Saturday Reads

Obituary:  Veteran character actor Danny Aiello, 86, has reportedly died.

New York Times

Daniel Louis Aiello Jr. was born on June 20, 1933, in Manhattan, the sixth of seven children of Daniel and Frances (Pietrocova) Aiello. Danny, known as Junior until adulthood, grew up on West 68th Street, before gentrification, and then in the South Bronx. His father, whose occupational experience included driving trucks for the bootlegger Dutch Schultz and who served time in prison, was largely absent. His mother worked as a seamstress, an envelope stuffer and a toy-factory supervisor.

Junior was a wage earner from the age of 9 — first shining shoes at Grand Central Terminal during World War II (10 cents for regular shoes, 25 cents for combat boots), then delivering magazines and laundry and, by his own admission, running numbers for the local mob. He dropped out of high school to join the Army in 1951 and was based in Germany during the Korean War.

Mr. Aiello was a blue-collar worker until his mid-30s. He worked on an assembly line at an aircraft plant in New Jersey, was a baggage handler for Greyhound in Manhattan and gave the public its first taste of his raspy voice when he started his job there as public address announcer, calling out the names of the stops for departing buses. He also became a union official but lost his job after a wildcat strike, reducing him to pool-hall hustling and eventually to burglary to feed his growing family.

Survivors include his wife of 64 years, three surviving children (one died in 2010), and a slew of grandchildren.
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It's a hell of a note women have to organize in order to keep the rights they already have thanks to this queer theory bullshit.
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I can't say I shed any tears over Paul Volker's death, either.
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