They play hockey in the Carrier Dome, and 30,715 show up

I’ve got season tickets to Syracuse University football in the Carrier Dome, and it was not a good season. One win, in double-overtime in the season opener against Football Championship Series Subdivision foe Villanova, and then five straight bone-numbing losses to rob fans of any sense of spirit. Maryland (OK, the win for my alma…

On Nov. 11, in Syracuse, N.Y., we played sunny golf

I’ve had a new saying lately. Syracuse is the new South Carolina. What I mean is … The periodic bursts of warm weather we’ve been getting this fall has been knocking me out. On Tuesday, Nov. 11, Veterans Day 2014, it reached 65 degrees in Syracuse, N.Y. That, my friends, is not the usual sort…

Our Trader Joe’s does seem pretty cool after all

I wasn’t sure what to expect when my dear wife Karen and I stepped into Syracuse’s Trader Joe’s at last a few weekends ago. The buzz was big. But I knew I couldn’t eat the cookie butter. Which is actually ice cream, I found out. Still can’t eat it. I saw not one no sugar…

Halloween has become quite the adult holiday

For a while there, I was a Halloween Scrooge. Didn’t care to dress up anymore. Kept the porch light off. Skip my place, kiddies. No candy here. Bah. But you can’t be that way and live in Syracuse, N.Y., I am convinced. Halloween is pretty darn big up my way. So big, in fact, that…

For Jimmy and Tootie Heath, the brotherly love of music started in Philadelphia

In 1975, three siblings who grew up in Philadephia thought they’d pool their vast talents in jazz as the Heath Brothers. The eldest, Percy Heath, played double bass. Middle man Jimmy Heath was a star of alto sax. Kid brother Albert “Tootie” was the drummer. They’d been in the bands of Dizzie Gillespie and John…

Carlos Santana soars, with no obstructions

It had been while since my dear wife Karen and I had gone to a concert in the Turning Stone Resort and Casino Event Center, but when I heard the word that Carlos Santana was bringing his guitar to the 5,000-seat room just 30 miles east of Syracuse, I knew that would make one heckuva…

A full Red house beat the Orange Out, but who cares, really?

It’s become the big thing to get a stadium full of fans to wear the home team’s colors. Syracuse football officials wanted a big Orange Out to help the squad build a head of steam for its Atlantic Coast Conference opener against Louisville in the Carrier Dome Friday night. Major fail. I snapped the photograph…

An Orange mood in Syracuse, before and after the fall

Officials from Syracuse University deemed Friday the as a perfect time for an Orange Out. That is one of the striking colors in Central New York’s autumn once the leaves change. That is the team name and color the the school’s sports teams. So that was the color they asked fans to wear during their…

Thanks to an imaginative fundraiser, more bowls will be filled

Kudos to the folks who first came up with the idea for the Empty Bowls fundraiser in Michigan in 1994. More cheers to the wise ones around the country who picked up the ball and ran with it, galloped, really, to states east and west and south, because hungry people are everywhere. My dear wife…

A return home from the Big Apple pleases CNY jazz fans

It’s been awhile since he’d played his saxophone in his hometown, Paul Carlon said while we corresponded about his trip up from New York City with his band La Rumba Is a Lovesome Thing to perform Friday night at Jazz-N-Caz. Yes, Carlon grew up in Cazenovia. Well, to be technical about it, his family’s home…

	willowdot21 on The other side
	beth on The other side
	Nancy on The other side
	markbialczak on Driveway plow needed help
	markbialczak on Not that door, dear dog

Mark Bialczak

What will I write about next?

Tag Archives: WAER