Initial Consultation

OK, Yesterday I went to see the lawyer that the Consulate recommended in order to start step 2 of the citizenship process. Now that mom is recognized as an Italian citizen, we have to get Italy to acknowledge my heritage even though I was adopted OUT of that family. I have my original birth cert with her name on it, but at that time I am merely known as “unnamed baby boy”. However I also have the adoption certificate which shows the link between my mother and my adoptive parents, relinquishment papers signed by my parents and my amended birth certificate showing my new name and adoptive parents. So…. the lawyer wants to get one document from the court kind of summarizing my link to Anita Anselmo and they think that the Italian Court will simply acknolwedge that without much fuss. However, I was warned that things are never simple with Italy and courts so be prepared. All in all, both lawyers I met with were very nice and seemed like good guys to work with.

I should be getting a retainer in the mail soon to sign and then an estimate on how much all this should initially cost… it won’t be cheap, but I had expected that. This whole step is for me, a giant “put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is” step of faith, since I don’t have the money up front in order to pursue this. However, IF this is really the Lord, then we are praying that he will meet us as we step out. I’ve been getting more work as of late, so that is a good sign, and with the move ahead and some of the simplification we are going through right now, we hope to free up enough to cover all that we need.

On a side note, my bike was stolen a couple of weeks ago, and I just sold my car last friday in order to buy a new bike and basically simplify life. However, I’m not going to Century City on a bike….. so…… I decided to make an adventure out of it and take the public transportation up to meet shelly near her work in Monrovia, and then we would drive from there. I took some pictures along the way as well as at the lawyers office so I’ll give you a little documentary commentary as I go.

So I left the studio and walked 10 minutes to get to the 460 Metro Bus. This is the 460 arriving around 2:05

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I rode the 460 for an hour to the metro green line station in norwalk where I caught the green line.

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Then I rode the green line over to the Imperial/Wilmington station where the blue line connection is and got onto the blue line, shown arriving below.

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The green line runs through the middle of the 105 freeway unimpeded by any traffic and is relatively fast. But the blue line runs through the middle of the city and contends with traffic as well, so it is a bit slower. Anyway I took the blue line from Imperial/Wilmington all the way up to the 7th St. Metro Station in downtown LA, where I caught the red line to Union Station. Here are a few pics of the 7th St. Metro station.

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So anyway I took the Red line to Union Station then got on the gold line to Pasadena. Here is the gold line arriving…

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This goes all the way to Sierra Madre Villa Blvd a few miles from Shelly’s work in Monrovia. So she met me here and we left from the metro station to drive to Century City. I arrived at the station at 4:30 so the whole trip took almost 2.5 hours… fat wonder more people don’t take the public transportation system… but in all fairness, there probably was a faster way, or at least less convoluted way, but it would have required much more walking. Here is Shelly in the parking structure after picking me up…

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We got on the freeway and then hit this common scene in LA…

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We actually got there in a reasonable amount of time though once we hit the 10 we were doing alright. We got there early so we went to the Beverly Center, vistited H&M and got something to eat, then headed to the law offices: 9911 Pico in Century City

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This is me with Raffaelle DiMartino, the lawyer who will be working here on the case. He has a counterpart in Rome whose name, apart from Roberto, I don’t know, but he will be working on the case from Rome submitting papers and guiding the procedure there.

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