Mardi Gras with tanks

Sections of the counter newspaper were being exchanged beteen customers. The guy next to me had the A section, the national news.
“They say yesterday’s Mardi Gras celebration was the biggest since pre-Hurricane Katrina,” he said aloud. “I went there once, when I was nineteen,” he continued. “Wild place. Million people from out-of-town.”
He spoke in short fragments. “College [...]

Society’s economic woes mirrored by waitresses

I usually come to the diner weekdays, but last weekend I stopped in on Sunday with Annette for a late morning omelet.
Annette’s daughter waits tables here Sundays. She is one of three part-time weekend waitresses. Each is thirty or younger, went to college, and has another “main” job. This is in contrast to the three full-time waitresses [...]

Searching for Jehovah

Question: What do you call a person who is an insomniac, an agnostic, and is dyslexic? Answer: Someone who lies awake at night wondering if there really is a doG.
That may be an old joke, but it’s often how I feel. For centuries the idea of God has been presented to us by organized religion.  Presented by [...]

Graveside memorial service on a cold day

Last Sunday I attended a graveside sevice for my very first boss, David “Scotty” Caplan, former owner of Scotty’s Shell Station at Twelve Corners in the Town of Brighton. I worked for him part-time from age 16 to 22.
Scotty was almost 97 when he passed away. Seventy people came to his burial. When you’re that old and seventy people [...]

Bird feeder as a mirror of life

A couple days ago I was sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast, cognizant of the fact that there were birds at the feeder just outside the window, but paying them little mind since they were run-of-the-mill house sparrows. Suddenly there was a flash of movement at the feeder. By the time I looked, all I [...]