My short days at The Post taught me so much, so well

Watching The Post tossed me into my own personal Wayback Machine. Tom Hanks as managing editor Ben Bradlee and Meryl Streep as owner/publisher Katherine Graham might as well have been speaking directly to me. Once upon a time, they did. Romanticize those short encounters with a copy aide from the sports department circa 1978/79 I…

One heck of a newspaper staff

My Facebook friend Pat Myers put a photo on my page last week that begged for a Throwback Thursday slot here. We were the student staff of the University of Maryland daily, The Diamondack. It was one hell of a college newspaper those 40 years ago. This black-and-white was captured for the yearbook in 1978.…

Happy Memorial Day! And Go Terps Go

We salute those that served us today. Happy Memorial Day from A Bitty Better in the Liverpool, N.Y., neighborhood of Galeville. My dear wife Karen and I included a flagpole yesterday among our holiday weekend purchases. And when we got home, I mounted the bracket on the fence at the back of our driveway and…

Do they have to play the second half?

When my bowling teammate and good friend Randy asked me this week if I thought Syracuse had a chance this weekend in its college football game against Clemson, I shook my head emphatically and said, nope. Clemson would win 70-0, I said. Too big, too strong, too fast are the undefeated and No. 2-ranked Tigers,…

Where’s Mark amid the Diamondback crew?

Yes, my two years toiling for the University of Maryland’s campus daily The Diamondback surely helped shape my career. As much as what I learned in the academic buildings, yes. More? Probably. I wrote hundreds of stories covering the soccer, women’s basketball and lacrosse teams as my primary beats, with coverage about football and men’s…