Pete Hamill cued me in about many things

When Pete Hamill left our world earlier this month, I bowed my head for the loss of a writer whose words meant so much to New Yorkers and smart folks beyond state and, yes, national lines. Hamill’s ink ran out of his veins onto newsprint and the pages of novels. Well, I recalled, did not…

And so Leon Russell says to me …

The year is 1999, and Leon Russell is coming to perform at the New York State Blues Festival in downtown Syracuse’s Clinton Square. I bag a phone interview to write a preview story for the big daily. So in my preparation, I see that Mr. Russell doesn’t do many interviews any more. In fact, some…

Lunch with the old sports department crowd

You bet I was excited to see David Elfin for lunch last week. He and I worked together in the sports department of the big daily in the mid-1980s. I was his boss, technically, the assistant sports editor to his men’s basketball beat writer. In reality, though, we’d both come up here with time spent…

My first time at Woodstock

My former colleague at the big daily Bill LaRue dug up a golden oldie from his files the other day and sent me into flurry of memories. That’s me, arms covered with muck, working hard on the old-fashioned laptop at Woodstock ’94 in Saugerties, N.Y. LaRue and I were the two reporters from the Syracuse…