From the archives – Arkells in Philly and DC

*The first of my ICYMI series. Seeing as how these guys have made the news recently for receiving a spur-of-the-moment invitation by Team Canada to fly to PyeongChang to perform at the Olympics, I thought it'd be appropriate to share this. I had the good fortune to cover Arkells' east coast shows in November with…

Content forthcoming. Standby.

I'm sure you've noticed that I've been a bit derelict in posting original content on here. Sorry about that...I haven't had much time alone with my thoughts of late. But it just occurred to me (because I'm super quick on the uptake like that) that I do have stuff to share, stuff that you might…

The Eighth Loser

I originally submitted this to my friend Rich Chizmar of Cemetery Dance Publications to be included as a guest essay for his Stephen King Revisited project. But after talking to him and getting his blessing (and since he's still a long way from revisiting IT), I decided the timing was right to share it with you…

Anniversaries and missed deadlines

This is post number 52. Which, had things gone according to plan, should have been published two months ago. But nothing seems to go according to plan for me these days, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. When I started my blog, I'd hoped to average about a post a week, if not more. I didn't…

With eyes closed tight, I swing with all my might

The last time these guys made an appearance in my blog, they kind of got the short shrift. They closed out a busy two weeks of traversing the east coast and, in much the same way I collapsed, exhausted, on the couch when I finally got home, I lost all momentum in writing my recap.…

The next step

Right at this moment, I’m sitting at the desk in my library (my personal library, not public one that employs me), my laptop on and a bunch of Word documents open. The room is filled with bright, early-afternoon sun. The dog is lying at my feet and the stillness is broken only by the sound of…

“The first day of the rest of your life”

Well, I don't know about you, but I could have done without the excitement of the last month. It wasn't the cheerful, Christmas-season kind of excitement either. I spent most of December in the throes of an existential crisis, trapped in a fugue of worry and second guessing and sleepless nights and being thrown so…

Finding your guts

A friend of mine just did something incredible and exciting and gutsy and more inspiring than anything I've seen in a long time - she opened her first art show. This may not sound especially remarkable, but in this particular instance it is. Like me, she was a long-time county employee. But for her that…

Making time

So we're in the lull between holidays, the few days when you've finished cleaning up from Thanksgiving but haven't yet gotten sucked into the chaos of Christmas. (Well, if you're anything like me, you haven't.) This is the eye of the storm, the brief reprieve before you end up buried under an avalanche of wrapping paper and tinsel and…

Aspirations, interrupted

WordPress has this handy little feature, the Stats page, where you can monitor pretty much any imaginable statistic about your blog. How many times it's been viewed, how many visitors you've had...and how many days it's been since your last post. And right now, that particular stat is glaring accusatorially up at me. Nineteen. Nineteen days since…