March 2012
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Why are dog owners such horrid scofflaws? According to our local police-lady, there are fifty-three signs distributed around the downtown mall that either say, in clear language, No Pets, or else picture a dog bisected with a diagonal line. But it's impossible to take a walk without encountering two or three or half a dozen…
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On our pleasant, prosperous downtown mall, we have entertainers and buskers of many stripes –everyone from fire-eaters, magicians, and left-behind 50s folkie guitarists to Zip Code Man. Some are excellent (the occasional string quartet or visiting bluegrass band) and some are horrible (the bam-bam-bam drummers and the pathetic didgedoorists. We also have a contortionist, whom…
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Our peaceful town, not long ago provincial and off-the-track, has now become molto trendy. Only a generation ago, we were bland, undistinguished, white-bread; and now we're America's happiest city, America's slimmest city, America's healthiest city, and, just recently, America's foodiest city. I'm not the slimmest, nor the happiest, nor the healthiest, so It's embarrassing for…
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I've now sometimes zoomed but sometimes plodded through seventeen hours of Downton Abbey. The series is lovely to look at but also at various times lugubrious, false, and shamelessly gimmicky — but apparently I'm easily seduced. Let me confess: I fell for it, mostly, but always against my better judgment. Let's face it, the primitive parts of my brain simply overwhelmed…
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I can't remember a time when I wasn't at home in a library. Although very much a schoolyard urchin, passionate about baseball, trading cards and punchball (or any kind of game played with a spaldeen), I rarely failed my weekly trip to the storefront Avenue J branch of the BPL, where there were cases upon…
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It wasn't until I reached college that discovered poetry. My comic-book super-hero and baseball-infused brain was until then, poetry-wise, an almost complete tabula rasa. I say "almost" because at eight or nine eight years old I had memorized two great classics of American literature: "Casey at the Bat" and also the poem by Grantland Rice about Tinkers, Evers, and Chance. In additon, I knew…