Day 110

 Good morning on this Monday June 29, 2020.  I am waxing nostalgic today after finding brainpickings.org yesterday and seeing Maria Popova is from Brooklyn. I emailed her, told her about visiting Bensonhurst nearly every weekend growing up and was inspired to find my grandparents house on 67th street via google maps. Here it is: Amazingly the statue of Mary in the garden I honestly believe was

identical to the one my grandparents owned, if not the very same one!  My sisters and I were reminiscing about walking down 18th avenue and shopping at the Five and Dime, produce markets and butcher shops. Janice, the youngest, remembers my aunt Gina and her buying Jelly sandals. It was a big deal as children to shop the Avenue with mom and grandma buying the fruits and vegetables and sausage and ground beef for the meat sauce grandma would make every Sunday in Brooklyn at 1913 67th street.  Lisa, the oldest, remembers the pepperoni sticks hanging in the "pork store".  In the summer we would have dinner under the grapevine on the back patio and then grandpa would create fun games for the kids to play and win money.  The three daughters (my mom and her two sisters) always went home with an envelope of cash.  In the cooler days we ate inside, usually in the basement on a long table set for 14 people.(and sometimes more if cousins like uncle Patty and aunt Ray and Patty Ann joined us)  There was always sauce and pasta, meatballs and sausage, fruit and nuts and cake and coffee and wine!  The bottles were often a Chianti in the traditional straw basket. 

I recently visited my in-laws and Dewey shared a photo of him and his friends road tripping to CA to surf with their surfboard on top of their VW bug. Here they are on their way to surf with locals in 1965:

Now to the present where the pandemic rules.  As the world continues to combat a virus outbreak that has infected over 10 million the summer weather is not helping as some speculated back in April.  Although being outdoors is helpful it seems opening up bars and other public venues is not as the number of cases has soared in certain countries (America, Brazil, Mexico) 

Social distancing in some areas is a thing of the past and wearing a mask is not cool.  The data on how effective a mask is to preventing transmission is pretty substantial yet people insist on venturing out into public spaces and spreading their germs.  This NPR  story on mask wearing tells how the infection rate could be slowed considerably if everyone just wore a mask. 

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/06/21/880832213/yes-wearing-masks-helps-heres-why