I apologize to everyone again.  Because again, my blog has been hacked.

This time, as you might have noticed, it wasn’t just a few weird posts.  The whole site vanished from existence.  Pooof.  Like that.  And I couldn’t even let you know what was going on.  I have hated the feeling;  kind of like when your cell phone dies or you lose your keys.  I have really missed this connection with you.

But thanks to Liz Birch and her tech geniuses , my blog is (mostly) restored, although it took several days of her patient hand rebuilding to get me up and writing again.  Thank you Liz, and Sean, for your brilliant work.  And thank you readers for your understanding.

It is very nice to be back.

Nine years ago today dawned sunny and hot in New York City.  Ray D’Amelio had gone to bed with the air conditioner on and the bathroom window open to combat the heat.  On the calendar on his wall, all of the days of the year had been neatly crossed off– June 12 and beyond were left blank.

At a few minutes past 6 am, Steven Santos climbed up the fire escape into Ray’s bathroom window. He saw, or maybe heard, Ray in bed, put his gun next to Ray’s head, pulled the trigger, and killed him.

Santos then went into Ray’s kitchen, found a bottle of Jack Daniels and poured himself a glass.  He sat down on the couch in front of Ray’s television, found a porn film in Ray’s video collection, popped it in and sat back and watched while he sipped his drink.  Next, he went back out the bathroom window and upstairs into the neighbor’s apartment, where he raped an 88 year old woman, then shot her and her husband to death.  He snuck out of their apartment and down the fire escape with a few credit cards, 400 dollars and the watch I gave Ray on our first wedding anniversary. Santos was apprehended a few minutes later, tackled by a police officer, actually, and taken into custody.

For nine years, these events have run through my head, like one of Ray’s videos–stop, start, stop, and rewind, over and over.  I desperately wish I could edit it differently, or erase it completely and make it not have happened.

But life isn’t like that.  Neither is death.

Ray was kind and generous to a fault.  He never knew Santos, had never met him, but would have given him anything, had he only asked for it.  There was no reason that Ray should have died that morning, or that way.  No reason at all.

Ray’s death left scores of us stunned and heart broken.  The world was gentler, funnier, warmer, and more beautiful when he was in it.  With every passing year, every new season, on every beautiful day, or any difficult day, we miss him again. Nine years later, the pain is still palpable, the memory of that morning still surreal.

After a three week trial, it took the jury only two hours of deliberating to find Santos guilty on all 11 counts of murder, rape and robbery.  He is now serving three consecutive life sentences in a prison in upstate New York.

I imagine his life is miserable.

I know Raymond is at peace.

Is there a limit to how dumb a person can be?  In the age of Twitter and Facebook, I guess not.  This is not and will never be a blog about politics.  But I can’t contain myself on this one.

All last week I wondered why there was so much clamor over the story of Representative Anthony Weiner, and whether or not he sent a photo of himself in his underwear to a woman on Twitter.  He said it was a prank, and of course, I believed him.  His account was hacked.  Perfect explanation. Why were the reporters still questioning him?  Why was Wolf Blitzer waving these photos in his face and saying, “Is this you?” over and over.  Who, in public office especially, would be so stupid as to send a picture of his crotch to a woman he had never met?

Yet, why did he look so uncomfortable in these interviews, and where did he dig up that word “certitude” to explain that he couldn’t be sure if the photo was of him or not? Surely, he was telling the truth, and surely he could have found a better sound bite to explain what happened.  He has people to help him with that stuff, doesn’t he?

Even in this age of social media when infidelity and transgressions become instantly public, even when the Eliot Spitzers, John Edwards, Tiger Woods and Brett Favres are careless enough to allow their private missteps become known to the world, I can somewhat understand, if not condone, their actions. These were ordinary, if sleazy, affairs of famous men who made big, stupid mistakes.

But, for the life of me, I cannot understand someone sending pictures of himself in his underwear to random women, especially when the public outing of this is clearly something that will end his career and, quite possibly, his marriage.  It is not like he fell in love with any of these women, or even fell prey to the Spitzer sin of patronizing the world’s oldest profession.  He actually went to the trouble to take pictures of himself, download them, and email them out.  It is just too weird for words.

Does he think these women will really LIKE looking at these pictures?? Does he think they will be really impressed with his underpants? It reminds me of the six grade boys I knew who used to made a lot of noise splashing in the swimming pool and doing cannonballs off the diving board because they thought it would really impress the sixth grade girls.

Really??

We all sin.  We all mess up.  We are all human.  And this  story, featuring a guy with the name of Weiner,  will clearly afford comedians a lot of laughs. But when one of our country’s leaders is shown to be so completely foolish, so ridiculous, it makes me, personally, pretty sad.

A priest I know once said summer is God’s way of slowing us down.

Henry James famously wrote: summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.

I  agree with both of them.

Summer is sneaking up on Park City.  While the fish ain’t exactly jumpin’ yet, the living is easy. Finally, it is sunny and warm, and it is beautiful. But like everything else in my Park City adventure, it takes some getting used to.

Throughout my career, I had deadlines.  Today at 2 pm-type deadlines.  Often, I would crawl in bed with a lined pad and pen and write concepts and headlines until I fell asleep, then wake up extra early when my brain was fresh and write more. After a while,  I would take a run to clear my head, jump in the shower, then come back and write some more. And that was all before even getting to the office.  The adrenaline rush was wonderful.

My life now is so different.  My days are so relaxed.

Yes,  I am at my desk with stacks of paper all around.  I have print outs on homes in Piedmont, Italy and San Francisco piled up before me.  But there is nothing screaming at me to be finished.  My Italian books are neatly stacked and my homework is done. The plants are watered. Dinner is marinating.  All that really needs to be done, is done.

It is so relaxing.

And a little weird.

I kind of miss the intensity of needing to get something done immediately.  And I loved jumping out of bed with a million things to do before lunch.  The energy that kind of life begets is addictive.  In that kind of life, my purpose in any given day was clear. Get the work done and out, fast.

I wonder what my purpose is today.

I do enjoy the slower pace, the longer perspective, the deeper breath.  And because I have time to dream and plan, I am making better choices.  I am able to go on a diet.  I am able to be there for friends, and my husband.  Like on the lazy, summer afternoons of my youth, when all I had to do was lie on my stomach on the lawn and watch a lady bug crawl up a blade of grass, I am able to sit back for the first time in years, and just be.

Maybe my life here is God’s way of slowing me down, of making me stop and listen.  Maybe there is another purpose, somewhere, waiting for me to discover it.

My new relaxed, quieter life here is certainly different. It is like one long summer afternoon.

And summer, especially here in Park City, is beautiful.

My brother never talks about his time in Viet Nam.  He was against the war then, but he fought it.  And he fought well.

I think my brother was actually decorated for heroic actions on the battle field, although he never speaks of that, either. I do know he was in the thick of the fighting nearly the whole time he was there.  We used to read about his infantry unit in the San Francisco Chronicle every morning, and pray that the lives lost that day did not include his.

He came home after his tour, alive and with all visible body parts in tact.  But I think his wounds ran deep.  He was angry.  At the world.  Maybe, at himself.

Looking back now, I realize how young he was then–barely in his twenties.  And yet, we had all asked so much of him.

The anger subsided over time, and he went on to excel in his life– marrying the girl of his dreams, becoming an amazing teacher and coach, and throwing his heart and soul into making his town a better community, in his own iconoclastic way.

On Memorial Day, we talk about remembering those who gave their lives for our country.  It is a concept I can barely comprehend, and the older I get, the more it takes my breath away. That someone I do not know is willing to put his or her life on the line, so that I can go to Starbuck’s and insist my latte be extra hot, or so that I can complain about the weather interfering with my golf plans, or so that I can have any number of pleasures and rewards of a life lived freely, is almost unimaginable.

Some troops, like my brother, do come home.  But his time in Viet Nam carried its own kind of sacrifice.  While he did not lose his life, I think he would agree, he lost his innocence.

Today, especially, I celebrate all of those who fought for my freedom, and have been willing to give their life so that mine can be the rich, full life that it is.  I honor them, too.

But there is nothing I can ever do to thank them enough.