Nov. 10, 2025 - Music Defines Your Life
The lead article in Sunday’s Democrat and Chronicle was about "the big game" in 1964 when McQuaid Jesuit played Aquinas Institute for the first time. Aquinas was a much older school with tradition going back to the 1930s
McQuaid was a much newer school and we had never played Aquinas in a football game. The end score was 14-13 with the McQuaid victorious in the last six seconds. Yours truly is number 32 in the above photo.
Years ago we started a tradition of gathering members of both teams to commemorate the "big game"…the crowd is dwindling as so many have moved to other levels of existence. I’m the guy with the 1964 Varsity jacket in the center.
We have a yearly tradition of watching this movie in honor of Veterans’ Day. It speaks volumes to "the greatest generation".
November 11th is the birthday of my oldest son Jay Andrew Bernunzio, a young man who always makes me very proud. My son Jay has been operating the Tint Shop here in Rochester for a quarter of a century. He does graphic design and window treatments as well as window tint and paint protection on automobiles. Several years ago he immortalized many of the Rochester musicians and his father with great graphics on the windows of Uptown Music. Happy Birthday kid!!
Music Defines Your Life
November 10th, 2025
Good morning friends,
The ride from Penn Yan to Rochester is a little over an hour each way. Three days a week I’ve been driving back-and-forth to work at the store and lend my support to our great staff. They are doing a fine job and things are running very smoothly, but, if I’m not being too presumptuous, I think my presence adds something to the ambience of the store. I’m becoming like a fixture sitting in my leather chair in the corner. On the ride in I often I listen to "news podcasts" that end up creating lots of angst, but lately I’ve struck upon a new approach. Although, I have always listened to a bit of music while I drive, I sometimes pass it by because I can’t stand those prepackaged playlists. Now, my new approach is to listen to entire albums from my youth. That is when albums stopped becoming just a collection of singles, but stories unto themselves… with a beginning, a middle and an ending. They are usually an hour long so I can get a snippet of news and listen to an entire album on the drive. Thus far I have listened to "Blonde on Blonde" by Bob Dylan; "Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band", by The Beatles and "Let It Bleed" by The Rolling Stones and “Working Man’s Dead" by the Grateful Dead. Obviously these selections date me to a baby boomer. So I began to think how the music we listen to, defines who we are, where we have been and, perhaps, where we are going. I don’t mean to judge anyone by what they listen to, it is simply that we are defined by our tastes. It puts parameters around who we are. When I first met Julie, I listened to the music that she liked (mostly Grateful Dead) and she liked the music that I listened also. We became good companions because of the music that we shared. Even though she is much younger than me, we have always been united in the music we both enjoy….including Old Time string band tunes. But over the past year we have been driving separately as Julie often needs to stay in Rochester usually to help someone in need. We haven’t been listening to much music together so I’m hoping our time together in Trapani will result in making some beautiful music once again.
With peace,
John Bernunzio
a little "collage" of Jay Andrew Bernunzio over the years.