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For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource October 23, 2007 Title A name given to the resource Oral History Interview with Nilda E. Maccarelli Description An account of the resource Audio is NOT available for this interview. Latinos in Conversation, our second oral history program, was developed to be our key Hispanic Heritage Month event in October 2007. Working with StoryCorps, we conducted 13 interviews in two days. The participants represented 8 countries: Bolivia, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, Peru, and Puerto Rico. These interviews were also transcribed through a Union County History Grant. DDA000220 DAROLD: OK, my name is Joe DaRold, I'm 65, and today’s date is October 23, 2007. We’re at the Plainfield Public Library. And my relation to my interviewee is that she is the sister of a good friend of mine. Nilda? MACCARELLI: My name is Nilda Maccarelli, I am 57 years old. Today is October 23, 2007, and we are at the Plainfield Public Library. My relationship to Joe, I just met him, but he’s a friend of my brother’s. DAROLD: Well, we’re going to start off, basically I have the same questions for each interviewee, but then we’ll go off in different directions based on your story. So where were you born? MACCARELLI: I was born in Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic. DAROLD: OK, and sisters, brothers? MACCARELLI: We are five, three girls, two boys. DAROLD: And you’re in the middle? MACCARELLI: I'm the second. DAROLD: Second oldest? MACCARELLI: Yeah, second oldest, yes. DAROLD: OK, and where were your parents born? MACCARELLI: They were also born in Santo Domingo, in different towns, but in the Dominican Republic. My father is from a town named [Bonao], and my mother was born in a little village, outside the city, named [Los Alcorisos]. DAROLD: Did they ever tell you their stories about growing up? Do you remember any? MACCARELLI: Oh, my father used to love to tell the story about him and his donkey, that he would fall asleep, and the donkey knows how to take him home. (laughter) He used to go to the (inaudible) with his donkey, and he would go to school with his donkey, and the donkey always would get him back home, because he would fall asleep. DAROLD: What did your father do for a living? MACCARELLI: He was military, he was in the Navy. He was a military person. He traveled around a lot. DAROLD: And your mother? MACCARELLI: A stay-at-home-mom. Before she married, I know she was a typist, secretarial skills. During the marriage, she did a couple of things, but nothing regular. She worked on a TV show for like a year or so, she worked on this radio show for a few months, all dealing with housekeeping, and cooking, and decorating, that type of stuff. But she was a stay at home mom most of the time. DAROLD: Now, I know that your native language is Spanish. When did you start learning English? MACCARELLI: Oh, since I was a kid. The school I attended provided English as one of the subjects. Since about first grade or so, that was just as a subject, just like they teach them here at the end, no one learns the language, but they did teach it in the school. After I graduated from high school, I continued taking English at college also. When I graduated from college, and I decided to come here for my master’s, then I took an intensive course before I came. DAROLD: And what college did you come to? MACCARELLI: I was -- I got a scholarship from my country to go to Brooklyn College, in New York. I was there for one semester, but I had relatives in New Jersey, so I didn’t want to stay in New York, so I transferred to, at that time, Newark State College, now Kay College. DAROLD: Did you already have your teaching certificate, or is that what you got here? MACCARELLI: I was working my country as a teacher, but that didn’t validate here, that didn’t count. So when I decided to stay, I fell in love, got married, so I decided to stay. Then I went for all my paperwork. DAROLD: How old were you when you came to the States? MACCARELLI: 20, 21. I came in December -- right before the holidays to get everything ready, I think it was 1970. And maybe 1971, so 20 or 21. And I stayed here since, just traveling as a visitor to my country. DAROLD: What was your first impression when you came here? MACCARELLI: Oh, I loved it when I came that winter. The first snow, the cold, I loved all that. Then the first summer, I went crazy, because the summer here is -- even though my island is hot, the humidity and the barometric pressure here was a lot higher, and I couldn’t deal with the different type of heat. That, I went a little bit crazy, and spent most of the summer in a bathing suit. I did not want to put clothes on, and looking for places with air conditioning, it was a different type of heat that I didn’t like. DAROLD: I don’t think of the islands as being low humidity. MACCARELLI: No, it’s a different type. DAROLD: A different type. MACCARELLI: A different type, because we have the trees and the breeze, and here it was just like I was -- I couldn’t breath, it was just too much for me. DAROLD: I know what you mean about the barometric pressure. When I came back after 30 years in California, Southern California, there were days I couldn’t breath. MACCARELLI: So that happened to me that first summer. DAROLD: Yeah. I'm very interested in -- you came here for continuing your education, and you got married. Your husband, was he American? MACCARELLI: He’s American. DAROLD: He’s not from the Dominican? MACCARELLI: No, he’s an American, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, whatever mixture of American. Typical American, a little bit of everything. DAROLD: Yeah, and you met him where? MACCARELLI: His father was my aunt’s attorney. My aunt was the relative I had living in New Jersey. And when I quit Brooklyn College to move to King, I stayed at my aunt’s. My aunt was going to a party at his house, so I met him at his house. I went to a Christmas party at his house. DAROLD: And now, where do you live, what town? MACCARELLI: I live at Berkeley Heights. DAROLD: OK, but you taught in Plainfield. MACCARELLI: Yes. DAROLD: What brought you to Plainfield? MACCARELLI: Well, when I got my paperwork, I applied in Plainfield. I had my license, I had my teaching license, but I wasn’t a citizen yet. So it was a temporary license until I got my citizenship. And they helped me with all the paperwork, that was when the bilingual law was established, and they were looking for bilingual staff. Before that, Plainfield had two -- yes, two people that were bilingual, two teachers that were bilingual, and their numbers were increasing, and the law was being passed that they needed to have bilingual programs for the population. So I was here at the right time, the right place. DAROLD: I understand you’re retired now. What year did you retire? MACCARELLI: ’05, I retired in ’05. DAROLD: And what school did you teach at? MACCARELLI: I taught at everywhere in Plainfield, I did everything in Plainfield. I started teaching in Stillman School. That was the bilingual school for many years. That’s where all the bilingual classes were. And then we had civil rights came and said there couldn’t be one school identified as the bilingual school, so they had to be spread out. But I stayed in Stillman a long time, some classes were moved out, I was still there. After that, I was supervisor of the bilingual and ESL for a while. Then I went to teach -- I went back to the classroom, I went to Washington School, bilingual teaching. Then I went to Emerson School as a bilingual teacher. Then came the new requirement of foreign languages, more languages for the elementary school. I worked with the State Department, writing some of their suggestions there that were read in for the district. Then after that, I took the job of teaching Spanish in elementary school. So I finished my career as a Spanish teacher at Emerson School. DAROLD: Are you affiliated in any way with Union County College or King anymore? MACCARELLI: I am alumni from King. I joined alumni and get all their stuff. And through Dr. Adamis, I'm always participating with Union County College. Now, through my life, I have taken a lot of courses everywhere. So I took courses at Union County College in computers when computers started being popular, and I needed to know about computers. So that, I had Union County College. DAROLD: I know Dr. Adamis had been at King before he went to -- MACCARELLI: But he went to King after I had finished with King. I never met him at King. DAROLD: Oh, OK. I was trying to see if there was a connection. MACCARELLI: No, I met him at Union County College. No, my years at King ended a while back. DAROLD: Now, while you were teaching in the Plainfield District, what’s your perception of the faculty in regards to the increase of Latino and Hispanics coming into the school system? MACCARELLI: Well, are you talking about faculty, talking about administration, or teachers? DAROLD: Well, was there a feeling of concern that teachers couldn’t deal with the language, or were frustrated dealing with the students because of language. MACCARELLI: You know, there are two things. Some of them might be frustrated with the language, but when the Hispanic children first arrived, they are moral students. They do not misbehave, they do not answer back, they do not act out. So teachers want them in the classroom, because they have one less discipline problem. But in the learning process, yes, they do find it difficult, and then they want you to speak English, and because your child needs your help. And so I think that’s what I find with the teachers. Some of them want them because of the behavior, when they first arrive, are the best students in the classroom. Later on, they learn how to survive, and they are not the best students any more. DAROLD: Yeah. Now you said that you had an aunt here in Central Jersey. Was it a large family community that was already here, or was she the only one? MACCARELLI: No, she was it. I was with my aunt, lived in Elizabeth. She was a doctor (inaudible) but she was it. I had some relatives in New York. Not many, but I have an aunt in New York also. A lot older, she just passed away this morning. DAROLD: Oh, I'm sorry. It’s just fascinated me that there’s just so many Hispanic countries represented in Plainfield, although I think the same is true in Elizabeth. But it’s more pronounced here because there doesn’t seem to be any one big group, like it might be the Cuban population. MACCARELLI: Yeah, Elizabeth has the large Cuban population too, but Dominicans, there’s not that many. No, she was it, and she moved to Florida, so she’s retired in Florida. DAROLD: Oh, OK. Let me ask you in terms of language, have you noticed differences in Dominican Spanish, from some of the other countries? MACCARELLI: Well, we all have our own little words that we use, and we might name a boss different in my country, than they’d name it in South America, and we might have to ask what is that? DAROLD: Do you have any funny stories to tell about that? MACCARELLI: Well, there’s some like the straw, and that has different names, and depends on the country, you might be saying a bad word. But we understand each other. We get to learn not to say certain words in front of someone from another country, because yes, there are some words that have different meanings. DAROLD: Have you ever thought about going back there to retire, to Dominican? MACCARELLI: I go all the time. Retire, my husband won’t go to stay. So I, since I've retired, I've been going and spending two months there. So that’s like retiring. I go spend time there and come back, my husband won’t go. DAROLD: Is there anything you missed? When you came here first, was there something in particular you missed about the Dominican? MACCARELLI: Closeness of family. You know everybody, everybody is family. Out here, all I had was my aunt. There was nobody else, and when you need something, it’s very difficult here, because you don’t have any relatives. Even when my children were growing up, when I had my children and they were growing up, all these relatives were my in-laws. My sister was living in New York, my brothers were -- nobody else was here. So it was difficult, because you don’t have too many people around. There it’s like a little village, because even though you might not be next door, it’s not that big of a town or that big of a city, there’s always someone nearby. DAROLD: Your brothers and sisters, did they all come to the States eventually, or no? MACCARELLI: No, there’s one still there. DAROLD: And who’s that? MACCARELLI: The baby. The youngest one is there. That’s a funny story. My oldest sister came to study here, she came to study English. She met a Japanese guy, they fell in love and got married. She moved to the States. I came to do my masters, fell in love here and got married. I stayed. When my youngest sister finished high school, my mother said she’s not going to the States to study, I need someone to stay here with me. (laughter) So she came only for a summer to study English just for the summer. And she had to go back that September and enroll in college there. She was not going to be left without daughters. DAROLD: I never thought to ask your brother, was anybody else in the family artistic? MACCARELLI: My oldest sister also paints, not at the level that he does, but she dabbles. But he’s the one that has all the (inaudible) DAROLD: Has he given you any paintings? MACCARELLI: Oh I have, I have plenty in my house, yes. (laughter) I have, yes I have. DAROLD: I've been a fan of his work for a long time. MACCARELLI: I have, my parent’s home have them. DAROLD: So tell me about your family, you have children? MACCARELLI: I have two children, a boy and a girl. My girl is the oldest, she’s 30 years old, and my boy is the baby, 25. DAROLD: Oh, that’s a baby. MACCARELLI: That’s my baby, yes. DAROLD: I was a baby until my mom died at the age of 92. (laughter) MACCARELLI: He’s always going to be the baby. DAROLD: What did you, as they were young, did you make decisions about teaching them Spanish or English? MACCARELLI: I always spoke to them in Spanish, and my daughter speaks, not fluently, but she speaks Spanish. The problem with my son is that when I would speak to him in Spanish, my daughter would translate it to English, and tell him in English. So he doesn’t know much Spanish. He had a real translator. DAROLD: And has he gone back, have either of them gone back? MACCARELLI: Oh yes, yes. They both go back. My son loves to go to [Quintacana] for vacation, he goes there a lot. DAROLD: Has his Spanish improved? MACCARELLI: He tries. Now that he’s older, he has tried, and he puts on tapes, and he listens to the music. He has tried now, but it is harder when you are an adult. It would’ve been easier when he was a child. DAROLD: What careers did your son and daughter go into? MACCARELLI: My daughter graduated with a degree that she doesn’t use, she graduated with a degree in theater and costume design for theater, but she is an officer in the media Pennsylvania, for the (inaudible) they have to report to her. So I don’t know what her title is, but she’s an officer of the court there. My son, great in computers, only wants them as a hobby. He also went to college and studied with computers and dropped. He’s an officer. He’s a sheriff’s officer in Union County. DAROLD: Oh, wonderful. MACCARELLI: So they started loving some things, and didn’t go the full way with them. DAROLD: Did you learn computers from him? MACCARELLI: No, I loved computers before. He was little when computers started, but I guess because he always saw computers since he was born, that’s why he -- that’s the generation that was born with computers. Yeah, my daughter doesn’t like computers as much, but when she was a child, that’s when they started, and I did have the Texas Instruments, but she was -- that was new. That was not something that she saw in the school, she didn’t see it anywhere. But he has had computers all his life, so he loves computers. DAROLD: Nilda, after you came to the States, did you have to help support your parents in any way? MACCARELLI: Not that I have to help them, help support them, but did I help them? Yes, because they live middle class, lower-middle class life, but then there are always extra expenses that they might need. So we always, all of us always sends something. And my mother had a stroke two years ago, and she needed around the clock care, so I helped with covering payments for some of that. She passed away two years ago, but now my father needs someone. He’s going blind, so he needs someone with him. So it still helps with some care for him. They have the basics, they are not poor, so it’s not that I have to send things. It’s just for those extra things that are to make better the life for them. And my sister there, my youngest sister, has a very good job there. DAROLD: What does she do? MACCARELLI: She’s an accountant with the phone company. She’s a vice president (inaudible) or something, I don’t know. It’s a big title, don’t know what it means. But she has a very good job. DAROLD: Let me ask, does the Dominican Republic have a socialized health plan? MACCARELLI: They just started, the new president is starting working on that. I don’t know how it works, but they started out with that, the president that is there now, he’s started working on that. DAROLD: Oh, that’s to your dad’s benefit then. MACCARELLI: Well, he’s retired from the military, so he has all the benefits from the military. So that’s what I'm saying. It’s not that they really were lacking, it’s just extra things. DAROLD: Now that you’re retired, and you go back to the Dominican occasionally, what’s your future? MACCARELLI: Well, I'm doing real estate. I cannot retire to the home. I get bored at home. When I got married, I told my husband you’re getting a wife, not a housewife. I hate housework. I hate housework, I cannot make my life out of cleaning and cooking, that’s boring to me. So I do real estate. I started as part time. My husband says that’s good that was part time, because if it was full time, he would never see me. DAROLD: And this is up in Berkeley Heights, or somewhere else? MACCARELLI: I am in the [Whitecurt], Madison office. DAROLD: Madison? MACCARELLI: Madison, yes. It’s not that far from the house. There is no office in Berkeley Heights, I think we have a (inaudible) or something, but there’s no -- Berkeley Heights is really tiny. There’s not that much there. DAROLD: Do you tend to get Hispanic families that are looking for somebody who can understand their needs? MACCARELLI: Yes, I have had some -- because they’re looking for someone that speaks Spanish, another one just by pure chance. But most of my clientele hasn’t spoken Spanish. There was something funny too, I got it from [Fairow], [Whitecurt] has a referral department where people go online and get their certificate and whatever, and they become rental agents. So this lady asked this referral agent that she wanted to by a house, but she wanted a Spanish-speaking agent in the Madison area. So they sent her information to me. When I called her on the phone, she was a Plainfield schoolteacher. (laughter) I said OK, it’s a small world. She started teaching in Plainfield High School after I retired. So we didn’t know each other, but she ended up working with me. So it’s a small world. And some of them do ask for a Spanish speaking, some other ones have just ended up with me without requiring Spanish speaking, just by pure luck. But it has been for two or three years that I've been working. Had a lot of different countries and different -- DAROLD: Is there a growing Hispanic population up in Madison? MACCARELLI: There’s a large Colombian population in Madison. Yeah, there’s a large Colombian population in Madison. There are some other countries also represented, but the largest one is Colombia. DAROLD: That’s interesting. Do you ever regret leaving the Dominican? I mean, you’ve made your life here in the States, of course there’s that. MACCARELLI: I don’t regret. Sometimes I think what would my life be if I had not left, but no, I don’t regret it. DAROLD: Are there customs from the Dominican that you’ve tried to keep alive for your family? MACCARELLI: Oh, yes. Some of them are just very simple, like when my children were growing up, they used to complain, not only do I have to have a teacher for a mother, I also have to have a Hispanic teacher for a mother. Because we are a lot more strict than the culture here, and they had a problem dealing with that, you’re not allowed to do this, and you have to do this. So some of those things, I tried to raise them the way I was raised, which they didn’t appreciate. And some of the fun stuff that they loved, and still try to get away with it, we have presents for the Three Kings on January 6, instead of Christmas. So they get their Christmas presents, but they still now expect me to have their Three Kings presents. DAROLD: Oh, they get extra presents? MACCARELLI: Oh yes. DAROLD: They don’t have to wait. MACCARELLI: They’re not going to forget. You know, Three Kings Day is coming. (laughter) So yes, they will not forget that. DAROLD: Do you remember anything about your childhood in the Dominican, games you used to play? MACCARELLI: Oh yes, there is a lot of -- we didn’t have all the advantages of -- all these advantages of man-made games, we had to make our own games. And we had circle games, like chorus games that we would play, like have [la pajara pinta], and let’s see, I'm trying to remember the names, it was so long ago. They were fun games though, you just played with each other without having anything that you had to buy. You made up your own entertainment. That’s difficult to get a child to entertain themselves now. DAROLD: Did you have typical things like jump rope? MACCARELLI: Yeah, jump rope, and when the hula hoop came around, but those are things you buy. DAROLD: Yeah, right. Well jump rope used to be a clothesline. MACCARELLI: A clothesline, that’s true. We did use a clothesline. DAROLD: Yeah, but it didn’t have the handles. MACCARELLI: No handles, yes. But we did also have trees to climb, and fruits to pick. So that was fun too. DAROLD: What kind of fruits were special down there? I mean, it’s in a tropical area. MACCARELLI: Yes, we have all the tropical fruits. DAROLD: Mangos, citrus. MACCARELLI: Mangos, yeah, the avocados, the oranges, all the tropical fruits. We have some that you’re not even familiar with because they’re not exported. But we have fruits everywhere. I'm trying to think how you call that one. We have guanava, I don’t know what you call them in English, we have plenty of those and they just keep falling. It was a funny story, we had a young man working in the backyard of my parents, and he was installing something on the door, a frame or something outside on the backyard. And he was getting all his tools on the floor, and guanava fell right on his head. So my father just saw him, well that means that it’s yours, you can take it home. DAROLD: Yeah, I miss the avocados, because in Southern California, everybody had the avocado trees on their property, and people would bring them into work. We had one family, they had three different kinds of avocado trees, so they had avocados all year. And here, you have to wait until they’re in season, and they’re usually as hard as a rock. MACCARELLI: Yes, the hardest part is to find one that’s ready to eat. That’s difficult, and I don’t like the Mexican ones, those little ones, I like the big soft ones, and those are difficult to find. DAROLD: Yeah, they are. MACCARELLI: But yeah, tropical fruits are a variety, and they are all year long, because you don’t have bad weather. So there is not one in season, there is another one. DAROLD: Right, I know the first time I ever had a mango, I had a friend from Jamaica who showed me how to eat it. MACCARELLI: Well, how did you eat it? How did you eat it? DAROLD: Well, it was peeling it, cutting it and then peeling it in strips to expose the flesh. MACCARELLI: Yes, because my oldest sister, she’s a fancy eater. She takes a fork and a knife to eat. She’s not going to get her hands dirty. Before I eat it, before I open it, first I mash it all around. I make a little hole and I drink the juice. Then I peel it. DAROLD: Oh, I've never heard of that. MACCARELLI: So it depends, there are different ways of doing the mango. DAROLD: It’s sort of like punching a hole in the coconut and drinking the coconut milk. MACCARELLI: Yes, and you just squeeze it and squeeze it, and the juice comes out. DAROLD: I’ll have to try that. MACCARELLI: Yes, so you drink the juice first. DAROLD: Yes, because I find that a lot of people don’t know how to eat an avocado. Did you have a movie theater down there when you were a child? MACCARELLI: Yes, when I was a child, 25 cents would take me to them. Yes, there are movie theaters, and now, their prices are probably as expensive as here. I haven’t been in one since -- DAROLD: Yeah, do you remember whether they were in Spanish, were they English? MACCARELLI: We had a lot of Mexican movies, and movies from Spain. We had a lot of those, yes, they were in Spanish. Very seldom I went to watch an English movie. But Disney, the Disney cartoons, I remember watching those when I was a kid. Fantasia, I remember Fantasia. But a movie itself, I don’t remember going to the movies to watch English. Most of them were Spanish from Mexico or Spain. DAROLD: Did radio play a big part in your family entertainment? MACCARELLI: Radio, it was on all day long, because you always have music. That’s something that you always had. You are cleaning, you are dancing, there’s always music. What other part besides that? Always during Easter week, we had to follow all the Easter celebrations and services through the radio, so I guess that was another part that it took. We had all the sermons on the radio that we were supposed to be listening to. That was when I was a child, none of that exists any more. DAROLD: Do they have -- we talked about the Feast of the Three Kings. Did they have any special celebrations during Easter week, like Good Friday celebrations? MACCARELLI: I have to think back, what did we do for Good Friday? DAROLD: We find some of the Latino countries have a procession. MACCARELLI: Yeah, we had procession Thursday and Friday, Holy Thursday and Friday, we had procession both days. And I'm trying to remember Saturday, Saturday night I think was supposed to have come back. I'm trying to remember what it was. It was at midnight, so very seldom I got to attend. And they had something, some celebration at midnight on Saturday, [el Sabado de Gloria]. DAROLD: I don’t have any other prepared questions, but if you have additional stories or thoughts, or anything you’d like to share, I’d love to hear it. MACCARELLI: OK, well life in the Dominican Republic is a lot different than here, or was at that time. But if you go now, it’s just a small, cosmopolitan city, because it’s so easy to travel back and forth from one country to the other. When I was a child, I remember that we lived in Venezuela for a year. We moved to Venezuela for a year in 1961, I believe it was. And there was not many people that traveled, and there were the small planes, and it was very difficult to travel, there was not many people who were allowed to get visas before that also, because we had the dictatorship. So it was isolated, and we maintain our traditions and our culture until I was 15, 16, but now it’s just American culture everywhere. So it’s a lot different, and I think that’s why it’s so easy for them to travel, that we get so much immigration, because they know where they are going and they’re used to all things American, and they see American as the big place to go. It is a lot easier, and we have a lot more immigration now because of that, I think. The travel has made that happen, the easiness that it is to get a plane and go. DAROLD: If I were to ask you what people would -- why they would come to the United States, not to settle, but to visit, what would they want to see in America? MACCARELLI: Well, the ones that come to visit New York, the Big Apple, they see it on TV all the time, so they have to see that. That would be it for them, because of the movies, anything that they see in the movies. I have had company from there, and I said let’s go to Atlantic City. They don’t see that in the movies, so they don’t know what they see in Atlantic City. But Vegas, New York, it’s things that they see in the movies. DAROLD: Do they understand the distances involved between Las Vegas and New Jersey? MACCARELLI: No. No, they do not. They listen to them, they’re going to New York. Doesn’t matter if they’re going to Vegas or California, they’re going to New York. Because they look -- it’s very difficult when you live on a small island, where everything is so close, for you to imagine the distances here. So that’s very difficult to look at things that way. I have a friend that is in Florida. She is visiting, really, in Florida. She is my parents’ neighbor, our neighbor all my life since I was a baby. But anyway, she went to Florida, and her sister in law has had a house in New York, in Harlem. And she knew I was in real estate, so she said, oh, Nilda is a real estate agent in New York. (laughter) So they called me on the phone, and I said you know, not only is that not close by, that’s another state. I will find you a real estate agent in New York. (laughter) But no, they cannot even picture the differences, everything is close by there. The farthest you go is two hours, and you’re at the other end of the island. So how can you imagine the distances. DAROLD: Yeah, you know, at the beginning of our talk, you mentioned about coming here in the winter and some snow. Do they have snow -- you have mountains in the Dominican, don’t you? MACCARELLI: There’s mountains, there’s no snow. It’s cool, it’s chilly, the water, you might see a little bit of ice. We love to go there, but there is no snow, no snow. DAROLD: I know some islands, the mountains are high enough. MACCARELLI: No, no snow. It’s just a little coolness, and a little bit of ice, no snow. DAROLD: What do you think is the best thing about Dominican culture? MACCARELLI: Respect, family, closeness. Those are things that you cannot find here. DAROLD: Sounds wonderful. MACCARELLI: Yes, neighbors there are part of your family, here sometimes you don’t even see your neighbors. Family and extended family, the word family is not just mom and dad and the kids. They are a whole bunch of people that might have blood, might have legal relationship, or might have none, but it’s still family. I used to go do [Bonao], my father’s town, when I was a teenager, 15, 16. I used to go to the [Fiesta Patronales], they are parties that they have in honor of their saint, the patron saint, and there is a whole week of celebrations. And they have dances, and a whole of different activities. And I was a teenager, my oldest sister was only a year apart. We were both teenagers. We would go for the parties and to meet guys. And we would walk around the town, and each town has the party center of the town, and everybody goes there. And before we got back to the house, they already knew who we had talked to and what we had been doing, because your cousin so and so saw you. He’s not really my cousin, but the whole town is a cousin. So that little family, this is too big to have that closeness. DAROLD: Well, I think American culture has changed too, because when I was a kid, we knew everybody on our block, and then the mothers in our class knew each other. And it was closer-knit community life. MACCARELLI: Yeah, I think what also happened was my daughter, that they go to college, they go away, they don’t stay nearby. So they go away to college and they stay, they fall in love there, and they get married there, so they stay there. So that’s how you spread the family. I understand that because I did it. (laughter) I came here, but there, when they go to college, they go to college 30 minutes away, or 45 minutes away. So they get married and stay there. So that makes a lot of difference too. DAROLD: Nilda, thank you so much for participating. MACCARELLI: You’re welcome. DAROLD: It’s been just delightful hearing your stories, and discovering who we know in common. So I hope you and -- MACCARELLI: So even though it’s such a big country, it’s a small town. We do know people in common. DAROLD: So you and [Fermine] are going to have to play your recordings to each other and your families, because you both had some different stories. MACCARELLI: Well, there’s a lot of years in between [Fermine] and I. So his growing up is different than mine. He’s a lot younger. DAROLD: Well, I'm sure you’re proud of him. MACCARELLI: Yes, yes. And my mother would be, he was my mother’s favorite. And he was always in so much trouble -- he was, she admitted it till the end, till she died. She didn’t die until he got there. And she admitted it to the end, but he was always in trouble, and she was always worrying about him. But she would be proud. DAROLD: And you too. Thank you Nilda, thank you so much. END OF TRANSCRIPT Language A language of the resource English References A related resource that is referenced, cited, or otherwise pointed to by the described resource. http://cdm17109.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p17109coll15/id/38 Relation A related resource linkto:001:http://cdm17109.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p17109coll15/id/38 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived NJ/DE Digital Collective