Making my way this morning from the Sept. 11 memorial ceremony at Rockland Community College to the Rockland County Memorial in Haverstraw Bay County Park, I stopped for a cup of coffee in Mount Ivy.

Walking into David’s Bagel’s, I passed under their television, tuned to the ceremony at Ground Zero, where first responders this year are reading the names of those lost in the terror attacks.

The first name I heard was that of Bernard Favuzza of Ramapo.

After working for eight years with the list of individuals who perished who had links to Rockland, I knew there would be a burst of familiar names.

There wasn’t much of a line, but as I waited to be served, I heard Sean Fegan, a former Blauvelt resident. Then Kristen Fiedel, whose family lives in New City and Thomas Fitzpatrick, who lived in Tuckahoe, but whose in-laws live in Spring Valley.

Before I left the shop, they read the names of Carl Flickinger of Congers, Thomas Foley, a New York City firefighter from West Nyack and Andrew Fredericks of Suffern, another FDNY member who was a nationally respected fire instructor and expert on hose nozzles.

Steve Furman of Wesley Hills, one of the last few F’s, completed the Rockland roll call  of eight familiar names.

For most within range of that television, they went by without note, just that many more names in a list that would go on for hours.

But for eight families here, for friends, relatives and colleagues, they were the focus of the day’s pain, the day’s memories.

And for one “keeper of the list,” they were faces flashing by in a matter of a few minutes — firefighters, a single mom, the Boy Scout leader, an Irish immigrant, brokers and an investment banker — each one a life story learned over eight long years and every one of them cut short.

A Sept. 11 Mass of Remembrance will be offered this evening at 7 p.m. at St. Francis of Assisi Church, Parrot Road, West Nyack. Last year’s mass was attended by many of the Rockland families who lost loved ones at the World Trade Center. This year, says Mary Novotny, who lost her son Brian in the terror attacks, the families are urged to bring along a photo of their loved one. The mass is open to the public.

It’s no surprise that friends and neighbors have been at the side of Grace and Gregg Cosgrove throughout their darkest hours this week.

It’s what people do in Pearl River, the “Town of Friendly People.”

But it’s more than friendship. It’s love, compassion, understanding and faith, all combined in a community’s heart large enough to wrap around a family — or families — in grief.

There was shock and an outpouring of love when Paula Bohovesky was first missing in 1980 and then found brutally slain the next morning. It’s a love and compassion renewed on anniversaries of her death and every two years since 2005, when her mother Lois and brother Peter have needed help to keep her killers behind bars.

We saw it 10 times over in the hours and days after Sept. 11, 2001, when the hamlet suffered a crushing blow, losing 10 present or former residents including members of the FDNY and the NYPD.

The love for Billy Kayser, who died in an auto crash in 2003, showed when his Pearl River teammates played their baseball season with his uniform jersey hanging in their dugout. And it still shows each year in the Billy Kayser Memorial Little League Tournament.

People stood in line for hours to pay their respects almost a year ago for Bill Harris, who devoted himself to his community and provided steel from Ground Zero for so many Sept. 11 Memorials. They did the same for Liz Houston, a local girl who married a local legend and became one herself for her valiant battle against a killer disease. Throughout her illness she was embraced and comforted by her hometown, just as her extended family was following the young mother’s death.

It’s the kind of thing that happens, perhaps on a smaller, more private, but every bit as meaningful a scale, day in and day out in a hamlet that cares so deeply.

And now, blue ribbons are sprouting across Pearl River, a show of love and solidarity with the Cosgroves in their time of unimaginable pain and sorrow following the death of their son, Chance.

It’s what Pearl River does all too well, all too often — and will assuredly do again — whenever there’s a need for the kind of love we know lives there.

It’s pretty miraculous when you come down to it that Haverstraw is in the kind of financial shape reflected in it’s latest outside audit.

Better yet, the town quickly moved to correct the only deficiencies auditors found in the 2007 report on town fiscal health.

It’s all remarkable because of one word — Mirant.

The energy company has devastated local taxpayers and municipalities with its continuing tax assessment challenges.  Never happy with a victory, they’ve now looking for another reduction of their assessments.

Haverstraw did what it could in advance of the settlement of the largest of those challenges a few years back and they’ve worked hard — as reflected in their audits and the changes they’ve made — to get through to this point.

But with Mirant always hovering like a huge storm cloud, it’s hard to imagine what the future might bring.

I have no mixed feeling about the release of convicted Pan Am 103 bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi by Scottish authorities.

He’s supposedly terminally ill and was released earlier today on “compassionate” grounds.

Compassion should have extended no farther than providing him appropriate medical care until he died in prison.

There was no compassion for the lives of the 270 who died when the jet was bombed, crashing to the ground in Lockerbie, Scottland with 189 Americans aboard.

His release is an affront to the U.S., to all the families of those killed on Pan Am 103 and to all of humanity.

Inhumane acts simply don’t deserve compassion for those who orchestrate or take part in them.

I’ll admit I was surprised to hear late this morning that former Giant Plaxico Burress had accepted a deal that will land him in jail for two years.

I expected he’d take his chances, hoping a jury might see a reason to give him a break.

I’m conflicted over his sentence. On one hand, I feel like shooting himself, dealing with the injury, the break with the Giants after their Super Bowl success and facing the public humiliation over his stupidity has been punishment enough.

He may even have been singled out as an example by both Mayor Bloomberg and the police because of his celebrity. But where does this end?

I followed the on-field heroics and off-field legal problems of West Virginia University football standouts Chris Henry and Adam “Pacman” Jones from their days in Morgantown to their time in the National Football League. Both had multiple brushes with the law and neither one —even after repeated second chances — got that they had to change their act.

Jones, for one, couldn’t stay away from clubs and the trouble that often lurks in that atmosphere even when his future in football depended on it.

So there was Burress, out clubbing, and packing a loaded gun — possibly because he saw himself as a target. But if you go places where you feel threatened, the simple solution is to stay away and party at home. Failing that, let a professional bodyguard tag along to fend off overzealous fans or macho idiots out to pick a fight with a star.

It’s a shame that talent self-destructs so often. Michael Vick did and so did his brother, who many believed was even more talented.

Now Burress has cut a deal that he has to find disappointing. He’ll lose two critical years from his pro career, leaving him to hope for a comeback in his mid-30s.

But even before a cell door closes behind him, another door has opened.

As it suspended the wide receiver, the NFL announced that he would be reinstated after his prison term.

Perhaps they don’t get it, either.

Twice in two days I’ve been heading east on Route 59 in Nanuet and had a close call with cars coming off the southbound exit from the New York State Thruway opposite Grandview Avenue.

Yesterday I was first in line, waiting for the light to change in the middle of three eastbound lanes. When the light went green, the three of us across started forward only to find a wave of cars coming off the ramp and making the left turn in front of us to head east on Route 59.

Then again this morning, the same thing happened, except that this time there were a couple of trucks in the mix cutting in front of us.

Yesterday, I chalked it up to a handful of people in a hurry who all blew through an amber light turning red.

But with it happening again this morning, I started wondering if something might be wrong with the timing of the lights.

When I reached the office, I spoke with Clarkstown Police spokesman Sgt. Harry Bauman, who said he wasn’t aware of other calls from concerned motorists.

He planned to have the spot checked this morning, but in the meantime, I’d urge people to count off a couple of Mississippis before heading through the intersection when the light goes green.

The story of a 76-year-old retired bus driver who believes she’s been tricked into selling her home is so convoluted that it’s taking several levels of courts to figure out what really happened.

In the most simple terms, Venera Held says she didn’t intent to sell her home to Michael Goldstein, just the right of first refusal if she ever decided to sell. He, of course, says she knew what she was signing and that she knew she was selling the home.

What actually transpired is so clouded that there have even been criminal charges brought and dismissed, a decision that is under appeal.

The property may be home to Held, but it’s more to Goldstein, who already has approval to subdivide it in a zone that permits replacing single-family homes with up to six housing units.

The lesson here, especially in times when money is tight and profits can have a special allure, is not to conduct real estate transactions over the table of a bagle shop. And don’t do it without a lawyer at your side.

One will probably end up there in any event.

Once again this year — this Sunday, in fact — Rockland Community College will host the American Heart Association’s Start! Heart Walk, an event that is expected to draw about 3,000 participants from Rockland, Bergen and Passiac counties.

The event begins with a program of speakers at 10:30 — including Rich Henning of Park Ridge N.J., who survived a heart attack at 43, and Audrey Liguanti of Spring Valley relating her 16-year-old son’s battle with cardiovascular disease.

The Walk itself kicks off at 11 a.m.

There will be a “Kids Zone,” with face painting, clowns and an inflatable “moon bounce.”

Blood pressure screenings and healthy cooking demonstrations will be among the highlights for adults.

You may drive along Route 59 every day for years and not see the scenes captured by the professional and serious amateur photographers taking part in the “59×59” exhibit now on view at the GAGA Arts Center in the Garnerville Arts and Industrial Complex.

The show opened last weekend as part of the two-day GAGA Arts Festival, but continues on Fridays from 4 to 8 p.m., Saturdays from 2 to 6 p.m. and Sundays from noon to 4 p.m. through June 6.

But this Saturday there’s a special opportunity. The public is invited to join the 31 participating photographers and their friends and family for a reception at GAGA from  6 to 10 p.m.

The first weekend reaction was overwhelming, says Ken Karlewicz, the professional photographer who was the mastermind behind the project last May 9. Karlewicz has several of his own shots in the exhibit, but more important to him are the works by his teen photography students from around the county.

One of those, an environmental portrait of the late Ellen Ferretti of Nanuet — whose home was all but encircled by the Nanuet Mall — captures decades of history in a single fram taken by 18-year-old Wilfry Fana of Haverstraw.

You can see Wilfry’s work and all the rest — and meet the artists themselves — tomorrow evening at GAGA. 

There’s no charge for the exhibit or the reception, although donations are accepted and all the photos are available for sale from the photographers.