Books
It's Just About Me: 23 Dover Street
A childhood is bumps, bruises, giggles and embarrassment…butterflies, broken hearts and birthdays…new beginnings, the wondrous discovery of the world outside your home…of new sights, sounds, touches, and tastes…what next door really is and who lives there…where values taught at home fit in with neighborhood friends, school chums, and teachers… checking yourself out against this new world and dealing with what sometimes frightens you with no recourse to mom and dad. These were my childhood. And it was a treasure.¿ It’s about growing up…about the price and the blessings…that it is a gift and not an ordeal to endure until adulthood. My world from the age of five was mine to discover and stumble through. The hard knocks were of my own doing. However, I was not unique. Many faced and successfully overcame similar challenges and frustrations. The reader may find some comfort in knowing this. No matter how unique and different their childhood might have been, others shared a similar path. That knowledge, laughter, and tear is what this writer offers.
The Sail Needs the Wind (Challenges)
The Sail Needs the Wind has to do with what has occupied my thoughts for my entire adult life…and that is quite simply, life itself. How we move through its maze; how its essence enters us and how we deal with its moment-to-moment flood and simply survive… and in no cursory way, thoughts about the Creator. I also have to ask, who are we…why are we, and where exactly are heaven and hell? Humanity is not easy and it appears we have little faith in ourselves…which I find unbelievably sad. We have been lulled into this state by the patronizing and the greedy and to some degree by those who would readily seek compromise to avoid meaningful collaboration. We have been in a state of war since our consciousness flowered, nothing has been gained, and we continue to believe, sans proof, that prayer will do more than just comfort the disparately praying soul. My notes are reactions to people and situations, both on the job and in personal relationships. I am not naive enough to believe that living is not complicated…and that everyone lighting just one little candle would create a brighter and more welcoming world. But I am also smart enough to know that retaliation never works; that at some point someone much brighter than anyone who exists today must say “no” no more and that offering the light and warmth of that one little candle may just start a revolution for the one thing that we so disparately want, but for the life of us cannot find…peace.
You Keep Thinking It: Jake, Donny, and Dibs
In the summer of 1963, Jake, Donny and Dibs are looking forward to a fun-filled summer of laughs before moving to high school in the fall. The three boys’ parents, however, have different plans for their sons’ vacation. The boys’ plan for a do-nothing summer with each other, much like summers past, is turned upside down with rushing hormones, girls, Donny going camping with his dad, Dibs’ sick mom and their family moving away, Jake’s newfound friend in his sister, his summer job, and an unintended interest in future education and work. The summer of 1963 becomes one of the related frustrations, females, and changes that none of them expected.
Ducky: Life Letters
The book is about the life of two young people, Donald and Phyllis, which took root and survived through hundreds of love letters. Married in 1940, they spent four months together. For the remainder of their life, forty months, Donald spent training and guarding in Canada, preparing for the front in England and then in Europe till his death on April 30, 1945. Phyllis waited for his return while raising two children. This book contains, verbatim, many of the letters that became their life. Letters burst with fears, hopes, and plans for how things may have been.
