Words and Music

 Offered in anticipation of the weekend's excitement, this excerpt from The Magnificent Ambersons .                                  ...

Twelve years ago, dictation software still struggled to make sense of its master's voice. I'm a middling typist but very accustomed...

My father opined that all drivers must endure three types of travel disaster: losing control of your car, hitting another car, and being hit...

NYC, March 21, 2010  |  Photo by B. A. Nilsson

Vintage Technology Dept.: I'm assuming that cell phone service in the Adirondacks has improved in the decade since I wrote this piece. ...

Boxing Day, 2011  |  Photo by B. A. Nilsson

Vanishing Restaurants Dept. : Bugaboo Creek Steakhouse opened in Albany's Crossgates Mall in 1995 and stayed for twelve years, closing...

Such is the holiday largess in my household that Christmas Day inevitably dawns upon a scene of breathtaking wreckage – or so it seems until...

Holiday Vault Dept .: An essay I wrote five years ago for Metroland Magazine. It remains gustatorily timeless. Bon appetit !            ...

Across the U.S.A. Dept .: My wife and I drove a VW camper from New York to California and back in September, 1989. Imagining myself a latte...

Honey ( hun' ē ), n. [ME hony , OE hunig ; c. D, G honig , Icel hunang ; akin to Gk knēkós pale yellow, tawny]     1. A sweet, viscid...

Guest Poet Dept., You Have to Start Somewhere Division: In 1909 -- 32 years before the first performance of "White Christmas" -- ...

From the vault: We moved into our farmhouse in 1990, the year this piece ran in the Schenectady Gazette , so much of the reminiscence herei...

At 2:30 PM on a bright December day, the orb of sun blazes through a lower quadrant of the picture window at the back of Union College’s Mem...

I waited for your call. It came At half-past six. You're not to blame If circumstances hobnob so They cause your sense of time to ...

From the late, lamented eatery. Albany wasn't ready for a Moroccan restaurant.                                                     ...

A Metroland feature from December 6, 1990. I approached the task aloof with a cynicism that evaporated as I spoke with the very likeable p...

Travel up an escalator and into the large, bustling dining room of Jing Fong , a restaurant in Manhattan on Chinatown’s Elizabeth Street. Se...

Accommodations at the 18-screen multiplex have grown more confusing and hostile than at any time in my long film-going history. From the c...

Provincetown, July 2011  |  Photo by B. A. Nilsson