The noise and clouds of rising smoke have left this year’s 4th of July celebration in their wake but it seems that every Independence Day I’m reminded of my endless fascination with blowing up shit when I was a kid. I was a pyrotecnic nutball, just wondering, mind you, what would happen if this or that...
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As anyone who knows me knows (is it you, dear reader?) I am nothing if not perfectly accurate in my recollection and honest to a fault. Knowing, in my mind, this truth, I’ve set forth the following account of a particular Mother’s Day in 1954 where, wishing to make it a truly special day,...
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It’s probably unnecessary to publish a formal correction to an earlier essay since that’s really only applicable if you’re a news reporting agency. In addition, this corrects a case of misremembered identity of a dead dog so I’ve probably got no obligation there either. However, my since of fairness in a universe that doesn’t...
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And that title pretty much sums it up because throughout my youth the rec room in our basement was a sometimes room for entertaining but, more importantly, a sanctuary where I carried out my studies in music. The only child’s goto move is ‘alone time’ and much of that was spent sifting through mountains...
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It was so much fun the first time that I’ve unleashed 10 more of my life’s musical bookmarks, songs or themes that will forever be associated with a time and place: 1) Ry Cooder – “Yellow Roses”: I’ve had an irrational love for this 1955 Hank Snow classic ever since I started tooling around...
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When I was 8 years old, an elderly friend of my mother’s, Mrs. Smith, passed away and we agreed to adopt her beloved dog, Toby, a Spaniel of some sort. Not being especially adept at breed identification, I wouldn’t be able to offer much else about his origin. On the other hand, if Toby...
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Music denotes points of interest along the road of life, bookmarks if you will. We’ve all got events, significant or outright mundane, that are made memorable because of a song or piece of music that will forever elicit a memory. Since I’ve become quite a fan of randomness, here are several of mine in...
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Because there was no father on hand and because my mother tried to have a life even while caring for an only child, I did a lot of things on my own that would probably have been more enjoyable in a larger family environment. But at the time I didn’t have anything to compare...
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There’s been plenty of speculation over the decades as to the source of Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer’s nice shiny red schnoz and most of it centers around some kind of lazy DNA. Thanks to 2009 being the last year of Rudolph’s legal suppression of the true story, this December it can finally be...
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Seeing my 10 year-old strep throat stricken niece at Thanksgiving a few days ago reminded me of my own yearly confrontation with the virus from grade school through early high school. I believe my body (the spiritual whole) has always had a bit of whimsy when it comes to what sorts of afflictions might...
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