Looking back as well as forward

AUBURN, Maine — The Yuletide and New Year force us to reflect on the past 365 days.

Introspection sometimes spurs creativity or serves as a sudden wake-up call. We realize being in the same room with loved ones during the holidays is a blessing — not a sure thing.

We are on the short-term plan. We all have an expiration date, but it is what you do in between life and death that counts.

Family gatherings won’t remain the same as time rushes us past us like a falling star. I often got an elbow in the ribs from anxiety during holiday gatherings.

I worried about those future empty seats at the table, knowing my tribe’s numbers would dwindle each year. But there is not a damn thing I can do about it.

I am not making any resolutions, but I am rooting for Mueller’s probe to straighten out a train wreck caused by inept leadership in the White House. Washington is a mess and I believe our leaders have embarrassed themselves here and around the globe.

I also support women who are standing up to men who have no boundaries or have common sense. No man, and I don’t care if he is a politician, actor, athlete or CEO, has the right to harass women. 

Keep your damn hands in pockets, your mouth shut and respect people — especially the sisterhood. Civility makes a nation tick, but common courtesy is eroding — with a lot of help from a mean-spirited leadership at the top in this country.

So I will shake off another banner year and recall the many special moments I shared with the two most important people in my life. Pictures reveal those special moments. I hope enjoy them.

Oh yeah, Happy New Year. 

Let’s hope it’s a good one without any fear.

Maple Syrup Sunday

RAYMOND, Maine — If you live long enough in Maine, you will hear of Maple Syrup Sunday, where Mainers come out in droves on a March day to purchase the good stuff. Maine's Maple Syrup is nothing like the syrup purchased in grocery stores. Maine Syrup is worth sinking deep into your pockets to buy this sweet-tasting stuff. It is as expensive as a fine wine, but this golden stuff makes pancakes a treat to eat. You won't leave a drop on your plate. We visited Balsam Ridge, where maple candy and other homemade treats are offered and equally delicious.

These falls are great

AUBURN, Maine — Great Falls offers spectacular views in the spring after the snow melts up north. It is also a great place to walk, with trails along the Androscoggin River. When Anthony is home from school, we walk the trail, talk and bid winter adieu.

Home on the range and a visit to the University of Maine at Farmington

Spring's arrival means it is time to get our big yard ready for planting. We even made time to visit with Anthony at UMF. We love our yard, Did you know enjoying a yard can relieve stress instantly. A walk in the woods does the same thing. That is why I garden and appreciate nature.

Out for a walk

The Paper Mill Trail in Lisbon, Maine features streams and a walking path that removes stress with every step you take. In the fall, nature unleashes a barrage of colors in the crisp air.  If you are out of sorts, this is a sanctuary to heal your tormented soul.

Come fly with him

LIMA, Peru — For 24 days, I didn't sleep when my son went galavanting all over Peru. He decided to take a trip and study abroad with the University of Maine at Farmington. There was a 12-hour flight to Lima, a quick journey to the Andes Mountains via a twin-engine prop job, followed by a visit to Machu Picchu and ending with with a execursion to the Amazon basin, where spiders as large as a human hand and poisonus snakes rule the jungle. He made it back in one piece after an adventure that many people only dream about in their short lives. What an enlightened fellow!

Hanging out in the Pine Tree State

WILTON/OLD ORCHARD BEACH, Maine — While Anthony was away in Peru, we bummed around Maine and found some interesting spots. Wilton features a big lake and hasn't lost that small-town feel. A visit to Old Orchard Beach always does the body good during spring. 

Fun in the sun

AUBURN/PORTLAND, Maine — Summertime in the Pine Tree State draws people from all over the world. They come to enjoy Maine's vast open spaces, culture and history. Whether I am out in the garden or visiting the little city that could — Portland — I relish the warm temperatures. It's takes the state's harsh winters for Mainers to appreciate summer, which is way to short for all of us. Each summer, the Old Port Festival in Portland comes alive with food and drink, a parade, music and artisans trying to make a buck.

Vacation is all we ever wanted

NEWPORT, R. I. —  We saw how the other half lives and toured one of their stately homes, and along the way, we discovered a piece of history in the Ocean State. Four hours from Maine lies a Rhode Island seacoast town where old, large mansions standout like the Rock of Gibraltar.

Newport is loaded with history and money. We toured the Breakers — the Vanderbilts' 70-room mansion surrounded by a well-manicured yard — for $27 a piece.  Was it worth? If you love history and the Gilded Age, then, yeah, I opened my wallet. It was built for $7 million in 1895 and it now worth $150 million in today's market. You won't find any furniture from Walmart. Everything is solid marble. It is said that the Vanderbilts still live on the fourth floor.

Just look at the pictures and marvel at the home's contents.

After the tour, we realized just how poor we really are today. 

But then we went back a few hundred years to tour Fort Adams. Here is synopsis of the this old fort:

"The cost of building Fort Adams for three decades was over three million dollars. It was designed to mount 468 guns around a perimeter of over 1700 yards. It used a combination of Maine granite, brick, and shale. During a time of war it could house 2400 men, though a peace time garrison of 200 was sufficient. The result was the design and work of two prominent engineers, Simon Bernard, a former aide to Napoleon and Joseph G. Totten, who later became the first head of the Army Corps of Engineers. Their problem was to defend the location by both sea and land attack and they relied on the classic military science developed by Sebastien Le Prestre de Vauban, the engineer for King Louis XIV of France. Depth and redundancy of defense was the key ingredient." — Rhode Island tourism department.

This fort is huge, but is now used for concerts and private celebrations.


I discovered my claustrophobia at Fort Adams. Everybody on the tour was invited to visit an underground listening post 20 feet below the fort. It is dark and dank and as you go deeper into the earth. I am 6-foot-3, and by the time we ended up at the other end, I was nearly squatting as the ceiling lowered to little more than three feet. At that low point, I felt like somebody shoved me into a pine box and was seized by claustrophobia. I yelled to the guide, "Hey, where the hell is the opening." He said, "You are close to it." I responded: "Good, because if it wasn't, I was going to make an frigging hole." Minutes later, I was looking at the sky after feeling like I was entombed for days.

The great and non-stop outdoors

Summer was none-stop for us. There was the Great Falls Balloon Festival and World War II planes descending from the skies and landing at Lewiston-Auburn Airport. A wind storm knocked out power to thousands across the Pine Tree State. We hunted for ancestors at an obscure cemetery and visited the Shakers' Village in Gray-New Gloucester. We hiked every weekend and discovered some great walking trails in Auburn and Lewiston. Anthony and I took in a Shins concert on a cold-and-rainy evening at Thomas Point in Portland.

Holiday happenings

Right now, it -1 degrees in Maine on New Year's Eve. Before this long stretch of cold enveloped the Northeast, the holidays came and went like a summer breeze. We traveled to central Massachusetts and then to Lexington, Mass., for Thanksgiving, but we enjoyed a white Christmas after a classic Nor'easter dropped a foot of snow on the Pine Tree State. The wood stove has been going for the past 15 days, but despite winter's biting cold, I enjoyed another year with my family. 

Goodfellows52: Goodfellows52: DNA results are in and I am a mongr...

Goodfellows52: Goodfellows52: DNA results are in and I am a mongr...: Goodfellows52: DNA results are in and I am a mongrel like any oth... : My uncle and World War II hero B.J. Murano, Uncle Rocky and his wife,...

The dream of a White Christmas was kind of like a nightmare.

AUBURN, Maine —Anybody who dreamed of this White Christmas, should be, and I am quoting one of my favorite writers, Charles Dickens, “boiled in in their own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through their heart.”

Bing Crosby has suddenly become my enemy and his holiday dream turned into a nightmare for many snowbound residents of New England. I never understood why Irving Berlin wrote this song. 

Did he ever shovel his driveway or try to drive a car in snow!

I was going to spend the afternoon eating, drinking and being merry, but a Nor’easter dropped a foot of snow on us this Christmas and buried both my driveways with annoying white powder.

But now my son and I will be manning the shovels and cursing another snowstorm on Christmas. Instead of raising a toast to my fine family, I will be tossing snow over my shoulder in the Arctic air.

Bah humbug! Are there no work houses for Mother Nature and Old Man Winter?

I would have preferred the sun, temperatures in the high 30s and a place to walk without fear of slipping on ice and hitting the ground with a skull-cracking thud.

Yeah, baby it’s cold outside!

Yukon Cornelius had it right when he screamed, “It is not fit for man nor beast.”

But before you call me Scrooge, I used my girth and muscle and extricated a car stuck in snow.

But no good deed goes unpunished. The plow came and left a wall a snow in front of my driveways the could have only been scaled with repelling gear.

I am lucky to be surrounded by neighbors who know how to be right neighborly and haven’t lost the Christmas spirit. Two of them snowblowed my driveways despite the frightful weather. Their kindness is just one of the many reasons why I offer them fresh vegetables from my garden each summer.

I was not dreaming of a white frigging Christmas. The last thing I wanted to be was snowbound thanks to Mother Nature, who took all of New England out for a walk this Monday.

Despite the shoveling and the biting cold, I have to admit the snow gave the holiday a special glow and a reason to get outside and breath that fresh Canadian air.

Forgive me for sounding like a cranky Mainer lamenting about winter’s wrath, but like Dr. Seuss said: “Adults are obsolete children.”

I am no different.

Goodfellows52: DNA results are in and I am a mongrel like any oth...

Goodfellows52: DNA results are in and I am a mongrel like any oth...: My uncle and World War II hero B.J. Murano, Uncle Rocky and his wife, Helen and B.J.'s wife, Eddie. My father, Big Al, (left) an...

DNA results are in and I am a mongrel like any other human being

My uncle and World War II hero B.J. Murano, Uncle Rocky and his wife, Helen and B.J.'s wife, Eddie.

My father, Big Al, (left) and my mom, Louise (red shirt) and our neighbor Maureen at a Columbus Day Parade in Revere, Mass.

My father, my son and I stand during a Columbus Day Parade in Revere, Mass., back in 1997.

A proud father with his daughter and son in 1962.

“There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.”    

                   — Helen Keller

“If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday.” 

— Pearl S. Buck

                                                                                                     

“We all grow up with the weight of history on us. Our ancestors dwell in attics of our brains, as they do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies.”

— Shirley Abbott

AUBURN, Maine — After receiving my DNA results from ancestry.com, my perspicacious son, Anthony, pointed out that all my ancestors exist in my spit that was just tested in a lab.

To me, it was a profound statement from my son. He continues to meticulously chart our family tree and has given me a new appreciation of who I am and how I got here.

When we look back at our biological history, I think we forget that humanity is composite of our ancestors who have given us life — and their traits — for better or worse. 

Evolution (only science works for me) has been kind to us — for the moment.

The saliva test was a Christmas gift from Anthony and it really is the gift that keeps on giving. I found there is an endless parade of fourth and fifth cousins out there and some have contacted me. My son has taken his quest further and reached out to living relatives around the globe.

We are all probably related (although we don’t like to admit it), but these conclusive results haven’t stopped us from killing each other over ancient hatreds, race and pride.

When the findings arrived, Anthony and I reviewed the breakdown of who I am and we found our ancestors come from all over Europe, the Caucuses and the Middle East.

According to Ancestry’s ethnicity estimate, my ancestors are from these regions:

Europe South 50 percent (no surprise there)

Southern Italy

From your regions: Caucasus, Europe South, Middle East

Europe West 24 percent

Caucasus 15 percent

Low Confidence Regions

Great Britain 4 percent

Middle East 2 percent

Scandinavia 2 percent

Finland/Northwest Russia < 1 percent

Ireland/Scotland/Wales < 1 percent

Iberian Peninsula < 1 percent

My ancestors’s biology is tucked away deep inside my DNA. Take the test and you will find we are all mongrels and the thought of being a purebred is absurd.

The DNA results arrived in time for the holidays, which can be a painful time of year for those who continue to grieve for lost loved ones.

I miss my parents and Christmas isn’t the same without them. I was raised on a street where nearly dozen Italian relatives lived and all had a hand in my upbringing. But their life force still courses through my veins and they will be with me this holiday and for all eternity.

Exchanging spirits and cooking enough food to feed a battalion of hungry soldiers was just a few ways my family celebrated the Yuletide. It was a two-day event on McClure Street and it featured a Christmas Eve supper with super-sized servings of fish, and for an encore, there was an afternoon Christmas meal featuring pasta, ham and turkey. You didn’t eat for days after gorging yourself in the afterglow of the holidays. 

But my neighborhood is filled with new faces, and those people I loved and cherished, are now wonderful memories of my past. The holidays resurrect those fond recollections and are a source of joy, pride and sadness for me.

But you have only two choices when confronting the holidays and loss: Close the shades in your room and disappear into an abyss of depression — or go forth and enjoy those special moments with your child and wife that only exist for a brief instance in the universe.

It is not a comfort to me and doesn’t ease my grief, but my DNA made me realize that my parents live on inside me. I begrudgingly accept that life is ephemeral, and if you live long enough, your loved ones and close friends fall away like the passing seasons.

But I made a promise to myself to make every day count, including the holidays.

My DNA test also revealed that I am related to England’s King Richard the III and Edward the I, who was also known as Edward Longshanks.

I sometimes feel like a royal, but my throne is a recliner in my parlor. 

I am also grateful to an ancestor, Middlesex County New Jersey Militia Capt. John Payne, who squared off against King George’s Redcoats. Anthony’s careful research of Payne led to our admittance to the Sons of American Revolution this year. He also went on to prove through our DNA that we are indeed related to Payne.

So I will raise a toast to my ancestors and my family and enjoy another Christmas with all of them.

Goodfellows52: A veteran and a fine father

Goodfellows52: A veteran and a fine father: Imagine you are this kid from the Greater Boston area with your heart set on attending college when a letter suddenly...