After work, I stopped at the grocery store, the Giant off Queen Street. I needed milk and bread and vanilla sandwich cookies. Though we’re three weeks past Christmas, there was a display dump of Christmas books. And it caught my attention. Oh, did it ever! “The boy! In the red poofball hat!” I exclaimed. I … Continue reading Going to Hell
Blog
I went to Big Lots yesterday. I didn’t intend to go to Big Lots — it was T.J. Maxx I wanted to visit — but while at Big Lots I snapped the photo above, of the crescent moon and Venus just after sunset. I wanted to go to T.J. Maxx because I’ve seen reports that … Continue reading The Cosmic Dance
A week and a half ago I discovered Adolph Sachse’s “bird’s eye view” map of Washington, DC, circa 1883-1884, and I was able to find where my ancestors lived in Washington from the Civil War to the mid-1880s. There was something else I was interested in. Swampoodle Grounds. Swampoodle Grounds, also known as Capitol Park, … Continue reading Revisiting Swampoodle Grounds
After writing on Tuesday about an unlicensed Monty Python/Beatles t-shirt that amused me, yesterday saw a package stuffed in my mailbox — an unlicensed Washington Nationals World Series t-shirt. After the Nationals won the World Series, my Facebook feed was filled with ads for unofficial Nats World Series merchandise. Especially unofficial t-shirts. I bought an … Continue reading Starring Snoopy, a World Series T-Shirt
My Facebook feed — and yours, too, I’m sure — is filled with ads for bootleg, unlicensed t-shirts and has been for at least three years. I was going to write “months” there instead of “years,” but I remember that, when I was in Chicago on business in 2017, I saw someone wearing an unlicensed … Continue reading A Silly Walk Across Abbey Road
A few months ago, the novelist Howard Weinstein posted to Facebook a link to Adolph Sachse’s “Bird’s Eye View” map of Baltimore in 1869, and I poured over it, finding the location where my great-great-grandmother and her father lived at the time and the church where my great-grandparents might have married in 1900, as it … Continue reading Exploring an 1883 Map of Washington, DC
This morning I turned in my Angel Tree package at work. This year, it was for a seven year-old boy. When I was seven, my parents gave me a hardcover copy of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. The book is well-loved and sits, to this day, on the bookshelf in my dining room. I tried to get … Continue reading An Angel Tree Package
I happened to turn around and caught a glimpse of the rising moon through my office window.
On December 6, 1917, two ships collided in Halifax, Nova Scotia’s harbor. One of the ships, the Mont-Blanc, carrying munitions en route to Europe, caught fire and, shortly after 9 o’clock local time, the cargo exploded, laying waste to the city and surrounding communities, killing (officially) two thousand and injuring nearly 10,000 more, in what’s … Continue reading The Coldest December
You buy a movie at Dollar Tree, you shouldn’t have high expectations. That movie? 2017’s The Wilde Wedding. Retired movie star Eve Wilde (Glenn Close) is getting married (her fourth trip down the aisle) to British novelist Harold (Patrick Stewart), and among the guests is Eve’s actor ex-husband (first), Lawrence Darling (John Malkovich), with whom … Continue reading The Wilde Wedding
Sunday night I watched Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (And Don’t Come Back!!) and its follow-up animated special, What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown. Given the subject matter and the time (Veterans Day weekend), it seemed appropriate. In the movie and the special, Charlie Brown and three of his friends (Linus, Peppermint Patty, and Marcie) travel … Continue reading Does Charlie Brown Have a Secret Cousin?
Washington DC shut down yesterday for the Washington Nationals’ World Series parade down Constitution Avenue. One month ago I was in the hospital, in the Intensive care ward. I thought there was a real chance I was going to be mostly blind for the rest of my life. Yesterday, I was at the a World … Continue reading Scenes from the Nationals World Series Parade