Category: Real Personal History
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Dante’s Ninth Circle of Hell is in My Kitchen
The ice cubes freeze quickly, too quickly. I don’t even have time to think what the ice was for…a martini (I don’t drink them), a Coke Zero (I don’t drink it), a single cube to chill my wife’s Chardonnay? Now, that’s likely. But one thing I can say…and this can be a warning to all…
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The True Cost of a 5 cent Root Beer Barrel
This post has nothing at all to do with Pop Tarts. I just put the photo out on Instagram and Facebook so it was handy to use. Pardon the deceptive lead-in but I had no photos of Root Beer Barrels to use. I could have Googled for one, but it’s nearly dinner time…and my time…
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My First Two Weeks Back In New York City After Five Years Of Living In The Far North Country

[Say what you want…this comes with the apartment] Okay, It’s maybe three or four weeks now since we’ve left the cold and hostile fields of the North Country for the Cold and hostile streets of the Big Apple. So, you might ask, How are we doing? [Across the street from out building. A line waiting…
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The Winters Of My Life
“Talk of your cold! through the parka’s fold it stabbed like a driven nail. If our eyes we’d close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn’t see.” –Robert Service. The Cremation of Sam Magee I live in the Adirondack mountains of upstate New York. I don’t live in the Yukon. But lately, I feel…
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Coal For Christmas
[Artwork:Watercolor sketch by Paul Egan (Date unknown)] Note to my readers: If you think you’ve read this blog before, don’t thing you’re getting senile…(the doctors won’t release such information)..this is perhaps the third, maybe fourth time I’ve posted it. Hey, maybe I’m the one getting senile. I’ve tweaked the story several times to try to make the narrative better,…
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Walking In A Winter Wonderland
Sure, I could be walking down this snowy, quiet and picturesque road. I could be thinking about the approaching holidays, the snow men, the fire in our downstairs living room wood burner…but I don’t imagine I’ll be making this walk. Don’t get me wrong, I love snow. I always have. But as I stand in…
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A Farewell Letter To Jimmy
Hey, Jimmy…I can’t bring myself to call you James. For most of my life you’ve been Jimmy, so there it is. Mariam and I were in Burlington just this past weekend. As I wandered up and down Church Street I kept wondering where the restaurant was that we met for the first time in over…
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Here I Sit In Space #275 In The Rose Reading Room: Yet I Am Not Insecure
It was an afternoon in mid-October. The rain had fallen most of the morning so when I arrived at the wet slippery steps of the Main Branch of the New York Public Library on 5th Ave., the scattered metal tables were mostly empty and wet. I posted a photo of the wet tables on Instagram.…