Our world changed... and perhaps with it, so all of us has too. I hope for a world where the differences we have with one another do not encourage the harm and threat of those we deem to be different. I am just storyteller and simply offer this story of a long time ago that took place on an island that looked like a turkey.

During the days when I was privileged to see the world through the eyes of my youth, I remember knowing that my friends were both Democrats and Republicans, they were Baptists and Catholics and even an atheist, if my memory is true. I knew some were liberal and others conservative, but those terms seemed secondary and only served as descriptors to our diversity and not impediments to our friendship.

I miss that island! I loved that place for all the things it allowed me to become back then. My love for that island is not the kind that would compel me to give up my future travels just to go back for one more visit. In fact, it was my time on that island with my friends in the Turkey Island Gang that taught me to take risks and walk down lots of other paths to other uncertain possibilities, even if I often had to mow those paths myself. I will always love that island for the way it pushed me to explore other places!