It’s a toss-up whether the most astonishing thing about the post-Sandy gas lines here was that they happened at all or that they ended so abruptly when the state imposed odd-even rationing.

    For those who were not in the New York-New Jersey region to see it, let me describe what happened. When word spread on the Thursday after the hurricane that supplies were going to run out, a collective freak-out quickly followed. Drivers immediately converged on the gas stations to top off their tanks.

    From what I heard, Montauk was the first to run out, followed shortly by Amagansett. The Internet, particularly Facebook and Twitter, seemed filled with alarming reports, no doubt adding to the sense of doom.

    Elected officials issued statements. The federal government started trucking additional supplies into the region. Nothing helped; the lines of waiting drivers continued to build. Police were tapped to keep order. On the South Fork, a half-hour wait was considered quick.

    Seriously line-averse in my own case, I got lucky early one morning finding an open pump at the Amagansett Mobil, and, until the kids’ school reopened, I was able to keep my driving to a minimum to conserve fuel.

    Today, an odd-numbered day, with my gas-hog truck’s fuel gauge dropping below a quarter of a tank, I’ll have to head to one of the stations. I anticipate all will seem normal — but why now and not a week ago?

    That rationing put an instant end to the lines is pretty good evidence that the lines were created by panic, not a complete loss of supply, which the industry said was crimped but not cut off. Fear made it all much worse than it needed to be.

    But it also made clear just how motor-dependent most of us in the Northeast are and just how much of the non-renewable juice our vehicles drink.

   Thanks to guys from Woburn, Mass., we got our power back on the afternoon of Sunday, Nov. 4. As for our own utility, I sighted my first LIPA trucks on Nov. 7 (the first day of the northeaster) heading up Three Mile Harbor Road — 10 days after the superstorm hit and two hours after we’d been rendered powerless again.

    Lulled by the euphoria of having uninterrupted lights, heat, and hot water for two and a half days, I had been ripping through The New York Times crossword puzzle and was planning on refilling the two-person Jacuzzi we never use except in such situations or when we need to wash the window screens, when there was an ominous flicker, and then, as can happen when you’re long-married and well-attuned to one another, simultaneous exclamations of “Oh, shit!”

    Bill Leland, our neighbor, who has lived in Tiffany Estates in south-central Springs since the early 1970s, deserves the credit for getting our thickly populated neighborhood’s lights back on in the first instance. A tree that fell onto the wires in front of a house at the intersection of Oak Ledge and Harbor View soon after the hurricane began was the culprit. Everyone knew it, including LIPA, though because the utility’s antiquated maps have us down as a “light-density area” (which may have been the case some 40 years ago), we were told, in effect, to cool it for six to 10 more days.

    When, at about the same time, I ran into Dom Annacone at Damark’s Deli and told him what LIPA had reportedly said, he, who had just had his power restored in Settlers Landing, replied, “If you’re considered a light-density area, then I live in a desert — there  are only a few houses on my street. . . . This is what happens when you’re dealing with a monopoly.”

    But, thank goodness, Bill Leland, whose son Danny thinks the time has come to have our own utility here, as Greenport does, was not so easily put off: He sought out the foreman of the Massachusetts State Electric crew, which was working in Clearwater that Saturday, and persuasively made his case for “the 80 to 90 houses” in our neighborhood that were, despite the fact that the problem was in plain sight and could be easily remedied, still languishing.

    I would like to say that the branches of palm trees were strewn before them as their trucks pulled in; instead, they were greeted by sandwiches made by Ryann Zaykowski Brennan. “Hosanna! Hosanna!” I imagined us crying as the Woburn guys went to work.

    On the bright side, the storm had given us a chance to pass some time with our hard-working, resourceful, and friendly neighbors.

    Mary brought flowers over to Bill Leland the next day, and she’s thinking of having everyone over for a pot-luck party when this all blows over. That’s the good news.

   Among the rewards of small-town newspapering are the little tidbits you learn about things that are not really news but are fascinating or amusing or heartbreaking nonetheless.

    On the serious side of the ledger, there are the ambulance calls we hear on the office emergency-frequency radio. Sometimes the call is from the home of someone we know; other times, they are strangers. On Monday, I listened with increasing anxiety as a request for transportation to the hospital for a badly dehydrated elderly woman in Springs initially went unanswered.

    Usually, South Fork volunteer ambulance squads send out a mutual-aid broadcast fairly rapidly to get help to the scene from other jurisdictions when necessary. Sometimes, no one is available for what seems like an interminable period, as it was with the Springs call.

    Sometimes, I think the public forgets that all the fire and ambulance crews out here are made up of volunteers, many of whom have jobs, families, and responsibilities they constantly must balance with their emergency duty. When these organizations say they need more volunteers, they aren’t kidding.

    Eventually on Monday, an unfamiliar ambulance first-responder’s vehicle raced east past our windows, from Southampton, it appeared. Privacy rules being what they are, we are likely to never know how things turned out for this woman.

    As to the lighter side, I spoke briefly on Monday with Terry Hickey, who phoned to ask that The Star list a community breakfast at East Hampton’s Episcopal Church in a little over a week. After some back and forth about the details, I said something about burned pancakes. Terry said she took the griddle rejects home as treats for her pet parrot. She puts them in her freezer, she said, and when she takes one out to leave on a kitchen counter overnight to thaw, the bird gets excited and very vocal. Not much goes to waste, Terry said.

    Neither the story about the Springs woman’s distress nor Terry Hickey’s parrot will likely make the paper, this column notwithstanding. Things come up to move them out of contention for space — local government doings must be reported, and so on. As most weeks go, the staff here knows of a lot more that is going on than shows up on the page. I, for one, wish sometimes we could just cover it all.

    But then, with as many stories as there are people (and parrots, apparently), no one would have the time to read anything else.

   My gal pal and I spent almost the whole hour it takes us to walk from the Star office to Main Beach and back on Monday talking about — what else — food.  Not food in general, of course, but specific to our Thanksgiving tables.  

    My friend will have fewer people than usual this year; the group at my house will be as large, if not larger, than it used to be in days gone by, when we balanced our dinner plates on our laps. For quite a few years, when the kids were old enough to be part of the crowd and to help and the grown-ups hadn’t yet reached four score (let alone four score and ten), not sitting down at a table was fine. This week, however, given that we will range from 21/2 to 80-plus, we all need a place at a table.

    Anyway, my friend and I dispensed quickly with my turkey and her ham. She’s going to have her standard cornbread and sausage stuffing, and I’m going to follow last year’s success with sausage, apples, and parsnips. Then we went on to talk about potatoes. We are both planning sweet potatoes — hers will be made with apples and mine with orange juice — and, somewhat reluctantly, we are making mashed potatoes, too. We were forced to, we told each other, because certain grandchildren insist. But green vegetables had the real focus of our attention. 

    She had thought of doing string beans in a Williams-Sonoma manner, dressing them up with shallots, for example, but decided that would be too much work.  She also told me that she has to dissuade her husband every year from small canned peas; he asks for them because he had them as a child.

    As for Brussels sprouts, which are not only traditional but can be roasted slowly with a little oil — a plus when a lot of other cooking is going on — not everyone likes them. Then she had an inspiration: How about collard greens?  They would stand up to the richness of the stuffings and desserts and, she suggested, you could just toss them around with some oil in a frying pan before mealtime. I agreed to think about it.

    Speaking of desserts, she’s got it over me because she is a good baker. She plans to make a pumpkin roll this year, explaining that you bake the cake in a long strip and then roll it with whipped cream instead of jelly. But I get points for Oysters Rattray as an appetizer. Thanksgiving wouldn’t be Thanksiving in our house without it, a version of Oysters Rockefeller using sorrel for the green sauce under which they are broiled.

    As we neared the end of the walk, the conversation turned to those living in inadequate shelters on Thanksgiving, without prospects of returning to houses that were destroyed, or those struggling still in cold, powerless apartments. On Thursday, we will be very aware of how lucky we are in having been spared Sandy’s fury. And we will continue to be thankful for those who have been able to go where volunteers are needed to help others.

   The story goes that when I was a little girl of about 4 or 5 I went next door to a neighbor’s house and asked if she would sell me two pieces of bread for a nickel. The woman of the house was worried that we had no food and my mother was mortified. I think I was just practicing my future yard sale skills. Although I would never insult anyone by asking them if they would take a nickel for Grandma’s old serving dish.

    When I serve my 20-pound turkey today, it will be on a large white platter I purchased for $1 at a yard sale. My turnips will be in a bowl the color of a harvest moon with sheaves of wheat imprinted on its front that also cost me $1. Tagged for $1.50, I bargained with the owner, which really made me feel like a cheapskate, even though I’m usually not. But yard sales tend to bring out the worst in people.

    My holiday wineglasses, a set of eight, are rose-colored goblets that I bought from an old Montauk family many years ago at the exorbitant rate of $10 for the set, the most I’ve probably ever paid for something at a yard sale. I still pull them out on every special occasion, so they were worth it. I probably would have paid $12 for the set, which is what they were selling for, but my bargaining chip kicked in.

    I enjoy going to yard sales and used to go more frequently when my mother lived in Montauk. She was the original thrifter and dragged my sister and me when we were young to thrift stores all over the Bronx every weekend. In Montauk on Saturdays, my sister, my mother, and I would set off and make the rounds of those advertised in this paper. But my mother was embarrassing — everything was too expensive for her and she had no problem proclaiming that loudly as my sister and I slinked back to the car, pretending that we weren’t with her.

    My sister and I even made the mistake of having a yard sale — once at her house in the harbor area and once at mine out near the Lighthouse. They were both disasters, and a lot of work — a lot of work. At yard sales people don’t expect to pay much, even for really nice things, like the pair of wool gloves in perfect shape that one woman offered me a nickel for. I found that really insulting. I mean, I knew they were itchy, but she didn’t.

    And then there was the pine hutch with cupboard doors that my sister was selling for $50 at a driveway sale in the spring. One lady kept asking her if she would take $10 for it, and even stalked her house when the sale was over, peeking in her windows and doing drive-bys as if she was going to swipe it. Hours later, she returned and knocked on the door to offer her the measly $10 again, as if she were doing her a favor and taking it off her hands. By then my sister had decided to keep it and give it to a friend who was furnishing an apartment.

    On a really nice fall day last year, I decided to clean out my garage a bit. I say a bit because to really clean out my garage would take months. We’ve raised three children in this house and my husband is a fisherman and you know what type of junk they collect: buckets, nets, fishing reels and poles, squid jigs that I’m sure are going to spring open and attack me, heavy rain gear, and slimy boots that are not allowed in the house.

    Things have gotten eaten up in our garage, never to be seen again. Like our chain saw that is somewhere under the Barbie Dream House, which is covered with the Mexican blanket that was given me. Next to them are three metal garden tables that I bought at a yard sale for refinishing that are still not refinished and chipping paint all over my Mexican blanket. There are endless bags of clothes, either outgrown or no longer in style, and all of this is on top of my husband’s go-cart, which we’re trying to get out and fixed by Christmas for our grandson.

    But I digress. The day I was cleaning out the garage, three cars pulled up in front of my house, thinking it was a yard sale — on a Wednesday? No one has yard sales during the week. I didn’t say anything and let them look through the junk I had pulled out and ended up making $2.35 and had less stuff to put back in. But I’m telling you, yard sale shoppers can sometimes be vultures, picking over your things and offering measly prices.

    Maybe this long holiday weekend will be a good time to attempt to clean the garage and have another yard sale, but I’m sure we’ll all be too full of turkey and stuffing to do much work. Besides, it’s Black Friday, and though I don’t go near the stores, I hear it’s a good weekend for yard sales.

    Janis Hewitt is a senior writer for The Star.

   When our lights went out the second time, during the northeaster, Mary said if Obama hadn’t won she really would have been depressed.    

    Therefore, joy trumped gloom and doom in our case, and in fairly short order the lights came back on and all was well with the world — well, with our world in any event. Though I was worried momentarily that had Obama not won the popular, as well as the electoral vote, I might have to recant my rant of 2000 (when Gore won the popular vote, you’ll remember), and argue, contrariwise, that the Electoral College should be retained as a hedge against mob rule.

    When I heard rather early on on election night that Latinos and young people were voting in large numbers, I was reasonably sure it was all over for Romney and went to bed, while Mary and her mother, as they always do, kept vigil.

    The next morning, while still abed, I ventured that I was one of the few recumbent white men over 64 to have cast my vote for the incumbent.

    And now on to reform. Keeping people working and keeping them healthy and educated so that they can continue to be productive seem to me much more worthy goals than forever fattening the fortunes of a few. Freedom, in this case, is just another word for obscene aggrandizement.    

    Spend then on job creation, and, as the historian David McCullough recently said, free up teachers to teach what they’re passionate about. Do that and the deficit can wait.

    And if, in fact, the Enemy R Us, let us consider first the beam in our own eye rather than behold the mote in the eye of our brother. (Matthew 7:3 and Luke 6:41.)

    But enough preaching. We are beckoned today to the Thanksgiving table, where for a time we’ll revel in family, taking care to ignore the beam in our own eyes while plucking the motes from those of our in-laws.    

     And we’ll toast the Republicans too, myopic though they may be.When our lights went out the second time, during the northeaster, Mary said if Obama hadn’t won she really would have been depressed.    

    Therefore, joy trumped gloom and doom in our case, and in fairly short order the lights came back on and all was well with the world — well, with our world in any event. Though I was worried momentarily that had Obama not won the popular, as well as the electoral vote, I might have to recant my rant of 2000 (when Gore won the popular vote, you’ll remember), and argue, contrariwise, that the Electoral College should be retained as a hedge against mob rule.

    When I heard rather early on on election night that Latinos and young people were voting in large numbers, I was reasonably sure it was all over for Romney and went to bed, while Mary and her mother, as they always do, kept vigil.

    The next morning, while still abed, I ventured that I was one of the few recumbent white men over 64 to have cast my vote for the incumbent.

    And now on to reform. Keeping people working and keeping them healthy and educated so that they can continue to be productive seem to me much more worthy goals than forever fattening the fortunes of a few. Freedom, in this case, is just another word for obscene aggrandizement.    

    Spend then on job creation, and, as the historian David McCullough recently said, free up teachers to teach what they’re passionate about. Do that and the deficit can wait.

    And if, in fact, the Enemy R Us, let us consider first the beam in our own eye rather than behold the mote in the eye of our brother. (Matthew 7:3 and Luke 6:41.)

    But enough preaching. We are beckoned today to the Thanksgiving table, where for a time we’ll revel in family, taking care to ignore the beam in our own eyes while plucking the motes from those of our in-laws.    

     And we’ll toast the Republicans too, myopic though they may be.

   Life on the beach is a temporary proposition. This I learned from my father, who was old enough in 1938 to remember the hurricane that ripped across Long Island and became the one by which all others here are measured.

    That storm and the devastation it brought were fresh enough in his mind in the early 1960s, when he and my mother had a 480-square-foot Cape Cod cottage moved from near Three Mile Harbor to Cranberry Hole Road, put it on a foundation, and doubled it in size. According to family lore, my father checked with old-timers about where surging waters had reached in 1938, and then placed the small house about as far back on the rectangular acre lot as possible.

    I grew up in that house and it is now the one in which my wife, Lisa, and I are raising our three children. Over the years, I’ve measured the distance from the road to the top of the dune and concluded, with the help of old surveys, that we have lost roughly a foot of beach a year since the 1970s.

    Then came Dec. 26-27, 2010, when 12 feet of dune was clawed away in a 36-hour period. By comparison, Hurricane Sandy was a piker, only removing about a foot of dune, although the northeaster that followed a few days later peeled off another two feet.

    This is not to say that Sandy was mild. On the contrary, my friend Jameson Ellis and I went up to the dune line for a last look on the morning it arrived just as high tide was approaching. Gardiner’s Bay was an unfamiliar brown river rushing from right to left past our feet, heavy logs bowling over nearly everything in their path. Before we left, Jamey and I went back to the house and carried my collection of hand tools to an upper floor on the chance that the bay would reach the basement. It did not.

    The thing that Sandy did do, however, was make me realize that moving our house farther back toward the road and putting it up on pilings was going to be my problem, not my children’s.

    Recently, Larry Penny, who is The Star’s nature columnist, and I were having an e-mail exchange about storms when he pointed out that with one exception there has been a storm in New York State worthy of a federal disaster declaration each year since 2007. People talk a lot these days about the “new normal” in this and that; for those of us living on the far east reaches of an eroding island, bad weather is something we all are going to be taking a lot more seriously in the years to come. And sooner than we think.

   More than 43 million Americans are said to have traveled at least 50 miles to celebrate Thanksgiving, and among them were four members of our family, including two grandchildren, who live in Nova Scotia. Two other grandkids were in Tennessee visiting other relatives for the long weekend, but it was a grandmother’s dream come true, nevertheless, having so many gathered here at one time. The feast at our house, with 14 adults and seven kids — from 2 to 11 — was all that it’s supposed to be (at least according to Norman Rockwell).

    The grandchildren were extraordinarily happy in each others’ company, proving that there’s magic in the word “cousins.” They showed immediate and loving bonds even though they haven’t seen each other very often so far in their young lives. Differences in age and temperament notwithstanding, their acceptance and pleasure in each other was unqualified.

    Naturally, and I have to admit it, my attention was drawn to the two kids from Nova Scotia, because they slept at our house and because we had so much catching up to do. They both strike me, of course, as noticeably clever. The younger of the two, Teddy, has just turned 3, and wants to do everything himself, regardless of whether the task is a suitable one. He is desperate to turn the stove on himself to brew his own tea, and equally eager to handle money in stores. The biggest laugh of the weekend came when my daughter told us that when she asks Teddy to hold her hand when they cross the street, he habitually says, “No, Teddy hold Teddy’s hand!” — and crosses sternly, with his right hand grasped firmly in his left.

    The grandkids were not only by our sides (or underfoot as the case may be) in the kitchen on Thanksgiving Day but during the week that followed. I’m not sure why it is so gratifying to see the youngest among them now playing with toys I bought when their eldest cousins were born 11 years ago, but I guess I’m just sentimental. It was delightful to watch them share the small metal trains and wooden tracks and the alphabet blocks.

    Because I don’t see my Nova Scotia grandchildren often, I was surprised to hear what they picked out at Stevenson’s well-stocked toy store in Southampton (as a reward for taking some especially nasty medicine that happened to be prescribed this week): Teddy chose a hefty orange plastic backhoe, with flashing lights and a macho voice — accompanied by a blaring rock-guitar riff — that says things like “This is Caterpillar time!” and “Backin’ it up!”; his older sister, Nettie, chose a giant stuffed husky dog, which she named Balto.

    At the candy counter at the new Mary’s Marvelous on Newtown Lane in East Hampton, for another treat, Nettie chose a bag of green gummy frogs (which ended up decorating the doorstep of a gingerbread house), while Teddy was beguiled by a massive, gold-and-white gift-wrapped panettone, of all things, weighing at least a few pounds. He hefted it home by its bright-yellow satin ribbon and surprised everyone by chomping down large quantities of what he called “cake bread.”

    I don’t think the airline personnel will appreciate the rock riffs and “Catterpillar time!” noise from the backhoe, during the Delta flight back to Halifax, but Balto is jetting north on Nettie’s lap, and Teddy is packing a slab of panettone.

    We were stopped in traffic on the way to Sag Harbor a few weeks ago when a car pulled up alongside.

    “Hey,” the driver shouted. “Do you want to sell that car?”

    “I might,” I said, startled. Actually I’d been thinking on and off for a year or so of selling my much-loved little Recreational Action Vehicle (longspeak for the Toyota RAV4).

    “What year is it?” he wanted to know.

    “It’s a ’97. Listen, we’re late for a movie, and I really can’t . . .” He broke in. “What’s your phone number?”

    I yelled it back at him as we started moving. “Hmmn,” said my husband. “He sounded really interested. I bet you’ll hear from him.”

    First thing the next morning, he called. “Hi, you may not remember, but this is the guy who . . .”

    “Wants to buy my car,” I said. “Look, I’m not actually sure I want to sell it. They only made the two-door model for three years, so it’s pretty rare now. And it runs great, and it only has 55,000 miles, and . . .” I heard myself sounding like a used-car salesman. “And I’ve never had any trouble with it,” I finished lamely.

    He ignored me. “Does it have air-conditioning?”

    I wasn’t sure. We’d never used it.

    “What about a sunroof?”

    “I’m not sure what that is. I know it has what they call a moon roof. Two moon roofs, actually. But they’re not electric; you have to climb up the back of the car and heave them off yourself. I did it once and that was enough.”

    “I have a steep driveway,” he said next. “Does it have four-wheel drive? I need four-wheel drive in snow.”

    I didn’t know that either. Well, he said, it had to be either four-wheel or all-wheel. “Can you find out?”

    Having come this far, it was looking a lot like we were being serious. “I can tell you the date I bought it and where, and the VIN number. You can call them and ask.”

    “Okay,” he said. “Just one more question for now. What are you asking?”

    I was waiting for that one, but when it came I choked. “Uhhh — I don’t know, I need to look at a few used-car Web sites and see what they say.”

    Silence on the other end. “Maybe $4,000?” I ventured.

    “Would you take less?”

    I didn’t answer, having said too much already. I really do like my car.            “Aaah,” he said, “never mind. I’ll call you later.”

    That was the end of it, I thought, more relieved than regretful. I’ll never hear from this guy again.

    He called back a few hours later. “They didn’t have the records. It’s too long ago. Lemme ask you, have you had any really bad accidents?”

    “No.”

    “Dents, dings?”

    “Uh-uh.”

    “Has the car been serviced regularly? Do you happen to have the service records?”

    “I do, yes. Fifteen years’ worth from T&B in Amagansett.”

    We made arrangements for him to come to The Star the next day and see the papers and the owner’s manual and whatever else was in the glove compartment. He seemed happy with everything. He wanted to drive the car, of course, but I said no; if I sold it, it wouldn’t be for a month, and I wasn’t ready to give a stranger the keys.

    Then I went back in to work and told Kathy Kovach, our production manager, what was happening.

    “How much you asking?”

    “Four thousand.”

    “Four thousand? That’s ridiculous. You could get $9,000 for that car. Check out Kelley’s Blue Book.”

    “I’d ask six grand,” advised Baylis Greene, an editor, who knows a lot about cars. “And be ready to come down to five or so. I just think people generally overvalue their cars. And no one ever gets Kelley Blue Book value. Four sounded pretty fair to me.”

    Two days went by. Four. A week. After all those eager questions, the guy who’d been so keen to buy the car never called again. He’d given me his cell number, though — and every day that went by, I didn’t call him either.

    On the eighth day I called somebody who had an ad in The Star and rented a spot in their garage for the winter.

    Irene Silverman is editor-at-large for The Star. She is at large in Manhattan at the moment.

   “Tashi delek.”

   The words, mumbled while fishing for coins in my pocket, surprise me, though it was I that had uttered them.

    New London, Thanksgiving Day, 11:30 a.m. I’ve allowed so much time to drive to Orient Point that I catch an earlier ferry and arrive an hour sooner than anticipated. I’m famished and everything is closed. Finally, not far from the Amtrak station, a small grocery, open.

    A middle-aged couple sits inside. Finally, I’ve chosen a few items, and stand at the counter. On the wall, pictures of the Dalai Lama.

    They too are surprised at my greeting, and we begin to talk, and with a long wait for my brother and his family to collect me, I recount my adventures in India, where they were born. Long journeys to Jaipur, Agra, Rishikesh, Mumbai, Ko­chi. To the breathtaking Namdroling mon­astery in Bylakuppe and, in the far north, to Ladakh, the eastern region of Jammu and Kashmir.

   Sometimes called Little Tibet, Ladakh is remote, mountainous, and primitive. The power grid is unreliable, the roads are deadly, and the air, even in this otherworldly land, hangs heavy with diesel exhaust. Being a coastal type, more suited to the ocean, it’s not really for me.

    But there is a serenity there, among the vast blue sky, the snow-capped peaks, the ancient monasteries, and the sangha, the Buddhist community of monks, nuns, and lay followers. I’m guessing it’s a more tranquil and welcoming environment than what lies across the border, where at least 90 Tibetans have self-immolated since 2009.

    In Ladakh, I knew many Tibetans. “The first time I saw a Chinese soldier,” one told me, “he said, ‘I’m here to help you. I’m going to plant your crops.’ ” Some years later — 1959 — the People’s Liberation Army brutally suppressed an uprising against the Chinese occupation, and the tragedy of Tibet was under way. The Dalai Lama fled to India. He has not returned.

    Another Tibetan acquaintance, in a book for which I edited the English translation, wrote of Chairman Mao’s “struggle sessions,” in which leadership was forced to “confess,” before agitated crowds, to crimes and exploitation, only to be tortured. This man’s uncle perished in such circumstances.

    Of all the wondrous characteristics of the Tibetan people — and I count many — most inspiring are their unerring compassion, even toward those who have so cruelly, ruthlessly trespassed against them, and the hope they sustain in the face of what seems utterly hopeless.

    That couple in the grocery store was like that. Once second-class citizens in a third world country, they now scratch out an existence in a small city in America, many thousands of miles from their ancestral home.

    But they seem happy.

    Christopher Walsh is a reporter for The Star.