Category: Holding onto the Past
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The Tragedy of the Commons
But the darkest scriptures of the mountains are illumined with bright passages of love that never fail to make themselves felt when one is alone. –John Muir There is irony lurking just below the surface of this blog. Irony, youth, pleasant times and not so pleasant times. There’s quietness and beauty sublime. And, dogs. It…
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Adulthood Rising
I have a hard time learning languages. Some people have an ability to pick up German, Portuguese, Farsi or Russian with ease. High School French was the first of my stumbling blocks. I used to “get sick” in the morning to avoid Mrs. Lowe’s first period freshman French class. I tried…I really tried…to understand the…
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The Little Boy And The Big Canoe: A Memory
[Not my brothers canoe. But you get the point. Source: Google Search] Canoes were always a part of my boyhood. Our family was definitely zero-octane. It’s all very logical given the fact that our property at 420 Front St., Owego, NY, my childhood home, happened to have the Susquehanna River in our backyard. And, we…
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A Gathering: A Farewell
The time for tears has come and gone. You passed from our lives a year ago. It’s sad Nance, that you won’t see your son on a hilltop be married to an amazing woman, Kristin. They moved back to Binghamton, the virus, and other events delayed a final gathering in your name until this day,…
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Reunion
[Source: Egan Family Archives.] I’m working on my family tree using Ancestry.com. As my son has said: “It’s addictive.” When my father passed away in 2004, there were boxes of old photographs. Many. of course, were unlabeled. My father would dig this photo out of wherever he stored it and name almost 75% of those…
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Too Old, Too Soon: Two Friends
“I want to go for a ride,” said the car that had a teal fender. “You can’t. You’re a mess. Your engine hasn’t run since the early sixties. A car also needs four wheels and you need three. Your ride isn’t going my friend. This is going to be where you will stay until someone…
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The Toboggan
It’s not really a wedding gift…it’s a gift for the future beyond that. When I was growing up in Owego, NY we had a garage that my father built using spare lumber he had accumulated since the late 1940’s. I cannot locate a proper photograph because I, more than likely, never took one. The whole…
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Split Personalities
[Source: Instagram Search.] Don’t worry, this is not going to be a symposium on Multiple Personalities or a detailed peer-reviewed paper on Schizophrenia. Maybe it will. Many of you know that after I retired, I chose several ways to keep my sanity and be assured that boredom didn’t become an aspect of my life. I…
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For Pete’s Sake
[Lenny Schmidt (L) & Peter Gillette on the ‘Going to Gramma’s House’. A 73- mile bike trip from Owego, NY to Lake Winola, PA. Circa 1960] How many kids, in the innocent ’50’s can say they were lucky enough to have a river in their backyard? Not many would be my guess. And it didn’t hurt…
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