Let's push the envelope. I tell the writers in the writing workshop I pilot to do that. A leader's gotta do what he asks his charges to do.

Here's some more about connecting those dots.

More on this Tampa Burn book I've been reading. Sure, it's just the latest book. Any book will do if you wish to make the connections. That E.M. Forster novel, in which he wrote, " Only connect. " That one will do. Or Moby Dick. That one was thick with coincidences. I posted on that one. You could look it up.

But it's the Randy Wayne White book I'm reading today. More dots...

Doc Ford's girlfriend, the woman named Dewey. Tennis player, a damn good one. Reminds me of Donna, my wife. Whose nickname is Duney.

Duney and I, before we got married, shopped around western Massachusetts for a place at which to hold our reception. We ended up choosing a place called The Red Basket, which is located on Route 10 in Southampton. After we had picked that bar and grill, my mother informed us...

That was the place where she had met my father. Back in 1946.

The Red Basket ( Not The Red Coconut ) burned down about eight years ago. The Red Basket wasn't far from The Broadview, the bar in which Donna and I met in 1972. The Broadview was in Holyoke. It isn't there anymore.

It burned down.

Connecting the dots can go on and on and on. Donna's mother's name is Sarah. That was my father's mother's name. Donna's mother has a sister named Ray. Ray was my father's name. Donna's father's name was Daniel. That was my father's middle name.

Names. The one that comes to mind as I write this was the name of a woman who was married to the landlord of the apartment building where mom, dad and I lived in the 50s and 60s. When we moved into the apartment, a family named Russell lived there. I was 7. Bobby Russell was 5. A family named Duggan lived downstairs. There was a daughter, Mary Ann.

Years later, Mary Ann, Bobby and me would all end up working as newspaper reporters. What are the odds?

A few years ago, the current landlord, a guy name of Wally, was tearing down some walls in the house. Behind the walls were stuck pages and pages and pages of yellowed old newspapers. The newspapers were used, way back when, as insulation.

When I learned of the newspapers, I thought: " God! What a fire trap we all lived in. All those old newspaper pages...

Oh. And what was the name of that landlord's wife? The landlord who owned and maintained the building in which we future reporters then lived?

Her name was Dorothy. But everyone in town called her Dot.