I hadn’t moved in thirty-three years, that’s three plus decades of stuff that probably should have been repurposed years ago. To be precise, we didn’t just move, we relocated 2,700 plus miles.

By now it’s no secret Kat and I are moving to Montana. When I say that to people around here, Monroe, NY, they mostly look incredulous. Who does that? Everyone from moves to Florida or North Carolina.

It was taking too long to sell our house so we asked for help from an unusual source.

For most of the past 34 years I was either up at 0500 and driving to the Bronx, or on the TS Empire State in the middle of the ocean with 600 cadets. In either case the drill was to get up in the morning, early and get out the door to complete the daily checkoff list. Mostly, the list was what ‘had’ to be done that day, not what I might have wanted to get done.

 
Michael Maloy looked out the porthole at a gray sea, gray sky and what seemed like a hundred dark gray ships of all shapes and sizes. It was the 5th of June, 1944 and they were anchored somewhere off the east coast of England. ​

Not everything in my town works well, not everyone gets along, but there is one thing worth sharing.

For the last eight months or so I’ve been cleaning my parents house in preparation to sell it. Mom passed away in the spring and Dad is trying to make the best of assisted living. The house has been in the family since 1964 and became our full-time residence in 1971. That’s 55 years of Palmiotti stuff in and around the house.

At the north end of Chodikee Lake in Highland, NY there’s the remains of an old mill. Hidden amongst the gray sky and bare trees are the remains of somebody’s enterprise. People may have lived here, they certainly worked here. Dreams. Now there’s nothing left but a stone foundation and questions about it’s past.

A few years ago we started putting a Log Book into, what had been, an empty box on a portion of the Appalachian Trail near our home. The box is about an hour walk in from West Mombasha Rd. and a little less from the next road crossing near Fitzgerald Falls, Greenwood Lake. A nice hike either way.