The Illustration Friday website suggests “midsummer night” as this week’s inspiration. My son and I experienced Niagara Falls for the first time at the same time. My wife, whose parents took their three children on numerous family vacations, saw the renowned natural spectacle in her youth. I went on my last furlough with my parents …
My father’s low tolerance for other humans kept my parent’s accumulation of friends to a minimum. There was one couple with which my parents maintained a close relationship and that was Jack and Myrna. They’d go out to dinner regularly. They’d visit each others homes, sometimes including a few other couples so the men could …
This week’s Illustration Friday challenge word is “shadows”. “There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears …
This week’s Illustration Friday suggested topic is “asleep”. The morning began like every morning begins. My alarm went off at six and I smacked the snooze button every ten minutes until I kicked myself out of bed at 6:30. I showered, brushed my teeth and checked the mirror to see if I could get away …
Summer 1979. My friends and I had just graduated from high school. We were all turning eighteen, the then-legal drinking age in New Jersey. Four of us ― Alan, Scott, Sam and ol’ Josh Pincus ― crossed the Pennsylvania border, headed for Atlantic City, for what would be a beer-soaked, debauchery-filled last hurrah before college. Atlantic City …
This week’s Illustration Friday challenge word is “safari”. Every kid grows up listening to novelty songs and every generation had their favorites. From the early 20th century’s “K-K-K-Katy” and “Yes We Have No Bananas” to the wildly popular “Der Fuher’s Face” during World War II, novelty songs have always been crowd-pleasers. When I was in …
Passover — the holiest day on the Jewish calendar after Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Shavuot, Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah …..um, where was I ? Oh, yeah. Passover. Passover recounts the story of the ancient Israelites’ long journey out of slavery and oppression by Egypt and the Pharaoh. The Jews were enslaved and ordered …
Character actor Joseph Kearns began his career in the heyday of radio in the unlikely role of a pipe organ player. He soon was performing regularly on radio programs like I Married Joan, December Bride, Burns and Allen, Sam Spade and many others. He was the mysterious announcer “The Man in Black” on the radio …
This week’s Illustration Friday challenge word is “cultivate”. In the nearly thirty years that I have known my father-in-law, he has told me this joke countless times. Whenever a piece of conversation triggers something in his memory that reminds him that this joke would be an appropriate anecdote, he delivers it as though it was …
Let’s get something straight. Men are idiots. They are bumbling awkward misfits who should be eternally grateful that women take enough pity on them to disrupt their own self-fortitude and take them as their husbands. As my 27th wedding anniversary draws near, I am reminded of how my own dear wife ignored all of the …
