Clotheslines as flags over the city. Every building a construction site. Every terrace the pavement of a new floor. Every windowsill the starting point for colored clotheslines where shirts, pants and sheets shared space with shoes (tied by their laces), sheets of paper, books. Carpets, chairs and larger furniture was usually brought upstairs on sunny days to dry. It was not unusual to find carpenters and builders working surrounded by wet, beautiful cabinets drying in the air.

Hey this book is pretty good it’s filled with poems about nuts.

Ode to a Nut

The nuttiest nut I ever saw

was one I never had

And though I tried my best to save

It ended up going bad.

*

Nuttier than Usual

If never I see another nut

How happy I shall be,

for every single one I find

does not belong to me.

~

It seems that life is most unfair

Why can’t just one be mine,

But no it always seem to be

It’s never mine – its thine!

*

The Stash

I’ve hidden a whole stash of nuts

Noone knows where they are

But even if they do get found

They won’t go very far.

~

You see I rigged a trap inside

Each nut that’s in my stash

So when somebody tries to eat

Instead they will get thrashed!

~

When I show up…

Today I went to Breezy Point, Queens, NY with a group of volunteers. We cleaned out a basement and gutted and demolished 2 houses.

It was eerie getting into Breezy Point.  All I saw was policemen, firemen, and other organizations.  The house and other properties seemed abandoned.

There were no kids playing, teenagers running around, people walking/jogging, nothing of the usual images that makes up what we think a small shore town should look like.

The houses we worked on were right on the water, the view and location was amazing, but it is hard to reconcile the beauty of the view with the destruction that I am witnessing.

I ask myself: Would I want to live this close to the water?  the answer is no!  I love and I am grateful for nature and the ocean, for the beauty of it and for all it affords us, but since…