I’m not sure if I’m unique in this, but I see autumn, along with its counterpart, spring, as less seasons themselves and more as transitions leading to the “main” seasons of summer and winter. I guess I feel this way because they are less extreme than the times they lead into. Fall ushers in the […]
“So, when the journey gets long,Just know that you are loved,There is light up above, And the joy is always enough.Bubbles up.” “Bubbles Up”, by Jimmy Buffett The deaths of celebrities don’t usually have a deep effect on me. I’ll usually say, “Aww…”, discuss some memory I have of their career, and go on about […]
My time as a full-tme teacher ended last May. It was definitely bittersweet. Sorry for the cliche, but it is one for a reason. I continue to have moments that tug at my heart, making me wonder if I quit too soon. After all, I still love being with the kids and I loved having […]
My earliest memories of being in Cincinnati involve camping somewhere on the outskirts of the city, going to a newly opened regional theme park called King’s Island, and then almost always ending up in Kentucky as my dad invariably missed the exit on the way to Riverfront Stadium for a Reds game. Remember, these were […]
Something happened on my way to having extra time on my hands when I retired. It feels like everything happened. Everything but having extra time, that is. At least until quite recently. Between giving more time to things I was already doing and picking up activities I hadn’t been doing, I feel like I’m at […]
When the troublemaking brother of the man in prison for a drunken crash that killed their parents is found stabbed to death in their restaurant, everyone in the small Irish village of Kilbane assumes it was one of the O’Sullivan clan who did him in. The blame falls squarely on oldest brother James, a hot-tempered […]
More than a quarter of a century ago, literally in a previous millenium, I interviewed for a job at a school I’d grown up hating. Having lived in south Parkersburg all my life and being an alumnus of Parkersburg South High School, the idea of working at Parkersburg High School was completely unthinkable. But I […]
I’ve read detective fiction for as long as I’ve been able to read, practically. I started with the classics: Holmes, Queen, Marple, Poirot. But then I picked up a new classic: Spenser. I’ve read others in the genre, including other characters created by Robert B. Parker. Jesse Stone, Sunny Randall, and Parker’s Western heroes, Virgil […]
I recently went with Sarah to see the latest Tom Hanks movie, A Man Called Otto. All I knew was the little I could glean from the trailer and that people were upset because they had changed the titular character’s name from Ove to Otto. Well, and that it stars Tom Hanks, which is good enough […]
Last week, I talked about two fantastic restaurants my friends the Delgados took me to while I visited them in Georgia. Today, I complete the journey. The places I’m going to tell you about are definitely all on my list of places I must return to the next time I’m there. I’m going out of […]