Good Morning....come with me on a bit of a journey today.

We'll start in Sicily, about 1908. A devastating earthquake levelled the city of Messina. Somehow, my 14-year-old great grandmother Angelina survived.

The following year, she boarded a ship to Ellis Island, New York...and made her way north to Boston, although not to the North End. She settled in the somewhat grittier East Boston, which was a working port and would eventually become part airport.

Fast-forward a few years to the other side of the world, on the Filipino island of Mindanao. After the Spanish-American war, these islands became a colony of the United States. It's part of family lore, but it seems unlikely that the Japanese were starting to eye the Philippines in the mid 1920s, but nevertheless my grandfather made the long journey from Manila to the West Coast. He eventually married and left a trail of random cousins across the US until he made his way to the Northeast....and decided he liked another lady better and divorced to marry my grandmother.

My father was born in New York City in 1934...and my mother is a war baby, debuting in Boston not long before the Cocoanut Grove Fire, saving my grandpa's life in the process.

But now we'll jump again....this time to a Caribbean island just 90 miles south of Key West. My Father-in-law actually went to university with Catsro and knew him slightly. When the revolution came, he packed his bags and left, before any of the travel restrictions came into play. He was already engaged to be married, but his bride was caught. Eventually, she got a travel visa to visit a cousin in Costa Rica, and stuffed everything she could into two suitcases and never went back.

Eventually, they made their way north to Boston and were married...settling far from the tropical breezes of their youth.

Somehow....the Great American Melting Pot did it's work, and all these things managed to intersect. Mrs. TriSec and I managed to get born...we lived our childhoods, and eventually crossed paths and decided we liked each other.

Not very long before we got married, a gentleman I have known since 8th grade decided to come out that he was gay. This didn't change a thing, and of course he stood for me as my Best Man. I am still waiting for my marriage to collapse because of this.

You know of our long and arduous journey to parenthood....and with Javi now turning 11, it's worth reminding everyone that we did go back to my ancestral homeland...and Javi is a pureblooded Malay from the island of Luzon.

I suppose it's a fairly typical American story I've just told you...but there is a point.

The GOP is against every single one of those things.

Immigration? Check.

Hispanics? Check.

Gays? Check.

"Brown" people? Check.

And of course, we're part of the struggling Middle Class, these days, so check that, too.

I do wonder what it is that makes me different from the "Americans" that the GOP is working to protect. While I never served, many of my elder relatives wore the Uniform of this country in war. I pay my taxes; I work with youth in my city for the betterment of society, I vote, I pay attention, I've run for public office....what more do I need to do?