I used to write letters. Letters that traveled here-and-there in envelopes with a USPS stamp. I still write letters. But not all that many, and not all that often. I don’t have to buy all that many “forever stamps” these days. My Dad’s side of the family has always written lots of letters. I don’t…
This is a story from more than a quarter century ago. It happened in 1991. It was the last time I put on a costume at Halloween, and one of the very few times that I have done so since I became too old to go door-to-door in the quest for chocolate. (Note: I still…
Birthday week of 2017 was a doozy. Music. Sunshine. Friends. Food. Family. Frolicking. Revelry. Reminiscing. More music…and a tad bit of introspection. We had been in Orygun less than 3 months when Jackson Browne released “The Pretender.” If I had a “ben franklin” for every time I have played the album since I bought the…
I’ve always been good with numbers…at least that’s what they tell me. I was a CPA once upon a time. I was/am a number cruncher, but I was NEVER a bean counter. “But this can’t be the right number….” -=-=-= I had just turned 17 when The Who released their first album. I cranked it…
I can hear John Crudele’s voice in my head like it was yesterday, but it was almost 20 years ago. Cancer took away JMC, his wisdom and his perfect answers over 3 years ago. But I’m pretty sure that if could ask him the very same question today, that there would only be a slight…
I had a walk-and-talk with an Army buddy one day last week. Tim is not the only person who ever called me Willie. He was one of several guys at Ft. Bragg that laid that one on me because of a basketball player named Willie Wise. Shelly and I spent a night in Wooster, OH…
It was a spring day in 1976. A Monday. The first class after lunch. Pre-Algebra. A packed classroom, most of whom didn’t think they had any reason to ever learn or understand math. (I still feel sorry for them. I’d bet that some of them said “do you wanta supersize that” for a looooong time….)…
Sgt. Joe Friday apparently never said it, but this piece will be the Jack Webb version: “Just the facts, ma’am.” {Apparently he did often say: “All we want are the facts, ma’am”and sometimes “All we know are the facts ma’am”} It was the years 2000 and 2001. It was the years of the presidential election…
It is right up there on my list of favorite “questions from Shelly.” There have been some doozies. The one at the top of the list has been there since our first date. (What’s said in the Corolla on 10/13/12, with The Rainmakers album “25 on” playing, stays in the Corolla….) When she asked the…
I have this thing about song lyrics. That is not new news. Sometimes I love a song when it’s lyrics could’ve been mine, especially if I had any writing talent. Sometimes I love the lyrics of a song when the lyrics are 180 degrees away from where I am, or where I’ve ever been. And…