Michael Stephen Daigle's Blog, page 7
January 8, 2024
How to live a long life
What are your thoughts on the concept of living a very long life?
Love well even when it hurts…be brave not fearful…taste everything…bring flowers…
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December 23, 2023
We were at war
Share what you know about the year you were born.
The year I was born we were at war.
And the year after that.
And the year after that.
And the decade after that.
And all the decades since.
At war.
At wars of greed,wars of anger, of national ego, wars that made no sense,which was nearly all….
All the decades since.
All the decades to come.
And in all that with all the distance and error and sadness, there is you, your mouth, the taste of wet fingers, the softness of
Pebbled skin, your dark smile.
In all of that,in all the wars, I love you.
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December 14, 2023
A pandemic Christmas, with elves
I wrote this last year, in part a tribute to singer Steve Goodman’s “Vegamatic” a classic satiric look mass marketing, and in part a reflection on the pandemic that changed so many habits for a time.
The irony, though, is that my Facebook profile was hacked in a ransomware attack, so all this stuff is quite real.
Anyway, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all.
“A pandemic Christmas, with elves”
“Marie, honey, did you buy a giant Lego set from Amazon?” He couldn’t disguise the irritation in his voice. Lewis planned, and such interruptions were disruptive.
He stared at the computer message, waiting for Marie’s answer. He could hear his wife shuffling with something in the kitchen.
“Honey?” He raised his voice. Maybe she didn’t hear him. “Weren’t we going to talk to the kids first, you know, before launching into the usual Christmas madness of huge toys?”
Silence, still.
“It’s just that I have a message from UPS saying they had trouble delivering it. Do you remember buying it? We’ve been home all week. Why would they have trouble delivering it?”
Marie slipped into the office with a dish towel over her shoulder and dropped her elbows on Lewis’s head.
“Ow,” he squealed. “Sharp.”
Marie mumbled a few words as she read the message.
“Ah, that’s spam,” she said as she kissed the top of his head. “Look at the return address. Nopolehaha.com? Totally fake. Delete it. Now if you don’t mind I have some chickens to murder for dinner tonight.” She turned away. “And if you can’t lower the stress level in here, I might just have to murder you, too. I get it, the report and all, but, Lewis, squawk, squawk!”
Lewis laughed. “Do it mercifully.”
She was right. The year-end sales report had taken entirely too long. It hadn’t been a bad year, just not as good as top management had predicted. And with the office disruption and people working from home half the time, it was hard to judge the corporate mood. Usually when that happened the talk of layoffs began. Maybe that’s why he took so long to complete it, to delay that possibility, as if each day longer he worked on the report the bad news might become better.
“I’m just the messenger,” he said softly so there was no chance that Marie would hear it. He didn’t want to worry her. “I’m just the messenger,” he repeated. “But sometimes they kill the messenger.”
He closed his eyes, opened them, and leaned back to the desk. “Okay, let’s go.” Trying to cheer himself.
He sipped some iced tea and returned to the report. Last piece of business for the year, some time off, visit the kids in Vermont for Christmas, a couple day’s rest, then back to the grind after New Year’s Day.
He puzzled again at the email message. Our kids are married with kids of their own, he thought, Maybe it was them. Shipment got messed up. “Alright,” he said, “Onward.”
He typed a few more pages. Christmas carols from the kitchen drifted throughout the house.
As he uploaded a chart, the front door camera chimed out a few measures of “Jingle Bells” and Lewis peeked at his phone to see a UPS driver walking away from the porch where she had placed a box.
“I thought they couldn’t deliver it,” Lewis grumbled as he pushed out of his chair. “Marie, did you order something else from somewhere? There’s a box on the porch.”
It was three boxes. Each was bound with red-and-white candy cane tape and a green-and-white banner that yelled, “Thanks for your order!!”
Lewis scratched his head. “What’s all this?” He propped open the storm door with one foot and dropped the boxes in the corner by the book shelf. “Don’t have time for this,” he muttered as he glanced as his watch.
He examined the labels and discovered all three had different return addresses and emails. He snapped photos with his phone.
Returns are usually 15 days. I’ll call after I finish the report and arrange pick-up tomorrow.
The kitchen was a warm with the mellow aroma of roasting, marinated chicken.
Marie entered and pointed to the living room. “There’s …”
“More packages…” Lewis completed her sentence. “It’s too much. The odd messages and invoices. I think we’ve been hacked.”
Marie offered as raised-eyebrow head shake.
“How long till dinner?”
“Hour. About 6:30.”
“Smells good,” Lewis said. “The report’s nearly ready to file. I’ll run a scan before dinner. Maybe it’s a Trojan horse or some malware. Clean it out. Where’s your laptop? I’ll scan it as well.”
Marie retrieved her computer from the bedroom.
“What a time of year to have this happen,” she said. “All that online shopping, all those orders, all those credit cards.”
“Yeah, everybody in a hurry. All it takes is one mistake and your whole financial world is open for examination. Always wondered what evil genius is behind it all. Maybe some Santa elf gone rogue.” He patted the computer. “I’m ready for them.”
“My hero,” Marie extravagantly swooned, eyes aflutter.
Lewis set Marie’s computer on the chair near his desk, started the scan and turned to his own.
He ran several types of analyses on the report, fiddled with the charts so they were easier to read, checked the text to ensure the highlighted hyper links to other company divisions worked, added a signature and sent the file to the company treasurer and chief executive officer.
The scan on Marie’s laptop had blasted through 270,000 files and reported no problems.
While sending the email with the report he noticed a new troubling message about an “approved purchase” from a large online merchant. The message alerted him to his apparent successful purchase of five kid-sized motorized toy Ram pick-up trucks.
Lewis recognized the item immediately as a “spoofing file,” an invoice created by hackers that uses the logos of real companies to inform unsuspecting customers of a large purchase.
Lewis smiled. “Gotcha.” And he open a desktop file marked “scam files,” selected an address, and forwarded the offending message to the security division of the actual company.
When he opened the file to check the virus scan, a sound leaked from the speaker. Lewis looked away and then back. Naw, he thought, computers don’t giggle.
****
The next morning Lewis found Marie opening the packages that had arrived the day before.
Beside her was a pile of baby clothes, another of children’s books, crayons, video games and assorted items intended as Christmas presents.
“What are you doing? We need to send this stuff back, not open it.” He scanned the boxes. “Wait, what’s this? Veg-O-Matic?”
“Yeah, it’s like a food processor.”
Lewis laughed. “Well, give that one away.” He knelt to gather up the goods and stuff them back in their boxes.
Marie reached for his hands and held them till he dropped the baby clothes.
“Honey, have some coffee and sit down. There is no place to send these things back to. Did you read the return email addresses? rednosedelivery.com? ondancerexpress.com? And my favorite, makingthelist.com.”
Lewis, eyes wide, wiped his forehead. “But…they charged us for all this. How did we get it? The cost…we’ll never get the money back.”
“I checked our credit cards, Lewis. There are no transactions.”
He scowled. “So it’s a joke. Who do we know…?”
Marie laughed. “But what a joke. We need to donate all this stuff as fast as we can, just in case it’s a mistake. I’ve already made a list of charities.”
“Some mistake.” Lewis wasn’t laughing.
“Come on, get over it. I doubt makingthelist.com is going to send out a squad of little armed Santas for this stuff.”
“Why?”
“Because it doesn’t exist. I’ve been searching the Internet all morning. None of these sites exist.”
Her enthusiasm won him over. “You’re right. No one is going to harass us over a few boxes of misdelivered toys. Happens all the time.”
Marie bit her lip and nodded toward the front yard.
“Not just a few.”
Lewis stepped to the front door, face puzzled and looked back at Marie before he opened the door.
“Holy smokes!”
Marie joined him, “There’s twenty.”
“Oh, Marie, that’s going to take…”
“Lewis, those are going to be easy. The ones in the side yard are going to be a little tougher.”
He stepped around one of the piles on the porch to see five large wooden crates in the yard marked, “Handle with care. HEAVY.”
He leaned against the pile of boxes, suddenly light, the pressing concerns of the past few days – the report, the deadlines, holiday shopping, planning the Vermont trip, what to get Marie after last year’s disastrous excursion into exercise equipment – gone.
He reached to hold her and laughed.
His phone rang with the sound of children giggling.
Staring back at him was an avatar of two smiling and waving elves and the logo: Zeke and Noel Productions. A division of nopolehaha.com.
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December 8, 2023
My Facebook account was hacked. Do not respond to any info requests from me under my name
Dear friends, my Facebook account under MICHAEL DAIGLE has been hacked under a malware/ransomware attack. Today the hacker is asking for your phone number.
DO NOT RESPOND.
For verification that this is me: Dover, Ironton NJ, Waterville, Flemington, Jimmy Dawson, cancer,
Thanks.
Also, if you would, please post a note on your FB account to warn your friends to ignore any request from MICHAL DAIGLE. that WOULD HELP.
Michael; Stephen Daigle
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December 1, 2023
DRAGONY RISING: An American story
The headlines tell daily of the small, corrupt events. A secretary, a treasurer, clerk, an elected official — anyone with access to bank accounts. They steal a few thousand, a sometimes many thousands, sometimes for years.
It’s the kind of casual corruption that infects our institutions. I mean, who steals money from a youth football team or the Girl Scouts?
It is the type of unseen crime described by Ironton, N.J. Mayor Howard Newton in THE SWAMPS OF JERSEY, the first Frank Nagler Mystery, crimes perpetuated unseen by the little men in the back room.
It is also the type of crime at the heart of the fifth Nagler mystery, DRAGONY RISING.
Dragony asks a simple question: How do you steal something in plain sight?
One answer: You buy it.
A second answer: You change the rules.
That way when the theft is complete you can claim it was perfectly legal.
In the Frank Nagler series I tried to create a city that is a complex society, with multiple layers of wealth and poverty, intersecting cultures with the joy and conflict those intersections produce.
For the Frank Nagler mysteries, those clashes are the heart of the mysteries Nagler must unravel; his family history is as much a part of that clash as any other character’s back story.
DRAGONY RISING was written during the Covid pandemic and the Trump administration, a time of great uncertainty that is woven into the mystery.
In DRAGONY RISING Ironton is a city on fire and it is Nagler’s job to quench the flames.
Dragony Rising and the other Frank Nagler Mysteries are available at Book & Puppet, Easton Pa., and a ebooks, paperbacks, audio books online at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. If you go to a Barnes and Noble bookstore, ask the clerk to order the books. Do it enough times and they’ll add it to their shelves.
For fun, here is a link to an interview I did recently with Kate Delaney, an award winning journalist.
Dragony Rising was awarded First Place for Mysteries in the 2022 Royal Dragonyfly Book Awards; named a Notable 100 Indie Book in the 2022 Shelf Unbound Indie Book Awards; A Distingished Favorite in the 2023 Independent Press Awards. A Distinguished Favorite in the 2023 Big NYC Book Awards
This is how the conspiracy at the heart of Dragony Rising was planned:
“Ramirez opened her computer screen to show the start of an old-style video.
“This looks like it was recorded on an older camera, possibly on tape and converted to a digital file. It’s really dark, badly recorded. The visuals are uneven and the sound drops out from time to time. I cleaned it up some. But… Frank … It’s that meeting, from 2006 in Dubin Place.”
The still image on the computer showed Ollivar, Dancer, Carlton Dixon, Tallem, Bernie Langdon, Dan Thomson, Taylor Mangot II and a blonde woman at his side, her face turned from the camera, possibly Rachel Pursel. The backs of heads filled the front bottom of the shot.
Ramirez hit play and the video jerked to life.
Ollivar spoke.
“All right, to finish up, here’s where we are. Ray…where’s Ray, okay put your hand up. Good. Ray’s in the planning department. All our applications will go through him, and the inspections. They’ll be the cleanest fucking inspections you’ve ever seen.” A general laugh. “Same in the fire department. Duval is working on a few “accidents.” He’ll inspect them, of course, and declare them solved in such a way that the insurance companies will have no questions. We have real estate and legal people who will handle property transfers once the settlements are complete. The properties will be consolidated under a variety of companies controlled by Mr. Mangot. That’s the first step. The police have others. Dancer?”
Dancer stepped forward and nodded. “Yeah, look. There’s some guys we’re gonna have to deal with. So if you’re working with someone one day, and the next week he ain’t there, don’t worry and don’t ask questions. If ya get asked about it, play dumb. ‘Sol died? I din’t know that. Sorry to hear that.’ We don’t need heroes. Just do your job.”
Ollivar shifted to the front of the crowd again. “Thanks, Dancer. Heed that warning. Do your job. This is not a frontal assault on Ironton. This is a takeover. Quietly. With stealth, not brawn. It will require patience. It’s the model we will use to move forward, town by town. Now, you all have heard about Article 256-2006? It is an article that will consolidate the power of Ironton’s government in one person. Councilman Bill Weston – Stand, please Bill, thanks. – Bill is our first player, newly elected. He has introduced Article 256. It did not get a second, and therefore no vote. But we planned for that. It will be reintroduced, and gain a second, but fail again. Then again, and add another vote, and again, until one glorious year, it is passed into law and signed by the mayor of our choice.”
Scattered applause.
Ollivar: “Thanks. Our leader Carlton Dixon has a few words.”
A shuffling of bodies. Handshakes. Embraces. Raised fists.
“Thank you, Jesus. People think revolutions take place on the streets, are loud, violent things. Crowds with torches and bricks and flags threatening overthrow. That is theater. Revolution are ideas, formed and refined in meetings like this, in meetings your ancestors held a century or more ago to take power back from the new folks who wanted it. Your ancestors stood up and said, no. No to the pollution of their lives. No to the slippery degradation of their beliefs. So they rose up and took back the purity of their lives.”
Dixon help up one hand to silence the murmured approval. “Society and its creation, government, at times rot. Such is that time. But society is a pile of rocks strapped together with the dreams of believers like you all. It is time to seek out the dreams that have putrefied. Pull out the loose rock, weaken its hold on the faulty structure. Pull one and it leans, makes a hole; pull another and it shivers, another, and it falls. Find your rock, that weak crumbling rock, brothers and sisters, and pull.”
A cheer filled the room. Dixon smiled and gently motioned for the cheering to cease.
“You will not see me often, but you will know the time has come when you hear me referred to as ‘McSalley.’ Think of it as a code. There will be an event of destruction. It will be a distraction, and while they try to solve it, our work will go on. Also know this: When this gentleman reappears in Ironton, it has begun.”
Dixon pointed to the far corner as out of the shadows stepped McCarroll.
A cheer and an uncertain, “Oohh.” Then another sound.
Ramirez shut off the video; McCarroll’s blurred face shimmered on the computer screen.
“Is it really that easy?” she asked in a tortured whisper.
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October 29, 2023
Nagler’s Secret: Silence and tension
In NAGLER’S SECRET, the work-in-progress Book six of the Frank Nagler Mystery series, Ironton, N.J. Detective Frank Nagler and others have been examining an old farm house that could be the headquarters of a shadowy outfit called Sunshine Farms.
In this scene Nagler stayed behind to look for something when two people enter the building,. He is on the second floor and they entered the front door, a floor below.
The idea is this scene is to use silence to create atmosphere and tension, and then with sound, bring the scene to a conclusion.
The multi award-winning Frank Nagler Mysteries are available in ebook, paperback and audiobook at leading online book sellers and at Book & Puppet, Easton, Pa.
Book 5, DRAGONY RISING, was recently named a Distinguished Favorite in the 2023 Big NYC Book Awards.
The scene:
He put on rubber gloves and with his pocketknife spun the eyehook from the wall and placed it and the footlong piece of frayed hemp rope in an evidence bag.
The voices from below startled him.
“Got company,” Nagler texted Ramirez.
Below, the pair had stopped talking.
With concentrated, squinting eyes he followed their hollow footsteps on the bare wooden floors. They first walked together to the room to the right of the doorway, a parlor that contained one chair and some boxes; the door to the room to the left had been closed.
It scraped open.
The room must have been empty. They didn’t enter. One of them sneezed. He imagined the other’s hard warning face.
He shook his head. Do they think I don’t know they are here? Why are they sneaking around?
Nagler felt his damaged left ankle begin to lock from standing still.
The only way to relieve the pressure was to step or walk; he raised his heel and slowly turned the foot on its ball, hoping the floor would not creak.
In his pocket, his phone pinged.
It was Ramirez: “On our way back. 10 min.”
They didn’t hear that.
Downstairs the pair separated.
While footsteps crossed to the rear of the house where he and Calista found Dwayne hanging, the creak of dry, stuck doors crept up through the thin, wooden walls.
A voice called from the rear of the house, excited but unintelligible. Quick steps toward the voice. Their clomping steps said they were both in rooms he had not examined.
What the hell are they doing? And why didn’t we see them before?
Nagler shook his head and dropped his chin to his collarbone.
They have to know I’m here, so what’s taking them so long?
“Enough of this,” he muttered.
He guessed that he had about thirty seconds before they were climbing the stairs if they heard his noise.
He stepped from the cubicle and kicked opened the door across the narrow hallway, left it open, and in three steps, entered the first door on the right side of the hallways. It stuck and opened with a pop.
Good. They had to have heard that.
Inside, he held the latch open and leaned his shoulder on the door frame.
The stairs creaked under each step; boots kicked the risers until all the foot sounds were at the landing.
They separated; doors on the opposite hall grumbled open.
When steps paused in front of the door to the room here he stood, with gun drawn Nagler pulled open the door and yanked in the intruder by his collar.
“What the …”
Nagler shoved the stunned man and pressed his face into the opposite door.
The other man stepped into the landing with a drawn handgun.
“Morrison?”
“You don’t want to do this, Frank,” Sgt. Jack Morrison said, squaring his posture.
“Do what? Shoot your friend and then shoot you? What the fuck are you doing, Morrison?”
“You need to walk away from this, Frank. It’s gonna get bad for you.”
“Not as bad as it’s gonna get for you,” Nagler said as he turned and in two steps pressed the barrel of his weapon to Morrison’s forehead, pushing the shorter man to the stair railing.
“Hey, Frank!… what the fuck?”
Downstairs the front door was slammed open.
“Frank!” Ramirez yelled.
“Upstairs. Got a couple friends. Tell Calista to stay downstairs.”
“Give it up, son,” Nagler said, glaring as he pulled back his weapon.
“Jesus, Captain, he was going to shoot me.”
“I doubt that,” Ramirez said as she nodded to Nagler and stepped off the stairs behind Morrison. “Let me have it,” and reached a hand out for Morrison’s weapon.
Instead of releasing the weapon, Morrison flinched.
Ramirez dropped him to the floor and pressed a foot onto his wrist.
“Push it away,” she ordered.
His fingers released the handle and with what effort he could muster from his crushed hand, gave up the gun.
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October 14, 2023
Fossils
The sun will consume us in a few billion years.
Gas billows blow across space,
so quick in an instant we won’t have time to look up
to call
to scream
to whisper
those last unsaid words;
dust.
The gray image is my innards,
A hole where the cancer used to be.
It is relief
It is hope
It is life.
A fossil.
We dig them up in the deserts.
All the things that grew, walked and flew
That roared in the darkness; all they ate;
Coupled, shameless, the parts of exultant being.
They, too, blasted to dust.
Will they laugh at us when we join them
Unable to change fate?
Your eyes were dark that first time
Unfulfilled with a first kiss.
The grey image shows the hole of what’s taken;
It does not show the touch of your mouth.
You thought in jest that I made fun of your hair.
Sighs come before screams.
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September 22, 2023
Big NYC Award for DRAGONY RISING
I am honored and excited to announce that DRAGONY RISING, book 5 in the Frank Nagler Mystery Series, has been named a DISTINGUISHED FAVORITE in the 2023 Big NYC Book Awards.
Dragony Rising joins other Frank Nagler Mysteries as multi-award winning works.
The award announcement can be found here:
https://www.nycbigbookaward.com/2023distinguishedfavorites
My thanks to the Big NYC award committee and the Independent Press Award committee for the recognition.
And thanks to Royal Dragonfly Book Awards and Shelf Unbound Indie Book Awards, too.
Dragony Rising awards:
First Place for Mysteries in the 2022 Royal Dragonyfly Book Awards
A Notable 100 Indie Book in the 2022 Shelf Unbound Indie Book Awards;
A Distingished Favorite in the 2023 Independent Press Awards.
A Distinguished Favorite in the 2023 Big NYC Book Awards
What readers say about DRAGONY RISING:
“This was such a thrill! A great detective story that made me not want to put the book down!”
“Dragony Rising is more a mystery than a thriller, but it’s a great read and a compelling story. I highly recommend the novel and the series.”
“This novel is absolutely fantastic! This is the 5th book of the series, and probably my favorite one. Could not recommend it enough!”
“A very well written and highly engaging book that sucked me in right away. The author masterfully crafted a fast paced and very realistic crime story. If you are into crime drama or mysteries, this book is a must! Well done…well done indeed!”
The Frank Nagler mystery series: “The Swamps of Jersey,” “A Game Called Dead,” “The Weight of Living,” “The Red Hand,” and “Dragony Rising.”
“One of modern fiction’s expertly drawn detectives:” Kirkus Reviews
“A Game Called Dead” was named a Runner-Up in the Shelf Unbound 2016 Best Indie Book contest.
“The Weight of Living” was awarded First Place for mysteries in the 2017 Royal Dragonfly Book Award contest;
Named A Notable 100 Book, Shelf Unbound 2018 Indie Book Awards;
Named a Distinguished Favorite, 2018 Independent Press Awards.
Named a Distinguished Favorite in the 2018 Big NYC Book Contest.
Named a Finalist in the 2019 Book Excellence Awards.
Named A Gold Star Award winner in the 2020 Elite Choice Book Awards
Named a Book Award Winner in 2021 by Maincraft Media Fiction Book Awards
“The Red Hand” was named a Distinguished Favorite in the 2019 Big NYC Book Contest
Named Second Place winner for mysteries in the 2019 Royal Dragonfly Book Awards
Named a Notable 100 Book in the 2019 Shelf Unbound Indie Book Awards
Named a Distinguished Favorite in the 2020 Independent Press Awards
A Nominee in the 2020 TopShelf Book Awards
Named A Gold Star Award winner in the 2020 Elite Choice Book Awards
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September 12, 2023
Tired of war
Tired of war.
Tired of towers falling
Of remembering battles with piled dead
Of reasons that have no truth
Blustering babble, too much noise
From thrust out medaled chests,
Fists raised then pounding
Launching sky shrieking
Red-tailed smoke filled sunsets
Ground shaking
Air filled with cries and loss and fear and mindless hatred
Ancient grudges made modern
The jingling of coins changing hands.
Hearing myself, my nonsense
The words you hear hollow.
Fight back, your eyes say
Hush
Let fingers entwine and tongues tangle
Burning flowers brush hidden flesh
Come
Join
Release not the anguished cry of war and loss
But the shout of love
Fight back, your eyes say.
Take
Give.
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August 26, 2023
Remembering Kathy
We didn’t know her parents’ names.
Just knew that she was driving from Maine to Virginia to spend time with them.
It was a surprise to us all she was driving, since none of us could recall her having a car, but there she was driving away unseen from the party; I think someone asked, “How was she getting home?”
She never made it.
A call from the Connecticut State Police told us she had been killed in a traffic accident in Danbury.
They called us at the Waterville, Maine Morning Sentinel, her employer, because the rental car had no other information about her other than her driver’s license. They found a copy of the paper.
We asked about her cat, knowing it would be traveling with her.
It was a sad end.
Her name was Kathy Keim. She was a copy and layout editor, a good one.
She might have been near forty, lived alone. She was socially awkward in a way that today might have her identified in some sort of spectrum or another. She would approach your desk and hem and haw for a moment before speaking; sometimes she’d hem and haw and walk away until you called her back.
Newsrooms on deadline are places that quietly hum with the combined effort to produce the daily edition.
The call from the Connecticut State Police took the hum out of the room, replacing it with a mechanical numbness. We had all written stories on deadline of the deaths of people familiar to us, but rarely about one of our own.
Management was called, information gathered about her career, details of the accident, all collected for a brief announcement in the next day’s paper about her death, placed at the bottom right on page one.
An official obituary would follow after other details were gathered.
The paper held a memorial service.
A recent trip back from Maine bought her death to mind.
The exit where she was killed — where she apparently, perhaps in confusion and fatigue pulled the car into the path of a semi — is still there, larger, busier, lined with more truck stops, gas stations and restaurants to serve the millions of travelers who now fill Route 84.
I have taken that trip a couple dozen times since then.
I think of her death each time.
Her life mattered.
The Danbury exit is in the general vicinity of an exit to Newtown. Perhaps because I wasn’t driving, I noticed that the highway exit sign to Newtown had included “Sandy Hook.”
That village name resonated because of the horrific school shooting in 2012. It seemed a new entry on the road sign, but I might be wrong.
Maybe it was added to the sign as a reminder, a silent memorial to those students and teachers who died and became a national symbol of the madness that strikes this nation from time to time.
Either way, it stood out, just as the connection to the Danbury exit does to the memory of a friend and colleague.
There are things that we should not forget, things that test our humanity.
Remember the people who matter, remember the people who care and for whom you care.
Tell them. Crush the barriers.
It pushes back the darkness.
Love them.
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