These cool crisp mornings remind me of my youth walking to school with a gang of kids from my block. We all left our homes around the same time and met our friends and it was a social time before we ventured onto the playground. There would be gangs of kids from other blocks ahead of us and behind us. I was giving thought as to why the Redbank site under South Portland at Mainetoday.com was so popular and I have come to a conclusion. First of all, who would ever imagine that posting my old grammar school pictures would generate a nationwide response? The beauty of it was that it never could have been orchestrated. Classmates.com has been trying to build such a community, but personally I would never pay to belong to a “club”. Why should any of us pay when we are the ones contributing to its success? It would not have been so interesting had it been for just my stories and the few others who wrote stories however the interactive piece formed the success of the site. The comments generated by the many readers who lived there at one time, made it spread like wildfire, all by the grapevine. Then again, that shows you that geography is not all that makes a community. It is the people who foster relationships with those from their neighborhood, long after they leave the neighborhood and move away. I also believe it connected people not only to their neighbors but to their youth. Each generation feels they lived in the best of times are perhaps only yearning for a time when life was simpler. Technology integrated with our faster pace of life is like a train and we are always running to catch up with it. We are getting further away from things which matter most to us. Maybe we are losing some of our connections to people, the earth, and our spiritual being is getting lost in the chaos. Take it easy…. It is Sunday morning.
                     While searching through my traveling desk which is a large bag filled with notes and scraps of paper with ideas for stories, I came across one note. I had been giving a lot of thought about Patrolman Michael Connolly’s death (from my story -The Unsolved Murder of Patrolman Michael Connolly 1930) when I heard a song on the radio. The song was by Cold Play entitled ‘Swallowed by the Sea’. I began to think about the possibility of drowning and actually finding a body on shore. I wonder if he had been washed ashore, that his body would have shown more signs of scraping. Quite often bodies are never found. Then I had a horrific thought that he may have been held over the side of a boat by his feet until he drowned. Maybe his body was thrown on the beach as a warning to others. Then my thoughts went to his cap. The search was endless for his cap. Did someone keep it as a ‘token’? I wonder if, in the chaos of the crime, someone was afraid they misplaced it and it would get into the wrong hands. With technology today, I also wonder if his badge has ever surfaced for sale? After telling his story, I am honored I had that privilege. Maybe one day we will know what really happened.
                     In closing, I must relay a funny story told to me by my longtime friend who is a divorced mom with kids. She is a survivor, one who has been through some very bad times. However she can still get me laughing especially with the following story. She was headed somewhere when she and her adult daughter drove through the Dunkin Donuts drive- thru window. She said her mouth dropped when she witnessed the most gorgeous man she has ever seen lean out the window to talk with them. “His eyes were blue, green, like the ocean and his hair was black with curls.” she replied, “and when I made eye contact I went ‘unconscious’.”  My friend said she asked him if their orders could be separate when he replied, “Of course” in his Russian accent. The window closed and my friend turned to her daughter and asked, “Did you see that guy?” The daughter replied she had not. So my friend said, “When the window opens again, take a good look.” When the Russian man came back he smiled revealing his beautiful white teeth as he delivered their orders. 
                     A few days later my friend decided she would to Dunkin Donuts drive-thru window again. She was hoping to see the Russian again. She was greeted by an older woman. My friend asked, “What happened to that handsome Russian man?” The woman replies, “Oh Vladimir? He went back to Russia.” My friend then told the woman that he was the most gorgeous man she had ever seen. The woman responded with a big smile , “Have you seen Rafael? He is from Brazil.”