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    A Patch of Light: Reflections from Levittown
    A Patch of Light: Reflections from Levittown
    A Patch of Light: Reflections from Levittown
    Ebook61 pages48 minutes

    A Patch of Light: Reflections from Levittown

    By Kevin Deeny

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    About this ebook

    A PATCH OF LIGHT is a collection of essays that range in topic from the earliest memories growing up in iconic Levittown Pennsylvania to opinions about the present status of health care in the US.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateNov 19, 2018
    ISBN9781543949704
    A Patch of Light: Reflections from Levittown

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      Book preview

      A Patch of Light - Kevin Deeny

      Copyright © 2018 by Kevin Deeny

      All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form or format whatsoever without express written permission of the publisher.

      ISBN 978-1-54394-969-8 eBook 978-1-54394-970-4

      Contents

      Acknowledgements

      Introduction

      A Patch of Light

      Pondering

      Really?

      On Thinking – Remembering the Lesson

      Life Lessons

      He Ain’t Heavy: Current Resonance

      Proactive Ignorance

      The Architect

      When I Am Ten

      Health Insurance - An Opinion

      For Marcia

      Trains

      Global 2000

      Movies

      Morning Prayers

      I Hate to Fly

      Black Ditch Creek

      A Fiction by Any Other Name Is Still A Fiction – An Opinion

      Snowfall

      The Eagle and the Crow

      Resources

      About the Author

      Acknowledgements

      Several of these essays first appeared in the Levittown Leader (now The Lower Bucks Leader) – a local newspaper. The publisher, Gerard Mullin, encouraged me to assemble these writings into a collection. I side-stepped into writing a novel and finally took the time to follow up with that suggestion. Thank-you Gerard. Your encouragement set me on this path.

      I am grateful always for my wife Marcia, daughters Jennifer, Kelly, Sheana, and Kimberly who have shared in these experiences.

      Introduction

      We seldom have time to sit quietly and let the day’s experiences unwind and re-spool into meaning. We have hectic lives and rush from one thing to another; getting kids ready for school, leaving early for work to beat the rush of traffic, working late to catch up, getting dinner ready, paying bills… the list goes on and on. Our days are filled to the brim and overflowing with things to do.

      Sometimes along the way a thought creeps in or a dream pushes us into a wakening which causes us to pause and ponder. It is a poorly understood and infrequently used word, ponder. My rather old and well-worn Webster’s Dictionary defines its meaning as: to weigh carefully in the mind; consider thoughtfully. There are moments in our lives, - sadly for me only moments, when something takes hold and leads us by the hand into pondering; a thoughtful consideration of experience, observation, or remembrance.

      What follows are the accounts of a few ponderings. These reflections take the form of essays in most cases, but in a few instances, a short story is what flowed from the pen.

      A Patch of Light

      One of my earliest memories dates to when I was perhaps three years old living in Levittown. We lived in a house known as a Levittowner – a single story ranch style house in the Magnolia Hill neighborhood or ‘section’ as they are called. This house was small with about 1,000 ft ² of living space which included three bedrooms; one was smaller than the others. For me, the small room was my favorite place in the house. It had nothing to do with the cool wall section which could slide away or the speckled paint on the walls. It was my favorite place because of the light that poured through the windows. I was fascinated by the way I could see the light’s angular profile made visible by the minute specular dust particles.

      As adults, we’ve all had similar experiences when clouds parted, and suddenly we could see rays of sunlight burst through, but as a toddler, I thought it magical the way the sun shined into that little room. If I sat immersed in sunlight in the patch of light on the floor with my eyes closed, I felt warm, calm, and safe. I was too young to understand the movement of the sun in the sky and wondered why the sun moved through the room until it no longer painted the floor and the space returned to shadow. As days went by, I would often check to see if this visitor had come again.

      When I was around 5, we moved from that house

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