The Harrisburg Senators began their 2019 campaign on Thursday with an 8-4 victory over the Bowie Baysox. Friday night’s game was rained out and rescheduled for Saturday doubleheader. I had a ticket for Saturday’s night, one I bought the day individual tickets went on sale early in March. Now I was getting two games forContinue reading “A Day of Baseball in Harrisburg”
Author Archives: Allyn
A Notable Relation and the Land of Pleasant Living
Yesterday I learned a cousin designed Mr. Boh, the one-eyed, mustachioed mascot of National Bohemian Beer, better known in the Baltimore area as Natty Boh. His name was Donald Fenhagen. He was the PR director for the National Brewing Company and, in addition to Mr. Boh, he was part of the team that came upContinue reading “A Notable Relation and the Land of Pleasant Living”
Exploring Mt. Carmel Cemetery
Late last year I had a dream that I found the grave of Captain Thomas Feenhagen, my great-great-great-grandfather. Feenhagen, the father of my my great-great-grandmother Susan and grandfather of my great-grandfather Allyn Gardner, was a sea captain. He commanded a merchant ship, the bark Seneca, in the 1850s and 1860s. From what little I’ve beenContinue reading “Exploring Mt. Carmel Cemetery”
Recovery
I had the flu. It’s taken me a little while to come around to that point of view. When asked, at the time I told people things like “It’s just an upper respiratory infection” or “I have bronchitis.” And, even now, I have an occasional, lingering cough. Let’s go through it. March 7, Thursday. IContinue reading “Recovery”
Stuck in the Middle with You
Sesame Street is coming to an envelope near you; the Postal Service has announced a series of Sesame Street stamps, featuring most of your favorite Muppets. I say “most”; Sherlock Hemlock is nowhere to be found. To promote the stamps, the Sesame Street Twitter account asked this important question yesterday: We’re re-enacting Cast Away, butContinue reading “Stuck in the Middle with You”
Wheels Down
I left work early this evening. It was snowing heavily, I had finished with a project, and it was a good time to go. There were light flurries in the morning when I left for work. Nothing that amounted to much. At lunchtime, even though it was forty degrees, the snow was heavier. Mainly, though,Continue reading “Wheels Down”
Gathering Evidence on a Genealogical Puzzle
Today, being a nice day before the polar vortex arrives midweek (or not), I went down to Baltimore for some cemetery exploring. On Monday, I found a reference to my great-grandfather Allyn Gardner in a defunct Baltimore daily German language newspaper. According to a one-line note, he was the witness to a marriage license issuedContinue reading “Gathering Evidence on a Genealogical Puzzle”
The Absence
On Friday, a colleague of mine at work was let go. He had been with the company twenty-two years. A dozen years ago, he was the best mentor I could have had, taking a not-inexperienced writer and turning him into a copywriter. Then he moved into other, consumer-oriented projects, and we didn’t interact every dayContinue reading “The Absence”
Pounding Away at the Keyboard
Last Monday, I started writing a short story. I was driving to work that morning, and idle thoughts played in my head. “What if I took this kind of character, put them in this kind of setting, and told this kind of story?” None of these three things should go together, but sitting in myContinue reading “Pounding Away at the Keyboard”
Contact
Yesterday afternoon, my buddy Julio Angel Ortiz quote-tweeted this to his Twitter timeline: I thought about it for a moment or three, and one scene came to mind: I ran out of characters while typing that, hence some brutal edits that resulted in the double “and” I noticed five seconds after hitting “Tweet.” The longerContinue reading “Contact”