Zimet increased her popularity with majority Democrats, having tallied 1,280 votes on that line in 2011. She had no major-party opposition.
A reader wrote to advise me again that people from Scotland are Scots, not Scotch or Scottish. Scotch is a form of whiskey, though some Scots undoubtedly drink scotch.
Missing Audrey
She was our neighbor and friend on West Chester Street, sending cards on holidays with personal notes, small gifts on birthdays, home-baked treats on all occasions, chatting on our front lawns with us. She liked to work in her yard, feed the squirrels and birds. Her home was always immaculate and neatly ordered. She was the neighborhood watch, missing nothing from the picture window of her brick ranch-style home. She was a bit unsteady at 86 after falling and breaking a hip last year, but in typical fashion had battled back and was getting around on a cane.
Her religion gave her strength to cope with life’s tragedies. She lost her husband Ralph, a boatman, in 2002, her older son David four years ago. She lived with her younger son Mark, 53. The son had mental health issues, it was said, more or less alleviated by medication.
Neighbors respected the family’s privacy, but it was generally understood there was tension in the home, especially around the anniversary of the older son’s death.
Last Saturday shortly before dawn, on the anniversary of David Carpino’s passing, Kingston police said Audrey Carpino’s son Mark killed his mother in her bed with a blunt instrument, He has been charged with second-degree murder. A grand jury will shortly hear evidence.
Some wonder whether an intervention could have made a difference. Probably not. Audrey was fiercely defensive of her sons.
In this quiet but heavily trafficked neighborhood where I live, it was a shocking double tragedy. A kindly woman we all liked and admired was murdered in her bed, and her son charged. The police festooned the “crime scene” with yellow tape over the weekend.
Squads of police stood guard. Neighbors were told nothing about what was an ongoing investigation. The house is empty now and will probably remain so for a time. The house across the street where Audrey’s friend Louise lived has been on the market for over a year.
The sense of how something like this could happen in our neighborhood has been tempered to some degree by the apparent fact that it wasn’t some nameless outsider breaking into a nearby home and creating mayhem. Before this we thought those things happen in other neighborhoods.
It’s quiet now. The cops departed on Sunday, but left a light on overnight. I look across the street, half-expecting Audrey to appear on her porch, straighten up her American flag, or sweep the walk as she did every other day.
In the end there is a sense of futility, of loss and profound sadness.
Join the family! 
