Working non stop on getting the new CD out to the right peeps. good reception so far. great reception. Yesterday I spent some time calling long lost relatives from Italy who now live here. these are people related to my great grandmother. Her nieces. All of them are already in their eighties. But I found a huge section of my family that is still alive and lives in eerie PA. All of them spun off from my great great grandfather and mother. It is amazing how many people can come from two people! there must be over fifty maybe seventy people so far just from those two who came over here. 

I would just pick up the phone, “hello is Eleanor there please?” “this is she.” “Uh, my name is Fishy, and I'm the great nephew of ... your aunt...” And they were always so cordial and polite and open and friendly. It was so nice. They gave me tons of information. Talked for hours. Turned out that there is a tradition in the family that went on for hundreds of years that the oldest son would become a priest. And finally my great uncle broke this tradition when he came to America. So since then, no more priests. Little things like this... it was fascinating. How did this side come to America in the first place? they were a wealthy family, with servants and summer homes etc. he built things. his older bro was of course a priest. He came to America to work at a new catholic church for Italian people in PA. And as was the tradition back then, the whole family followed the father, or in this case since the father was already passed, the older brother. So the whole family moved to America so the priest could run this new church. And from them there are like hundreds of these agrestis all over Pennsylvania and now all over America. It is an amazing story. The oldest daughter, my great grandmother, was married and pregnant at fourteen. She had six children. On of them my grandmother. Like everyone back then. Five or six children. These poor women. Anyway, out of six children, my brother and I and his kids are the only offspring. It goes to show, you just cannot have enough children. You never know if your bloodline is really going to carry on or not. So I decided I really needed to get busy and have lots of kids. And boys. Without boys your name doesn’t carry on. You see it in the family tree I am making. Where they had girls the name just stops and goes into another name. its really quite awful. Its like a race to have boys. Lol. 

While I was away this summer I received a few emails from people about the transcendent diaries. a few were people I knew, and some were people I didn't know. but they were all good. thanking me for writing and saying how much it meant to them, and asking me why we weren't posting new diaries recently. Frankly the diaries scare the shit out of me. I don't even know why I do it. I think I'm insane. I sit back and look at myself from afar sometimes like, man I hope you fucking know what you're doing. We’ll see.