Words and Music

Three-Day Vacation, Day Two Dept .: Time to get off the beach for a while and try our luck at getting the most important information about ...

Three-Day Vacation, Day One Dept .: I'm taking the next three days off, so I'm leaving you with a Bahamas vacation. It's a vaca...

Pienza, Italy | Sept. 2005 | Photo by B. A. Nilsson

Did Somebody Mention Toscanini? Dept. | As promised in yesterday's post , I can and will hold forth on the subject of conductor Arturo ...

The author strikes a ruminative pose. THERE'S A NOXIOUS TYPE of party guest, usually male, whose attempts to be the life of said ga...

For One Night Only (A Tragedy) P.G. Wodehouse I MET him in a crowd:     As if with care ’twas weighted, His shapely back was bowed...

Today is my daughter's birthday, a good time to recall her arrival fifteen years ago. The legal issues of homebirth have improved since...

WHOEVER INJECTED ME with my liberal-tinged middle-class whiteness left a scar. It’s the place where my supposedly enlightened thinking end...

Get those credit cards out! Here's a recent Metroland piece listing my favorites of the 2011 classical recordings -- and one coming o...

From the Vault Dept. : One of those can-you-do-something-with-this-topic? pieces, it's a vintage Schenectady Gazette story I wrote abo...

Chez Mike, East Greenbush, NY  |  Oct. 12, 2009  |  Photo by B. A. Nilsson

Even as we ponder our seasonal root vegetables, let's look ahead to planting season. Here's a Metroland piece from 2008 that has m...

From the Vault : 2012 marks the 60th anniversary of John Cage's 4'33", and I feel the need this quiet morning to heighten my a...

. . . know what's best for us.  Support SOPA and PIPA!  The internet was getting too damn sassy anyway.  (Image: aftermath...

CALL IT ANTI-CAPITALIST guerilla theater. Call it urban terrorism. I think it’s great, mean-spirited fun. Yesterday’s Martin Luther King...

 Vintage Stuff Dept.: Although nearly a decade old, the numbers in this Metroland piece remain fairly current. And it remains a popular to...

A trip to the Berkshires. The family car. Electronic message: Your door is ajar. I slump in the driver’s seat, patience worn thin; My ...

MALIGNANT MIRRORS                                                                                                                 I am...

The third Albany Chefs' Food and Wine Fesitval has kicked off at the Crowne Plaza. Two years ago, I worked behind the scenes at the in...

Uses of Theater, Adolescent Division Dept.                                                                         If I excelled at not...