Who wouldn’t want to learn from a gentle DeNiro?

Ben Whittaker has done the travel thing, the exercise thing and the grandpa thing in his retirement world, and none of it is exactly making the 70-year-old widow from Brooklyn happy. Oh, he’s not complaining, mind you, as he faces the camera explaining exactly how he’s gotten to this point in life as we meet…

Shine on supermoon

Brighter minds than mine have come up with some mighty big names for what I just saw in my Syracuse sky. It was not just any old moon this evening, you should know. According to Robert Roy Britt writing on livescience.com, we started with a full moon and raised the ante with a lunar eclipse.…

A new pizza joint opens in my neighborhood

For the past couple of seasons, it’s been comforting to know that a good slice of pie was just steps away from my league play at Bowling Green in North Syracuse. Too rushed to catch dinner with my dear wife Karen, I could visit The Pie Guys. Attached right to the alleys, their little restaurant…

It’s still September, so leave me time to golf

My friend George has a good mind. He wouldn’t let this entire golf season go by without us getting out there for a round. The bridge between summer and fall turned out to be perfect, he with the boys back to school and me with a mid-week morning I could free up from freelance and…

Flexing the Quad

For the third game of the 2015 Syracuse football season, my dear wife Karen got to the campus early enough to catch the festivities on the quad flanking the Carrier Dome. Hover over any gallery photo for a description. Click on the bottom right photo in any gallery for an enlarged slide show. Of course…

Building a downtown party into the right setting

Finally finding the right day, I met my dear wife Karen for lunch downtown Syracuse’s Festa Italiana. Set in big white tents in a major parking lot and city streets between City Hall, Key Bank, a big church and other buildings of architectural note, this festival sets itself apart from the others that call the…

In Black Mass, Johnny Depp has evil down cold

Quite the block in South Boston that was that gave the world the Bulger brothers and John Connolly. Black Mass tells the tale with a deep and horrible chill. Directed by Scott Cooper by a script from Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth, this crime drama documentary is 122 minutes full of high ambition and low…

A square with a water view

My dear wife Karen’s email asked if I’d like to meet her for lunch at Festa Italiana. I got there early enough to take out my iPhone 6 to share my view of the fountain at downtown Syracuse’s Hanover Square on a lovely 85º F mid-September afternoon. No mattter that Karen meant the next day…

Nice to see ya, Coach Mac

They stopped last Saturday’s football game between the first and second quarter to wheel a guy around the Carrier Dome field in a Pope Mobile. Well, a fancy cart, anyway. But for what he did to bring the Syracuse University football program back in the 1980s, Dick MacPherson could have been welcomed like the Pontiff.…

Things you don’t expect to see in downtown Syracuse on Sept. 18

After meeting my dear wife Karen for lunch at Festa Italiana this afternoon, I passed through Clinton Square, smack dab in the heart of downtown Syracuse, on the way back to my car. Oh, what I saw on this Friday, Sept. 18, in upstate New York. Nobody’s supposed to use the dancing waters in the…