is, indeed, a wondrous world we live in.

Faith and Begorra!

Kinda makes you want to say "Erin go Bragh" nice and loud, doesn't it?

Welcome to Daylight Savings Time...here's a little tidbit for you from a graphic in the paper this week.  Almost 50% of the population of this country lives in the Eastern Time Zone.  Isn't that kind of surprising?  So anyhow those of us feeling a little loggy and sleepy today are in good company.

Happy Birthday today to Jean and to Amy this week!  Amy has gone back to school this week to finish up her last 8 weeks or so.....Yikes! 

I expect most of you have now had a chance to take a quick look at the DVD.  Kathleen and Nick think it must be either Watkins Glen or Bridgehampton.  All seem to agree that your dad never had a camera so we aren't certain who is doing the filming.  I was doing a little looking around for more information and came across this link for those for Bridgehampton Raceway.  Maybe someone with a sharper eye might be able to narrow down the race from the information provided here (if it's Bridgehampton).  The pictures seem to match to me but this is not my specialty.  Anyone else have any thoughts to share?

It really is a small world after all

 

Most of you have probably seen this many times.  It is your parent's wedding invitation.  The front cover actually says Bridal Book while the inside clearly is an invitation.  And I'm sure many of you recognize St. Rita's church and its role in the family history.  The Pheasant Tavern not only hosted their wedding reception, but was also one of Tony Bennett's early employers.  In his book The Good Life  he notes he was a singing waiter at the Pheasant Tavern.  Another connection between Tony Bennett and your family, even as your parents were leaving their childhood homes to begin a new life!  I find these connections very interesting--the whole "degrees of separation" concept seems to validate that it is, indeed, a very small world.

St. Rita's Long Island City (at least according to Google!)

Happy Birthday this week to Pat!  James and Ryan are visiting Kathleen and Nick this week -- they have outdone their hosting duties this past few weeks!  Amy is now home for Spring Break.  It's starting to look and feel like spring......Enjoy!