Moved permanently to Portsmouth. I had just left academia (the first page of the black-and white composition notebook I started on this date in 1991 has the mangled "Faculty" bumper sticker from the NY Institute of Technology unceremoniously plastered on the front cover) and I took the summer off to write, which seems an unimaginable luxury now. My first step was getting a driver's license, a library card, and stopping by Town Hall, which in those days, I think was next to "The Mac Shop" in the shopping plaza with Tak Pao City.

I still have the official Town welcome packet in my notebook, a blurry multi-generation xerox signed by Robert Driscoll and Carol Zinno. "We are pleased that you have chosen Portsmouth to make your home. Though we are the smallest community in population on Aquidneck Island, we like to feel we have a big heart, as big as any community anywhere."

Hurricane Bob and the coup in Russia were lurking, unforeseen, in the near future. But I was just enjoying this charming house where my grandparents had lived and my mother grew up, and discovering this wonderful town that is now our home.