A matter of presidents
Virginia spawned four of the first five US presidents. Between Reconstruction and the roaring twenties, Ohio’s executive fecundity earned it…
Back to 1984 with Robert Dean Lurie
Robert Dean Lurie, who had written very good books on worthy rock music subjects (REM, David Bowie and the Church),…
How one bad scene can ruin an otherwise great movie
Can one egregiously bad scene ruin an otherwise great movie? When I go on an early 1970s jag — revisiting…
The awesome Alan Pell Crawford
The great nineteenth-century novelist Harold Frederic (The Damnation of Theron Ware) had a character complain “I cannot read or listen to…
Gazing at the eclipse in Walt Whitman’s perfect silence
The day before the April 8 eclipse — our postage stamp of ground sat smack dab in the middle of…
The story of Vince Maney
Batavia, New York ‘Tis spring, and if a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love, as Tennyson opined,…
My biggest regrets
Regrets, I’ve had a few, but unlike Mr. “My Way,” mine are enough to mention. (Didn’t Hoboken Frank at least…
An introduction to presidential grave-hunting
Where better to talk about dead presidents than over beer and wings at Jim’s Saloon in East Pembroke, New York,…
Remembering George Eastman
George Eastman, founder of Eastman Kodak and benefactor of Rochester, New York, told my late friend Henry Clune (1890-1995 —…
Remembering John Gardner
“Art begins in a wound, an imperfection,” said the late novelist John Gardner, one of the last American writers to…
Roque is alive and well in Angelica, New York
Goose-pulling is dead and gone, and lawn darts are on life support, but roque is alive and well and avoiding…
Summering in Scranton
Our big adventure this summer was supposed to be a trip to the Capri for a young friend’s wedding, but…
Rage against the baseball machine
In a lifetime of attending perhaps a thousand professional baseball games, all but ten or so in the minor leagues…
How the NCAA twisted women’s sports
This has been a banner, or perhaps baneful, year for women’s intercollegiate sports, what with trash-talking basketballers, record TV ratings…
Michael Cimino’s gift to cinema
In the spring of 1981, I committed what the entertainment press of that day regarded as an act of self-abuse:…
Ernest Hemingway’s Idaho playground
In Ketchum, Idaho, heart of the skiing mecca of Sun Valley, my wife and I found ourselves on Picabo Street…
Looking homeward
Batavia, New York The presidential campaign just ended was mercifully lacking in the ghostwritten platitudes with which Franklin D. Roosevelt,…
