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Park Avenue on a Rainy Day
I am standing in the rain at the intersection of the Mythical Avenue and Ordinary Life Street in New York City. If there’s a map at your side, look for where E. 92nd Street crosses Park Avenue. That’s where I am standing, safely protected from the speeding traffic, on the landscaped Mall that separates the…
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The Weekend I Took the Moon Rocks Home
Only on rare occasions (once or twice a month) do I check for the black SUV’s in my driveway or parked around the corner on the road where I now live. I hesitate to give the name of the road–I’m not sure it’s in the Big Computer now. We only moved here in December of…
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The Digital Indoor-Outdoor Thermometer From Area 51
It’s common knowledge that various agencies under the umbrella of the “Federal Government” have been conducting TOP SECRET experiments in highly secure location inside an Air Force Base in California (or Nevada or some such forgotten region of the Great American Desert). This place has been known by many “in the know” people as “Area…
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2014 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog. Here's an excerpt: A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 5,100 times in 2014. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people. Click here to…
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Let It Be
I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea Sometimes I turn, theres someone there, other times its only me… –Bob Dylan “Every Grain of…
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A Watercolor Found
My father never said much about his life. He did have his favorite stories that he would tell us when his four boys were…little boys. Some of the tales were family jokes, like this one: “We were so poor, one Christmas we got a pair of roller skates. We had to wait until the next…
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Cooks of the North (A True Story of Survival)
If you’re traveling in the north country fair where the winds hit heavy on the borderline… –Bob Dylan “Girl From The North Country” We who chose to live here in the North Country are a hardy breed. You can see signs of this all around you. The cows have thicker hides, the trees have…
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Coal For Christmas
My father grew up poor. Not the kind of poor where he would walk through ten inches of snow barefoot or go from house to house asking for bread. Just the kind of poor that would keep his father one step ahead of the rent collector. His parents provided the best they could, but, by…
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The Great Hiking Pants Problem
If a sweater was hanging in an empty forest, would it still be Cobalt Blue? I ponder these kinds of questions…maybe a little too much. Every time my wife suggests a hike, I can find some kind of excuse. And most of them are real concerns of mine. It’s not that I don’t like to…
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How Three Moments From An Evening With Bob Dylan And His Band Will Stay With Me
It was December 1, 2014. The mild afternoon had turned into a chilly evening. A light rain was falling on the gritty sidewalks of the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The marquee of the Beacon Theater on 75th Street told the story of the next few hours in my life: TONIGHT-AN EVENING WITH BOB DYLAN…