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."

Racist toys such as this "Jolly N----- Dentist" mechanical bank were common in America in the 19th and early 20th centuries. I keep it around with some more and less celebratory artifacts to remind myself of how far we have come... or perhaps not.

People protesting against their own interests somewhere (everywhere) in America.

Brooklyn pizzaioli in training

This is the depleted basket in which guests to our annual Christmas party have taken the small gifts collected by my wife Suzanne during our most memorable trip this year (quest' anno). This year the trip of note was to Sicily where I visited the village of Marineo near Palermo in which my roots are sunk. Therefore the "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year" sign hanging from the basket handle is written in Sicilian. il insegno "Buon Natale ed il nuovo anno felice" scritto in siciliano