Golf can be about camaraderie during Ryder Cup week

Good friends off the course. Tremendous rivals from first tee to 18th green. I’m talking about KP, Tater and I with the first statement and the American and European teams for the bi-yearly Ryder Cup matches with the second. I assume that the off-course relationship for the 24 golfers from the professional squads should be…

Kitty Hoynes, you saw it with that Guy

I had lunch this week in downtown Syracuse with my great friend Jim McKeever, author of terrific blog Irish Investigations. As we usually do for our sessions of catch up on life with my dear wife Karen and his great girlfriend MG and our offspring, which leads to memories of our years together at the…

A cruise with the gang, minus me

My dear wife Karen is aboard Jet Blue, about to taxi down the runway at Syracuse’s Hancock International Airport to head toward Fort Lauderdale. Tonight, Bubba Gump’s Shrimp. Tomorrow morning, the big ship of Royal Caribbean International. Key West. Other destinations and dinners and lunches and breakfasts. Friends we’ve cruised with for eight years now.…

At Festa Italiana, folks eat it up

Even the name sounds delicious. Festa Italiana. Rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it? Well, sure, downtown Syracuse has its share of festivals that declare their devotion to the culinary. The Crawfish Festival is named after the bright red mud bug dug so much down New Orleans way, and in May, Clinton Square welcomed folks…

A patio party with a firepit warms our weekend

We’ve heard word of this big patio, my dear wife Karen and I, from the planning stages to the digging and pouring to the inevitable haggling about finishing touches with contractors. I was not pleased when damage was done to the steps that DJ had put in previously. Make it right, dude … When somebody…

Entering a new e world, and it’s not about dating

I’m trying to attract attention with a new online profile. I showed it to my dear wife Karen, and she gave it the green light. This first week after my temp agency informed me the 40-hour-per company had decided to end my assignment two months in has included enough soul searching to remind me that…

Thirteen years ago, we were invaded forever

Thirteen years ago to the minute, I was watching in horror as the television screens in the newsroom of the Syracuse Newspapers were all turned to some version of that horrible vision above. Oh, how the 9 o’clock hour on this day sends shivers down my spine every year. It forever will. The fact that…