A Watchfire to honor those who served is a fitting Memorial

I’m pretty sure I’ve never welcomed in Memorial Day in a more appropriate manner. My dear wife Karen told me our great friend Michelle had a big plan for late Sunday afternoon into evening. Her former colleague Dino was celebrating his 70th birthday with a barbecue and dozens of amigos at the New York State…

Tomorrowland will open your eyes wide

Tomorrowland brings us to Yesterdayville. Writers Damon Lindelof and Brad Bird and director Bird select the Worlds Fair, Flushing, N.Y., 1964, to focus the attention on young inventor Frank Walker and his kindred guide Athena. I was there! The thought stirred me in the surprisingly well-attended first matinee Friday in a Regal Cinemas theater in…

Pop goes the memories, says Gary Frenay, and it is good

Gary Frenay, File Under Pop Vocal Northside Records Syracuse music fans know what a cool cat Gary Frenay can be. He’s got nine band lives, too. Well, that number’s a bit of a stretch, but the singer and guitarist has made the Syracuse Area Music Hall of Fame twice with the power pop of the…

Final Fridays, Promises Broken, First Mondays and Great Guitarists in a Syracuse music roundup

Last chance this season at Theater Mack My friend Ron Thompson sent over a reminder that the cool monthly happy hour shows in the marvelously refurbished little carriage house in Auburn, N.Y., stages its final edition of spring this week. The Fabulous Ripcords headline. The powerful blues band was recognized at this year’s Native American…

Peony power for Memorial Day Weekend

They call Memorial Day Weekend the unofficial start of summer in our part of the world. It got down to 44º F last night, more fit for another season. Nevertheless the peony standing proudly in front of the Little Bitty in the Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood has pushed out its pretty fuchsia flowers. My…

I think of the button-wearing Johns Hopkins fans and I’m not too merry

The Final Four of men’s Division I college lacrosse will roll up and down the green turf of Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia today, a Memorial Day Weekend tradition. The game born centuries ago by Iroquois tribe athletes is still popular here in the Syracuse area’s Onondaga Nation and upstate New York. Yes, I live…

Our little league outlasts the rain to start fresh

In thundered while DJ, Bird, Marie and I played our first hole. I do believe lightning may have flashed fairly close to Northern Pines in Cicero, N.Y. But the folks in the clubhouse who closely watch the radar — they have a senior ranger in who roams the course in a cart to monitor speed…

Our little cherry tree now has a name

The results are in. You voted with your feet. Well, no you didn’t. It wasn’t the kind of poll where you actually have to drive there and pull down the lever and hang a chad or anything like that. No, a week ago I decided to ask the world with a poll what my dear…

A word from Rachel Carrera …

Let us take a moment today to solve a small mystery about one of my favorite mystery writers, shall we? There are certain folks here in BloggyVille whose absence of an uncommon length raises a chill in my soul, a pause in my thought and an investigation of some sort on my part. Rachel’s been…

I couldn’t hedge my shaggy thoughts any longer

Two of the front yard shrubs had already gone out of control standing guard at the Little Bitty in the Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood. So as my dear wife Karen tidied up the hourglass garden and spread red mulch, I grabbed the battery-powered Black and Decker hedge clippers and went to work. One of…