An Explosion of Trees

Last weekend I was in the Baltimore area. A former colleague from Diamond was holding a comics and toys show in Westminster, so I drove down to show my support. After, I drove down to visit the cemeteries, which I’d not done since Memorial Day. I was both glad and sad that I did. GladContinue reading “An Explosion of Trees”

Baseball Night in Lancaster

Last night I attended my first baseball game in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. When I lived in Chester County twenty years ago, Lancaster didn’t have a baseball team. Harrisburg, Reading, Wilmington — those would have been the closest baseball teams to me, probably in that order. I never attended games at any of them, though I dimlyContinue reading “Baseball Night in Lancaster”

Arsene Lupin, Gentleman Gundam

I really don’t know anything about Gundam, even after selling Gundam video games at EB Games, then writing about Gundam models for the past fourteen years at Diamond Comic Distributors, except that it involves giant robots. And that’s okay! I don’t need to know anything more than that. Yet, when I had to write someContinue reading “Arsene Lupin, Gentleman Gundam”

Rethinking the LEGO Tower

There’s a fundamental law to building with LEGO, especially if you’re making something original, not building to blueprints. A LEGO creation isn’t right until it’s right. It may take some tinkering at the edges. It may require a teardown and rebuild. It may have to sit six weeks or six months. But it’s not rightContinue reading “Rethinking the LEGO Tower”

Memorial Day at the Cemeteries

No Memorial Day parade in Dallastown yesterday — a casualty of the COVID pandemic, no doubt — so I went down to Baltimore to visit the cemeteries of my grandparents and great-grandparents and leave flags. I hadn’t been down that way since March, when I lined up the old photograph of the trolley at LoudonContinue reading “Memorial Day at the Cemeteries”

“Lafayette, We Are Here”

Minor league baseball looks very different this year. The reorganization of the leagues, rumored throughout 2019, took effect at the beginning of the year. Teams shifted up and down in levels. Teams from independent leagues were brought into affiliated baseball. Teams that had been part of affiliated baseball for decades no longer had a place.Continue reading ““Lafayette, We Are Here””

LEGOing Up a Webcam Tower

A few months ago at work, I built a LEGO stand for my webcam. I’d bought the camera at Ollie’s Bargain Outlet. It was supposed to clip onto the monitor, but I have a curved superwide monitor at the office and the clip, while well-intentioned, wouldn’t attach to that. I had to come up withContinue reading “LEGOing Up a Webcam Tower”

A Saturday Evening on City Island

Yesterday — the second game of my seventeen Harrisburg Senators games of the 2021 season. Not to mention, my second game of the year — and this week! — seeing the Richmond Flying Squirrels. This year, the affiliated minor leagues feature six-game series between opponents, running from Tuesday to Sunday, instead of the normal/traditional three-Continue reading “A Saturday Evening on City Island”

Scenes from the Senators’ Opening Night

The last time I was on Harrisburg’s City Island for a baseball game — the fourth and final game of the 2019 Eastern League Division Series between the Harrisburg Senators and the Bowie Baysox — no one had ever heard of COVID-19. And I wasn’t visually impaired. Tuesday night, after something like 612 days, professionalContinue reading “Scenes from the Senators’ Opening Night”

Visiting the Grave of a Long-Ago Cubs Pitcher

At the end of 2019, the York Sunday News here in York, Pennsylvania, ran a two-part essay by June Lloyd that summarized the history of York County amateur baseball, drawing on an eight-part series originally published in the York newspapers in 1940. (First part here, second part here.) I was curious about the original articlesContinue reading “Visiting the Grave of a Long-Ago Cubs Pitcher”