The above title is the Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition of graffiti.  In a literal sense, the hundreds of yards of graffiti that form a ribbon of color on three giant concrete water towers near my house are simply that, “unauthorized paintings”,  but I find them oddly beautiful.

The Morningside water towers, owned and maintained by the Syracuse Water Authority, are closed to vehicular traffic.  There’s a road that goes up there, but it’s chained shut at the base beside Ed Smith School.  Legend has it that ever since a man was shot and killed up there in the 1960s, police decided to shut down that secluded lover’s lane.

After the 911 Attacks, the department of Homeland Security restricted access even further.  I learned this from the utility line crews that sat five huge trucks in my driveway for several days last year to replace the cables and some of the telephone poles that ring the edge of the water authority property.  They needed to access the project through my driveway because even they could no longer get the key from the city anymore.

Neighbors make great use of the wooded paths throughout  this large patch of undeveloped  land in our city.  The view from the towers is spectacular, affording broad vistas of the south side and valley.  You can see the southernmost fringe of Oakwood cemetary, the roofs of Hughes Magnet School and Ed Smith school and Manley Field House, you can see the entire maze of south campus housing for Syracuse University, Brighton Towers apartments and the valley beyond. And always, by your side as you walk the narrow paved road around the three water towers, is the graffiti.

Graffiti artists find this remote and quiet location appealing for the same reason the lovers did.  You can be up there for hours and never see another soul.  The hideous scribblings elsewhere in the neighborhood; on the train track bridge over Colvin Street, the concrete abutments along Meadowbrook drive and the side of Nottingham High School are done in haste.  Witnesses are everywhere and they have no problem calling the police.

But give someone a canvas and some time and graffiti can be very pretty, at least to me.

I first saw the artwork at the top of my homepage a few months ago.  On a walk with my german shepherd, this orange-on-blue graphic was a colorful surprise on a day that was gray everywhere else; gray skies, gray snow, gray trees, gray people.  At first I thought it read “Syracuse”.  Doesn’t it look a little like it?  It must be the hometown colors, or the length that suggest the name.  For all I know it’s coded instruction to destroy a famous landmark or something, but I am choosing to ignore anything negative.   I’m happier when I focus on the rhythm and movement of it.

I’m not condoning graffiti.  It’s illegal and costly and my tax dollars get used up faster for its presence.  Even my artistic son Christian admits he would love to try his hand at some, however he is aware of the hefty fine and would rather save his money for electronics.  But up here, at the water towers, I suppose I prefer graffiti to the the bleak and the gray that is clean concrete.

Here are some other photographs I took up there.  Tell me what you think.  Am I crazy to find them a little delightful?  Did I chose the right one for my blog home page?  Or should I go the safe route and just do flowers?

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When I left the post office on South Salina Street where Miss Dee regularly helps me process the packages of stuff I sell on ebay, I encountered the immediate aftermath of some trouble one block to the north.  Seven Syracuse Police Department vehicles had pulled up to the tiny convenience store called Styles and officers were cordoning off the area with yellow police tape.

The police officer I questioned wasn’t authorized to speak to me and by the time Syracuse Police Sgt. and spokesman Tom Connellan arrived I was standing across the street with the other onlookers.  I was unable to reach him by phone, as I no longer represent the working media in this town, he was under no obligation to take my call and give me details of what happened.

I saw another familiar face in the crowd, Rich Puchulski of Syracuse United Neighbors, an advocacy organization for inner city neighbors and business owners. Rich heard the commotion from his office nearby.  He pretty much blocks out the sound of sirens that race up and down South Salina Street each day but when that sound turns constant he gets out to take a look.

We ran into Addie Hightower, another friendly and commanding presence in this neighborhood.  Standing a whisker under five feet, Addie stood tall in the sunlight and wondered like everyone else what had happened.   She appeared puzzled to hear witnesses say store owner Craig Davis clunked a customer on the head with a hammer, a customer who may have been involved with drugs.  She said Davis and his wife whose name Addie could not recall, host an annual barbecue for neighborhood children in Kirk Park each summer.

Some detectives stood watch outside the store  and others moved about inside before a man identified by onlookers as Davis was lead in handcuffs to a waiting police cruiser.   As it pulled away from the curb the cruiser nearly took a block of yellow police tape with it.  The side view mirror had been used as an anchor for the tape.  Oops.  That’s something I would have done had I been in uniform.

Addie told me she has lived on the South Side since 1962 so you could say it’s the understatement of the year to suggest she has seen changes through the decades.  She flirts with the idea of moving to the suburbs but then she says someone greets her with a friendly hello and she is reminded why she stays.

“These are my neighbors, and if I moved away, I might not find good neighbors somewhere else”.

Indeed, during our 20 minute chat just outside the police tape barrier several people of all description; young, old, male and female recognized Addie and gave her a warm hello.

See the tape tied to the mirror? Moments later the cruiser carrying the man identified as Davis pulled away

It was still an active investigation when I got into my car to drive home near Syracuse University and Manley Field House where pale legs exposed to the elements for the first time in months carried students in a game of Frisbee on the lawn.

Two very different ways spring fever took hold in Syracuse today, each just about two miles apart.

Post script: Sgt. Connellan spoke with the Syracuse Newspapers.  Click here for the story on syracuse.com.

As Syracuse Police Chief Gary Miguel anticipates his retirement at the end of the year I can say my experience with his department has always been A ++.  I’ve never been on the wrong side of the law so you’d think I’d have no experience at all with police, but when you live in a medium-sized city for almost 28 years you’re bound to encounter a face to face contact with the men and women in blue at some point.

From out of the woods came a menace in disguise

Years ago, during all the hype about child abductions, I had a creepy incident behind my back yard.  My young boys were playing basketball at the end of my driveway when out of the woods came a middle-aged man inquiring about a lost puppy.  Did they see a dog wandering around lost, he asked Harry and Charlie who were then about 9 and 11 years old, and when they said no he watched them shoot hoops for a minute before disappearing into the woods again.

I knew nothing about this until later that week when the religious education teacher at St. Therese Church on Lancaster Avenue cautioned the children against walking home after class as usual because a registered sex offender had moved to our neighborhood.  The children called me from the church phone to come and get them.

Once at home I reminded the kids never to talk to grownups they didn’t know, and that’s when they told me about the guy looking for his puppy.  My blood ran cold.  The lost puppy story was a well-known trick that sex offenders use to lure children away.  I told them adults never need a child’s help with anything.  If it ever happened in the future they should ignore that they were raised to be helpful and run in the opposite direction.

Enter the Syracuse Police.  I don’t recall the name of the Investigators but they arrived immediately to find out more.  Charlie couldn’t recall a description of the man in the woods but Harry thought he could.  Over the next few days they brought sketches to Harry to see if any of them looked like the puppyless stranger.  On a page of a six sketched head shots Harry went right to the suspect.  But then he hesitated and said “maybe it’s this one instead” .  That moment of ambiguity sunk any hope police could pick up the man for violating his parole.

I sensed their frustration.  They really wanted to help us.  And I really wanted to help the neighborhood by putting this guy away again so he couldn’t come near other children as he came near mine.  We were lucky that day that my innocent little animal lovers didn’t offer to walk into those vast woods to look for a puppy that didn’t exist.

Knowing the police department did everything it could, I approached the water department that owns the land behind my house and asked for permission to clear a buffer zone so I could plant grass and see what was going on back there.  They were most understanding and gave me the green light.  To this day people come and go on the trails behind my house but they stay a comfortable distance away from my yard.   I do hear the teenaged “field parties” that occur on warm nights in the fall and spring, but the only threat to come from those woods for years now are the deer who decimate my flowers and shrubs.

It’s the big crimes that get our attention; the murders, the rapes, the occasional mugging, but police do the majority of their work in small doses.   One by one they answer our calls for help, they are gracious about apologies for bothering them for “such a little thing” and they chip away at the problems.

Chief Miguel you have earned your time fishing or golfing or whatever it is you intend to do beginning in 2010.   This citizen in particular thinks your police department is the very best.

Of all the missing persons in the U.S. right now, one person is getting more attention than any other.  She is Annie Le, a Ph.D. student in pharmacology at Yale University in Connecticut.   The joint news conference with law enforcement and university officials captured live television coverage on CNN yesterday.  The Today Show featured Le’s disappearance as it’s top story this morning.  Among all the people who disappear under mysterious circumstances, Le is now best known.

When asked to speak about journalism to various organizations and community groups throughout the years, I was often asked how our television station decided which stories to feature on the evening news.  The answer, I told them, was that news is what is not supposed to happen.  And of all the day’s events, which story was what was not supposed to happen most?  That was often the lead story on the news.

If a teenager with a history of running away from home fails to come home one night, it doesn’t get much attention.  A teenage runaway who runs away is not news.  On the other hand, a teenager who reliably makes it home on time and has no history of being out without a phone call home, makes news for it’s sharp deviation from character.

That’s why Annie Le’s sudden disappearance is so disconcerting.  She was supposed to be married today.  When she was reported missing on Tuesday, some wondered if she got cold feet and became another “runaway bride”, like Jennifer Wilbanks whose disappearance prior to her wedding in 2005 sparked a nationwide search.  Le’s case started small but grew after every family member and friend portrayed her as stable and happy about marrying her “best friend”.

Now the case reads like a prime time crime show.

Why did surveillance cameras record an image of Le walking into the Yale Laboratory building but not walking out?   Reports of some bloody clothing recovered from a hiding spot above some ceiling tiles indicate “foul play”, according to authorities.  Police say they’re working to link the clothing with Le, but we already know the answer.  A green shirt and brown skirt in size extra small as shown on the surveillance tape is Le’s.  We hope if she is trapped somewhere in that giant building, she can be found, injured perhaps, but alive.

This story might not end well.  Police have summoned cadaver dogs, and they’ve been going through nearby dumpsters.  The authorities say they have no suspects and until the clothing is confirmed and identified, they won’t even declare this a missing person’s case, but they always know more than they reveal to the media.

On the other hand, Elizabeth Smart was found after nine months,  Jaycee Dugard after 18 years.  Sometimes there are weird, but happy endings.  Let’s hold out hope for beautiful and brilliant Annie Le.

In 1975 I graduated from high school.  A gallon of gas cost 44 cents and Bic launched the first disposable razor.  The Alaska pipeline was begun.  Gerald Ford was President.  And my oldest, most important friend was murdered.

Lisa Nodelman was perfect, at least through the eyes of a five year old on that first day of kindergarten at May Street School.  She remained that way until her violent end as a senior in high school at 17.  She was the most popular girl in class.

Maureen, middle row left. Lisa middle right

The classmates we had in kindergarten were the same kids we had all the way to 6th grade.  We played together after school, celebrated every birthday looking just like the class roster only more dressed up,  knew whose birthday came early in the year and was therefore among the oldest which seemed important back then.  Lisa was one of those early ones.  We knew who was smart and who was dumb,  lined up automatically according to height anytime we went in and out for recess or set up for the class photo.  Lisa and I were always within one head of each other.  We started and ended May Street tall for our age.

By Junior High at Chandler Street, our little class got diluted with kids from other grammar schools, and high school blended the group even more, but by then I enrolled in tiny Notre Dame Academy and I lost touch with Lisa, lost touch in the hallways and classes each day but I did keep informed through friends and my sister Karen who attended Doherty High and ran track with Lisa.  I heard Lisa joined a fast crowd off the track too.  It was probably God’s grace that I was in a different school not able to keep up.  My parents would not have allowed it and I would have resented them for that.

Maureen and Lisa, at center

Lisa was beautiful.  She got the grades.  Except for the time as a little girl she was afraid to climb down from the tree house in our yard and I was surprised to have to summon my mother, Lisa was fearless too.    Lisa broke school track records.  She was as we say today, the total package, destined for great things, and I had no doubt those things would come to her when I saw her for the last time.  She walked into a little shop where I worked at Tatnuck Square and was her usual confident self.  High school had matured her, matured us all, and she treated me favorably, which was a relief.  I always wished Lisa would like me best.

Just a couple of months later on a cold day in January, a small item appeared in the Worcester Telegram and Gazette.   A city girl was missing.  It was Lisa.   Karen said everyone at Doherty was talking about it.  No one had any idea where Lisa could have gone.

By the second day, the article on Lisa got longer.  Authorities expanded their search to Cape Cod for the suspected teenaged runaway.  The stories I heard about Lisa made a run to the Cape seem plausible even in winter with everything shut down.  But at the same time, in the same newspaper, there was another story about a woman’s body found in a snow bank outside the campus of Anna Maria, a small college in a Worcester suburb.  She was nude and had no ID.  Thank goodness it’s a woman I thought.  Lisa was no woman, she was just a girl.

Maureen at left, Elise at right

The next day all the dots got connected when Karen came home from school out of breath from running up the driveway with the afternoon paper in her hand and fighting tears to announce Elise is dead; the news not only confirmed but hammered on the front page in bold black lettering I still can see. “Paxton Body Identified As Missing City Girl”.  The most famous headline of my life.

I was too stunned to do the right thing, so I did the young thing.  I carried on with my busy little senior year.  I didn’t take time for the funeral, didn’t feel the need to expose myself to all that sadness.   In fact I heard Lisa’s mother turned hysterical at the burial and starting kicking dirt all over the place, so grateful to have missed that messy scene was I.  There were college applications to fill out.  Life was waiting for me.

They arrested a man some time later, I don’t recall if it was weeks or months after the murder, but he stood trial and was sentenced to death until the Governor overturned the death penalty and I felt the guy got off easy.  I don’t remember the murderer’s name anymore, so I don’t know his fate, but I suspect he probably did his twenty years in prison and got out around 1997.  I recall he was young to be a murderer, only about 23 years at the time.

Side by side in 6th grade

On the night Lisa was murdered she got into a fender bender while setting off for a party across town.   She exchanged license and insurance information with the man she bumped into, and went on to enjoy the last night of her life.   With Lisa’s address in hand, the man drove around the corner and waited outside her home on Havelock Road.  In the cold, all night long, he patiently anticipated the return of the pretty girl to whom fate had introduced him.  When Lisa pulled into the driveway around 4 am, he grabbed her before she could even turn off the engine.

The next morning, Lisa’s Mom got up to go to work and found the car in the driveway, engine still running, radio blaring and warmth floating from the dashboard vents through the open driver’s door.  A few blocks away, police found one of Elise’s shoes.  Further down the street, they found her purse.  By the time they found her days later, she’d been raped, stripped, strangled and dumped in the snow by the side of a rural road.   No more Lisa.

I should have gone to the funeral because I’ve been saying goodbye in my dreams ever since.  Lisa makes periodic appearances in nocturnal story lines that make no sense, but I’m always living my life and she’s not living hers.  She looks exactly as she did when I last saw her, age 17, younger than three of my own children now, just a baby to a 51 year old.  And I always wake up so sad for Lisa, for the college she never attended, the career she never started, the husband she never met and the children she never had.  I’m sad for the class reunions she didn’t make and for the chance meeting at the grocery store with an old acquaintance who is the only one who gets to be old.  She never got that far, getting herself killed so young.

There are all kinds of lessons to be learned and I focused on them early.  Friends used to say, “that could have been us”, but I didn’t say that.  My parents never would have let me go to a party on the other side of Worcester.   They gave me the curfew of an eight year old.  So I didn’t learn how close I was to being a victim of rape and murder like Lisa.  My life wasn’t set up like hers.

Mostly, I’ve learned how life takes fairness off the table again and again.

How do you go on when your mother tried to kill you?  The Stacey Castor story is so bizarre, so incredible, I don’t think Lifetime Television would consider it’s story line.  Surely there are no self-help books on this one.  How many people would need to buy it?

When David Castor of Syracuse died of suicide by antifreeze poisoning in 2005, authorities never stopped thinking about Castor’s wife.  The drinking glass on the night stand held the fingerprints of only one person; Stacey Castor.

For two years prosecutors worked to build a case of murder and in 2007 their efforts led them to another crime.  They exhumed the body of Stacey Castor’s first husband David Wallace who died of a suspected heart attack in 2000.  A subsequent autopsy revealed he died of antifreeze poisoning too.

With the truth bearing down on Stacey, the mother of two warned her daughters, 20-year old Ashley and 15- year old Bree, that the police were opening old wounds and causing trouble for all of them.  The girls believed their mother was a victim and did not deserve this stress after all the tragedy in her life.

On the eve of Ashley’s 21st birthday, Stacey offered to give her daughter a first celebratory cocktail.   She mixed two vodka drinks and the pair sat down to enjoy the evening.   Ashley recalls her mom encouraging her to finish every last drop of the drink.

That night, Bree inquired about her sister and her mom said Ashley was resting in her room and would sleep until morning.  Ashley’s boyfriend telephoned her, but Stacey said the girl was sleeping and should not be disturbed.  He asked Stacey to look for an item left behind in Ashley’s bedroom and Stacey returned to the phone to say she looked and couldn’t find it.  The boyfriend was calling from just outside the house and never saw the light go on in Ashley’s room.

The following morning, Bree entered her sister’s room and found Ashley dazed and incoherent at the foot of the bed.  Bree went to get her mother and when she returned a few minutes later, she saw a typewritten suicide note on the bed that was not there a moment earlier.  In it, Ashley confessed to killing both her father and her stepfather, however the note bore no fingerprint from Ashley.  Only Stacey and Bree, who had picked it up to read it left fingerprints on the paper.  Ashley was  rushed to the hospital and recovered from her poisonous cocktail of alcohol and prescription drugs and her mother was arrested.

Stacey Castor was convicted last week of murdering her second husband and attempting to murder her daughter.  Prosecutors in an adjacent county are now building a case of murder against Castor for her first husband’s death.  Castor is 4o and will likely never live outside prison again, and yet it is the life sentence of the daughter that I can’t shake.

What will it take for Ashley to repair her wounds?   She told prosecutors she considered her relationship with her mother to be close, which makes it even worse.  Had they been competitive or estranged from one another, Ashley would have had a little distance to protect her.  This attack came from deep inside the heart.

I think of all the life events where Ashley will want a mother.   New jobs, a bridal shower,  a wedding, pregnancies and parenting advice.    Holidays, birthdays, Mother’s Day.  All the moments through all the years where we place a phone call home or we come together and toast to the happy occasion.

Will Ashley ever have a drink when she doesn’t remember her mother’s special recipe?  Will she ever have a cocktail again at all?

The courtoom photograph of a sobbing Ashley shows the finality of what her mother tried to do.  Did  Ashley harbor any doubt about the truth until that moment when a body of informed adults confirmed it?  We cannot know.  Hopefully Ashley will receive counseling and friends to carry her to the other side of this nightmare, where the woman who brought her into this world also attempted to take her out.