I’ve often said that at seventy-seven, I’ve lived an interesting life.

An understatement. 

It's times like now when you look back at your life. Celebrate the victories. Learn from the failures. 

I often think about where I was born and raised. The South Bronx in the late forties, fifties, sixties, and early seventies. America and the world were changing.

I would grow up right in the middle of the history of those changes. 

The projects: The Patterson Houses and the John Adam Houses. (Middletown, New York, inserted there in 1962-1964, and Manhattan’s 116th Street, slipped in somewhere in between, 1969-170.) 

Man, those were trippy years. Catholic school in the fifties and early sixties, followed by seminary in Middletown in the early sixties. 

Discovering drugs during the wild sixties. Vietnam War protests. Getting arrested in 1968 during the New York Teachers Strike. Phoenix House in 1969 to overcome a heroin addiction. 

Oh yeah, I then decided to get married. (That didn’t last long.)

Finishing my Bronx years on 171st Street in 1971.

And all this before my twenty-first birthday.
I told you I’ve lived an interesting life.

It’s difficult to describe or explain everything that came next, being the action junkie I am.

Washington, D.C. La Voz Del Barrio and the Espiritu Libre radio shows on WHUR-FM, Howard University radio. Involved in local and national community organizing. Completed a paid internship as a reporter at what was then WTOP-AM-TV. 

Hartford, Connecticut. Hired by Post-Newsweek Stations as a Television Reporter at WFSB-TV, Channel 3. 

Marriage number 2. Child number 1. (That one lasted a little longer.)

In between, half my spirit was climbing mountains.
The other half was digging a hole into hell. A deep one.

Washington, D.C., Public Information Specialist in the Office of the Mayor, Marion Barry. Executive Director, D.C. Cable Television Design Commission. 

Living La Vida Loca in Sodom and Gomorrah. Unindicted Co-Conspirator in a federal indictment during an investigation into drug use by the Mayor of Washington, D.C., Marion Barry.

I was thirty-five when I left the East Coast for good.

Southern California. Inglewood. Los Angeles. San Pedro. Long Beach.

The next forty-two years have been a whirlwind of rebuilding, tearing down, and rebuilding for one last chance at a good life. 

A more positive, interesting life.

Marriage number 3. Child number 2. Still going strong.

Motorcycle courier. Never rode a motorcycle in my life until that moment. Airport shuttle driver. Bartender at a German Alpine bar. Never bartended in my life until that moment. 

Selected in a national competition for a dramatic television writing internship at the American Film Institute. 

Movietime Cable Network, which would later become E! Entertainment Television. Over twenty years as a segment producer and supervising producer, with time as Executive Producer for live events, including all live red-carpet award coverage. 

In 2008, my life imploded as the economy did.

The Blank Years. 2008-2011.

On September 11, 2011, I told myself, "Enough."

I’ve been sober ever since, going on 15 years.

Since then, I have filled my life with living, writing, and school. 
In 2016, I returned to college to earn the degree that had eluded me three previous times.

Eight years later, in 2024, at age 75, I graduated Summa Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Arts in English-Creative Writing.

Not the end. Writing. A website. More classes. Conferences. Plays. 

Time with my life partner, without whom I would be empty.

Time with family and friends, without whom I would be lost.

Well, not like I’m going to allow a stroke to stop a life of action as full as mine.

At my age, I can feel there’s more to living, even in these troubled waters.

With my life partner, family, and friends at my side, my interesting life will continue.