Sept. 7, 2026 - LABOR DAY AND A NEW MAP
School is in full session this week and everyone is back including my twin granddaughters, Scarlett and Olive and grandson Rocco. They actually started a couple of days last week. Catholic school can do anything they want.
Penny on the right is the wonder dog of our daughter Grace. Grace is visiting Rose in San Francisco and we have been watching her THREE dogs… which include Penny, Poppy and Migo…So, along with our two, Ike and Tina makes five dogs! Quite a responsibility on the shoulders of my poor Julie. Ike on the left is a real alpha male and doesn’t usually get along with any of the other dogs, but he has made his amends with Penny…. they are a tag team of barkers.
This nonagenarian was wheeled into our store by his caretaker. He had played violin when he was a young boy, and he expressed the desire to just hold one once more and we accommodated.
On Sunday, we went to see Eric Carlin‘s Grateful Dead tribute band with Julie’s brothers, her mom Barbara Schnepf and her mom‘s friend Sylvia Hoffmeier… some nonagenarians just keep trucking! The three of us enjoyed the concert from the outside on the lawn and in the sun….
On the cooking side of things, this was a week for Delicata squash, a delicious appetizer that was for a picnic on Saturday.
LABOR DAY AND A NEW MAP
September 7th, 2026
Dear Friends,
It’s Labor Day….. a day that everyone has a vacation and there’s no labor to be performed. Labor Day originated in the late 19th century, as a product of the American labor movement to honor the social and economic contributions of workers. It was often deemed an a "socialist uprising" against the wealthy industrialists of the late 19th century. Today, it is a time for everyone to picnic, watch sports, explode fireworks, drink beer and eat charred mammal flesh. America has some interesting twists that you don’t find in other countries. Hopefully, everyone enjoys their day off, their short work week and gets back to business when school reopens.
I started John’s corner 8 -1/2 years ago writing a weekly tome for the business of Bernunzio Uptown Music. It was my way of stepping back from the everyday activities of the business and being more of an advisor…. expressing my opinions about instruments and life. Well, it has taken a life of its own, and there are now well over 400 episodes. Each week I share it on Facebook and try to stay out of any other "fracas" that appears on that venue.
Well, last week I veered off of that high ledge and made some comments about the recent name change of one of the Great Lakes, specifically the lake that I have lived on or near for my entire life. To the people here, Lake Ontario will always be Lake Ontario, and to rename it Lake America was merely an act of vengeance and punishment against our closest and most loyal neighbor. Some folks pointed that other things have been renamed.. like Mount McKinley, but none of those folks could tell me who McKinley was nor why a mountain should be named after him…. other than getting shot and killed while in office. They told me about professional and college athletic teams, whose names had reflected native people, and they were forced to change, but I don’t think anybody wants to go back to the "Redskins". So I expressed my opinion and I deleted the two popular map programs, Apple Maps and Google Maps from my phone in a protest….. it was not that easy because I was very very involved and invested in both of those applications and I am struggling with any new ones. BUT I felt it was my way of expressing how I feel. Today we live in a society where there is a fear of expressing your opinion because you could be taken down with someone else’s comment in a short bit of time. That is not healthy dialogue, this is not communication. I have a particular disdain about sharing "memes" whatever political content they may be ascribing. I REALLY try to avoid this. Most likely, someone else made that screenshot up and you can never verify it. If you have an opinion, detail what you believe… don’t share someone’s "meme" just to stir the pot. It may give you a lot of "likes" or "dislikes’ and it probably strokes your ego a bit because you’ve got a lot of comments on your post, but it is a bad thing for America and I do not want to be trapped into sharing things that I have not fully invested time to authenticate or find the original source. I’m not saying don’t share your opinions. Just don’t take for a granted what you’re sharing is true…. it’s the New World order. Kind of like celebrating Labor Day and not really knowing why it was started….
My main goal has always been to make the world a little better place and to do it with Music and I intend to stick to my original plan….without compromising my values.
With peace,
John Bernunzio.
The remains of the vast collection of Mitzie Collins, acclaimed dulcimer player from Western. New York and “Eastman” school graduate. These, and much, much more have been left to us to sell. There’s many great projects and some incredible hammered dulcimers.