The first prize I ever won was this crucifix from the nun who taught the Holy Communion religious instruction class I took at Visitation RC Church near the Red Hook Houses where I lived as a child. Although I have heard many horror stories about nuns told by people who went to Catholic Schools, my public school Wednesday afternoon released time for religious instruction memories are distinctly fond ones.

In the fall of 2006 I gave a walking tour of New York’s Mulberry Street Little Italy for an Elderhostel group. This is one of the sights that greeted us on the trip. I interpret the display to mean that San Gennaro was a cigar smoker.

Somethings don't change. Here, at the turn of the 21st Century, is an Italian American village on Carroll Street, Brooklyn near the Gowanus Canal. It is not far from where my wife Suzanne's grandparents, the Giordanos, lived at the turn of the 20th Century.

When the Twin Towers fell, many New Yorkers felt the need to visually express their grief. Here on 7th Avenue in Park Slope one car owner used his rear window as a canvas.

Last year I walked around in Oslo, and as I have done in so many other places, I tried to visually capture the commonplace aspects of local neighborhoods there. This was a place where migrants from many different places had created a home. Anders Behring Breivik and I probably have different takes on this scene.

Wedding Photo Montmartre, Paris, June 2011

A parrot on the bird feeder in your backyard after a snow storm in Brooklyn, New York is surreal. Mob round-ups, Silvio Berlusconi's antics, and "Jersey Shore" are not.

I didn't have a picture handy of Silvio Berlusconi with his allegedly very close friend Vladimir Putin, so I thought one taken in Vlad's "Lennongrad" hometown (Leningrad/St. Petersburg) while I was there for a conference might be equally informative and ultimately damaging.

In the end, we are what we eat.

Marching in the Columbus Day Parade requires a commitment that up until the present time I have been unable to make. I did however march in the Turkish Day Parade in 2005, but that was more of a courtesy than a commitment. It's not that I have a problem with Cristobal Colon himself or El Dia del la Raza but you never know who's going to show up in the crowd of spectators or marching on Fifth Avenue.

The Christian Cross had become a tourist attraction at Ground Zero as will the Cordoba House Cultural Islamic Center and Mosque, he said hopefully. As did Yakov Smirnoff on his mural -- "The human spirit is not measured by the size of the act but by the size of the heart."