Episode 61. A Discussion With Author Maria C. Palmer
Email Me: paranaughtica@gmail.comFacebook: The Paranaughtica PodcastTwitter/X: @paranaughticaYoutube: The Paranaughtica Podcast Welcome back everyone! Today I have with me Maria Costanzo Palmer! She is an author and Page Turner Award Finalist. She is also a regular moderator for the Food Is Religion Club on Clubhouse, and she was a former host on L.A. Talk Radio. We'll be talking about her new book about her fathers journey of opening and running a popular restaurant in McKees Rocks, a rough-and-tough neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, throughout the 80's and 90's. He would also run for local politics, but it, combined with the success of 'The Primadonna', would inevitably lead to an unfortunate stint in federal prison. So, let's sit back and hear her story! Maria C. Palmer's book: “On the Rocks: The Primadonna Story”Find more at her website: mariacpalmer.comFind her on Facebook and Instagram: @joecostanzoprimadonna And also on Twitter/X: @mariacpalmer Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
I hope everyone is having a fantastic work week and that things are improving in all of our lives.
It's been a pretty hectic, you know, month so far with all the violence and political corruption erupting throughout the entire world, throughout the country, throughout our own neighborhoods.
Not to mention it's the politics that are behind that violence.
But we are here.
Here we are.
Keeping the gears oiled up, engines running.
Ladies and gentlemen.
As you know, I cover a lot of different topics, a huge range of things, and that's because I'm not divisive.
I don't play that game of choosing sides and catering to one group of people or the other.
I want to give everyone a chance here on this show to tell their story, no matter who you are or what kind of person you are, what things you've done in your past, what your religion is, what your beliefs are, what stance you have on politics.
It doesn't matter to me.
I welcome everybody here.
So with that said, today I have an amazing guest with me.
She's an author, a grant writer, and Paige Turner Award finalist.
For the book that she co-authored with Ruthie Robbins, who isn't here with us today.
But the book is called On the Rocks, The Prima Donna Story.
She is also a regular moderator for the Food is Religion Club on Clubhouse.
Go check that out.
And she was a former host on LA Talk Radio.
So that's pretty big.
Mario Costanzo Palmer was recently featured on Food and Beverage Magazine Live, which is a nationally syndicated podcast that is doing very well, I should add.
And I have here today because she has a unique story to tell about her father's journey of success through the 1990s as the owner of a popular restaurant and a radio host and a columnist and aspiring politician, all of which led to an abrupt and sharp fall that would culminate into doing just a little time in federal prison back in 2005,
which obviously had a huge impact on her life.
And I'm sure we will get into all of that.
So, Maria, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me.
I'm really excited about being here.
You're welcome.
So let's just start off by talking about your father's origins.
Where did he grow up and what was life like for him in those days?
So my dad was one of three children.
He grew up in the city of Pittsburgh and he grew up his both of his parents were Italian immigrants.
So my grandmother came from Abruzzi and my grandfather came from Calabria.
And they settled on the east side of Pittsburgh, not far from downtown Pittsburgh.
And after my parents met and married, they went to the west side of the city, which is kind of where my story began.
And in Pittsburgh, so he grew up in a time when it was called the Smoky City or what, Hell with the Lid Off?
Yeah. Absolutely.
The smoke was just so thick from coal-driven industry.
Yes. It was pretty crazy.
Yeah. My grandparents would tell stories about during that steel mill age.
You'd walk downtown and in surrounding areas and you would come with a white collared shirt and leave with a gray or black shirt.
So the pollution was heavy at that time, no doubt about it.
It's crazy because people then thought that the smoke was good for them.
It was good for their lungs and it helped the crops grow.
So they're just like inhaling this constantly.
Yeah, and kind of ironically, both of my grandfathers were smokers, but they both died from lung cancer and were alive and well during that mill time.
Neither of them really worked for a long time in the mills, but obviously it's Pittsburgh.
You know, in businesses that were close to the downtown area, and I'm sure breathing in all that soot did not help anything or anyone.
No, I mean, there's no escape in it.
Sure, yeah.
The streets were so dark until, like, noon.
They had street lamps on.
Yeah, yeah.
Just so thick.
The mayor, David Lawrence, when he became mayor, he had to sandblast the skyscrapers because there was just so much tar on the buildings.
Yeah, yeah.
That's insane.
It was crazy, but I don't know if you've been any time recently, you know, within the past 20 or so years, but...
Pittsburgh now is consistently, I don't know if it's this year, but for several years it was consistently voted as the most livable city in America.
And it is really beautiful.
Yeah, it's more bridges than Paris.
And, you know, this amazing tunnel, it's my favorite tunnel, the Fort Pitt Tunnel.
You come through.
On the outside of Pittsburgh.
And as you come through the tunnel, the entire city.
The city comes.
Yes. And you can see the point and all the rivers and all the bridges.
And it's just, it's one of, I think, one of the best views in the world.
It's gorgeous.
It's really a cool place.
Yeah, I was there 2015, I believe.
2014, 2015.
Yeah, so you know.
You get it.
Yeah, it's a cool place now.
I went up on the lookout and just like, wow.
This city.
This historical city.
It's really a cool place to go if you have an extra weekend.
Check out Pittsburgh.
For sure.
I would love, yeah, if anyone's near that area, I would definitely go check it out if you haven't already.
So for him, so okay, he was growing up in Pittsburgh in the 40s, 50s, I guess 60s, 70s, pretty well.
And then he decided to start a restaurant.
Yeah, he actually, he grew up in a bar family.
So his immigrant father ended up starting a bar in the Shadyside area of Pittsburgh, which for those of you who are and aren't familiar with Pittsburgh, that would be kind of a very high class, lots of...
Window shopping, independent stores, very close by to Carnegie Mellon University.
And so most of the clientele that were coming to this bar were either students or professionals, either in the healthcare field or, you know, working for the university.
So my dad grew up in the hospitality industry, but then he got a job as a postal worker.
And he always had a dream of opening up his own business, but he didn't really have the money to back that.
So instead, he bought a failing business on the west side of Pittsburgh in a small little town called McKee's Rocks, PA, which if it's ringing a bell to you...
It never had before, but if it's ringing a bell to you now and you're a sports fan, the Buffalo Bills star Damar Hamlin actually hails from McKee's Rocks, Pennsylvania.
It's my dad's favorite football team.
Really? And the building that once was my father's restaurant, the failing business that he bought and turned it into the prima donna, it actually borders the daycare.
Wow. Awesome.
And also because, of course, you've all read On the Rocks, right?
Well, exactly.
Exactly. Or maybe now you're going to, right?
Yeah, yeah.
And McKee's Rocks, that's got a lot of history to it, that area itself.
Yeah, it certainly does.
It's an interest.
Pittsburgh is one of the very few cities, I guess Boston would be kind of a similar sister city, where people...
Came over in droves right before World War II, and they came over for obviously better opportunities.
And a funny aside, somebody that I went to high school with went back to Calabria because that's where a lot of people from McKee's Rocks came from.
And he was in the library.
He was just looking up family records.
And the mayor of Calabria happened to be there.
The mayor, sorry, of this small little town in Calabria.
And he immediately didn't recognize my friend.
And so he said, you know, you're not from here.
He said, yeah, you know, I'm from the United States.
And he said, oh, well, I visit the United States once a year.
He said, well, I'm from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
And he goes, well, I don't know much about Pittsburgh.
I fly into there.
But I do know a lot about this small little city called McKee's Rocks.
And he said, well, that's actually where I'm from.
And as they were looking up records, all of the people that I went to school with, last names, also had roots in this small little town in Calabria.
So it's a very...
It's an enclave-esque, I don't even know if that's a word, type city.
Yes, it is now.
It totally is now.
It's official.
But, you know, where people just completely packed up, moved, were in search of a better life, and then settled here.
So when my dad bought the business, he didn't know a soul in McKee's Rocks.
He grew up on the east side of the city.
And really, McKee's Rocks was not known as a place that...
You would open a world-class business.
It's pretty rough in that area, right?
A very rough area.
And still to this day, I think it's one of the most dangerous places right now in Pennsylvania.
I believe it.
And just the name, McKee's Rocks.
It doesn't sound like a pleasant place.
Yeah. Well, one or the other.
It's either big mansions on top of...
Large mountains.
Oh, is that how it is?
Like split like that?
No, it's actually not at all.
It's very rough and tumble.
You know, it's an area that has a lot of history.
One of the opening chapters of the book, we do a flashback from the 50s and 60s.
The small-town America with the cobblestone streets and the little mom-and-pop shops and, you know, you go downtown whenever you want a day out with your family and to buy anything that you need and fresh groceries and eggs and suits and ice cream and,
you know, everything that it once was.
And, you know, unfortunately...
As the industry and the steel mills moved out, people emigrated a little further out into farmland that now is kind of built up with Best Buys.
Well, no longer Best Buys really, but, you know, the big metropolises with all of the Walmarts and Targets and strip malls and no independent operators.
And so it completely changed the dynamic not only of moving people out of the city.
But also leaving the draw of those independent operating businesses that once were.
So it's interesting because some of the feedback that we're getting from the book, because the book is a triple entendre, on the rocks obviously is drinks over ice, right?
On the rocks could mean a shaky situation.
But on the rocks, people that are from McKee's rocks are known.
As from the rocks.
Right. So people are seeing On the Rocks and they're buying the book because they have nostalgic memories about that area from a better time.
Yeah, it just elicits a nice memory and I'm like, oh, all right, picking this book up.
Yeah, so he kind of...
It hedged his bet, bought this failing business, and then turned it into, well, struggled for a long time, years, and then was finally able, with one review, to turn it into one of America's hotspots, which was quite wonderful.
And the restaurant was previously owned by Nick Fusco, right?
Fusco's Italian restaurant?
Yeah, it was Nick Fusco's Italian restaurant.
Yep. And he...
We had decided he was retiring and he was going to be moving to South Carolina.
And we, as a young family, I was only four and my sister was nine months old whenever my dad came into being of the restaurant.
But we would go down there for dinners because there was nobody in the place and we could just run around and be crazy.
But Nick Fusco always knew that my dad had this idea of wanting to open a business.
Whenever he had the idea of moving to Myrtle Beach, the first person that he approached was my dad.
And it was an offer that was just too difficult to say no to.
An offer he couldn't refuse.
Yes, an offer he could not refuse.
Somebody put the remortgage on the house.
He sold off everything.
Yes, absolutely.
And bought the restaurant and named it the...
The prima donna?
Named it the prima donna.
After his wife.
Yep, after my mother.
Her name is Donna.
And also prima donna in Italian means first lady.
So, you know, it worked.
And, you know, it was slightly better than, like, smoking Joe's Cafe or Joe's on the Rocks.
You know, like, he needed for such a machismo area, he needed a very feminine name to kind of back it up and to...
Get people thinking about a different way to partake in business in the rocks.
Yeah, mix it up a little bit.
That's awesome.
So tell us about the Prima Donna.
What kind of restaurant was it?
What's on the menu?
What was on the menu?
So many wonderful things.
And I'm so excited about this.
This is not completely public knowledge yet, but it will be in the next week.
So as a result of the book, we actually have developed a partnership with a countertop company in Pittsburgh called Van Gora Countertops.
And so we're going to be recreating the restaurant once and a quarter.
It's actually happening, huh?
It's happening.
We're bringing it back.
That's awesome.
But as far as the menu is concerned, it was Southern Italian cuisine, 32 different pasta dishes.
You did hear that right.
32 different pasta dishes.
Each pasta dish was one pound of uncooked spaghetti.
So to give you an idea of what that is, that is an entire box.
Of store-bought spaghetti per dish.
That's amazing.
I'm bought.
I want this.
Yes, and also, you know, several different Southern Italian-inspired appetizers, veal, seafood, chicken, you name it, steak even.
You know, some American classics as well kind of melded in.
His signature was two things.
Bukini, which was thin sliced on a mandolin, tempura battered, basically, quickly deep fried, served with a side of marinara sauce and some Parmesan cheese, of course.
All right, stop, stop.
My mouth is watering.
I know, I haven't had dinner either yet.
And then the other thing that was quite popular is there's a bread company.
In the rocks, still in the rocks, for the last hundred years, called Mancini's Bread.
And if you think bread is just bread, you gotta go to Mancini's, or at least drive through McKee's Rocks in the middle of the night whenever they're baking.
This bread is absolutely fantastic, and it has this soft, chewy texture on the inside.
And just the perfect amount of crunch on the outside with like a little bit of like a cornmeal glaze on the bottom.
It is so fantastic.
And so we used to make garlic bread out of it.
And it was quite the hit.
It actually just came free with every meal.
And, you know, most of the time the zucchini did too because if my dad was trying to get to know somebody or already knew him.
Then the person was getting free zucchini.
Cook them up.
Yeah, exactly.
That's amazing.
So you're going to be in business.
You're going to do a partnership with this bread company, I'm assuming.
Bring it back.
So the bread company will be contributing to the menu.
So we do have our first menu, which I'm super excited about.
So it's a little different than the Prima Donna.
So obviously, the people that used to frequent the Prima Donna.
All the time.
Most people would never be able to finish their meals.
And those who did finish their meals every time, they are no longer here to talk about it.
This is going to be more of a tasting menu.
So four courses, 40 people maximum, because let's face it, we're all getting old.
And so on this first menu for May 13th, we are going to do the fried zucchini.
With the side of marinara sauce, the Mancini's garlic toast.
My dad bottled his own Italian salad dressing, which was almost in a way its own marketing ploy, right?
Because people walked out the door with their own little, you know, eight ounce bottle of salad dressing and then they got hooked on it and, you know, went to the store to buy more.
So we're going to marinate.
Red roasted peppers in that dressing and serve that on top of the Mancini's garlic toast.
Then we're going to be doing a chicken Marcella dish, you know, just kind of a very classic Italian dish.
And then my dad did a spaghetti con sausage.
And really, like, he was farming local ingredients before that was a thing to do.
And so it's...
Spaghetti in a red sauce with red and green peppers with loose hot sausage out of the casings.
And it has definitely a different flavor to it whenever you do the loose hot sausage in the marinara sauce.
So that'll be the next course.
And then my mom used to do this really amazing frozen chocolate cheesecake.
Pecans and whipped cream.
So that will be the dessert to kind of culminate the evening, but more of a tasting style because that's certainly a lot of courses to, you know, serve really big helpings.
And it should give people the flavor who have now read the book and said, I wish there was a prima donna to go to.
It's not going to be the exact same thing, right?
Because we can't, you know.
Recreate the building, but it'll be as close to that as possible.
You know, Joe will be greeting you at the door, just like in olden times.
We may even have Chef Pino, which was my dad's head chef, pop in.
His cousin, right?
Or brother?
Yep. Yep, his cousin.
We'll pop in like for, you know, a session or two at some point.
It's going to be kind of a co-moderated night between there's a very well-known musician in Pittsburgh called, his name is Johnny Angel, and he was part of the band Johnny Angel and the Halos.
And so he...
He's also a restaurateur by trade, and he's going to be kind of the chef of the evening.
And he and my dad have a very electric connection because any time he was playing, all of his pre- and post-meals were at the Prima Donna.
And all the people that were going to see him, all their pre- and post-meals were also at the Prima Donna.
So it should be...
A very interesting night.
They reunited for the first time in 20 years on the radio over the summer.
His daughter is a host of a very popular radio show in Pittsburgh, and she has a partner in on it.
And I was there in the studio, and we were only supposed to be on for 15 minutes.
And after 15 minutes, Rachel and John just turned the mic over to my dad and Johnny Angel and just said, well, it's Rachel and John, but not tonight.
It's Joe and Johnny Angel.
And we'll be sitting back and just watching this unfold.
And it was...
A completely awesome experience if people want to kind of get a flavor of it.
If you go onto my Facebook page or onto my website, the at Joe Costanzo, C-O-S-T-A-N-Z-O, Prima Donna, P-R-I-M-A-D-O-N-N-A, you can check it out.
I think it was...
Right around July at some point in 2023.
And you'll see, I think there's something crazy.
Like there was 5,000 or 6,000 views on this thing.
Because it's very humorous to watch.
And it's not all three hours.
It's just, you know, segments of basically whenever we were on commercial breaks, what was happening behind the scenes, which was...
Almost funnier than what was happening on air.
I usually have.
I'll put links in the show notes if you want to send me those links after this.
Sure, absolutely.
I'll send you the Facebook link of that for sure because it's a fun one to take a look at.
And so is your mom, is she running a restaurant right now?
No, for a small amount of time, they reopened a restaurant called Cafe Costanzo, and it was across from where the Penguins, the hockey team, was playing.
Okay. And they were in business for about a year, but honestly, it just did not take off with the charisma that the prima donna did.
It was a different time, more of like a, I'm not going to say a fast casual, but not really, I mean, Back in the 80s and 90s, for those of you who were alive then, as my kids call them, the dinosaur years,
back during those dinosaur years, there was a certain level of dining and customer service experience that I don't think we are in today.
No. That's all but gone.
Yes. When you're going to a place, You know, the best way for me to describe the prima donna to those of you who haven't really experienced it is imagine that Broadway show experience, right?
Like you go to a Broadway show.
Yes, you see, you know, the curtains come up and there's music playing and actors come out and they're singing and they're dancing.
there's so much happening behind the scenes that you just have no idea about.
You know, there are people on walkie talkies and, you know, saying what needs to happen next.
And there's set designers changing things out and there's costume people and there's all kinds of stuff.
So when you watch, you know, Phantom of the Opera and the iconic, you know, scene takes place, then
You know, yes, it looks magical, but there's so many people that are making that magic happen for you, right?
And that's what was happening not only at the prima donna.
It was certainly happening at the prima donna, right?
But it was happening all around during those times.
It was just you went out for...
An unforgettable dining experience.
The food was part of that, but the ambiance was a big part of that.
The hospitality was a big part of that.
Huge part.
And, you know, you weren't rushed out the door.
There wasn't...
Yes, we did to-go orders, but, you know, I would say on average, you know, for Saturday or Sunday, or sorry, Saturday or Friday, we were closed on Sundays, but for a Saturday night, Let's say we did 300 dinners in an 83-seat place.
To-go orders maybe have like two or three to-go orders the entire night.
Wow. So it wasn't the same as what it is now.
I would say, you know, if I had to guess now, I'm not currently in the restaurant industry, but if I had to guess now, I would say...
It's almost stacked more for those DoorDash, Uber Eats.
You know, people don't want...
And if they're waiting for their food for more than five minutes and something's not out, it's like they're ready to go.
You know, they don't want that experience.
They don't want to, like, interact with the staff necessarily.
And the staff is just not there.
I mean, nobody really...
And they don't want to interact with the customer either.
They're just like, I just want my paycheck.
Exactly. I'm just here.
And I want to get out.
I'm in and out.
And, you know, it was just, it was a different time, a different dance.
And I think that that's why it worked.
And I think whenever, you know, we tried with Cafe Costanzo to sort of recreate some of that magic, but it was...
In an apartment building that was mostly college students.
And so, you know, if you know anything about college students, they don't have a lot of dispensable income.
Nope. And it was also across the street from the Penguins Arena.
So if the Penguins were playing, we were very busy.
If they weren't in downtown Pittsburgh, it's absolutely crazy.
You have to pay $20 or $30 to park.
You know, in the parking lots down there.
So, you know, to pay $20 or $30 to travel to downtown Pittsburgh to have something that's, you know, nice, but like, you know, a pasta meal, but more in like a fast, casual kind of pub type environment,
people just weren't willing to do it.
In 2006, 2007.
They were willing to do it in like 1980, you know, 1990.
That was a big thing.
And, you know, also pasta is kind of, pasta needs its own little facelift.
You know, if I can make it my mission in life, I'm going to, you know, whoever got on pasta's good list back in the 90s, pasta was known as, you know, if you're a marathon runner, You're going to go for a bowl of pasta.
Great carbs.
Now pasta is like, and carbs, and now carbs are the enemy.
Yeah. Nobody wants carbs.
I mean, even like my doctors, like, you need to stop eating carbs.
Like, you can't, you just can't do it anymore.
Like, I'm like, all right, you know, like, what's, what's going on here?
But, you know, it's, it's a different.
So I think the food that we're eating, you know, we embrace different things, too.
So I think that that was all part of the reason why Cafe Costanzo just never really took off the way it did.
And almost my dad's actually more ashamed to talk about Cafe Costanzo than he is to talk about his time in prison, which to me is like ridiculous, you know, but it's...
I don't know, like whenever you have passion about something and you have an idea and it just doesn't come to fruition, I think it's really hard on your ego, you know?
Yeah, it's a failure, you know?
You see it as a failure, this little baby that you try to create and establish and make it thrive and it just doesn't work.
You're like, no, my creation.
Yes, yeah.
It's worse.
It's worse.
Yeah, and I think too...
Times change a lot and there are good things about that evolution and maybe not such good things either.
And I think one of the things that my father struggled with was the world and how we interacted in the world had changed so much between 1985 to 2005.
So things like social media, that's a key component, right?
That's obviously how we connected, right?
Regardless of whether or not you like these things, you have to embrace them.
And I think that my dad was kind of unwilling to learn a new way, and he was still taking ads out in the penny saver.
And I'm like, Dad, people only use the penny saver to pick up dog poop.
Like, that's it.
It's basically, like, what it comes down to.
But, you know, it's hard to explain this to somebody who's, like, very old school.
And now he gets it.
And he's so funny.
I mean, he still can't.
He's blind, you know, legally.
But he still can't, for the life of him, turn on a computer or, you know, go on a Zoom.
I mean, he does.
He does totally go on if I'm in Pittsburgh, you know, and we're going to go on an interview together like he goes on the Zoom.
But it's just funny because he knows the power of all of it.
So whenever we're together, he'll say, OK, let's do a Facebook Live.
And I'm like, for the life of you, you would like if if somebody had a gun to your head and said, now you need to go on Facebook.
Oh, my God.
I made him a card with the QR code of the book.
Oh no.
So he'll hand out, it's hilarious, like he'll be somewhere, he'll be at the doctor's office and he'll say like, did you hear I have a book about me?
And the people are like, what?
And he's like, no, it's actually good.
Like it's like a critically acclaimed book.
And then he'll hand the card and he'll say, yeah, like just hit the QR code on the back.
Just hit it.
He's got to press that QR code.
Yeah, he's like, just hit that QR code on the back.
And it's so funny to me because, again, for the life of him, if he had to come up with a way to create a QR, he has no idea.
But he's at least amenable now to speaking that language, you know?
I did watch him the...
Words of wisdom?
Joe's words of wisdom?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's pretty good.
He's on point.
He's intelligent.
I don't think he's losing any intelligence, right?
No, no, he's very intelligent.
Yeah, he's sharp.
He's a sharp guy.
Yeah, he's very sharp.
You definitely know if you're in a room with him because he is by far the loudest person in the room.
But he's also the person that you kind of want in the room with you.
You know, I think that there was –
Right before the book came out, we were able to establish a partnership with the Heinz History Center, which is the Smithsonian Museum affiliate in Pittsburgh.
And together we threw an amazing 500-person invite-only launch party for this book.
Nice. And the cool thing about the whole day, I mean, the whole day will, in my opinion, like go down in history as one of the best days of my life.
But the coolest part of it was to see all of the people that showed up for my dad and people that had worked for him.
You know, some 20-some years ago and now, like, as bus people and now are very successful in the banking industry and real estate and, you know, teachers and whatever, you know,
fields they've went into.
I think one is a state police person.
Like, they are very successful in their own right.
And, you know...
They all attribute it to working for my dad, and my dad is not easy at all.
He had a level of excellence.
Oh, froze up.
Oh, sorry.
Okay, go ahead.
Okay, my dad's not easy to work for.
He had a level of excellence that you needed to meet as an employee, and he wasn't going to let it slide because he strove for An overall outstanding customer experience.
And I think that that was part of what made it so special and why people wanted to continue to work there.
Absolutely. Oh no, can you hear me?
You're frozen now.
Uh-oh, you froze up again.
Uh-oh.
Are you there?
Oh no, we froze up.
We lost her.
We lost her.
She'll be back.
Hold on.
Hold on, folks.
Having technical difficulties.
Having technical difficulties.
There she is.
We're back.
Sorry. All of a sudden it said, like, internet is frozen.
I thought, man.
You're frozen on the perfect funny face.
And I was like, oh, no.
Yeah, no.
It's never...
It's never, like, a brightest moment.
You know, you can never freeze when you're just smiling and looking awesome.
It's always, like, you know, some kind of demonic, ridiculous, like, somebody's just sort of left me out on the cold face.
Exactly. I can only imagine.
Hopefully you found some light in that.
Oh, it was great.
It was great.
It was great.
Well, it's okay.
You were saying your dad's still for excellence and he only hired the good people that he knew were going to hold the expectations that he had for the restaurant.
So I think that's a good practice.
Yeah, yeah.
And I think, you know, a lot of the people that he hired were young people from the area and young people who he gave them a window to how to get out of the area if they wanted it, you know.
And many of them did.
And many of them became very, very successful adults.
And, you know, a lot of them attribute that right back to my dad and his work ethic and some of the practices that, you know, even though he was tough, he was not easy at times.
And he had confidence in people that didn't even have confidence in themselves.
And one of his employees blurbed in the book and he said, one of Joe's practices that I have taken on in my life is he always...
Would thank people for things.
If somebody said, oh, thank you, Joe, for this experience, he would say, no, thank you.
Thank you for coming.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you for supporting me.
And this particular individual, he says, still to this day, I take that forward and it's a way for me to connect with other people and to take myself out of the equation.
And everybody, Everybody wants to feel that they're somebody special.
And I think when you walked into the prima donna, when you interacted with my dad, you could have been just some guy living on the street.
But as soon as you walked into that building, you went from a nobody to somebody.
And I think that that was the magic out of everything.
That's the inspiration people need.
Yeah, I think so.
I think that that is one of the things that the world is lacking today.
As you kind of open, there's so much dissension, right?
There's so many sides.
I think this way, you think this way.
So automatically we have to hate each other.
What we should be thinking is, okay, maybe we have different thought patterns on these two different things, but what is it that unifies us?
What is it that could potentially bring us together on XYZ issue?
And how do we move forward?
How do we use both of our trains of thought pattern to come up with a better solution of what's going on?
And I think that that is something.
I think that's one of the reasons why people are picking up the book, because the book spends a lot of time talking about these intangibles of what makes us human, the duality of being a human being,
right? Everybody wants to talk about the big reviews that they got, the big awards that they got, but nobody wants to talk about whenever they maybe weren't at their best moments.
or you go to prison.
Nobody wants to talk about that.
But whenever you do open yourself up to that, it allows people to connect with you in a
Yeah. I mean, that's awesome.
I just want to touch on it a little bit, because you did say something about celebrities.
So, actress Jamie Lee Curtis, she would go dine there.
That's incredible.
Danny Ayo.
Is that Ayo?
Ayo, yep.
Ayo, yep.
In the Godfather part, too.
That's huge.
Yes. The Los Angeles Dodgers manager, Tommy Lasorda.
That's pretty big.
But I think this next one, one of the best boxers ever to set foot in the ring, Joe Frazier.
Yes. That's insane.
Yeah. But your father also made a fire linguine with white clam sauce with Frank Sinatra?
Yes. And a giardiniera, which was not on our menu, but hey, when Frank calls and he wants something, you do it.
That is crazy.
So your dad knew Frank Sinatra?
Well, he never technically met him, so the story was Frank Sinatra He was on his final tour, and he was playing a show one night in Pittsburgh.
So he came into Pittsburgh specifically for that show.
He was at some hotel, and they asked the concierge, where do you go to get good Italian food?
And he said, well, you go to one place, and that's Prima Donna.
Yes. So his, one of like his, Frank's.
Like, right-hand person called and said, you know, we're going to be finished with the show at this time.
We're going to come down.
We have to get a to-go order because we get on a private jet to go wherever they were going next.
And he said, you know, this is what Frank wants.
And, you know, can you deliver this?
And my dad said, absolutely.
The pressure on your dad at that moment.
I cannot.
Oh my god.
This has got to be the best meal ever.
Otherwise, he's probably going to have someone kill me.
I know.
And not only that, the funny thing is, okay, so we were before the time of...
Being environmentally conscious and savvy, right?
So we had these big styrofoam containers and we used to write on them like, you know, who's to go order it was.
So you would, you know, take a pen and with the styrofoam as you wrote on it, you know, it kind of almost not only just like bled all over it, but it like kind of poked through the...
So it was just so surreal.
Like we're like...
Frank Sinatra.
I mean, okay.
The person who wrote the name?
Was it your dad who wrote the name?
I think so.
Yeah, I think so.
I think he just like wrote like Frank Sinatra and then he didn't actually physically come into the restaurant to get the to-go.
His person came in, picked up the to-go, shook my dad's hand and said, Frank said, thank you very much.
And that was it.
What more can you ask for?
Yep, exactly.
That is awesome, man.
So let's get into your dad.
So what happened with the business?
Did he somehow get involved with the mob or the mafia anyway?
Was that the beginning of the downfall?
Because it seems like any person who's starting an Italian restaurant anywhere in Pennsylvania during that time, I mean, you would think...
The mafia, the mob, whatever, would come in and be like, I love you, some protection, you just gotta pay us.
Exactly. Was that the thing?
Is that what happened?
Not exactly.
So my dad is a very, as you saw on the Facebook videos, larger than life kind of guy.
And one of the things, I think there were a couple of things going on that sort of turned the government.
although it was not his last downfall.
thing is the person that gave him his first big review, he was a critic for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
His name was Mike Kalina, and he ended up committing suicide.
But before he committed suicide, there was some speculation that he had accepted bribes for reviews.
Oh, man.
And it was not the truth.
In the, I think, 15 years or 16 years that he was the Post-Gazette reviewer, and he also was a syndicated columnist for the New York Daily News and the New York Times, he only had 15 five-fork reviews,
which was his highest fork rating.
So that's not even one a year.
So if he was getting paid off for reviews, he certainly wasn't making a lot of money to do so.
You see that all the time now.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, it's common practice.
It's common practice.
Yeah, exactly.
Now a reviewer comes in, it's like, all right, I'm comping your meal.
I'm going to give you whatever the heck you want.
But at that time, it was sort of like a little faux pas.
Mike got into a little trouble.
He ended up being part of a federal grand jury investigation over this.
He committed suicide.
Was it a suicide or was it more of a murder to look like a suicide?
No, it was definitely a suicide, for sure.
For sure, it was a suicide.
He left a note and everything, a very sad situation.
Always loved Mike and really thought that he died for no good reason other than he was targeted.
And so he took out an ad in the Post-Gazette and, you know, really big and bold letters saying, you know, we miss you, Mike, and rest in peace.
A lawyer who was not my dad's lawyer, but somebody that my dad went to school with, before he did this, he said, Joe, I don't think you should be talking to the media about the whole thing that's going on with Mike Kalina.
There's a lot of heat on this.
And you don't want...
People kind of turning on you.
And you don't want to be the subject of the government because they're looking to get somebody.
And if you kind of go out there on a limb, they wanted to get Michaelina and now they can't.
So if you start throwing it in their face, I don't think they're going to like it.
And he was like, well, I'm going to do it anyways.
So that probably wasn't a great move.
Then he ran for political office and he got into a lot of financial trouble because he had thought that he could take some of the transferable skills from the restaurant into running for office,
which he could.
He certainly could.
But in the same way, he kind of got short on money.
So that was probably another piece of the downfall.
And the final go was somebody else was in trouble and they mentioned his name in a federal grand jury investigation.
Oh, man.
Which at the time was not a civil case.
It was a criminal case.
And unfortunately...
What was that case?
I don't know the person.
Well, I do know the person.
I, you know, won't speak their name because to me they...
I've completely let that go.
I'm a big yogi.
I understand why they needed to do what they had to do at the time.
And I don't think, I mean, it may have sprung from jealousy, but I think really it sprung from a lot of fear.
But regardless, the person was in the same type of industry as we were.
And whenever my father's name was mentioned as a person of interest, it automatically Put the government right on his case.
And it was a very public criminal investigation with the feds.
And, you know, as far as Yelp reviews go, that's probably, like, not even a one star.
It's like, highly do not recommend.
Yeah, there you go.
Zero stars.
Yeah, zero stars.
Zero stars.
Do not get into a federal government investigation.
It's like, yeah, you don't want to do it.
So he ran for the Allegheny County Commissioner.
Sure, yeah.
Did he get that position?
No, he didn't.
All of that to not even win, which was very frustrating, especially to my mother, because during the time he kind of borrowed some money unbeknownst to her from her retirement.
So, yeah, that was, my dad said,
You know, you can cheat on your wife, but do not steal her money.
She will never forgive you.
In jest, of course.
Yeah, exactly.
All right, so what started him getting into trouble?
Well, I mean, the impetus of it was this federal grand jury investigation.
And then from there, it was three years of...
The government trying to find something more.
Putting him through hell the whole time, I'm sure.
Correct. And also scaring the people around him because all of the employees now were being questioned about things about him.
It was an awful time.
In our lives, for sure.
And it was a very sad time because the thing that made him happiest was the restaurant.
And, you know, one of the questions that I get asked a lot was, was the restaurant on a downturn when this happened?
And that could not have been further from the truth.
The restaurant had just won an International Drona Award, which is similar to a James Beard.
Back during that time, James Beard did not do restaurant awards, only chef awards.
So this was one of the most prestigious awards that you could get for a restaurant.
And we were busy every single night of the week.
And people were even begging for us to open on Sundays.
I mean, we didn't because we needed some time to rest.
But this was not...
This was not a time for him to go into retirement.
He was, you know, in his later 40s, basically early 50s whenever he walked from the restaurant.
And that in itself, it wasn't the prison that did him in.
It was the fact that he walked away from his baby, which was that restaurant.
And I, you know, a piece of him Died when we left that restaurant.
And I'm very proud to say that now that we're so far past this, and this is like 20 years ago, which has taken me that long to talk openly and honestly about this.
But now I see that glimmer of life coming back in him through reliving what is in this book.
And that, to me...
It's probably the greatest gift as a daughter that I could ever give to him is, you know, in essence, he wrote in my copy of the book, like, Maria, you've resurrected me.
I'm like, you know.
Awesome. That's beautiful.
I'm so glad.
That's something, man, that, yeah, like, I want to do something good like that, make my parents super stoked, you know, make them feel proud and like.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's a cool, you know, I always tell people, like, if this book sells no more copies, in my opinion, it still would have been a really large success because it's those memories that you make.
And I have an amazing relationship also with my co-author, Ruthie Robbins, and, you know, it's been lovely to write with her and lovely to write with my dad.
I mean, these are...
These are intangibles that you just...
You can't replicate.
These are memories that are going to last forever and even well beyond me, which is awesome.
I was going to ask, when you guys reopen it, is it going to be in the same location?
It will not be.
It'll be at the countertop place, which is Van Gora Countertops in Irwin, PA.
It's a bit of a drive outside of Pittsburgh.
It's about an hour east of Pittsburgh, kind of in the Greensburg area.
But they do a lot.
It's in the middle of nowhere, but it's this huge storeroom.
And if you Google it, Google The Kitchen by Vanjura, V-A-N-G-U-R-A, The Kitchen by Vanjura.
And it has this Las Vegas feel to it.
It's a really large storeroom space, big open kitchen.
It has this like horseshoe.
I don't know if you're seeing the pictures now.
It has like this horseshoe seating for 40 people.
So if you enjoy cooking, you actually watch people cook.
But if you enjoy eating, it's kind of an interactive eating experience.
I know for a while, right before COVID, that concept of the open kitchen tables were very big, especially in the large cities where people wanted to sit almost inside of the kitchen, right?
Like those were the prime seats to see.
These famous chefs, you know, do their magic.
So this amplifies that in kind of a more conducive space.
And they get some names that come there, which is like amazing to me.
Like people, you know, who might be traveling and they do a pop-up restaurant night or, you know, a chef that's kind of up and coming, but maybe they don't have their own space.
You know, they'll come.
Pizza looks good.
Yeah, they do all kinds of stuff.
This setup is awesome looking.
I know.
I mean, I'm really excited about this.
This, and then I've been doing my other super fun event, but that's more of a me event.
I do these cook and book classes, which that started on a fluke.
But it's an hour and a half of a cooking experience and an hour and a half of a book discussion, which is super cool.
So your dad did, what, three months or five months in federal prison?
Yep, five months in the Fed, five months on probation.
What did he say that experience was like?
You know, I'm not going to downgrade anybody's prison experience because it's not fun to go to prison.
It's horrible.
It's horrible for the family.
It's horrible for the individual.
But the thing that my dad had on his side is he is naturally a very gregarious person.
And he got that from bartending in the early days at the Prima Ana.
I mean, he sometimes once a night would be breaking up a bar fight.
So for him, going to prison was not as big of a culture shock as for maybe somebody else.
I think what he learned, you know, he always jokes around.
He said, you know, people don't go to prison because they're dumb, right?
They go to prison because...
Sometimes they're a little too smart.
You know, they figured out, especially federal prison, they figure out how to do something a little too well.
Yeah. But, you know, some of the people that he met, and I won't ruin the story, but I think that he had a way of giving people comfort and protection
in...
Something that may have been a little foreign to them because, you know, federal prisons typically are larger white collar crimes.
So think a lot of like money crimes, tax evasion, larcenary, crossing state lines and, you know, doing something that maybe you shouldn't be doing.
Those would all be kind of the federal crimes.
So some of the people that were in federal prison were.
People who were doctors or lawyers or superintendents.
And those folks, I'm not going to say that they didn't fare as well, but they were not able to kind of speak the language of both worlds, right?
And whereas, like, my dad, you know, he'd meet somebody that maybe was like a big-time drug dealer, and he's like, yeah, these people would come in all the time to, like, my bar.
So for him, it's no problem.
But for somebody that is doing high-end liposuctions in the middle of Beverly Hills and now they're in a cell in a federal prison in West Virginia, it's culture shock to them.
So my dad kind of spoke both languages because he had the very high-end customers and then he had bar people that were crazy.
So he was able to kind of straddle both worlds and I think provide a little bit of the familiar to people who were a fish out of water.
So his experience was not one of like Shawshank Redemption.
I think one of the things that he could agree on was That of the Four Seasons.
I could guess that.
I think that that was his toughest challenge, is he tried to use his people skills to woo everybody over, and the staff, they just weren't having it.
They're like, you're a prisoner, we are guards, we run this shit.
Yeah, exactly.
And he's like, I'm just a person, man, just trying to have a good time at a restaurant.
Exactly. He's like, you know, we're not a customer of your restaurant.
We're not interested in that.
And I think that was really hard for him, you know, because he's always found a way to kind of see through the gray in people and, in a way, get his way.
I mean, he's the firstborn in an Italian family and he's a male.
To him, life could not be, exactly, life could not be easier.
So, and people naturally tend to gravitate towards him.
So I think he had a hard time with some of the staff and the guards whenever they, there's nothing that he could do to make them like him.
And once he got past that, he was like, eh, okay.
How old was he when he went?
He was in his, I think he was like 51, maybe, maybe 53, like lower 50s.
Right. Yeah, so not really what he was expecting, how he was expecting kind of a life to go, but, you know, he made a lot of friends in there, and some of whom he's still in touch with today,
you know, which...
It's kind of funny.
A lot of people, we disguise their names, but he sent them books and then they've kind of undisguised their names to their own friends and family.
They're like, this is me!
This is who Joe's talking about.
Not all prisoners are bad people.
There's so many innocent people in prison right now.
I was going to look up the stats for this just to see because I know you do some volunteer work.
You do...
Because of your father's federal incarceration, you began working for Get on the Bus, which is a non-profit organization in California that's dedicated to uniting children with their incarcerated parents, which I, for one, stand behind a thousand percent.
Tell us a little bit about that, and does the organization only work with people in California, or is it national?
So now they've opened up.
They're actually in Arizona and California.
State by state.
I worked for them for a while whenever I was living in California.
I'm still connected with them.
I actually...
Just had a conversation with the executive director, weirdly enough, last night, right around this time, because I'm going back to California and I'm going to be doing an event with them in Cali in mid-July.
We still haven't picked an exact date, but we're going to talk about social justice issues, you know, all kinds of stuff.
It's going to be a really fun event.
We'll raise a little awareness and hopefully some money for the organization, too.
Essentially, you know, the thought behind it is whenever parents go to prison, oftentimes they're being taken care of by their maternal grandparent.
And the maternal grandparent does not have the means nor the ability to drive in California sometimes 8, 9, 10 hours to go for a day to visit the parent that's incarcerated.
Afford to call because, you know, the calling cards and the rates are just so astronomical, let alone, you know, take a whole family to go visit for the day.
And, you know, it's not like there's a lovely cafeteria whenever you get to a prison.
In the waiting room, it only takes quarters, so you have to...
Have your own change ready.
And you can select from a lovely, wonderful selection of...
Goldfish. Yes, goldfish.
Microwavable meals that you're not even sure that have improved the quality of the meal after it's been microwaved.
Like, eating this frozen.
I think it may have been better.
Everything is, think of the cost that you're spending on the outside and times that by at least four, sometimes ten.
And that's what you're paying for a bottle of soda whenever you walk through the door.
And there's a captive audience because you can't bring anything in.
You're not going to the AMC to watch a movie.
You're going to prison.
So you're not bringing anything in.
Get searched, you know, potted down.
Just go through hell and wait for hours just to see their family for one hour.
Absolutely. Like you're treated like you're basically have done whatever it is that your family member is accused of doing.
And, you know, it's a bunch of BS, but it's what you have to go through, you know, if you're visiting somebody.
So the whole concept of get on the bus is it takes a group.
Of families from a specific location, buses them to the prison for the day, makes the journey a little less scary for the kids.
All of the paperwork is done ahead of time, so whenever the families get there, they're not waiting in lines for hours, they're not being accosted, they're not going to potentially be turned away.
And it's more of a carnival kind of environment whenever they come in.
We order pizzas and food from the outsides, which is a huge...
Asset for, obviously, the people inside because they never get that kind of food.
But there's face painting and activities and all kinds of, like, fun things that happen within the visit.
And then after the visit is finished, each child gets, no matter how old the child gets, gets a teddy bear and a letter from their parent.
You know, such an amazing event and experience, but I think part of it, part of why it's such a cool event is that it also helps the recidivism of people once they come out because they have those established relationships with their,
not only with their children, but with the caretakers of their children.
So it's really a cool thing.
Yeah, I know prison, the whole thing is just based on rehabilitation, but...
That's the last of their worries in the prison system.
They're not trying to rehabilitate people.
They're just keeping them.
It's a money.
It's a cash cow.
It is a cash cow.
How to get money.
They're keeping prisoners in there.
$10,000 a day or whatever.
It's like, what?
The privatization of a lot of them and the vendors.
It's a very sad situation.
It's a mess.
Wish we could come up with a...
A better way of doing things, especially for nonviolent offenders and a lot of the, I mean, we did visit the men's facilities as well, but I would say a lot of the women's facilities, it's very sad,
but there's a stat and it's going to be outdated, so I'm going to tell you wrong information, but it's definitely within, I'm sorry, the...
80 to 90% of the females that are incarcerated, many of them have been victims of abuse themselves.
I believe that 100%.
And not only just whenever they go to prison, but their entire lives and childhoods.
And a lot of them, now there are some laws to protect against self-defense and against kind of a Nicole Brown Simpson law of killing your abuser.
Some people are still serving sentences based upon those old antiquated laws.
And, you know, I've met several women who, they were in the car.
When, you know, they were picked up by their boyfriend and told that they were going to stop at a mini-mart and he was going to run in and do something, he runs in, robs the mini-mart, kills people in the mini-mart, and drives away, and they're in the car, and now they're accomplices to the crime.
And, you know, I mean, do I think every single person is innocent in that?
No, but, you know, you hear some of the stories and it gets you thinking.
Like, how lucky we're all one mistake away from being incarcerated.
And not only that, it's just, you know, sometimes our privilege allows us to avoid things that others just can't.
And that's, I think, very hard.
And, you know, working with the families, you know, truly, whenever things happen with my dad, It was tough.
I was only 20 years old and I went through a lot mentally with everything.
But being able to interact with the families, especially for get on the bus, really put things into perspective for me because it was, yes, my dad went to federal prison.
It's horrible.
I hope nobody has to go through that.
But in my situation, we had the means to go visit.
I had my dad for my entire life until I was in my 20s.
He went to prison for a very short time in the whole grand scheme of things.
For tax evasion, right?
Yeah, tax evasion.
As one of the people said as he was coming in, that's not even a reason to be here.
Everyone should be doing that.
Everyone should not be paying taxes.
Everyone should be filling out a 1040X to get all that money that you have paid.
Right. Right.
Right. Right.
Right. Yeah.
But yeah, so anyways, he's in there for that.
But just meeting these families, it really put it into perspective for me that they were struggling to put food on the table and they were struggling to be able to...
Have a better life and to try to get out of these really horribly crime-ridden areas and trying to keep it together and going through so many things that I just didn't have to go through as I grew up.
And so I very quickly chose the path of healing instead of the path of being a blameful victim.
I just decided from there on out, even if I had to just take one small step every single day and stupid stuff, like even getting out of bed sometimes was a struggle for me,
or eating a meal.
Whenever I get very, very depressed like that, I can easily drop a ton of weight because I just have no motivation to kind of go on.
And, you know, sometimes if anybody's listening right now, sometimes life is very hard and life can really turn you to some really awful things.
And it's really the person, I always say this to my nonprofit clients now, it's not the smartest person in the room that's going to be the most successful.
It's the person that's willing to trudge through the mud whenever things are really hard.
And it's the person that has that resiliency to know that in life, the only thing that's constant is that things are going to change, right?
And we just need to learn to adapt to those things to know that it's not going to be this way forever and that there will be better benefits.
And I think that that was the blessing of Get On The Bus for me.
It really taught me To be able to kind of move on from all of that and to find a different path and purpose.
And I was really blessed.
I just recently met Hoda Kotb from the Today Show.
Oh, yeah.
Okay. She has two memoirs.
Actually, she has like three memoirs out, but two that I've actually read.
And they all talk about kind of a...
An event happening and it changing the course of your life.
And one of the things that I was able to tell her whenever I met her was, you know, you helped me take one of the worst days of my life when the federal government knocked on my door and I was home alone and they were looking for my father.
And you turned that into...
A life of purpose and a life of me trying to give back to people and do what I can do to raise some money for charities and to get some good work and some resources and food to people that don't have it and shelter to people that might need it and better educational opportunities to people who are coming into this country for the first time.
It was just...
It's just a beautiful thing and a beautiful message.
So if you're out there saying, why me?
Why this?
Why now?
Know that that worst day, although you might not want to repeat it, I'm not sure that I'm signing up to do that anytime soon, but it can help you to get on the other side of the fence in some sense of the way, if that makes sense.
Yeah, I think people need to find the purpose, like find the message within.
All that turmoil they're going through.
Because there's something there.
You've got to find out what the universe is telling you.
And break out of that.
I mean, it's not easy.
I've been in some pretty bad situations where I've been extremely depressed.
And I just don't even want to do anything.
But I just have to be like, okay.
And it happens often.
I mean, this podcast is stressful.
I'll say that.
Running this podcast once a week is stressful.
Doing it all alone.
But sometimes I'm like, what am I doing?
I've got like 30 interviews set up and I'm like, oh man, this is going to be intense.
How am I going to do this?
I've never done anything like this.
And so this is all new to me.
I've been doing this for over a year now, but this second year has been so much more intense for me.
I've been doing so much more and this is something that I never would have thought I would be doing a year ago.
I would not be doing this, but I was like, I can do a podcast.
I'm going to try a podcast.
And then it's the consistency of every, you know, once a week.
Sometimes I just want to give up.
Then I'm like, no.
I'm not going to give up.
That would be ridiculous for me to give up.
Right. Not after all you've invested into it.
Exactly. You've got to keep on going.
Just keep pushing.
Push for it.
I don't know what's going to happen with it.
Maybe someday something awesome will happen.
It's a step towards something better.
Who knows?
I don't think anything negative would come out of it.
I do cover a lot of conspiracies and stuff until the government...
He's knocking on my door.
You're talking too much.
It's like, oh man.
But whatever.
Whatever. But you're also working for St. Paul's Development Corporation?
Is that true?
Yeah, absolutely.
In Patterson, New Jersey?
Yeah, that's kind of a good way to sort of turn this all around.
Right now I'm the grant writer for St. Paul's CDC.
And it's really an amazing job because I do one of the programs is working with people who just come out of probation and they're on parole and they're trying to find job opportunities.
So we work in culinary fields, which is right up my alley, right?
And also green construction jobs.
We have a full-service community school, which I always kind of equate it to the Google of schools, bringing programs and services into the schools so kids can, during the school day, go see a pediatrician, mental health services for the whole family,
lots of parenting classes and ESL and everything that you could need, a food pantry that serves about...
3,000 or so families a year.
And emergency men's shelter that helps men that are kind of transitioning into permanent housing and find jobs and places to stay and sometimes just fill out paperwork, you know,
and be surprised.
Some people just don't have basic documents.
Permanent housing for women who are single without any children.
We have SRO that has five spaces for that.
AmeriCorps program, that's a great program, which is basically a way to give back and then you can get some college credits out of it.
We farm AmeriCorps members all throughout our county.
We also house AmeriCorps members too.
And it's great.
It's a great It's nice to kind of have something coupled with all of my author stuff because, you know, as I kind of have shared, I'm very busy on the road all the time.
So it's a treat that, you know, I'm actually able to do a job that allows me to have that freedom and flexibility.
Yeah, no kidding.
So it's good.
It's all good stuff.
I'm just stoked that there are people like you out there that are actually putting in the work that...
Truly can change lives for the better for some people, man.
You know, making actual differences in the world.
You don't see it a lot.
I know a lot of organizations are out there, but this country's in a bad spot right now.
And I don't know how anything's going to help, but the small things that you are doing and other people are doing like that, it's making a difference.
We just need more of that happening in every community.
Yeah. Especially mental health.
Some closing remarks.
I mean, you have to be your own change, right?
So everybody is part of a community.
Everybody is part of a family, even if it's not a traditional family, even if it's a work family or a friend family.
You need to be that change for yourself.
So find something that you're passionate about, that you love to do.
And, you know, maybe it's a service project.
You know, I hold service nights here in northern New Jersey once a month to benefit the men's shelter.
We make 60 sandwiches and, you know, share a pizza dinner, which is awesome because you're with...
Really cool, like-minded people.
So if you're in that rut, find an organization that you can give some time or money or resources or help to because it's going to essentially make you feel better even though you're helping somebody else.
So go out there and do it.
And I can say this.
Anybody out there that wants to do something like that, don't be afraid to go to these places and ask for their assistance.
That's what they're there for.
They're going to welcome you in and help you any way they can.
I know that taking that first step is difficult.
I mean, I used to work in a mental health clinic, and so I would do a lot of intakes and a lot of that sort of thing.
Some people have antisocial personality disorder or something that they can't get out of that shell of theirs.
So that first step is often extremely difficult.
No one's going to turn you away.
100%. Just take that step in that door and let the universe take the rest, you know?
Let it do its thing.
But Maria, I know you're a very busy, very busy woman.
I guess I won't keep you here all day.
I just want to thank you for coming on.
I appreciate you taking the time to come on here.
Of course.
Anytime. Give us a unique story.
I love it.
I'm going to put your information on the show notes, but if you just want to go ahead and tell people where they can find you, go ahead.
Well, you have upcoming events, too, so get those out.
Oh yeah, I've got actually lots of stuff upcoming.
The best way to find me is just going on my website.
It's mariacpalmer.com.
I have a whole events tab.
I also have a media tab.
So after we're done here tonight, hopefully I can get a link and I'll put that right up on my website too.
So if folks have missed this...
Tonight, they can hit the replay button for that.
As far as upcoming events and what I will be doing, I have a couple of private events this week in Pittsburgh.
Then I'm back in New Jersey.
Then I'll be back in Pittsburgh in the early part of April for some events.
Then I have a few things.
Back here in New Jersey, then I think I'm back to Pittsburgh.
So I kind of have a lot of events in both cities.
Every once in a while, I do do events in other...
I do a lot of virtual book clubs.
So if that's of interest to anybody, you can certainly reach out to me.
We can get Ruthie to be a part of that.
It's possible when I'm in Pittsburgh to get my dad to be part of it, but not whenever I'm not.
I want to talk to you.
I wish your dad could have been on this today.
Oh, well, you can get him a different time.
The key is I have to be in Pittsburgh.
But if I'm in Pittsburgh, which is...
Often. We can definitely get my dad on, for sure, on a different show.
Yeah, anytime.
Let's do that.
Anytime. So, yeah, I have a lot of flexibility, and if I can be of assistance, please do reach out.
Love to connect with anybody, and it's been a pleasure to be on tonight.
