The Pushcart   

In the spring of 1934 my father built a singing pushcart

He designed and decorated it himself

And after his day at the WPA (if it doesn't rain)

He pushes it from the garage under Mr Lempke's house

He rents for a dollar a week - over the cobbled streets

To St Mary's Park in the South Bronx

As the evenings gentle on toward summer

He waits at the park's entrance for the old Jews

To shuffle out of the tenements for their evening stroll

Old men who walk arm-in-arm and read from little books

Whispering to themselves - Nodding always nodding

As their old women sit and gossip on stone benches

The young are still at work and will stroll much later

My father waits for them too

As it gets dark - I walk across the park along the lamp-lit esplanade

My net-bag full of the evening's pretzels and his sparse supper wrapped in wool

He is always there at the bottom of the hill under the tulip trees

Standing next to his glowing creation

The pushcart he has painted lemon-yellow and apple-green with its red trim

Sparkles gaily under the crystal entrance lamps in the smogless dusk

I hear it singing now as I run toward him

Dodging the tottering old Jews - Nodding always nodding

My father's pushcart sings because the charcoal brazier roasting the chestnuts

Also makes steam for its whistle

It's divided into orderly sections of open boxes

Of Butterfingers and Baby-Ruths and luscious Milky-Ways

Their colorful wrappers glisten like jewels in the magic light

How beautiful the pushcart looks bathed in that crystal light!

How wonderful the roasting chestnuts smell!

How good those few ‘silver kisses' taste

My father always gives me for bringing the pretzels and his supper!

Next to the chestnuts waiting to be roasted and the peanuts waiting to be warmed

Are rows of crimson pistachios and dried pumpkin seeds

And striped sunflower seeds and rockhard salted chickpeas

Like the ones my friend Louie Dinardi steals from his father's store

And uses in his sling-shot to pop pigeons

But my favorites are the big butternuts from Brazil

I ask my teacher Miss Carlson where Brazil is

And she shows me on the big earth-ball in the corner

And says it's thousands of miles away - so that’s why they're so expensive

Because it costs so much to bring them on a ship

Across the ocean to the Bronx

Once a week I sit with my mother at the kitchen table

As she cracks their big brown shells

My mother carries my little sister who has polio in from the bedroom

And we both help her count the tasty nuts into little yellow bags

My father sells each little bag for a nickel

Sometimes my mother lets us have one or two for helping her

But never takes any for herself

My father also sells those big chewey pretzels covered with coarse salt

He stacks them high on little round sticks at the back of the pushcart

So very early each Sunday morning before church

I roll my rusty Radio Flyer to the Jewish bakery on 3rd Avenue

It's in the cellar of a big tenement under the EL

The men who work there wear little round caps on the backs of their heads

And sweat a lot even though they don't have any shirts on

They're always covered with flour

And laugh and yell at each other all the time 

Their boss is a great big giant Rabbi with a dirty grey beard

He has long curly hair way down in front of his ears and it swings back and forth

As he fills my net-bags with pretzels

And helps me carry them up from the cellar to my wagon

I give him the coins wrapped in an old sock and he pats me on the head

And gives me a free salty pretzel still warm from the big stone oven in the cellar

When I get home my mother puts the pretzels in our oven

She keeps them there all week and only takes out a few each evening

So I can bring them to my father to sell when I bring his supper

She lights the oven a little bit each day to keep them crisp and chewy

And only takes them out when she bakes bread or spinach pie

The best times of all though

Are the sunny Sunday afternoons in the summertime

When the Midbrook Giants play the House of David baseball team

So early on Sunday morning before church if it's not raining

I help my father push the pushcart to the ballpark near the river

So we can get the best spot at the bottom of the stairs

Everybody has to use them to climb up to see the games

Because the field is so much higher than the street

It was made out of thousands of tons of dirt and rocks

The city dumped there long ago

When they dug the subways under the Bronx

When church is over I run back to the ballpark

Even before the double-header starts I walk among the families

Spread out on their blankets with my basket full of five-cent bags of peanuts

I still remember the afternoon I set my all-time record

Ninety-three bags! - Wow! - Ninety-three bags!

My father couldn't believe it when I kept coming back for more!

He stores a hundred-pound bag in his friend Mr Stavros' old truck

Mr Stavros and his wife sell hot dogs and orangeade from their truck

And she helps me fill all the extra bags with peanuts

My father told my mother more than once - about all the bags I sold

When he got home that night from St Mary's park  

There are two colored guys on the House of David

But no colored guys on the Midbrook Giants

And the House of David almost always wins

Before the second game begins the players find a pretty girl to pass the hat around

Then the House of David picks out a little kid to try and guess

Which one of the players has on a fake beard

The prize is a great big shiny silver dollar and everybody laughs

At the faces the House of David make as the kid pulls on their real beards

Most people know who it is but the kid almost never guesses

It's the skinny manager in the dugout until she comes out

And gets in line with all the ballplayers and takes off her hat and her fake beard

She gives the kid the silver dollar anyway

Sometimes my father gets arrested by the cops

Because he doesn't have a license for his pushcart

My mother tells him to pay the alderman like the others do

But he refuses because he says it isn't right

And God will punish all those rotten crooks someday

So the cops park their police car around the corner of the tenement

And walk through the cellar and sneak up on him

Most times they come early and it's my job to watch for them                                                                                                        

When I see them I run and tell my father and he moves the pushcart down the street

One of the cops who rides a police horse in the park is my father's friend

And he told him that as long as he is moving his pushcart down the street

They can't arrest him

But sometimes the cops arrest him anyway

And I have to help him push that heavy cart a very long way

To the Alexander Avenue police station - The cops follow us slowly in their car

The people in the street yell at them to leave the poor man alone

"You bums"... He's only trying to feed his family"... they yell

But the cops don't care and lock him up all night with the drunks

He tells me to go home and tell my mother he won't be home

Until he pays his fine to the judge in the morning

And for me to bring the pretzels and his supper again tomorrow night

Unless it rains

The cops make my father push our beautiful pushcart

Into their garage before they lock him up

In the morning all the nuts and candy-bars and pretzels are gone

(A few years ago they made a movie about that police station

They called it "Fort Apache - The Bronx"

And Paul Newman and Ed Asner played the cops

It was just about the only building left standing on that block

Because the junkies had burned everything else around it down)

In the winter when it snows and the park is bare

And the pushcart sits silent and empty and cold in Mr Lempke's garage

My father sells old flowers in the subway cars all night

He gets them from the wholesale markets on West 28th Street

After the ice has melted in their iceboxes

And the florists throw the flowers out because they're spoiled

He takes me with him on the EL when I get home from school

And we pick out the best flowers from the rusty barrels in the street

In front of their stores

I help him tie the flowers into little bundles

And together we arrange them in his enormous flower basket

And before he goes down into the subways for the night

He puts me back on the EL and sends me home to my mother and sister in the Bronx

Sometimes before I go to school in the morning

He comes home all hurt

He tells my mother they beat him up again last night

After he sold his flowers and they stole all our money

After my father goes to bed

My mother hugs me very tight - and cries

Note: During the 1930’s depression, there were a number of "House of David"

baseball teams touring the US. The only requirement was that all players were Jewish

and some of them who weren't adopted the faith. A few were former Major Leaguers

that had fallen on hard times. One of them, Joe Boyce who played for the Midbrook

Giants, briefly held the home run record in the late 1920's but it was never entered by the 

record keepers of the time as they were told he was supposed to have spent time in prison.      

          A Natural Worship  

They are simply there to be revered

Creatures of air of water and of earth

Osprey seal raccoon - Each is affirmed

As surrogates for personal rebirth

He was a paradise child - Astonished wonder once

Bargained down through generations of neglect

To a not-too-much-time-left ambivalence

A ravaged heritage now left unchecked

An innocence defeated by intolerant rush

To ruinous subjective senseless gain

As manifested by a plastic beach and other trash

Scattered by wind and tide on miniature plain

Pure glaciers once crept from sunless north

Marbling ledges to childrens' "Golden Stairs"

Bright shining silica now splits the granite lith

To mark the ancient march from arctic spheres

With each inevitable rounding of earth's star

An ephemeron of poisoned dust obscures its light

And will slowly stain once-lustrous air

Into a gangrenous and suffocating blight

Yet despite slow desolation of their ken

The natural children sing a measured truth

Sleek seal - swift osprey - bright clever coon

Unhurried melodies that sound a steadfast faith

Ondine    

Her image triggers a heat in his loins

As she roams knee-high in the rush of surf

Pink shimmering hair streams over pale shoulders

Pale breasts pale buttocks pale legs

Polished by glistening salt

Eyes raised to the luminous moon

Lips parted by stars

Twin tiny cactuses coraled in pink

She wanders the watery wastes

Past twisted swamp-willows

Revisited in yesterday's dreams

He follows as striated knifings of mollusky shells

Blackish blue-grey and sickening white

Slice at his feet

Stone barnacles pierce tender toes

Salt stings

Slats broken from traps float sluggishly past

Galvanized nails needle his skin

Unknown to her

She's marked by touches of blood from his wounds

As she weaves a carved lobster claw into her hair

Discarding the faded shore lilies like him

Shrivelled and old

He reaches to catch her as she floats past

Pink-tentacled hair spread on the inky brack

Nipples and bush

Faint pinky-points glow in the deep greening of swamp

She sinks under the weed-petalled sea

He hears the purrings of cat

And knows he will never see her again

White Night Ride to Northeast Carry   

It snowed last night in Northeast Carry

The first day of autumn... September 25, 1947… a mere 65 years ago

And there he was... just coming awake in his '36 Special Series Buick 40

Zipped up and cozy in his army surplus down-sleeper stretched out on the horizontal back

Of the wooden interior he had sawed and angle-ironed - his mattress resting on the jump-seats

Of the pre-war limousine bought last year for six hundred mostly-borrowed dollars

That afternoon it started snowing... small flakes mixed with hail and plentiful with both

Coating the narrow unpaved road within the hour with a white-washed veneer

Snow-wrapped and canopied giant spruce in over-arching lapstreaks

Feathery plumes swaying slightly in the soundlessness of absent birdsong

Views of the lake glistening occasionally through the logged-out spacings

Yesterday he managed to drive the big car from Rockwood some twenty angry miles

Through a wilderness of towering forests to the end of this muddy rutted road

And it was almost midnight when he reached the tiny village of Northeast Carry, Maine

At the upper end of Moosehead Lake… It really did seem like the edge of the world to him

And as he climbed out of his bag this morning… there were the cabins up ahead

Donny Hawkins was an old retired logger who leased lake-front from Georgia-Pacific

He built these roughed-out camps for loggers and occasional hunters and fishermen

The kid at the pump when he gassed up in Greenville and helped him put on his chains

Said he rented cheap… so here he was knocking on Donny’s door for a place to stay

Five bucks a night and breakfast and all the coffee he could drink

Donny told him there was no one else here… Season’s done for a while he said

It was eight in the morning but he’d been up since four o’clock fishing

He brought him a pot of coffee and bacon and eggs then retired to his “A” frame for a nap

He finished eating and then went out to park his car behind the camp and get his gear

Folding easel… Acrylics and brushes… Arches watercolor block

He made some sketches of the cabins and the mountain views across the lake

The gas was cut off so after a can of Dinty Moore’s cooked on his little Coleman stove

He decided to walk into the woods because he could see a cleared area up ahead

To his astonishment there were five or six huge diesel rigs lined up next to these long flatbeds

With two big skidders alongside… snow melting off them because it had warmed up some

Donny told him later that come February when the lake freezes deep enough

The truckers and jacks will show up and load the long fifty-foot double flatbeds

With thousands of huge stripped spruce logs cut last year and stacked on some thirty cleared acres

And hook up those big Peterbilts and Kenilworths and set their compasses

And drive some forty miles down the middle of the lake to Greenville and the pulp mills

Once he said just before the war… one of those rigs broke through the ice

But the trucker radioed his position and got out before she went to the bottom

The State Guides sent their ski plane and picked him up before he froze

Donny told him one of those rigs full-loaded weighs about seventy tons

But as long as the temperature stays below zero… four feet of ice easily support it

This time of year he said it’s nice and quiet and will be for another few months

But come early February the boys will come up and load the flatbeds with last year’s timber

And hook them up to the big rigs and set their compasses and drive over to the lake

And haul-ass down the ice to Greenville… usually at night when it’s colder

And come back next morning for another load

He told Donnie maybe he could come back next year

When one of those rigs would haul-ass down the ice to Greenville

Maybe he could follow behind it in his big Buick for the thrill

Donnie got a laugh out of that but told him those ice truckers are a tight bunch

And wouldn’t take kindly to a flatlander joining them for a lark

News Item: Barrie Fortier 65, the last of the ice truckers passed away unexpectedly in Guilford Maine in

January 2009… And there is no more winter ice-truck log-hauling on Moosehead Lake… Plum Tree Inc,

a huge land conglomerate is planning to build two large resorts on the more than 80 thousand acres it owns

along the lake…

Powders   

Powders

Fine earth-dusts

Beneath a stone upturned

By the clattering

Mob-pourings after centurions

On the mocking-run to Golgotha

They drive a poor shrunk Man heaving a Cross

Bright honor they do to One

Who gave them alms from heaven...?

Bread from stone...?

Life...?

See them all for their total pale shadows-grey eye

Each surly ash etched deep in monotonic dullness

Yet slowly slowly now

Out of the loveliness of death's oncoming shade

Deep deep within Exquisite Quiet

Where Temple bleeds out thorn

And Hands and Feet shed iron studs

The Agony whispers in the sad and delicate air

"Forgive"

See Perfection and Futility

As Twin Agonies inseperable as earth-dusts

Lying beneath an upturned stone

High on the mocking-run

Powders

Blowing time out of mind

Powders 

Upon which the mind is nourished

            The Unconscious Island   

The violent island cliffs high out of violet hazes

Brooding in its bulk - A grave of rock and silent now

But for the vague hiss of granite steaming in broken waves

Here where once hoppers flicked across its baldness

This timeless rock is circled by the scavenger

And by-passed by the shag and only the braver piper

Touches occasionally in the quieter coves

And within its gut the frozen trees are stilled

Wrapped up in one another like antiquated lovers

There are no crows to call to - The wrens are gone

The deer and coon have braved the sea to main

And the earth is shattered

 Down in the leeward village where seiners once hove to

And the night filled up with raw yelling and laughter

And birds screamed as fish-heads were slung to the tide

Whiskey once burned the fog out of man's bones

As his warm woman trimmed his beard and washed him down by lamplight

And went to bed with him and laughed softly in the night next to him

As a dog barked somewhere in the mist

And a lamb bleated at the moon

Now the shingles crumbled on the frame and there was stillness

There was a stillness too that long night back when animals and men

Their mates - Birds - All the island creatures

Slept exhausted in the womb-fog sea-lulled into dream

It was then a wind came up to moan the night to sky-black

And burned its lightning deep into a heaving forest world

But the rain did not come

The Wilderness of Derivatives   ­­­(by the numbers)

1. In 1968-70, Congress in its infinite wisdom and with a lot of help from Wall Street lobbyists created

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as GSE’s (Government Sponsored Enterprises) EXEMPT FROM TAXES*

Fannie had been part of the government since 1938 - But it was privatized along with Freddie to create a

secondary market for mortgages - The “Implicit Full Faith and Credit” of the US Treasury backed their

operations… The bonds they issued made up of millions of mortgages were lumped into huge pools and

traded like commodities - sugar, wheat, pork bellies, etc.

2. Banks and Non-Banks no longer had to hold mortgages in-house. They were sold to Freddie and sister

Fannie and this freed up their deposits to make many more mortgages… Their trading symbols FNM and

FRE were listed and traded on the New York Stock Exchange and their prices skyrocketed - In year 2002

FNM was selling at $120 a share and her brother hit a high of $75 in year 2004.

3. I was for many years a member of the board of a little Waldoboro Maine Savings & Loan suddenly and

magically transformed into an FSB (Federal Savings Bank) and I started to worry - So did the Chairman,

the CEO and the rest of the board… Holy smoke!...  Uncle Sam was now our biggest competitor!

4. For the next 20 years Fannie and Freddie made enormous TAX-FREE profits!…Their “No Risk” bonds 

yielded 35 points more than US Treasuries and 70 points above triple-A corporate debt…The whole

investment world, foreign and domestic, clamored for them --

6. Enter the Wall Street Banksters again, who created these two voracious entities… They started getting

jealous…they wanted in on this profit bonanza… so around year 2000 they started making a market tied

to short-term ARM’s (1-Year Adjustable Rate Mortgages) and thanks to Allan Greenspan -“Sub-Prime

Mortgage Derivatives” were born - They came up with fancy names for these “Paper Promises” like 

CMT’s, CDO’s, MTA’s, COFI’s etc - They chopped each one up into 20 or 30 pieces and sold them

to hedge funds and pension funds, foreign governments, insurance companies, etc.

7. Not one of the many government regulators responsible bothered to check all this questionable

leveraging activity – a lot of it illegal because some of these guys were selling their OWN stocks short.

Not to worry - After all, everyone knew that American home owners don’t walk away from their mortgages.

But when the bubble burst lots of them did - and taxpayers now are forced to bail out those ‘too big to fail” crooks.

8. A few years ago, that little S&L in Waldoboro Maine was gobbled up by a big bank that got themselves

in trouble - and that big bank was gobbled up by an even bigger bank - And Fannie and Freddie closed

yesterday (Dec 2008) at 42 cents and 35 cents a share respectively.

9. And so it goes…

*The Emergency Home Finance Act of 1970

Note: I have re-posted this because it’s been almost 5 years since the illegal abuse of EHFA mentioned in numbers 6 and 7, 

and not a single individual responsible for the near-destruction of the world's financial system has been prosecuted! 

The Summer Camp   -  Repost 

Coming as it did from woods behind his house

The light is unexplained - A first in all these years

A splash of ray now here now there

It flits among thick trunks and spiky scrub - Unwanted and unknown

It cleaves the blackness with its fear

He could not say what stirs him from a fitful sleep to look outside

He waits disoriented - shotgun at the ready in his hands

Watching with soundless breath to see who dares

To sidle to his rear perimeter unwatched since he beached himself

So long ago upon this island land

These barrier woods became his keep-away construct

The barbed impassable remains of violent squalls

A wall of smashed uprooted trees shot through as now

With struggling sun-starved growths - Stacked to an impenetrable mass

Of ancient and invulnerable falls

This sinister light is not from flash - Rather a soft ochre fire

Cast by a lantern or perhaps a tallow torch

The whispered hisses and faint grunts he thinks he hears reflect a distant age

Dissimilar rasp upon his nerves as dim etherials float by

Portaging just past reproach

These travelers have taken almost a completed moon

From the sierras of the upper River of the Dead

Its ice unbroken still but softened now by higher sun

The fishers slip their way and slide their slender craft

To a lower and much rougher river run with mud

Unfettered country opens as they ply the Kennebec

Its cataracts and spates replete with sharded ice

A family lost to its niagara - They press on

To branch before they reach the primitive fort

And gain the ponds and streams beyond the splice

They scent the sea in April's dusk

And rush to cross to the long island on the moonless tide

Hard wind forestalls a paddling round to ocean shore

So with gear lashed within canoes - the apparitions move 

Through seething woods to pitch their rough reside

They make their camp below his granite parapet

Among the massive boulders of the gravel beach

Canoes tipped up above highwater - blankets spread and children tucked

They rest - The storm roars on but they're impervious of violence

Beyond the outer reach

Here they will pass warm days drying yellow-tail and cod

Seawater boiled for salt - next winter's sustenance

Is smoked and layered tight between drained kelp and birches' peel

While bronze children splash in gentle surf

Their mothers tie fish bundles onto sturdy carry-packs

As summer sun climbs higher and the sea is rippled up

By fresh southwesters that flush mist-colored hues

Lithe near-naked warriors venture beyond the barrier isles

Their slim canoes out-rigged to smooth Penobscot chop

Return with bottoms filled with harpooned blues

All summer the camp pulsates with laughter love and tears

As nature's children work and play beneath earth's dome 

And when first frost begins to wilt the wild cucumber vine

They rake the beach and pack canoes and smother fires

And paddle back to main to climb the hills to home

The rose of dawn has fired up the eastern sky

As gulls and cormorants and crows unleash their strident cries

His reverie is shattered too by the P3 low over the bay

Its engines throttled back in preparation to touch down

Tumultuous reality returns as violated vision dies

The Quarry Ghosts   -   Repost 

It's difficult to trace out where the block-house stood

Although if you look carefully and slice the brush

The granite base cleared now of strangled berry-wood

Is visible beyond the wash

Once long ago - this place resounded with delighted cries

Of children scampering across the quay

As steamer-cranes lifted huge cuts beyond the rise

Onto the barkantines that lay at lee

Among weed-woven tangles of this ditch

You find old lamps and pots and Leslie Magazines

A shredded doll - A tallow cup stuffed in a niche

A book of verse marked Josephine's

The names and dates are also chiseled there to read

The Abels Joshuas Mollys and the rest

These drillers cutters blasters and their brood

Whisper across the hundred summers that have passed

Note:

The granite quarried on Friendship Long Island in Muscongus Bay Maine

was used to build Grant’s Tomb in Riverside Park in New York City.

Sometime later the workers struck for a five-cent hourly raise and the Boston

owners shut the quarry down rather than give in to them – The men decided

to work the granite themselves and hired an overzealous young blaster who

promptly blew a hole through to the sea and the pumps could not contain the

flooding so the quarry was abandoned.

Sandy Hook

I am deviating from my usual style to present an account of my familiarity with the area where the terrible tragedy occurred. I am sure most of you have been saturated with the overwhelming coverage the media devoted and still devotes to what happened in that small province of the town of Newtown, Connecticut.

Newtown is comprised of five villages that were once independent entities. Dodgingtown,

Botsford, Hattertown, Hawleyville and Sandy Hook. I think it is the largest town in

Connecticut area-wise. My family and I lived in Sandy Hook for more than ten years. In

1959 we purchased a house in a small colony of German immigrant families who, in the

1930’s bought about 150 acres bordering a state park and built vacation cottages

which they used in the summertime. Some of them I’m sure were Bund members and all

lived in the Yorkville section of Manhattan. After WW2, they expanded the cottages into

houses and garages where they eventually retired and formed a trust which stated that all

nine families would have to approve any sale in their community. When one of them

moved to Florida, the property remained vacant for a year until we were vetted and okayed.

I think our little one year-old Maria, and the fact that my wife was pregnant with our

second daughter Melissa, had something to do with it, as only a teen-age daughter

belonged to the youngest couple in the group. She became our wonderful baby-sitter.

A couple of years later I bought a large vacant 2-story building which once was a supermarket, renovated it and moved my business from Bridgeport to Sandy Hook. It is located in the center of the old village close to the bridge which crosses the Pootatuck River. Since the tragedy, I have seen it a number of times on television as on the corner next to it, all manner of mementos have been placed in memory of the lives of those children and adults taken by that deranged young man.*

In 1967 a new super-highway (Interstate 84) bisected the town of Newtown. It became possible to drive up from New York City in less than 2 hours. Many well-to-do New Yorkers, celebrities and others built second homes in the surrounding hills and around Lake Zoar. An airport in the adjoining city of Danbury allowed international pilots from Kennedy and Logan who were very well paid, to spend the mandatory rest time between flights flying their little Cesnas and Piper Cubs to Danbury and be home in Newtown in less than an hour. The sons and daughters of these newcomers were enrolled in Newtown High and drove expensive cars. School-buses would arrive with empty seats while the parking lots were full. Every other week or so, a fatal accident reported by the Newtown Bee, involved teen-agers using the new highway to race their sports cars after midnight. The part-time first selectman who sold office supplies and was a good friend of mine, told me the State Police broke into the high school lockers one weekend and found enough drugs to rival a junkie pad in East Harlem as he put it.

In 1964 we bought an old house on an island near the small fishing village of Friendship Maine as a summer retreat for a couple of thousand dollars. It was built by a fisherman in the 1880’s, a wedding present for his bride. It was neglected by its previous owners and was in very poor condition. A new roof and plenty of work on the inside with great help from my brother-in-law made it quite livable and for the next few years we spent a couple of weeks there each summer.

Both my daughters were enrolled at Sandy Hook Elementary and soon would be eligible for high school. Without saying anything to my wife until the week before we left, I shut down my business, (we produced Industrial Catalogs), laid off my employees with a year’s severance, called a moving company and had them drive everything up to Rockland, Maine where it was stored. We said good-by to neighbors, relatives and friends. With my wife Lucy driving our big Plymouth station wagon with Melissa and 5-month old Melanie tucked in the back, she followed me in my Toyota Land Cruiser with Maria and our dog and cat asleep in the rear. We drove all night and arrived in the little fishing village of Friendship in the early morning of July 4th. George and Sharon Hayes, a young couple we met and became friends with, helped load our gear and us into his lobster boat and towing our 14-foot skiff, deposited us on the gravel beach in front of our island house. We lived there that summer while I looked for a house in the village and found a small well-maintained two-bedroom cape with an attached garage. A few weeks later we registered our kids into the local school system. We lived there for almost forty years.

I write this because I think about the incredible series of events that occurred and I am constantly reminded by today’s voracious media, of the once-quiet little hamlet of Sandy Hook and my own and my family’s proximity to the events. Except for the gift of time, my own children could have been part of that massacre. Today it would be possible for me to walk up a little hill from our former home (a matter of 3 or 4 minutes) and stand before the house where that disturbed boy murdered his mother and then a few minutes later, twenty-six innocent human beings before killing himself…

*It is possible to Google a satellite view of Sandy Hook Center to view my building that was sold to a fashion

 designer. If you follow Rt 34 past the high school to Bennetts Bridge Road and turn left, then take the first

 right at Osborne Hill Road to Yogananda Drive, you will find the killer’s home. It is in a development of

 expensive homes that was built many years after we moved to Maine.

.