Category: Everyday Events
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Good-bye Blip
I will miss the blip. The blip and I go back many, many years. I saw the blip when I was very young but I didn’t know what it was back then. Over the years, the blip took on a special significance when I would look for it in dark movie houses, from the next-to-last…
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The Thing
A few months ago, I stopped at a small country deli for a turkey and swiss cheese sandwich. The store was in Keene Valley, New York. There are fine views of the High Peaks of the Adirondacks from the porch of the deli. I had some brown mustard and low-fat mayo on rye bread. The…
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Sunday Rock
It was raining as I drove along the western edge of the Adirondack Park recently. It was around the time when my thoughts turned to how much weight the Yankee pitcher, C. C. Sabathia, had lost during the off-season. Or, perhaps I was reflecting on Colbert replacing Letterman on the Late Show. More than likely, however,…
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The Rivers of my Life: Episode 1–The Charles
The river rolls on, like a sad lover’s song. But is it the beginning or the end? [Lyrics taken from an educational film I used to show my students when I taught Earth & Space Science in the 1970’s] Flowing water has always held a fascination with me. I grew up with the great Susquehanna…
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The Skeleton in the Taxi
The Division Head in the private school where I taught was very adamant. “All this stuff has to go, Pat. Everything you don’t use in a year should be cleaned out.” I looked around the Middle School lab and began to make mental notes of what needed to be tossed. The chemicals, of course, had…
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A Missing Image But Still A Memory
The photographic frame, measuring 3″x5″ sat on the flat surface of the headstone. It’s a small quiet Catholic cemetery on the edges of the village of Saranac Lake, New York. The winter snow was gone but no grass or Spring flowers had the courage, or time, to begin their life again. Cemeteries are full…
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A Room With a View
Everyone likes a room with a view. Otherwise, why do we need windows? Does anyone want to look out over the Fresh Kills Land on Staten Island, the Gowanus Canal or the latest toxic runoff pond from some mine in northern Canada? No, we don’t. And, I believe I can speak for most of us,…
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This Old House
There is so much to be done when your last surviving parent dies. My father passed away nearly ten years to the day and I can remember so much of the aftermath that my brother, wife and I had to deal with. The lawyers, the probate, the will, endless medical records, phone calls, funeral arrangement…
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Dad
On this day, January 24, my father was born. I don’t know the day of the week or the time of day. All I know for sure is that it was 100 years ago. My guess is that it was a home birth. My grandfather, Michael, would likely have been pacing the floor of their…
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Losing King–Losing Thea
The email from my daughter, Erin, came on the evening of January 16. It’s title was short and full of foreboding: “Thea’s gone.” A few hours earlier she had written that she and her husband had taken Thea to the “doggie hospice”. Now this. She described how her big black lab mix, Thea, had to…
patrickjegan 