Stealing Stones

The Chambers Concise Dictionary defines the word "serendipity" as "the faculty of making happy chance finds". In the Merriam Webster Dictionary it is "the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought after". Coined by Horace Walpole in 1754, it is the term that characterizes the author's life and is the theme that runs throughout this book. Stealing Stones is about a journey; one which has taken many unexpected and for the most part happy turns. The author has probably been, metaphorically speaking, Stealing Stones throughout his whole adult life, finding himself in professions and activities for which he had no preparation or training and in which he had no expectations of ever being involved. The comedian and actor, W. C. Fields, once said, "Never work with children or animals". For eighteen years the author as first director of the Oatland Island Wildlife Center worked with both and loved it, but it was a job he never expected to have and one for which he had no real background. After retiring he left Savannah, a city said by many to be the most beautiful in North America, the place where he had been born and raised and spent his whole working life and had many life-long friends. He and his wife moved to Northern Ireland a country with which he had no connection, one he had never even visited and one in which he was afraid to say or do anything as it was still immersed in the "Troubles". One might think that this was the end of this journey, One might... and be wrong. As soon as he had become both comfortable and settled in his new situation and enjoying life in the "North", the decision was made to move south to the Republic, a country that the author knew only through the huge annual St. Patrick's Day celebrations in Savannah. There he became involved in a variety of new and unexpected activities which included authoring three books and writing the scripts for and performing in several highly acclaimed musical shows. Most importantly, in mid life he acquired a wonderful family with whom he has shared much of this journey. Stealing Stones is about a career and indeed a life that has been totally serendipitous.