chalk 2026: triangle factory fire commemoration

it's march 25th and several weeks ago i had signed up to chalk the name of caterina bona giannattasio who died in the triangle shirtwaist factory fire in 1911. today chanda went with me and we carefully wrote in the information on bedford street where caterina lived. artist ruth sergel who began this chalk project has handed over the distribution of names to the tenement museum. (an interesting coincidence is that my childhood pediatrician was a giannattasio, and his grandson still practices in his old office space. i don't think they are related to caterina, however.)

caterina's older sister, rose, also perished in the fire. there is a photo of their gravestone in calvary cemetery here, along with a small article about them (click here for the article about rose). there were nine pairs of siblings who died in the fire. it's so very sad and tragic.

i have several past posts about chalking and the triangle fire which you can read if you like by scrolling down on the left to the labels list and clicking on the triangle fire label tab. but here's a link to one of our first experiences (in 2011) with commemorating the tragedy here in the city. korrina had read a lot about it and we went on a walk around the neighborhood, reading the names of the young women and seeing where they lived. (well, i see now we had an earlier encounter with seeing the names of the workers . . chanda and i walked by caterina's home in 2009 . . and here in 2015 is a post of chanda chalking for daisy lopez fitze on charlton street). this link goes to the tenement museum's youtube page that has a video of the discussion with historians from last year's commemoration, and this link goes to a list of the workers' names and where they lived. rose bona bassino actually lived just a few blocks from her sister at 97 west houston street.

afterwards, chanda and i treated ourselves to coffee, an omelet and a scone at buvette's . . 

and i had my class today at noon, and we finally integrated the cats . . below is zuzu with pluto . . 

i had been keeping zuzu separate from the other two as when she came home from the animal medical center she had a strong odor of soap and surgery antiseptic. cricket didn't even recognize her and would hiss (once he looked at her and then turned to me and hissed, as if it was my fault!). then when he finally stopped hissing at her, she began hissing at him! everything seems to be back to normal now, however, and zuzu is only doing her occasional hissing at pluto.