Grandpa

My maternal grandfather was reportedly elated the day I was born. This stemmed from the fact that I was his first grandson. Grandpa & Grandma were blessed with four children including my mother, her two older sisters & her little brother. Mom's oldest sister, Mary, & her husband Dan had two daughters before my parents were married. The middle sister, Jeanette, & her husband Arthur also had two daughters before I was born. Four granddaughters & he loved each of them, but no grandson.

Grandpa was a great man who loved children & always had. He was also fond of fishing & was probably looking for a fishing buddy. When he was a young man during the Depression, he was lucky to land a rare job working for the company that would eventually become the Hostess Bakery. He kept that job throughout the Depression & in the years that followed. He kept that same job as his children grew & married & had kids of their own.

It was later said by his daughters (my aunts & my mom) that my Grandpa always made you feel as if you were his favorite. For however many minutes you got to spend with him that day, you were the most special thing in his eyes. We would spend many hours together fishing at the lake near my house - sometimes just him & I, sometimes the two of us & my little brother.

The day I was born, my grandfather retired.

My Birth

What they tell me about my birth is that I was loud. So loud that my mother could hear me from down the hall after they moved me to the baby room. So loud that one of the nurses--a nurse who probably saw a thousand different babies a year--was overheard saying, "That Arconati kid sure's got a set of lungs." Or it was something to that effect. My mother always seems prone to exaggeration when it comes to me, but I think others have corraborated this.

They will also tell you that I did not sleep much the first few months. Most babies do not sleep eight hours a night for a long time, and I didn't either. But most babies do get multiple naps during the day. My parents were lucky if I got one. I was just not sleepy.

I seem to be making up for lost time now.

ME

I am James A. Arconati,
Son of James E. Arconati & Lois C. Arconati,
Husband of Lisa R. Arconati,
Brother of Jonathan L. Arconati,
Father of Reese M. Arconati & Olivia N. Arconati.
Also of familial importance to me are Linda A. Kramer, Lonny A. Kramer & Frank L. Barker (More on this later).

I was born on February 22, 1976. I was married on December 22, 1998. I became a father on May 20, 1999 & again on November 30, 2001.

I used to carry a five-subject spiral bound notebook with me wherever I went. That was my journal. But I haven't written much in it in the past couple of years. The truth is that I have mostly been too happy to complain about anything. I still am. But putting things down into ... something ... filling white space with something that was ME, even if it was unimportant ME ... that need still burns inside my brain like a 9-week fever.

I am now and shall forever be a computer person. I am also a good people person, a teacher, a helper, a service person. I specialize in bringing people and technology together. Always have. I now am blessed with a job where I get to sit at a desk and answer the phone and work on the computer busily bringing people together with technology and showing them how it can make their life, their art, their business better. But I also have art in me.

Art in ME! I don't have a painter's hands or a sculpture's eye, but I do have my way with words.

I can't tell you all of the ideas and thoughts and words, and, and, ... AND music and stories and adventures and dramas and cliffhangers and just random make-believe stuff I daydream about all the time. There is so much of it I couldn't possibly tell you.

Or ... can I?