carrying on

I began working at and for Walden House in San Francisco on Monday, January 16, 2006. It was Martin Luther King, Jr Day. I settled into my office, with one window on the left wall, overlooking Haight Street. The Haight Street of ‘Haight Ashbury’, a place I’d longed for back there in Massachusetts in the ‘Summer of Love’, and to which my fellow Wareham hometown and high school grad Nicky DeMesa had taken me in the fall of 1977. I actually squeezed and clung to the “Haight Ashbury” sign at that intersection. What else could I do?

And there I was on Martin Luther King, Jr day 29 years later, beginning a job in ‘The Lower Haight’, the job opportunity a crazy combination of events, vacationing with my best friend Bob Z in the East Bay town of El Cerrito, a day visit over to the Presidio Middle School by the Golden Gate, where my longtime friend and former Salem State College roommate David P was a beloved teacher.

Now, here it is 18 more years later, Martin, Bob, and Nicky gone. David retired, on his way to the next chapter in New Mexico. Me co-habitating in San Diego. Still here – which is crazy – carrying on, hopefully, for folks who paved their own journeys with kindness and generosity. I like to think of myself as a come-lately Merry Prankster, looking out the window from my seat on the bus whose destination is simply, “Further.”