Barre Reunion

Every year, Matt's family holds a family reunion up in Barre, Vermont, which is where his grandfather August's family lived. His family was large - three Sironi siblings, then after the death of his father, four Somaini half-siblings. Each of the kids had families, many of whom travelled and raised families far from Barre, and several who still remain in the town to this day. It is an impressive sight to see so many people, many of whom are now distant cousins, gather together with a shared sense of history and place. Bob Somaini, who has hosted the reunion for the past few years, just purchased a gorgeous house on a mountainside, filled with many antiques from the antiques store that he owns.

There had been flooding in Barre the week before we came, and scenes from its destruction of the roads and land could still be seen. Luckily none of the family suffered too much damage, but it was strange seeing photos of people boating down the main roads!

We stayed at a hotel and had several misadventures there, as they first lost our reservations, then assigned us to a room that was already occupied, and finally reassigned us to a new room, only to not record the fact that Matt & I were in another room, so that when a group of people came in at 2 AM, they assigned our room to them, so they walked in on us sleeping in the middle of the night! Needless to say, we'll be choosing a different hotel next time around!

But it was wonderful seeing the family, and hanging out with the cousins and uncles and aunties. We were taught how to play Pitch, a card game (Matt got the hang of it quickly... me? not so much!) I brought up a lot of Sironi-Somaini genealogy that I had been working on, and it was a blast hearing stories of Italy and Barre in the early 1900s, family scandals, and funny tales.

We also visited the Rock of Ages granite quarry, a huge working quarry that produces beautiful rock for buildings, monuments, gravestones, etc. Here's the quarry: