Category: Musings

How many ways can a good man’s life be measured? By the joy he holds for his family, his friends, his work, his community, and himself. By the people he encounters and the way they greet him — with a smile, with an embrace, with unabridged delight. By the visible evidence of his success. The people he employed. The people he helped. The community that, for decades, admired his way of conducting his life. All …

Woody Allen taught me years ago that “80 percent of success is just showing up.” So I did last October, to attend the White Plains High School class of 1974’s 50th reunion. Let’s just say this straightaway. It was a blast, just like the two others I attended, the 35th and 40th reunions. The 50th was so well staged in an event center on North Broadway in White Plains close to end of the route …

Of all the facets that God and heritage cut into the diamond that was Jo-Anne Schneider’s stylish life, the one I always found memorably amusing was her quick, unreserved assessment of everything. I call them Joanyisms. Years ago, for example, I bought an old farmstead in the forest of northern Michigan, close to the Great Lake. It was a place to spend summers and eventually to establish a home in what I considered a glorious …

The Alcan 5000 is a peculiar sort of motorized competition undertaken in the dead of winter from Washington State to Anchorage, Alaska with stops through Canada’s northern territories and the Arctic Circle. If it’s not as familiar as the Iditarod, the classic Alaskan sled dog race, that’s because the Alcan 5000 does not measure speed even though it also crosses immense distances over some of the planet’s most rugged territory. Rather, the Alcan 5000, which …

HONOR, MI — The one unmistakable element in Ron Gianola’s arresting “Passages” paintings is his command in brush, knife, and single pigment colors to produce abstract images endowed with energy and motion. The Passages collection, which Gianola started about a decade ago, has a readily available narrative expressed by freedom from constraint and realized through free form rhythm. The paintings are a visual declaration, much like Gianola’s other artistic expression as a jazz drummer. The …

Here’s a sweet story of friendship, family, and love. Every five years my close friends from Haverford College gather for our class of 1978 reunion. These are don’t-miss affairs for me, and for them. Memorial Day weekend marked our 45th reunion. I attended this year because those friendships produced entirely unanticipated virtues. In March, Gabrielle scheduled hip replacement surgery two weeks prior to the reunion. Our email train includes the fellas and their wives, all …

Water is not my beverage of choice. That is, until deer started eating my lilies. After I balked at online chemical repellents that cost as much as $199, Gabrielle reminded me that deer wouldn’t eat anything sprayed with urine. I began chugging water like it was a cold lager on a hot day. I now collect the non-toxic, organic, aromatic waste stream daily in wide-mouth kambucha jars. Every evening the contents are liberally poured onto …

Before the country scrambled itself into an almost unrecognizable mess. Well before actually, there was a place on Chicago’s South Side called Theresa’s Lounge where every weekend the city’s best Blues were played in a deep song voice and a melancholy tone. Junior Wells and Buddy Guy were regulars. So was James Cotton. I was once at Theresa’s in 1982 with a friend when Cotton walked in off the street, took his spot on stage, …