I've been listening to a podcast called "A Small American City," about Troy, NY. I know Troy, somewhat. My brother C. used to go to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy. I remember well driving out Route 2, over the Berkshires and the Taconics, to go visit him. I don't know that I explored the town much, although we did go to a few bars and ( Read more... )

We're approaching the end of 2012. As I type this, it's nearly midnight and the snow is falling outside. We had about six inches on the ground from a storm a couple of days ago, and I suspect we'll get about the same additional amount by morning, if not more. It looks very peaceful out there. And it sounds quiet. We have a fire going in the ( Read more... )

My tennis-watching history has a gap. Now that I'm back paying attention to tennis, I realize that I've missed a lot. Most of what might be called the Roger Federer era, in fact. I recently found myself reading Andre Agassi's Open and I while I definitely remember the Sampras-Agassi rivalry, I don't think I was really an Agassi fan. I don't think I ( Read more... )

As I was mounting the shelf brackets in our laundry room the other day, I had the laptop perched on top of the washer that I had pushed out of the way, so that I could watch Bull Durham while I worked. I had gotten the movie through Netflix and L. and I probably weren't going to watch it together. I had added a few sports movies to our queue in ( Read more... )

At first, I had planned to show up to the first day of class with my canoe. You see, we had read the book Zeitoun for summer reading. I think it's  the best summer reading book at the college in the five years I've been teaching there. But then again, as I told my students, that may have partly to do with the prominent role that the canoe played in ( Read more... )

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Milos Raonic is Canada's number one ranked singles player. In fact, he is apparently the highest ranked Canadian player on the ATP tour, ever. His current ra.nking is number 21 in the world. So he is kind of like Canada's Andy Murray. Unfortunately, the Rogers Cup tournament -- the biggest tennis tournament in Canada, played in Toronto and Montreal ( Read more... )

At the Rendezvous last night, I went to the CD-release party for Daniel Hales and the Frost Heaves.Hales had invited everybody from the Po Group to write a poem in response to one of the songs on the album. Neither L. nor I had done this, but he invited us to read poems anyway, by people who did write poems, but weren't able to show for the event. ( Read more... )

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