Category: Art

  • ODDS and ENDS: Don’t Answer, Fandom, and City’s Full

    ODDS and ENDS: Don’t Answer, Fandom, and City’s Full

    (Throw out your frown…)

    So, I was sitting in my car this morning because I needed to move it for the street sweeper, and my phone rang with a number that I didn’t recognize. I think I’m like most people and I don’t answer calls to numbers I don’t know. If it’s important, they’ll leave a message and I’ll call them back. But this morning, the number kept calling me, and didn’t leave a message. I mean, I’m pretty sure it was a spam/bot call and no big deal, yet there is still part of me that gets a little rush of anxiety when a call keeps calling. Like, if they keep calling it must be important. It has to be important if they called three times. This must be the most important call, because they called three times from Miami! But didn’t leave a message. That’s why I don’t answer.

    I stayed up and watched the Cowboys play the Eagles. Actually, I watched until the weather delay, and at that point I called it. I was hoping that the Cowboys would win, but I wasn’t totally surprised that they lost. At the breakfast table this morning, the kid had questions about who won the game, which I found rather surprising. Normally, she doesn’t care about the Cowboys or football in general, but she was rather curious about the game, and if I watched it all. Then she wanted to know if I thought the Cowboys would win the Super Bowl, which I told her no, and that the team would be lucky to be above .500 this year. Then she wanted to know if I as going to watch all of their games, which I am. She was confused by this, and wanted to know why I was going to watch them if I thought they were going to lose. Because that’s want a fan of a team does; you suffer along with the team, and hope for next year. I really hoped that there was some important life lesson there that I was passing along, about loyalty, and commitment. But what I she made me feel was that I was about to waste a lot of time over the next couple of Sundays.

    Boy, it is not a joke. The day after Labor Day, New York City fills back up with people. Twenty years I have been here, and I keep thinking that this maxim isn’t true. And every year I am amazed how on Labor Day, no one is around, and then the next day, people are everywhere. I really should know better.

  • Good Ol’ Vermont

    We got away for one last Summer trip over Labor Day Weekend, and this is something that we never do – travel over Labor Day that is. In fact, this might be the first trip I ever did on this weekend. Most of the time, we are in the City, and do something in Central Park, or most often, we don’t do anything.

    This year, we got an invitation from friends in Vermont to come and visit them, and it was hard to pass it up. I love New York City, but there is also something great about leaving New York City, especially when it’s hot out.

    We made the most of our short amount of time. Got on the road early to beat the crowds, and really, once you get past Springfield, MA, it’s like you are just driving in the woods. And the further north we went, obviously, the cool it got. This allowed me to do my most favorite thing in the whole wide world, which is wear a sweater in August. I might have been sweating a little, but it was in the 60’s and that was good enough for me.

    But in all honesty, it was nice to be in a place where it was cool at night, with crickets chirping, and the stars all above. It was fun to have the kids playing and the adults talking in the next room. There was morning disc golf and an afternoon hike to a hidden waterfall. Even got some swimming in, which the kid liked.

    And as we drove home, we noticed that the very tops of the tress had started to change color. Little specks of red, yellow and orange were beginning to show up. As if right on cue. As one season ended, we could see the other one about to enter.

  • Earworm Wednesday: Friends Make You Funky

    So, the part of this song that gets stuck in my head is the refrain of “Most of All” at 1:22. Don’t know what it is, but it just plays in a loop in my head. Not a complaint because I love this song.

    “Flash Light” is the song I think of when someone says Parliament or George Clinton, or Bootsy Collins (even though Bootys doesn’t play in this song,) or funk music in general.

    See, I made a friend, a best friend, in 9th grade and as all best friends do, he introduced me to the wonderful world of funk. I think I had seen Parliament an SNL rerun, but I knew nothing about them. That’s when my friend stepped in and filled that gap I didn’t know I had. He helped me understand what the “Great Rock n’ Roll Swindle” was, how funk influenced hip hop and rap, and the importance of “on the one.”

  • Short Story Review: “Project” by Rachel Cusk

    (The short story “Project” by Rachel Cusk appeared in the September 1st & 8th, 2025 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Photo illustration by Stephen Doyle

    I am a big fan of Rachel Cusk; have been for some time now. There are a great number of reasons why I enjoy her work, and when I read anything by her, such as “Project” in this week’s New Yorker, my fandom evolves into admiration, and even a little jealously. I am not jealous of her talent as a writer, envious might be the better word for that, but when I read her work, I wish I was the type of writer that had time. Cusk’s fictional version of herself, though narrator might be a fairer description, possess the greatest gift of all; time. Time to observe and contemplate.

    In “Project,” the narrator contemplates how who we are gets created. This contemplation leads to a path that bends and turns and takes us to people in the narrator’s life. First we meet M, a movie star and model. The narrator is thinking of writing M’s autobiography, which M’s response is to “…just make it up.” In this first section of the story, the narrator intertwines her interactions with M, while also speaking of a book she is reading by a woman who details the horrid abuse she suffered at the hands of her stepfather. It is a strange comparison, if not a juxtaposition. In Cusk’s assured hands, we see how these woman took their situations, fought back and went forth to create better versions of themselves, yet both spoke of a moment where their childhoods were lost… But even as I try to describe this, I am not doing this story justice. The story moves on the narrator’s partner, and his bout with an aliment and the need to a brief stay in a hospital. Then there are questions of the time we have and how we share it. Why we live the way we live and where we live…. See, not doing this justice.

    This story falls into my favorite Cusk style of writing – It just flows. Maybe this type of writing is like stream-of-consciousness-lite. These thoughts and ideas have depth and weight to them, but they don’t get tangled up in minutia and tangents. All of these disparate ideas roll across the page, with observations of the life the narrator lives, but also how some of these truth and universal; Or at least there is a hope that they are. This is a story seems to be celebrating the existential gift of being able to create our self, and chose how to live out that creation. And to do all of this, to have a life that can be observed, we need time for reflection.

    And through all of it, the ins and outs of this story, Cusk has a wonderful melancholic final paragraph. Not so much an observation, or a contemplation, but a memory of raising her children; when trust was tangible and innocent. That taking the time, to remember and re-experience, is a continuous step in the project of self creation.

  • Earworm Wednesday: Our Pandemic Song

    The one thing I know for a fact is that my wife is the one who introduced this song to our family during the Pandemic. It got put on a playlist that we listened to all the time; out driving, taking a hike, having a picnic, dance party at home, whatever we were doing this song would pop up. I put it on a playlist, and the kid even added it to one of her first playlists she created. So when I hear it, not only does it get stuck in my head, but it reminds me of a very specific two year period of my life.