My first pet was a rat...not one from the pet shop. Mine lived behind the toilet in a one-room schoolhouse where my mum learned to read-- the place I called "home." My parents and grandmother worked the same fields Dr. Martin Luther King picked tobacco in--for 82-cents an hour--trying to feed a family of five. I moved on to cover four U.S. presidents (two sitting, two standing), earn 5 Emmys, then hired 600 people to start the world's first 24-hr., all-live cable news channel. It was NOT CNN, rather owned by ABC- TV and HQ'd in Connecticut, an hour's drive from the town of my birth--where the doctor was paid $10 for making me cry. Two-thousand kids can swim, 500 can ice-skate and hundreds play tennis in some small part due to my efforts as a coach and mentor. I even guided the career of Humphrey Bogart's only son--with Lauren Bacall. The last person to fire David Letterman, I hired Bill O'Reilly. TALK ABOUT A CHECKERED PAST... For forty years Nova Scotia's been a HUGE part of my life--keeping me semi-sane and alive--after quad by-pass surgery.

No one would ever confuse Somewhere Island with Kansas. There is no tabletop flat land on the rocky outcrop sticking several clicks into the North Atlantic Ocean—the world’s largest air conditioner if anyone from Florida asks. It has not a single field of golden grain, wheat or any other cereal crop. It is graced with white horses on the bay as offshore winds blow across the harbors crowning steel blue waves with foam. Most of the 80 islanders can’t wait to get back to it before dark. They eagerly return from their shopping trips to Halifax, 80 miles west, down the heavily rutted Seven Highway. They want to sleep in their own beds, on their own island, connected to the mainland by one bridge—of Maritime wood and stone. The Bridge, though less than 80 yards long and two narrow lanes (with the orange stripe painted down the middle long ago obliterated by weather and wear), is the social center of the island. This may seem strange to Canadians used to meeting up at the local Tim Hortons, Canadian Tire store or Walmart. In the absence of these institutions, The Bridge, serves as a meeting place. It is an accidental magnet for happenstance meetings. It is the only place everyone on the island must visit at one time or another. As the only way a car or truck can enter the rocky spec—there is no ferry boat or another fixed link—all entering SI make their way across the bridge, then back again, as they return to South Harbour or Halifax for shopping and services, including worship. Nearly forty years ago the only church on the island—one-room St. Anthony’s Catholic—burned to the ground and was never replaced. Now folks make their way to St. Peter’s for one Mass per week at 9 AM Sundays on the side of the hill at the head of South Harbour, just past the Irving garage. The Somewhere Island Passage road—which gets you the twelve bumpy clicks from the village of South Harbour—today features blades of Kelly Green grass popping through the pavement, struggling for the sunshine, trying to survive the grinding tires of passing trucks, SUV’s and cars driven by Islanders heading home. The pavement was brand new just four decades ago, when a family of six (Mom, Dad, three boys and a princess) first arrived from New England. The Island a special space. One: you don't just pop into for a few hours, or even a few days. It is what tourism officials might call a “destination location.” This means you don’t arrive at this spot casually. You don’t just “show up” here, like you may visit a museum, theme park or typical tourist attraction. Somewhere Island has no formally organized or specially constructed things devised to attract tourists. The natural formations of the sea and shore long ago topped anything men and women might build to bring in visitors and their dollars. The sole exception is the oyster farm—the carefully constructed aquaculture operation now helping mollusks make market maturity over the course of six or so years. This one-of-a-kind, man-made place was not built primarily to bring large groups of people to SI. Not as a goal in and of itself. Tourists do seem intrigued by the ocean-top farm riding atop the waves, striking west —toward the sunset and South Rock light. There the lighthouse once flashed its warning to ships approaching the Harbour. When the evening sun heads for the horizon, visitors stand slack-jawed, in awe of the orange ball of fire dipping down below the hills toward Mushaboom. On summer evenings, a carefully constructed campfire adds a cheery glow to the parklike setting, near the picnic tables and the “oyster shed.” Just this past week several groups from The New England States (as those six distinct entities were once called) arrived seeking raw oysters to eat. Visitors also came from the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Quebec, Ontario and New Brunswick. All departed happy, with oysters on ice and special instructions on shucking, if they asked. The polyethylene rope lines connect into a row of 120 distinct oyster condos. These two-by-three foot Vexar bags (with handles and closures of bungie cord) serve to shelter the growing animals each hour filtering algae and plankton from gallons of cold North Atlantic Ocean water. This solution-based farm was built with a primary intent—to grow oysters to market size using non-invasive, ecologically sustainable methods. Each oyster is itself a small scale seawater filtration operation. In tropical coastal areas of the world (including S. Florida and much of Australia), mangrove trees in tropical areas take sea water and remove the salt from the brine, converting it to fresh water which they use to grow their leaves and branches—to reach the ultimate goal of most species: survival. Oysters seek self-perpetuation through filtering microscopic green plants from water. As they reach sexual maturity—usually within three years —male oysters “spat out” sperm. Female oysters release their eggs into the N. Atlantic. Sperm and egg meet in the brine, becoming fertilized zygotes. It’s fortunate for oyster farmers their female charges can produce 10-million or more eggs annually. These tiny specs in the water column of one of the largest oceans on the planet are food for everything—including other oysters. Scientists who study such things tell us less that one-in-a-million survive to sexual maturity—several years down the road in the bold, open ocean. That’s odds no Vegas bettor would take! Tom Morgan was barely seven, summer of ’80, begging his Dad, Wes, to take him to the government wharf. He was eager to try his hand at catching some silver/blue mackerel for the evening frying pan. A small chrome spoon with a single hook his favorite conceit for catching the “baby tuna,” as the tasty fish are called by Islanders. Or maybe today he would try a red and white Daredevil, with a treble hook on the tail end. Little did the young fellow know one day he would stake his entire future and those of his loves--wife, two kids and a dog--on his ability to coax oysters to maturity through six years of uncertain wind, weather and predation."