Following a particularly pleasant and productive day, I lingered at work, and then decided to take Route 7 for a leisurely “smell the new mown hay” drive instead of the usual I-88 rush. I turned off the AC, lowered the rear windows, and uploaded songbird Leslie Uggams’ “Uptown Downtown.” The show had just played at […]

In the realm of the unexpected, meeting facebook friend Tony Commisso at Proctors was a complete surprise. You may remember that I blogged about Tony in these pages several months ago (The Facebook factor, Monday, Nov. 1, 2010) — but until the day of the Blue Man Group opening, we had never met. Proctors receptionist […]

There’s nothing secret about it. Valentine’s Day notwithstanding, I ♥ Susan Arbetter –- and have since well before we met five years ago at WAMC. I fell instantly in ♥ with that voice. All else followed. Each morning since moving upstate from New York City, I listened to Susan (pictured at left) and Joe Donahue […]

For more than 20 years, I followed a habit strengthened by a weekly trek from my apartment in New York City to a country house in Big Indian, N.Y. Quickly, the three-plus-hours span became a welcomed opportunity to transition from the stress of the workweek and morph, gradually, into the “my time” mode of the […]

Christmas Eve day was long on travel and hours behind the wheel. Despite the low volume of cars to and from a day in New York City to visit friends, the trip seems to get longer with each return. In truth, I’ve traveled for almost every holiday since I left for college an eon ago. […]