Honorable Smoke on the Water

This link will take you to the much-touted video of Japanese musicians performing Deep Purple’s classic rock song, Smoke on the Water, using traditional Japanese instruments: http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=3897
The Japanese culture may be older and wiser than our own Western Society, but I believe these musicians are missing the boat. Smoke on the Water is more than simply notes [...]

Thunder and lightning as a crowd pleaser

Yesterday afternoon started out beautifully. I went up to Cobb’s Hill to walk around the city reservoir (.66 miles, 12 minutes). The first lap I had my shirt off, soaking up the sun. By midway through the third lap the weather had changed so dramatically that I was shivering and wondered if I would make [...]

Profiling at the US-Canadian border

A female associate and I recently drove to Canada on business. We traveled through Northern New York and crossed into Ontario at an out-of-the-way crossing site. We were the only car in sight, in either direction.
While in Canada we stopped for lunch. As on previous Canadian trips I wondered, reading the menu, what the savings were these days using US [...]

Taking care in the air

I called a taxi to take me to the airport. I don’t use my cell phone much so the forty-some calls I make each month average out to about a dollar a call. So that 30-second call cost me about three cents a minute.
The six-and-a-half mile, 20-minute taxi ride to the airport is $22.00. Round trip, [...]

gnus ewe can yews

I like watching the news. The world news at six-thirty. At my job I’m on the computer eight hours a day and can get news from the internet. But I like sitting down and watching it on TV. Like when I was a kid and we all watched it as a family.
As bad as the news generally [...]

What can you tell about a man based on the length of his driveway?

When I was nine my parents paved our suburban driveway. They measured it first. It was 105 feet long from the street to the garage. One-hundred-and-five feet! I thought we were rich. I casually mentioned the length of my driveway in my fourth grade classroom many times that season.
When I lived in a duplex in the city my [...]

Ask your doctor if CBS News is right for you.

Not only did the “CBS Evening News” go to just one sponsor for this past Sunday’s edition, this fact was announced by the anchorman during the opening moments, as if it were a lead story: “Good evening…one sponsor…fewer commercial interruptions…”
I wondered which car manufacturer was stepping up to the plate to underwrite this heavily viewed [...]

Second amendment, fifth wheel, eighth grade

When we were boys, my brother and I and my cousin had a .22 rifle. One rifle. Three boys. We would go to an old farm dump and shoot at bottles and junked farm vehicles. Sometimes we filled the bottles with rain water so they would explode better when we hit them. If we got [...]

Speaking of air safety

In 2007 I wrote a story, examining possible future uses of the now closed Seneca Army Depot, for Rochester’s City Newspaper. When I called my contact to set up an interview he said, “If you’re free tomorrow come on out. I’m renting a plane to fly over the Depot and take photos for promotional purposes; we [...]

Where our music comes from

Yesterday I presented the once obscure lyrics of the 1960s’ rock song, Louie Louie, revealing they are not - as once thought – vulgar. But there is something even more important about this song. The lyrics are the words of a (black) Jamaican sailor. The song was written by Richard Barry, a black man. This underscores the importance of [...]