OPENING DAY In the spring and summer of 1971, I joined a Little League Ball Club. My baseball training was pretty non-existent. My dad Nick was a hard working man, and had been since I could remember. He was up and out of the house by 5:15 am every morning, six days a week. Sometimes…
The first love of my life was Mary Von Zastrow. Her family lived next door to us on Gayle Road in the bucolic Finger Lake Village of Skaneateles, NY. What does a five year old kid know about love? In retrospect, not much, but to me at that time, my undying love and devotion to…
Author’s Note: “Friendships are funny. You think they will last forever, but life intrudes. Trajectories that seem to coincide for a time, skew unexpectedly. As I age, I’ve come to accept that phenomena a little more gracefully, but as a child, it’s hard to understand what was seemingly set in stone… wasn’t.” These three “Daily…
Author’s Note: “Friendships are funny. You think they will last forever, but life intrudes. Trajectories that seem to coincide for a time, skew unexpectedly. As I age, I’ve come to accept that phenomena a little more gracefully, but as a child, it’s hard to understand what was seemingly set in stone… wasn’t.” These two “Daily…
Friendships are funny. You think they will last forever, but life intrudes. Trajectories that seem to coincide for a time, skew unexpectedly. As I age, I’ve come to accept that phenomena a little more gracefully, but as a child, it’s hard to understand what was seemingly set in stone… wasn’t. In grade school, I had…
This 9th “Daily Dose” is directly connected to yesterday’s 8th installment. In yesterday’s post, I talked about my sister Becky’s first true love, Bobby Varno. and what an absolute profound effect he had on my life. Bob is one of the greatest guys on the planet, bar none. Back in 1974, he was a true…
The very real denizens who actually actively participate in my invented and imaginary world (That would be the mythic land of “Hungaria”, to the un-initiated) often ask me: “When did you know that you wanted to be a professional musician?” Although I can accurately pin-point the exact moment that I decided, I haven’t really shared…
LAKE BOY #3 I remember the day I became aware of the concepts of physics. Actually, physics made sure to get my attention. At the bottom of my bucolic street was a strip of beach frontage on beautiful Skaneateles Lake. The sixteen or so families that lived on Gayle Road shared the beach. On sunny…
I’m getting ready to pack the gear up in the car and head out to a rehearsal. But this isn’t your run of the mill rehearsal. It’s with the Dean Brothers, my very early childhood heroes. I grew up in a very small town called Skaneateles, NY. Skaneateles has a little village, but its surrounded…