TIME FOR A BREAK

End of a long satisfying day that began dry and clear in New Jersey and ends after midnight with the sound of rain outside in Massachusetts. Always dig being here in New England, especially with all my kids and grandkids here too, and especially this time of year.

Some of the leaves are already turning, so there's flashes of bright autumn colors here and there. And the local pub in the small town my son and his family live in (and where the band he's in, Bell Engine, will be playing next weekend, too bad I won't be here) was packed tonight but worth the wait for a table for the good local food they serve and the friends run into.

Makes me wish I lived here on days and nights like this. I spent the afternoon in Connecticut just across the line from Millerton, New York, at a soccer game my grandson played in, digging the vistas as well as the game. Then tonight in the local pub/restaurant (where we ran into friends of my older son and his wife who moved here also from the L.A. environs and know some of the same people in Hollywood I and/or he does, it's always been a small world in my experience).

But then I remember a few days ago when I was sitting in the living room of my apartment and a few feet away my youngest son and three friends were playing with their custom made fingerboards (tiny skateboards you use your first two fingers like legs and feet to do skateboard tricks with on tiny ramps and railings and steps etc.) and I turned around to look at them at the height of their fun and thought how cool it is where we live in New Jersey and how lucky we are as I took in my son with his Irish mug and his friends, an African-American boy his age, an Asian-American boy his age, and a girl whose family combines some Caribbean and maybe Latin American antecedents as well as African.

Having been beat up and harassed and arrested and the rest in the struggle for Civil Rights and to make the world a place where "love is more possible" and as MLK Jr. put it in his famous "I Had a Dream" speech about children of different races sitting down at the same table together, it filled my heart to see how far we've come and how much grace has been bestowed on us all to live in the times we live in, despite the 24/7 bad news cycle the media perpetuates.

Time to take a deep breath and let it out as gratitude for all the progress we have made despite the odds that were against us. Then get back in the struggle again.