……………After knowing Angela for over 20 years I am only discovering NOW….that she’s a wonderful artist……Her paintings are made with HEARTS…….ALL HEARTS!……They look like beautiful expressionist paintings….I think they are wonderful, and really express who Angela is….A JOYOUS………FREE SPIRITED…..LOVING PERSON…………..I adore her paintings….but mostly I ADORE HER!
…………..Today, on this election day….I thought this post was what I needed to express………Every so often an envelope would arrive for me in the mail…..When I opened it HAND CUT PAPER HEARTS came falling out!!!…..Sometimes they were just loose hearts in different colors and sizes…..and sometimes a card with a message was enclosed…..They were ALL FROM ANGELA…..all sent to me with LOVE……I kept the cards, and displayed them in my kitchen cabinet so I could see them every day……but I wanted to do something special with the loose hearts. I had an idea….I wanted to string them together and make a “STRING OF HEARTS”……….I wanted it ready for when the girls came to visit….so I got special thin string and crazy glue. I sat down and started to attach one heart to the other….playing with the colors and different sizes…..I decided I would hang them on both sides of the cabinet….knowing Angela would see them as soon as she came into the kitchen….She was so surprised to see them, and was so happy with my “String of Hearts”……Angela surprised me with something else!…..She showed me a photo on her phone of a large painting she had been working on for a long time….It was all hearts in different colors, and looked like a beautiful impressionist painting…..I always knew Angela was very creative, but I never knew, after all of these years, that she is an incredible artist too…..I keep asking her to send me a picture of this marvelous painting, and when she does I will post it………..I love these girls, and they are always in my heart…….Today, on this special day….we have to remember to have love in our hearts!…..To STOP THE HATE and LIES…..we must bring the country together, and there is only one candidate who is PLEDGING to do that….the other only talks about putting the “enemy within” in prison…….There is only ONE enemy within, and we all know who that is.
……………………Today….the word……IMMIGRANT…….denotes something EXTREMELY BAD…….Immigrants are people that we are told to look down upon with ridicule and disgust…..People who are stealing from us, who are taking our jobs, who are killing and raping us, who are destroying our country…….The SAME THINGS WERE SAID over a century ago when the millions of immigrants came to this country from foreign lands!..”Simply put, an immigrant is a person living in a country other than his or her birth…..no matter if that person has taken the citizenship of their destination country, served in the military, married a native, or has another status. He or she will forever be an interna-tional migrant”…….Unfortunately, we forget ALL IMMIGRANTS through the centuries have ALWAYS been looked upon this way!…..I am the FIRST GENERATION of an ITALIAN IMMIGRANT FAMILY……Both of my grandfathers came to this country from the same town in Italy. My grandfathers came here together on a boat, as close friends. to support each other, entering a country they knew nothing about, not speaking the language…..just with the HOPE OF A BETTER LIFE for their families…..My father came here as a very young boy, not quite school age, alone with his father to a foreign land, also not speaking the language…My grandfather would eventually enter his young first born son, my father, into a Catholic school with other immigrant children…My grandfather was a fisherman in Bari, Italy, but it was not something he could continue in America…….Somehow….he started his own business, if you could call it that. He built his own push cart, and collected used paper, bundled it up with string, and found people who would buy this paper from him….Where did he get this idea from? Maybe he saw others doing it?…Was he one of the first in the recycle business????He would take my father with him from early morning until late at night, sharing a crammed apartment with other Italian immigrants in what is known as Little Italy in NYC…….He worked hard until he was successful enough to build a business, and bring his wife, my grandmother, and the rest of his family to America……Eventually, he made enough money to buy his own four family building in the “country” on Avenue U between 11th and 12th street in Brooklyn……my first home until I was 3 years old…My aunts and uncles, my grandfather’s children, all lived in this building……..All immigrants, Italians, Irish, Germans, and Jewish people who escaped the horrors of the many countries they came from….were all considered sub-human, and were treated terribly by so called “Americans”…….who’s families, though many decades earlier, all came to this country as IMMIGRANTS too…….The PURITANS were IMMIGRANTS…..They were NOT native Americans. They came here as immigrants to escape religious persecution……Let that FACT NOT BE FORGOTTEN!….Let’s not forget it was those early immigrants. like my family, who built this nation….The Chinese immigrants, on the west coast, built our railroads as slave labor…..I was born in this country, and have always been proud of being an American, but my parents were always afraid we would be treated the way they were, and for that REASON ALONE they never taught us Italian, because they feared we might have an accent…..I never knew this until I became an adult…..One day I asked my mother, also born in Bari, Italy….WHY they never taught us how to speak Italian? I told her with my career, and all of the travel I did to Italy, it would have been a great help…..That’s when she explained to me why she didn’t want us to have an accent, because she feared we would be looked down upon….She wanted us to be American…..It was eye opening to me, and I finally started to understand what their lives were like when they first moved here as young “foreign” children….They told my brothers and myself only the “good” stories, never the hardships they went through……TODAY……I see NO CHANGE in the way immigrants are looked upon, even thought a great majority of them are citizens, in the military, and are hard working people contributing to the growth of this country as our forefathers had…..Where would we be today without the immigrant population….who take jobs nobody else would deem to want….cleaning public toilets, cleaning hotel rooms, cutting the lawns of wealthy people’s homes, migrant workers toiling in the fields of America picking the produce we all eat…..Imagine how the cost of these products would sky rocket if these workers didn’t do these menial jobs for little money, and were all deported!!!………We, as Americans MUST change the way we look at immigrants, and not listen to the hate, and lies……..because after all is said and done…….WE ALL CAME FROM IMMIGRANTS…………..Today IS the most important day of your lives, your children’s lives and generations to come…..VOTE, VOYE, VOTE, VOTE…….VOTE FOR DEMOCRACY………….VOTE FOR WOMEN’S RIGHTS………….VOTE FOR FREEDOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
……The end of the story!………We were very excited about getting into our costumes and going out to dinner………….I was a “SNOW MAN”…….I wore a white TN, white jeans, white sneakers, a red scarf, a black top hat, white gloves, and had white snow flakes hanging all over my white hoodie…..but the piece de resistance…..was my CARROT NOSE!…..Chantal gave me red round cheeks………Chantal wore a LEOPARD CAT SUIT…..and a head band with little Leopard ears. She also did fabulous cat makeup…..Angela wore a SKELETON catsuit with flowers printed all over it……The girls looked HOT!…….We went to a restaurant in Westport Ct. called “CASA ME”…..It’s relatively new and already impossible to get into, but they gave us the “prime table”….There was only one other person in costume, so were were quite the sensation, and received lots of flattering comments……One guy even said to me he was watching me all night to see if I would take my NOSE OFF!!! He applauded me for eating and drinking….always in character!…….The food and drinks were fabulous….the waiter and the staff were great, and the patrons really appreciated the effort we made….That’s Chantal walking down an empty main street in Westport with her arms in the air!!!!…We all agreed it was THE BEST HALLOWEEN……EVER!……TOMORROW IS THE BIG DAY!!!!! VOTE, VOTE, VOTE, VOTE, VOTE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!VOTE FOR DEMOCRACY……VOTE FOR WOMEN’S RIGHTS…….VOTE FOR FREEDOM!!!!!!!
………………….On Halloween morning……the girls made coffee for themselves, and tea for me. and we took the drinks outside, and enjoyed the early morning on the rocking chairs embracing the peaceful view of the water as the WARM sun was coming up. Franco, always happy to see Chantal and Angela, paid us an early visit….Angela and Chantal brought me a huge wrapped gift basket which we took some time to go through…..It was lots of fun going through each package….I’ve never gotten Halloween presents!!!!….Then it was time to get ready for the day, and head up to my studio on the third floor where I STILL had racks of clothes for them to go through…..Besides Linea, I had clothes that all belonged to Jac, from my “DEI TRE” collection designed for Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus and Holt Renfrew, and some of her original Anne Klein clothes….samples that were made on her. I also had quite a few evening dresses that I had made for Jac for the many special events we went to…….It took many hours to go through, and trying on all of the samples….bringing back memories for all of us…………..We all needed a BREAK………..It was time for LUNCH!