Ah, where to start? At the beginning, I suppose.

Everything was black and empty. Nothing existed at all except a tiny point of light. Suddenly, the light exploded, releasing incredible amounts of energy! Out of the swirling, white-hot maelstrom of cosmic power, matter began to condense and form the stars.....Somewhat later, I was born and grew up. I did that in small-town coastal Connecticut.

I live in Essex until I was 11 years old. Looking back, Essex was (and is) a great place to grow up. I lived on a small block full of houses built in the 18th and 19th century. We had the tidal coves at the end of my street and a mill-pond with three waterfalls at the end of the field behind our house. An elderly recluse lived next door in a huge old Jumangi-like house (we used to steal her rhubarb, hoping Mom would make strawberry-rhubarb pie). We convinced ourselves that she was a witch. Some strange guy at the end of the street had this enormous lawn (acres of it) that stretched down to the cove itself. I used to wonder why he wanted such a huge lawn to take care of. The field, the pond, the cove and the boatyards were my playground. I rode my bike down to old Main Street anytime I wanted.

I took all that for granted at the time. I thought everybody everywhere lived like us. I knew nothing of money, power, pretense, prejudice or poverty. I know all about it now, but I still do not understand any of it very well. Except the money part; I get that.

Then my parents moved us to the slums of Old Saybrook. The houses were weird, not like the normal ones in Essex. The main street had lots of ugly brick buildings and stores. It had four lanes and too many cars and I wasn't allowed to ride my bike there because it wasn't safe! There were no kids close enough that I could ride my bike and make friends with - I couldn't cross the unsafe Main Street. I couldn't even ride around the block because we lived on a dead end street! What's more, we had to live next to a swamp, where the tides would sometimes creep up almost to the lawn. What kind of hellhole had they dragged us to!?! Dead ends, swamps, deadly roads? Crap!

As an adult looking back, I lived on a cul-de-sac overlooking the salt marsh, in the very upscale town of Old Saybrook. I had the pleasure of keeping company with one of the great icons (and great people) of the century. But alas, I did not grow up knowing all this. I grew up in my reality as I experienced it.

Still, I spent my entire life within walking distance of both fresh and tidal water (we had a small pond behind us in Saybrook as well). I was indeed fortunate in that. Plus Saybrook has always had an awesome library (more on that later), and I loved to read. By the age of twelve I had gone through everything in the children's section and had to move on to the adult literature. Not surprisingly, it is a fantasy of mine to make love to a librarian.