A throwback to what made my father happy

One look at this photo, and memories of what brought my father Frank joy smack me in the back of the head. Yeah, sometimes he’d do that, too, figuratively, with just one of his parental death stares. But not when we were tooling around the village of Stony Brook. Our father was proud of this…

A snowy spring hiccup

That is not the sight I wanted to wake up to on April 16 in Syracuse, N.Y. Not when just a day ago when I took a good, long look at this garden in our city neighborhood of Eastwood front yard, I was noting the yellow flowers of this forsythia that’s the cornerstone of the…

Now that’s a front moving through

When my dear wife Karen and I pulled out of our driveway to drive an hour west to the Waterloo Premium Outlets early this afternoon, the car dashboard thermometer read 80 degrees. We enjoyed the last hour of the spring warmup, strolling the outdoor quad of stores in shirt sleeves. I wore shorts. But while…

Remembering a daughter and a husband on a grief day

There’s no shortage of joy in our home here in the Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood for my dear wife Karen and I, and Ellie B aka Dogamous Pyle, too. We hope that the happiness with life radiates out to adult children Daryl and Elisabeth as well. Of course we have our share of pain…

And it was you

Once upon a time, a dad-to-be climbed into bed after another night of work and fell asleep to the world. After five or so hours, the mom-to-be shook her husband’s shoulder. Not used to opening his eyes this early in the day, the man may have grunted. The woman said it was time. The man…

A family resemblance can sneak up and floor you

Sometimes the pieces to complete a startling vision sit pages apart in the scrapbook of your mind. For all my life, I’ve been comfortable with the premise that out of us three kids, my youngest sister, Dory, had the most family resemblance to either of our parents. My sister Fran, the middle one, kind of…

The biggest star at this concert was the Dalai Lama

Just the other day when I was reading a post from my friend at Peace, Love & Great Country Music, recounting a blog conversation we’d had about the band Train, the thought hit me again. I had some truly great moments in the 21 years that I covered music and entertainment for the big daily.…