From the year of his birth in 1914 until the outbreak of war in 1941, my father lived in a mostly white, mostly working-class, mostly Irish Catholic neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York.

I once started out to walk around the world but ended up in Brooklyn.

My father was a Norwegian tenor and my mother a New York Irish librarian.

To people from 'Brooklyn-Brooklyn' North Brooklyn is really just South Queens.

My parents were children during the Great Depression of the 1930s, and it scarred them. Especially my father, who saw destitution in his Brooklyn, New York neighborhood; adults standing in so called 'bread lines,' children begging in the streets.

Take it from me - he's got the goods.