Congratulations to a hard-working George III

George Venditti III put on the cap and gown in Oneonta and went up there with a whole bunch of other young people to mark the occasion of receiving that coveted academic degree. As a bunch of proud parents sat around a table at the Retreat in Liverpool, N.Y., during a celebration dinner, my marvelous…

Angie says she won’t be blogging anymore

The email from Angie two days ago did not make me happy. My blogging friend from Kentucky again was having trouble with her WordPress account. That’s putting it mildly. “WordPress hates me,” she wrote. “I’ve had to reset my password two times in the last two hours and none of them are working just like…

Dinner with Daryl and Tony Graziano, too

With my dear wife Karen’s son Daryl quite content working the overnight-and-weekend shift at the Turning Stone Resort and Casino in Verona, N.Y., our dinner get-togethers come on Wednesday or Thursday nights. His late-winter move some 25 miles from Syracuse and closer to the job has further complicated schedules. Last night we celebrated his birthday…

I might even give it a catchy new nickname …

When I enjoyed my Saturday stretch with Ellie B, aka Dogamous Pyle, at Onondaga Lake Park last Saturday, I had ulterior motives. I wanted to take pictures for today’s installment of my weekly community blog for Syracuse Public Media site waer.org. I happen to think the facilities at Onondaga Lake Park deserves some boasting. The…

Sometimes it feels like a whole new course

For some dozen years now, my Tuesday nights in the warm months have been reserved for nine holes of golf with good friends. Weather was beautiful at Northern Pines for week two of our informal little formal golf league. In the beginning, four foursomes of workers at The Post-Standard newspaper hustled to arrive for tee…

Come out and play

Winter held on. Spring was sleepy. The Robinson flowering crabapple in the front yard of our home in the Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood shook all that off and made its grand entrance, as far as I’m concerned, this very morning. Hello to summer two, you hardy and hearty blooming beauty.

A dirty job no matter how you look at it

Four plants now are ready to sprout in the new section of our hourglass front-yard garden in our Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood, the portion I dug out last fall. My dear wife Karen and I teamed this glorious and sunny Sunday to dig in the dirt. I used a spade to make holes for…