As a child, Christmas meant magic to me. As an adult it has come more and more to focus on community, both in the broad sense that we all understand, and in the sense of deeper communion with those individuals with whom my life is luckily bound up.

This is the time of year when community is most in evidence in our personal lives, and that gives us the opportunity to take a moment, just a moment, to look within ourselves and recognize how dearly we value it. To enhance that value in whatever way one can is to literally restore a genuine font of the good will we hear so much about each December. A smile or wave will do it, keeping our patience for five more seconds will sometimes do it, doing something for someone else, especially if we don't have to, will inevitably do it. Trying to understand an opposing point of view will do it in spades.

To suggest that Frank Angelino might put his relationship to the RIOC Board of Directors or his relationship to RIOC itself before his commitment to the community is quite simply ludicrous. There is no other word for it. I have no hesitation whatever in naming Frank Angelino as the greatest asset this community has on the RIOC Board of Directors. His long history of community service in New York City is both remarkable and impeccable, and I challenge Dick Lutz directly to produce any shred whatever of any evidence to the contrary.

I don't question that RIOC's request to the Capital Planning and Development Committee was precipitous. They said so, and we all know that it derived from the developers finding the sudden opportunity of a customer for the first building. The outcome of the 'sense of the committee' was not entirely clear, but that is exactly why it was put forward in that form rather than as a vote or recommendation. The article makes no mention of the fact that the Minutes of the Board Meeting at which the final resolution was voted upon state clearly (through Angelino) that there was time only for a sense of the committee, and that there was no vote or final recommendation from the committee.

Nor do I question the potential value of many of the suggestions made regarding Southtown in the past few weeks. The fact remains that there was ample public access to the formal opportunity to raise these issues at those points when they were due to be considered over the past three years. It does no good to the community to pretend we are wholly in the right here, or that there are underhanded motives on anyone's part for taking the course that has been taken so far. The committee is thoroughly qualified to probe and resolve these late-arising issues to whatever extent they can be resolved. And it remains that this development, the development of Southtown, is absolutely mandatory if we are ever to reach full self-sufficiency and thereby, some form of self governance.

I firmly believe that the outcome that is in the best interest of the community will come through rational, and civil, negotiation, and that the negotiation should continue that way right up until that point that we can be thoroughly sure that rational negotiation has failed.

Without doubt, it is incumbent upon those of us who voice our views on community in public, whether professionally or otherwise, to try our best to uphold the spirit of community, real community, each time we speak. Surely I need to remember that as well as anyone else. It's way past time for some genuine pacification of Roosevelt Island, let alone a great deal more civility.

Surely we can and will continue to sometimes disagree amongst ourselves, but disagreement needn't mean war. War solves nothing, and I'm confident that Roosevelt Island isn't going to become the first community that a war enhances rather than destroys.

As my old friend Pogo once memorably said, "We have seen the enemy, and it is us."

First and last, it will be the community that saves or destroys Roosevelt Island, not RIOC, and not the developers of Southtown, who, so far, have given every evidence that it is in their own best interest as future operators of these buildings do everything that they can to enhance this community.

I really believe that simple good will can, in fact, generate magic, which is the other inherent part of this holiday season. And the simplest way I can say so is to repeat what I wrote here two years ago:

I believe in magic. I always have. Of course, for eleven months of the year, I keep it pretty much under wraps, and rely on a belief in all those other more mundane virtues to inspire me to get things done. Each December, though, out it pops, as if it were brand new.

I owe it to my mother, of course, as we all do. I say, "We all do", because I firmly believe that somewhere, each of us still has that core belief in magic, and that we all got it the same way, on the morning of some other December 25th.

Oh, admittedly it gets dented and tarnished, sometimes almost eradicated, and some of us undoubtedly believe we've routed it out for good, but it's still there. It's almost indestructible, thank goodness. It's what saves us each time we think we've finally come to the 'last straw', and we've all seen a few last straws in our lives.

Today's mothers amaze me. Most of them have jobs on top of the 24 hour a day job they have to begin with. Many, far too many, are alone. And yet, they still manage, somehow, to create the miracle of Christmas morning for another child, ensuring that yet another generation will be blessed with the knowledge of magic, true magic.

I don't mean at all to disparage fathers in all this, but mostly, if we admit it, we just follow directions. We know who's in charge of Christmas.

Maybe we all need to 'mother' our community a little more, even though it's hard sometimes to find the energy. That's what mothers do.

I sincerely wish each of you the joy of the magic of Christmas, and hope that, for at least one moment, you are touched with the memory of your own most magical personal Christmas. May each of us know love in our own hearts, and may each of us be inspired to give of that love to others.