President Donald Trump suspended entry from seven countries last week. File photo
As an editorial staff, we have an opinion. …
The first half of that sentence isn’t necessary in order to reveal what we think. And that is the exact problem we have had with this past weekend’s news cycle.
Political leader after political leader came out this past Friday, Saturday and Sunday to condemn Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s leaked comments, bragging about being able to commit sexual assault against women.
One of the common themes from legislators who pulled their endorsements was “As a father of daughters” or “As a brother with sisters — or a mother,” they were offended.
Two problems here: You don’t need to be a “someone” in order to be offended, you can simply be offended. And why is it that women are repeatedly being referred to as a sister, a daughter or a mother?
A presidential candidate talked about how he can sexually assault women because he is a star. A woman doesn’t need to be anything to be offended, threatened or violated by that sentiment. A man is also not disqualified from finding Trump’s comments reprehensible simply because he is a man.
Women don’t need to give birth or have a brother before they can be victimized by Trump’s words. Men don’t need to be married to condemn sexual assault. It should not matter your role, your background or your stature — no one should need to back up or justify why they are against sexual assault. They just should be.
Billie Phillips, the original owner of Billie’s 1890 Saloon, will retake control of the Port Jefferson property on Main Street. File photo by Elana Glowatz
By Billie Phillips
My name is Billie E. Phillips. Thirty-five years ago, my late first wife and I, borrowed every dollar we could and spent every dime we had to open up the Bar/Restaurant, Billie’s 1890 Saloon. Like every venture into the hospitality business, it was a gamble. We were very fortunate. Through the first years it became apparent that Billie’s was becoming a special place for the community, a place for stories to be told, laughs to be had, and new memories to be made.
Since then and after my sale of Billie’s it has maintained its standing as part of the fabric of the community. Unfortunately, as most of you know, Billie’s sustained a kitchen fire and has been closed since late June. Since then, the current tenant’s lease was cancelled for reasons many people have speculated about, but most people have no true knowledge of.
Rumors have spread to the point that petitions were started to save the building from being torn down. The building will not be torn down and the bar and restaurant you have grown to love will continue on in the tradition of Billie’s 1890 Saloon for as long as I have a say in the matter.
After a brief tour of the building by the landlord, I was asked if I would be interested in leasing the property, as a new lease would not be offered to individuals of the previous corporate tenant for reasons that were explained to me. After some contemplation, I felt the reasons were understandable.
At the end of the day, I could not stand by and watch Billie’s 1890 Saloon be taken over by anyone without ties to the Port Jefferson community. In a decision that was very difficult to me because of friendships I have with people connected to Billie’s, in many capacities, my family and I have assumed control of the space used by Billie’s 1890 Saloon. It is my hope people will begin to understand this could have been the end of Billie’s as they knew it, and to some it will probably still feel this way. However, to those that are skeptical, please know my family and I will endeavor always to maintain the intangibles that make Billie’s such a special place in the hearts of so many.
Billie Phillips is the original owner of Billie’s 1890 Saloon, located on Main Street in Port Jefferson.
Lit luminaires light up the night during the third annual Lights of Hope event in Port Jefferson on Aug. 31. Photo by Nora Milligan
It’s no time to pass the buck.
When it comes to the rising opioid abuse issue coursing through Long Island’s veins, we want to make sure we continue the open dialogue.
As you finish reading this edition, we hope you reflect on how this growing problem affects you, your family, your friends and everyone else around you — we can’t hide from this.
We need to take a more head-on approach to this medical issue, and accept that it is a medical problem, and not as some say a moral failing.
Parents shouldn’t let the stigma attached to drug or substance abuse keep them from talking about it. If we are to learn and grow and recover, we need to be talking. If we hide from the issue, the results will most certainly be fatal.
This is a problem that requires a collaborative effort, including prevention through education and early identification of at-risk people, enforcement with sharper penalties to dealers and prescription writers and improved rehabilitation resources and strategies. And as this issue should reflect, many groups on the North Shore are dedicated to working together to fight this crisis.
A cooperative combination of all of these things can help get Long Island headed in the right direction. Listed below are several resources if you or a loved one is struggling with substance or drug abuse.
• Suffolk County Substance Abuse Hotline: 631-979-1700
• Hope House Ministries: 631-978-0188
• Response of Suffolk County 24-hour hotline: 631-751-7500
• Prevention Resource Center: 631-650-0135
• Phoenix House’s Edward D. Miller substance abuse treatment center: 844-296-9046
• St. Charles Hospital rehab program: 631-474-6233
• New York State HOPEline: 1-877-8-HOPENY
• Suffolk County Division of Community Mental Hygiene Services: 631-853-8500
Visit https://www.suffolkcountyny.gov/substanceabuse for a downloadable prevention, treatment and recovery services directory, which gives a list of service agencies and treatment centers on Long Island.
Michael Tessler, far left, at the Icon Oscars at Walt Disney's Hollywood Studios in Orlando, Florida. Photo from Michael Tessler
Transcript:
[Movie trailer voice] In a world, on an island … a long island, there is a man, a curly-haired man, on a bold and courageous journey to create the best column ever written. Will this Jonah-Hill-looking fellow overcome his childhood lisp, will he make audiences laugh, find out in the next exciting chapter of OPEN MIKE: The Column.
To quote the late great Robin Williams, “I do voices.”What does that even mean? [Yoda voice] Ermm, master of voices I am, make you laugh I shall [Yoda laugh]. This fascination of mine first manifested itself at the young age of 5, shortly after my youngest sister was born, leaving me with a horrendous case of middle child syndrome. My parents literally learned to tune out my voice, leaving me with no option but to invent and discover new ones.
My first real character voice was an impersonation of my Uncle Jean Pierre. His thick Parisian accent was like nothing I had ever heard before. So I began to replicate it. Weeks later and after a few thousand attempts, I figured it out. My face scrunched upward, my nose lunged toward the sky, and his voice came out of mouth — (in heavy French accent) [French laughter] “Bonjour my name Jean Pierre, and I am proud Frenchman!” this caricature version of my uncle became a hit at family parties.
From then on my range of voices grew 10-fold. Every movie I watched, every video game I played, every foreign accent I heard, I absorbed and replicated. Character voices became an outlet for this otherwise socially awkward child. There’s no better feeling than brightening a room and having the power to produce laughter. No matter your age there’s no way not to laugh at the dueling Michael Myers characters Shrek/Fat Bastard bursting into a room shouting: “Get in my belly, you stupid fat donkey!”
Voices weren’t always for an audience though. Most of the time they were just for me. One year while re-watching the“Muppet’s Christmas Carol” (arguably the greatest film ever made), I became obsessed with learning the Muppet voices — starting with Kermit, Fozzie Bear, Beaker, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, and inevitably Miss Piggy. Learning Miss Piggy was the first time I ever made the connection between voices and voice actors. Frank Oz, who famously gave life to Master Yoda in “The Empire Strikes Back” also played the sassy frog-loving pig we know and loathe. [In Yoda voice, then Miss Piggy voice] “Ermm, pigs, pigs lead to pork, pork leads to bacon, and bacon leads to the dark side, Kermie, don’t you love mwah?” How stunning, to hear how the voices connect to one another.
But truthfully with time and practice anybody can do a line or two. What distinguishes professionals from amateurs is the ability to carry out any kind of dialogue, conveying any kind of emotions, and being able to do so without a second thought. Rehearsing this looks like pure insanity but is beyond rewarding. My favorite example is of Andy Serkis, who played the dual personalities of Gollum in “Lord of the Rings.” “Frodo’s our friend! Yes Yes! GOLLUM! GOLLUM! Stupid fat Hobbit(es)!” After hearing his voice, I knew I needed to up my game.
There’s literally voice recordings on my phone of every character you can possibly imagine, communicating with one another! That’s my favorite part honesty, having great historical figures and pop culture icons interacting with one another. For example:
Richard Nixon: I don’t know Bill, that wife Hillary of yours strikes me as a real crook.
Bill Clinton: Oh Rich Nixon you are so funny. If candidates were metaphorical fast food items, my wife Hillary would be a Big Mac.
Jack Kennedy: Do you mind if I chime in here? Rich you look like you sweating again.
Richard Nixon: I bet you think you’re SO hysterical Jack Kennedy.
Fozzie Bear: Wakka Wakka!
Richard Nixon: Why is there a Muppet in this scene!
Kermit: Sorry about that everybody, wrong sketch! Although while we’re here, I’d lobby you about an issue I’m passionate about, it’s not easy green!
Bernie Sanders: Hello, adorable green frog. My name Senator Bernard Senators and the top 1 percent of mammals are being treated better than 99% percent of all amphibians. I like to wave my arms in the air like an inflatable tube man at a used car dealership.
… scene!
In my life I’ve been blessed to have performed in front of thousands of people. One of the most rewarding experiences was performing a musical parody of Disney characters on a stage once graced by Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker, The Joker), Billy Dee Williams (Lando Calrissian, Harvey Dent), Jim Cummings (Winnie the Pooh, Tigger), Warwick Davis (Wicket, Professor Flitwick) and so many other vocal greats. There is nothing more magical than the look in a child’s eyes when they hear their favorite character speak to them, calling them by name. One can only hope it inspires them the same way my [in accent] French Uncle Jean Pierre did!
So, as my former employer Mickey Mouse would always say, “Thanks folks, see ya real soon! Buh-bye!”
TBR Interactive: This column is the first in our interactive series. Hear the column come to life by scanning the QR code or use the link featured below.
Supporters for both candidates are out early on debate day at Hofstra. Photo by Victoria Espinoza
A growing trend this election season amongst newspapers, politics-centric websites, pollsters and even candidates is to fact-check claims made by presidential hopefuls or their litany of staffers during speeches, debates and other public forums in real time.
In theory, that makes perfect sense. Candidates should be taken to task for false claims they make in public when attempting to appeal to voters. During the first presidential debate, Sept. 26 at Hofstra University in Hempstead, between Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump, each took turns making statements and accusations that were later proven false by the army of fact-checkers listening closely.
Trump asserted that the stop-and-frisk policy did wonders for crime rates in New York City during its short-lived run. Fact-checks by the Associated Press, the Washington Post and CNN yielded no proof of stop-and-frisk impacting crime rates. Trump accused Clinton of “flip-flopping” her position on The Trans-Pacific Partnership, a global trade deal, which she initially supported and referred to as “the gold standard.” The same cast of fact-checking characters nabbed Clinton for switching positions in the debate aftermath.
Fact-checking during and immediately following the first presidential debate was a useful tool for American voters. However, if checking facts were this important throughout the primary process, it’s possible Americans might be choosing from a different slate of candidates Nov. 8.
Our editorial staff wonders how much of an effect fact-checking has on voters. How many Trump and Clinton supporters heard their candidate say something that was later proved false, and actually started reflecting on if that mattered to them? Fact-checking is important, and it’s great that so many media outlets are devoting resources to it. It’s part of what separates news organizations from the rest of the social media storm that ensues during and after major events. We hope the increase in fact-checking doesn’t fall on deaf-ears, and voters take notice of when their candidates are proven wrong.
If you have had enough of politics and pundits this week, come with me for a nostalgic trip through the golden age of Broadway musicals. I was carried back to those heady days of the 1950s by a recent New York Times article about the lost art of sneaking in for the second act, impossible today due to post-9/11 security. Now I don’t know if you have ever indulged in this type of larcenous activity, so I will explain how it worked — at least for me and my merry little band.
I attended junior high and high school at 68th Street and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. The subway was right at the corner of our Gothic-style building. This is important information for you to know in order to follow our exploits. The other bit of vital info is that our school day officially ended each afternoon at 2 p.m., rather than the usual 3 p.m. for the rest of the schools under the New York City Board of Education’s auspices.
Shortly after I started in seventh grade, I fell in with a happy group of kids who lived across town, on the Upper West Side. While that was decades away from what we know today as the highly cultured and worldly UWS, nonetheless these kids were a lot more culturally savvy than I was. Every Wednesday, which is of course matinee day, they would slip out of our last class some 15 minutes early, slither quietly through the side door of the school and make a beeline for the subway stairs 20 feet away.
Somehow I came to be included in this precocious group. We would ride the local to 59th Street, descend to the lowest level of the station, which in those days housed the BMT line, ride it through Midtown to 49th Street and Broadway and arrive at the predetermined show of our choice just as intermission was ending and the smokers were returning to their seats for the second act.
No one ever checked the tickets for the second act in those days. And there were always empty seats sprinkled throughout the theater that we claimed for our own. If the real seat owner arrived, most often the usher would help us find another seat since it was fairly common practice for young people to move closer to the stage in those days if there was opportunity. I doubt the ushers realized they were helping scofflaws.
In this way, I saw some of the most famous plays with their original casts during what turned out to be the most memorable period of American musical theater. Of course I didn’t know that then, I just knew I was having a fine old time and we didn’t even have to pay the subway fare because we had student passes.
Of course I never told my parents what we were doing every Wednesday afternoon, and somehow we never got caught leaving school early. Perhaps the faculty understood where we were going and thought it more important than the last 15 minutes of classes.
But my parents may have wondered from time to time because I seemed too knowledgeable about the current musicals, their actors and composers. There were the Rodgers and Hammerstein classics: “Oklahoma!,” “Carousel,” “The King and I,” “South Pacific” and “The Sound of Music” (the latter two with Mary Martin); Frank Loesser and his “Guys and Dolls,” “The Music Man,” “West Side Story” and Chita Rivera; Ethel Merman, Gertrude Lawrence, Yul Brynner, Gene Kelly and Gwen Verdon; Irving Berlin and Cole Porter — they were all in my world.
And then there was the best of the best, its eloquence, melody, intelligence and heart standing at the head of those magnificent musicals, Lerner and Loewe’s “My Fair Lady.” I can still hear the music, with its clever lyrics, playing in my head. Led by Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews, it was the longest running show on Broadway for years thereafter. And we saw them all — at least by half.
It’s time to raise the bar on communication skills for teachers. I realize there are sensational educators who inspire a cadre of young minds each year. There are also plenty of teachers who are weak communicators, whose work wouldn’t stand up to their own liberal use of the red pen and who have their own rules of grammar that defy any style book.
That seems especially problematic, particularly for language arts teachers who are, presumably, not only educating our sons and daughters about how to read and analyze text, but are also helping them develop their writing style and voice.
The do-as-I-say-and-not-as-I-do approach may, unwittingly, be preparing students for the unfair world where merit doesn’t count as much as other factors, like connections.
I’m not sure that’s really the lesson we want to teach or the subtext we want to share during these formative years.
I’d like to ask a favor of teachers: Please read your instructions before you give them to your students. You can shape the assignment the way you’d like: asking questions about identity, seeking to understand the perspective of the author, asking for an analysis of the tone of the piece. But please, please, please read over your directions before printing them out, sending them to students or sharing them with parents. It’s not OK for your writing to read like the assembly instructions for a child’s toy.
I know it will take a few more moments and I know that you’re not particularly well paid, but please remember your mission and the difficulty of a double standard. Children can sense hypocrisy quicker than a shark can smell blood in the water.
I realize these missives filled with misdirections may provide a lesson unto themselves. Students may learn that nobody is perfect. While that may be true, are the teachers — who provide confusing directions, who send out assignments rife with poor grammar and misspellings, or who casually make the kinds of mistakes for which they would take major deductions — comfortable enough with themselves and their position to provide students with the opportunity to correct them?
Ideally, learning isn’t just about hearing things, memorizing them, spitting them back out during a test and forgetting them within a week of an exam. As teachers say so often when they meet parents, they want their students to learn to think for themselves and to question the world around them.
If that’s the case, then let’s not pay lip service to those missions. Let’s add a corollary to that and suggest that how teachers communicate is as important as what they communicate.
Let’s also encourage students to ask teachers why their instructions include particular words or employ specific phrases. I recall, many years ago, the first time one of my more self-assured teachers silenced a room when he said, in his booming baritone, “I stand corrected.” The rest of us didn’t know whether to cheer for the boy who challenged him or to duck, worried that a temper tantrum with flying chalk — remember chalk? — might follow.
Maybe schools should hire an editor who can read the instructions to kids and emails to parents. Or, if the budget doesn’t allow a single extra employee, maybe they can engage in the same kind of peer review they utilize in their classrooms.
Ideally, students and teachers can seize the opportunity to learn and improve every year. Teachers create an assignment and then reuse it the next year. If the assignment is unclear, or the directions flawed, the teacher should do his or her homework and revise it.
History came alive on the distaff side last Monday night, as Elizabeth Kahn Kaplan talked about the nine first ladies born in New York State. Kaplan, a longtime resident of this area, author and prominent member of the Three Village Historical Society, combined her appreciation for history and art with delicious details from the lives of the nine women to make a delightful and informative evening at the Setauket Neighborhood House.
So who are those women?
Some of them we can tick off readily: Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Kennedy, Barbara Bush and Nancy Reagan. Others are shrouded in more distant history. They are the wives of Presidents Monroe, Van Buren, Tyler, Cleveland and Fillmore.
Here is an example of one of Kaplan’s anecdotes about these women. Elizabeth Monroe, born of an aristocratic Loyalist family in 1768, who disregarded the disapproval of her father to go ahead and marry the patriot James Monroe, is generally credited with saving the life of Madame de Lafayette. The wife of the French hero of the American Revolution was incarcerated as a result of her aristocratic heritage during the Reign of Terror and about to be guillotined, as had been her grandmother, mother and sister before her. At the time, Monroe was the ambassador to France, but was unable to officially intercede. Elizabeth Monroe, not bound by diplomatic constraints, acted on her own and publicly went to visit Mme. Lafayette in prison, promising to return each day. Not wanting an appearance of conflict with America, the French authorities released Mme. Lafayette the next day.
When Monroe became president, did the American public appreciate his wife? They did not, as Kaplan reported. She was far too elegant and aristocratic for American tastes.
Tyler’s wife, Julia Gardiner, born on Gardiner’s Island, was known a bit infamously as the “rose of Long Island” and was called “madam presidentress,” the term “first lady” not having been coined until much later. Gardiner was Tyler’s second wife, and she attracted a lot of attention by being the first to marry a sitting president and for being 30 years younger than him. Tyler’s eldest daughter was five years older than her stepmother.
And so the stories unfolded, Kaplan keeping her audience totally engaged for well over an hour. Martin Van Buren, the first president to be born after American independence, and the only president to speak English as a second language, married his childhood sweetheart, Hannah Hoes. She spoke Dutch at home with her husband and was his first cousin once removed. Millard Fillmore married Abigail Powers, a schoolteacher. Both were upstate New Yorkers.
Grover Cleveland, who served two terms, but not consecutively, married Frances Folsom, a woman 22 years younger. A bachelor when he entered office, he married the daughter of a close friend. He had looked after her as executor of his friend, Oscar Folsom’s, estate and simply waited until she was old enough before they married. At 21, Frances was the youngest first lady, and she was well-liked. She is appreciated for having started kindergarten in schools.
The other first ladies are well known to us. Eleanor Roosevelt is credited as the most influential and active first lady in our history. The longest-serving first lady, as wife of four-term president Franklin Roosevelt, she went on to a public life of her own. Jackie Kennedy became an American idol and is known for her cultural efforts and redecorating the White House. Barbara Bush, with her forthright style, her constant loyalty and support of her family, and refusal to dye her hair when her husband became president, was always a more popular figure than he. And Nancy Reagan, Ronald Reagan’s second wife, was a diminutive and elegant first lady whose life was dedicated to protecting her husband after the assassination attempt that wounded him and his press secretary.
They are fascinating women and we can claim them as our own.
Monday, we will finally get to see, on the same stage, the presidential candidates who hate each other, find each other unqualified, and who long ago seem to have taken the gloves off in their smackdown.
Here are just a few of the questions I’d ask the man and woman who would like to be our president:
• People don’t like either of you, including politicians in Washington. Secretary Clinton, how will you bring together Democrats and Republicans, when your war with so many Republicans dates back to your years as first lady? And, Mr. Trump, notable Democrats and Republicans seem to find your style and policies confounding. How much can you really accomplish without the broad-based support of Republicans?
• Mr. Trump, you suggested that Congress shouldn’t consider President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee and they haven’t. What would you do if you were President Obama and the Senate openly ignored your choice for Supreme Court?
• Mrs. Clinton, there’s a frequent line from courtroom dramas like Law & Order that goes something like this: “You said X when the detectives spoke to you and now you’re saying Y. Which is it? Were you lying then or are you lying now?” People don’t trust you. You don’t seem completely forthcoming, even about your pneumonia, until we see pictures of you stumbling into your SUV. How do we know when you’re sharing the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
• Mr. Trump, are you going to release your tax returns? The longer you go without sharing them, the more people wonder if you’re hiding something. You believe your opponent selectively discloses details about herself all the time, but you’re not sharing something most, if not all, candidates have shared. What gives?
• Mr. Trump, you have suggested on a few occasions that advocates of the second amendment might have something to say about Hillary Clinton’s position on gun control. You claim that people misinterpret what you say because you didn’t mean what you said when you wrote it. Your rhetoric, were you to be president, would mean something far different from what it does when you’re tweeting. If you were president, would you tamp down the bluster that people might misinterpret? Do you feel you can and should be able to shoot from the hip, as it were, whenever it suits your interests?
• Neither of you seems ready to say the kinds of things we would hope to teach our children, such as “I’m sorry,” or “I was wrong.” Can each of you name a situation or circumstance in public life when you made a mistake and you recognize that you could and should have done better?
• Okay, turning away from each other, what policy do each of you guarantee wouldn’t change one iota and for which you would be inflexible or unwilling to compromise if either of you became president? Candidates often make promises they can’t keep when they’re elected. Is there anything you will pursue in its current form from your platforms?
• You both must recognize that your own rhetoric has alienated voters and raised concerns among various groups about your ability to lead and act on their behalf. Mrs. Clinton, how would you reconcile with Trump’s “deplorables,” as you put it, and Mr. Trump, how would you represent Muslim-Americans, Americans of Mexican heritage or any of the other people you’ve alienated if you became president?
• This campaign seems steeped in negativity. What is the most positive message each of you can share? How would that positive message make people feel better about the election and, down the road, the prospects for themselves and for this country? Be as specific as possible.
Throughout our lives there are roads not taken. What might have happened, who might we have become, are all fascinating questions for which we will never know the answers. Suppose we had gone to a different college, married a different spouse, taken a different first job, followed a different career path, how would our lives have played out? Now most people we have asked have said they would change little or nothing in their lives if they had a do-over, that they had few regrets. But suppose the circumstances had changed, that when we were presented with a choice, we had taken the other road. It can be fun to speculate.
So, to paraphrase Yogi Berra’s famous quote, what are some of those other forks in the road?
The first such choice that comes to mind for me is the decision my husband and I made to return to the East Coast. He was ending his stint in the Air Force in Texas, and he had gotten a job offer from the medical center at The University of Oklahoma. We went to look, my husband and I and our then two children. The people were gracious, welcoming and encouraging. The medical school had a position open in the ophthalmology department, and he was thought to be the right fit after his considerable experience taking care of airmen and their families. The school made him what sounded to us, after the military, like a terrific offer. He toured the hospital, we were shown nice areas of Oklahoma City in which we might live, we were taken to dinner at a country club and we met several other young families who were happily settled there. At the end of a lovely weekend, we turned to each other and said “no.”
We were sure that we wanted to settle in San Diego, California. We had been out to the West Coast during my husband’s vacation weeks, and we loved the area — La Jolla in particular. The city was set in the hills, curved around the harbor, offered a fine academic and cultural existence and had the best climate in the United States. My husband hated the cold weather and thought he had found Shangri-la. I wasn’t so sure about the occasional earthquake tremors that rattled the dishes in the cabinet where we stayed, but I lusted for the ocean after two years in northern Texas. A decision was made: We would move there as soon as he was discharged. He even found a possible associate in a growing practice and we checked out a couple of places to live.
OK, you might ask, how did we wind up on the North Shore of Long Island?
The answer: family. Our children were my parents’ only grandchildren, my parents were our children’s only grandparents, and in those days — the late 1960s — flying between coasts was a big deal involving many hours and changes of planes. And, anyway, my father hated to fly. Additionally my parents were tied to their business in New York City with no plans to retire. On the other side, my husband’s three siblings and their families, along with aunts and cousins, were all in the New York area.
We reluctantly yielded to the pull of family and, in a manner of speaking, we left our hearts in San Diego and came east. We then had to decide where in the vicinity of New York we would stay. The choice was between two medical centers that were on the drawing board: Valhalla, in Westchester, and Stony Brook. So how did we wind up here? That is a story for another column.
Would we be different had we settled in La Jolla? Would our children be different? Ironically one of my sons felt the siren song of that beautiful coastal city of San Diego and almost moved there. But the proximity to family, among other considerations, prevailed. Had we taken the other road, we would be the same people with the same values, I trust, but the details of our lives? We will never know.
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