Operation Skunk Be Gone, so far, so …

I do not want to jinx it. The halogen light has been shining from the back porch for seven nights, flooding the area between the butterfly garden and the backyard shed, the space where our Syracuse city skunk shot its spray into Ellie B aka Dogamous Pyle at dusk eight days ago. Saturday and Sunday,…

One more Supermoon from Good Neighbor Tim

I must have been too busy Sunday night. Writing my review of “The Hundred-Foot Journey” for my Syracuse New Times blog, to be posted later this morning there (and teased here). Catching up on the DVR, with the NASCAR Sprint Cup race at nearby Watkins Glen, and the horrifying news of Tony Stewart’s involvement in…

The skunk makes us miss the days of the gopher

My dear wife Karen let out Ellie B in the backyard for a few minutes just when the sun was setting Monday night. I heard the bark, the frantic one, the I’ve-got-an-animal-bothering-me pitch. I heard Karen calling my name with an equal amount of panic. I smelled the hint of trouble as I saw my…

Does anybody really know what time it is?

On the first day of this fourth week of this new full-time job, I knew it was time to take a lunchtime shot of the clocks that I pass while walking during my 60-minute break. At the corner of Warren and East Washington streets, just a block from Hanover Square, the Key Bank branch has…

In the butterfly garden, blossoms at last

It took long enough in this summer of 2014. But at long last, on this slightly gray Sunday morning of Aug. 3, I finally felt it was time to grab the iPad Air and take these shots of the backyard butterfly garden in the Eastwood neighborhood of the Syracuse city home of my dear wife…

The night before the Bash, fans and bands meet and eat

While putting together today’s Benny’s Lost ’80s Bash fundraising concert for the Carol M. Baldwin Breast Cancer Research Fund of Central New York, Syracuse native Greg Ross came up with a different wrinkle. Fans of Benny Mardones were able to purchase tickets for last night’s Eat and Greet at the Gem Diner to meet the…

A pretty little golf course in the city

When my wonderful daughter Elisabeth and her terrific boyfriend George and I decided it was time for some Sunday golf, I suggested the little city golf course that’s just two miles from our house in our Eastwood neighborhood. They’d already been to Sunnycrest’s sister nine-hole, par-three course, Burnet Park, so they were eager to try…

You smell it before you see it

I woke up at 5 a.m. with a smell in my nose. Something burnt. Without opening my eyes, my groggy mind sorted the scent. Not a skunk, not wood, not food, not quite electrical, we’re safe … I felt Ellie B aka Dogamous Pyle press close to my lower leg just as the final tumbler…

Where car lovers go to really love all kinds of cars

For the 15th year, the Syracuse Nationals brought car lovers to the state fairgrounds just outside of last weekend. By the tens of thousands they piled up at the center of the grounds where the the New York State Fair will settle in four weeks and a day from today, and I’m talking the amound…

A beautiful building, coming and going

The reaction to my lunchtime walk iPhone 4 photo tour through downtown Syracuse last week convinced me that you folks like a taste of what these blocks hold. This is the University Building, as in, built back in the early 1900s by Syracuse University. Now its 10 floors are used by numerous companies. Including the…