Thank You!
Greetings and salutations from the sand, sun and surf of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and the great island of Nantucket! So great to be with you on this eve before the most important holiday this country has ever had and ever will, Thanksgiving Day…a time to see that “time” is just that, but the PRESENT is paramount to recalling what WE all hold dear and holy in this most beautiful world that is free and clear for all of us to SEE… should we choose to. Looking up at that image of the Unity Church, taken only a few days ago in a place I call the most holy places on planet earth, Hyannisport, Massachusetts, the home of the late, great President Jack Kennedy, his beautiful wife Jackie, his sister Eunice, his brothers Teddy, Bobby, his father Joe Senior, and his mother Rose Kennedy and all of the wonderful members of that family that took me all the way to this little sand bar created 11,500 years ago by the last great ICE AGE, forming the islands of Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard and the long island of Long Island, I give my greatest thanks…I give my greatest effort right here, right now, to those souls who saw what I had been searching for my whole life–a place to call HOME. There is no doubt in my mind that if it were not for the ideals that Jack held over 50 years ago, when he was elected to the office of the President of the United States, along with his brother Bobby and my dear friend Teddy, his youngest brother, I would not be writing this “blog” today…for it was 8 plus years ago (having failed twice before…leaving the corporate world behind) that I made one last attempt to “land” in a place I fell in love with so long ago–Cape Cod, Massachusetts. When I was first introduced to this wonder, it was a simpler time, 1987, and having just graduated from the University of Vermont and working at the Edgartown Yacht club, located in Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard, I was “pushed” into the “real world”, accepting my first job with the Prudential in New York, knowing that someday, somehow, I would return… I, of course, fell in love with someone from Michigan, a girl who was working for that same Yacht club and on her summer break from Michigan State, and thus, followed her to Detroit after spending 2 years in the ‘Big Apple’, working for 23,500 a year as a “group rep”, and therefore logically living and commuting from Jersey City, via the ‘path’ train, I continued to follow that dream of coming back to Camelot–a place that holds more magic than Gandalf himself. But, it would take 17 years to make that so. There were many pit falls on the way, to truly breaking out of the corporate milieu that I had found myself in, and on that fateful day I left Denver, Colorado, July 25th, 2003, for the final time, destination Nantucket, I felt like I had a real shot at realizing my dream–becoming a full time writer in the place I call, once again, the most holy I have ever been privileged enough to visit on this little blue rock I call earth. It was a hard landing, as the NPD had different plans for me on August 2, 2003 when I had my head “slam dunked” into the cobblestones on India Street, putting me in a coma for 18 hours and then living in FEAR for the next 8 years, fear of the mean streets of a USA I have always held dear and close to my heart and was never in fear of before. I say all of this for one reason and one reason only… I am so grateful to be alive, to be lucid, to be able to put into black and white what needs to be said in a country that has become blind to the TRUTH that is all around us–the smiles of the children, the grace of the Blue Heron and the majesty of a dune that nestles next to the gentle waters of the Atlantic Ocean… There is something to be said for reviewing HISTORY and what those men and women who went before us stood for, what they fought for and what they died for. Sometimes, something draws you to a place that you have no idea why it would or why, a Field of Dreams, if you will… The gratitude that I feel today, for people of this little Cape Cod, my family and friends I have met here, along with all of the wonder of the land and sea–cannot be put in words–for I died 8 years ago and came back, through the GRACE OF GOD, and I am, for that, the most Grateful man on the planet, bar none. There is no doubt that this fantastic country can come back and be great again, there is no doubt that these great men and women we are honored enough to call our brothers and sisters will come out of the ashes of greed and prosper once again…for you can kill a man with a bullet or a bomb, but you can never, ever kill the SPIRIT of the human SOUL, ever entwined with infinite creative intelligence, emanating in the form of a smile on a harbor seal, a little girl, or a giant Humpback Whale, the symbol of Cape Cod, the islands and the grace that the Kennedy family will own forever. May this day bring you JOY, LOVE and PEACE so that you may feel the same way I feel right NOW, knowing that tomorrow will be better than what we are witnessing today. In the immortal words from a half way house half way across this great North American continent, “Charlie Street”, in Costa Mesa, California, “Happy people are grateful people, those who aren’t, aren’t.” And, if no one told you they LOVE you today, “I just did.” Have a great Thanksgiving and may the good LORD always be with you and YOURS! PRESERVE THE WILDERNESS! Peace~M
