With the passing of Jimmy Breslin, one of the finest newspaper writers to ever clack out a crackling lede on a typewriter, I recalled how fond I was in my earliest years of his writing. I was introduced to Breslin when I got my first job pumping gas in Blawenburg, […]
I don’t take that many sick days, usually about one or two every year. Today it’s a Saturday and I’ve resigned myself to just let myself be sick, though it makes me feel totally disconnected with the rest of the world. There is something about spending the whole day in bed […]
I’ve been enjoying reading a book I heard about after someone left a comment on Facebook. It’s Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade, and was written by Adam Minter, who has a particularly relevant background for his topic. Minter grew up in a family of scrap dealers, and […]
I read an interesting and slightly depressing report today in the Boston Globe. It said that the number one cause of early death among middle-aged men was not cancer, nor heart disease…but loneliness. WOW. This correlates with another survey where thousands of men were interviewed over a period of 75 […]
A few years ago, I remember coming back from a really fun evening of music at the Shea, where the Dead Collective played the familiar songs of the Grateful Dead. It was comforting and enjoyable to know the songs, and they chose the true standards, which was even better. I […]
I am amazed sometimes at how easy it used to be to write a daily blog. I would naturally have so much to share, so many things I’ve just read that I’m eager to share, or a comment someone made, or a place that I’m going. It’s harder now, maybe […]
I had a highlight of my recent stay in downtown Brooklyn, Citybiking. I met a friend up in Williamsburg, and after a most excellent lunch at Aurora, we walked around and checked out the funky shops, huge condo developments, and hand-painted billboards, up close. I walked a mile or so […]
I read an article about the pornography industry that indicated that the profits are getting smaller and smaller as the business faces the same headwinds that affected the music business. The business is down…way, way down, from the lofty heights before the tubes. And the tubes are what is draining […]
I am looking forward to a short little trip on Sunday, to the nation’s fifth largest city….Brooklyn, New York. I’ll be staying at the Marriott Brooklyn Bridge, between the Heights and Williamsburg, for two nights. I’ve enjoyed visiting the Park Slope neighborhood a few times, and every time I’m there […]
We’re enjoying a February vacation city break at a great and relatively new hotel, the Element Seaport Boston. Up on the sixth floor, we’ve got a suite with a full kitchen and a comfy living room. Unfortunately, the only view out the big window is of the vast parking lot. […]
The voice of Amherst has been silenced. Ironically, the car accident on Amherst Road that killed veteran blogger, Larry Kelley, 62, was the kind of thing he would have covered on his wildly popular blog, Only in the Republic of Amherst. Larry died Friday afternoon, and many, many people have […]
Now I can type on my phone with a real keyboard. wow. I just plugged my iPhone into a Bluetooth keyboard. Cool! I can post blogs with this…i can bring this on a trip with me and leave my laptop at home. Can I? Ok, well to test this out, […]