Getting better with age on stage

I was on the phone last night interviewing two guys in the Syracuse music scene I’ve been fortunate enough to have seen play many times. Guitarist Terry Mulhauser and harp-blower and singer Pete McMahon are veterans who’ve played with different bands and a wide array of other musicians. But the cream always rises to the…

If you light them up, please be careful

With three days to set things off, somebody somewhere is going to hurt themself. Or, worse yet, send a bottle rocket or another home firework off into the good night and have it land and turn somebody else’s holiday weekend into a nightmare. For my July Fourth Weekend edition of my Mark It Up community…

Now fans will see what direction the program is going

There are a lot of old sayings that make the point. Smelly stuff flows downhill. Cut off the head to defeat the enemy. Wow. Those are pretty harsh as I’m thinking about Syracuse University bringing in the new athletic director chosen to direct a program pretty important to the community in which I live. Mark…

Straight from P-Town

I’ve been mulling this idea about a great T-shirt around in my head since my dear wife Karen and I started visiting Provincetown as part of our annual pre-tourist-invasion June week in Cape Cod. The saying is Straight from P-Town. We love this city on the top of the Cape because it is so inclusive…

A suite night at the stadium

It was not a run-of-the-mill visit to the old ballpark the last time out to see the Syracuse Chiefs. My dear wife Karen had some big news for me with her text. Her co-worker and our friend Marlene invited her to the SMG suite for a Friday night International League game against the Indianapolis Indians.…

Riding across this great big land for a worldly cause

Brian D’Apice stayed at my good friend Jim McKeever’s house through the Memorial Day Weekend. Anybody who’s read Jim’s passionate Irish Investigations blog know how he’s one to advance the good cause any way possible. And the work of D’Apice, this project he’s calling Bicycle Around America is a great cause. D’Apice’s pedal pushing began…

There’s always room for good writing

Victoria Coit sent me a Facebook message of introduction, saying that she was a friend of Tina Hills and would like to speak to me about a project. Tina and her husband Ken were the owners of a restaurant in downtown Syracuse, I remembered, Sophistications, hosted jazz, very nice people. Victoria said she’s meet me…

The end of an era for the little program that could

Brian McDowell took the podium at his final year-end Journalism Convocation at the State University of New York at Morrisville last week. The professor looked somewhat happy to be able to pack away his books and belongings and go back home to spend more time with his wife. And he looked somewhat sad in the…