The Magnificent Mrs. Johnson

The lovely chapel on the Syracuse University quad resonated with chuckles. Some of the hundred people inside from the shining July sun dabbed their cheeks from tears. We listened to pretty guitar and stately organ music. We celebrated the 92 years of Vivienne Jean Johnson beautifully in Hendricks Chapel on a lovely Thursday afternoon as…

It’s a new day for our pearly whites

When I last wrote about my teeth cleaning experience at my dentist’s office, several people threw a flag after spotting the photo of the Spinbrushes used by my dear wife Karen and I. Including a dentist I know — not my dentist — who wrote on my Facebook page how the old electric brushes were…

A Facebook tag takes me back to a newspaper office in 1979

I recognized the face immediately when it popped up on my Facebook page, a mom smiling between her two daughters. We’ve been friends on social media for … well, since the advent of people telling journalists that social media just might be a good way to prop up the work life. Oh, say, a decade…

Somebody needed a haircut in the worst way

Ten inches of rain in June. More on July 1. A whole bunch of writing and working on my busy schedule. I could practically hear the grass growing in the backyard of our Little Bitty in the Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood. Into every life a little rain must fall … yeah, right. The Lush…

Happy Fourth of July from our colorful garden

My dear wife Karen says she always wanted to have a combination of red, white and blue in a garden for the Fourth. She was sort of surprised when I pointed out that this year in our backyard butterfly garden of the Little Bitty in the Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood, mission accomplished. The blue…

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…