The Columbus Day Parade and a snub from school board member, Mr. Romaniello

My sons and I went to the Columbus Day Parade after Saturday morning's violin class at CAPA. We mingled with spectators and walked up the parade route in the opposite direction along side of the street -- in the shade. Then as the tail of the parade passed, we worked through the crowd back to the parade's end along the other side of the street.

Bill Peduto and others were in the parade. We shook Bill's hand, walking out onto the street. But, we were on the sidewalk mostly. Mark DeSantis switched to the other side of the street when he saw us coming, so thought my 12-year-old.

Along the way, we saw and talked with Pgh Public School board member, Dan Romaniello. I reached my hand out to say 'hi' and shake his hand. He wouldn't. Humm... He might have had a touch of thin skin.

He held his ground with a few insults. One was "get a job."

The other thing he said, "I read your blog. You post all that shit."

I said, "What shit? I've posted more than 5,000 comments to the web. What are you talking about?"

He said, "Don't you read what is on your blog?"

I said, "I write most of what is on my blog."

He said to his wife, 'Honey, you don't want to talk to him. (She has taking my campaign literature.) He writes mean stuff about you.'

I said, "Oh, this has to do with Michael Diven." I mentioned that he was old news and I offered to shake his hand again. No luck. He wasn't going to shake my hand.

Puzzled, I did a web search on this blog by looking through all the content posted here on ROMANIELLO. Dan Romaniello, an elected member of the Pgh Public School's Board, has a wife who worked full time in the office of State Rep Michael Diven, D & then R. Diven switched his party from D to R. Then he ran for PA Senate 42nd district in a special election to fill the seat of Jack Wagner, D.

I was in that special election too, as a Libertarian. Diven out spent me 500-to-1. In the final vote count the margin between Diven and I was 5-to-1.

Diven's campaign, office, and supporters had a bit of trouble since that special election. The next year he had a race to hold onto the seat as a Republican. Michael Diven got voted out of office. One storm came after a number of dead people in the Republican party seemed to have signed Diven's nomination papers to allow him to get onto the ballot.

This blog didn't go into a lot of detail and coverage with another incident in Romaniello's past -- the paved driveway saga. I don't really know why, how or who from what public works crew felt the need to get the bumps out of the driveway of the Romaniello property. So, I didn't blog about that.

Looking deeper into what I posted, I can't find anything to get really yanked off about.

http://rauterkus.blogspot.com/search?q=Romaniello


I de-briefed with my sons as the weirdness of the behavior of that one guy we encountered at the parade and what was said. I offered that the best I could do was be kind and move along. My guess was that the "job remark" hits close to home with him as Diven is not in office any more and his office staff must have been put out of work. My kids know about notarized nomination papers, getting signatures, and other paperwork challenges of ballot access. Oh well.