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Joe Strummer’s ‘Coma Girl’
Remembering the late, great Joe Strummer on the day he died in 2002. If Strummer had never done another thing after The Clash, then he would still have been a legend. But the 50-year-old was in the middle of a creative renaissance, truly in his “roots rock rebel” phase that he sang in the late ’70s. “Coma Girl” is proof of that.
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Remembering Tom Stoppard: A Playwright’s Legacy
RIP to a playwright who showed a new way to look at a classic, and thanks to Mr. Matthews, my English teacher at Coronado High School, who told me about “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” in class one day and the Center for Creative Youth writing faculty pointing me back in that direction two years later.
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Echoes of a past crash
Yesterday’s crash of a United Parcel Service MD-11 cargo jet brought back memories of a crash more than four decades ago.
American Airlines Flight 191 was a DC-10 taking off from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport bound for Los Angeles when it lost its left engine as it went airborne, and crashed not too far off the runway. All 273 people aboard were killed on May 25, 1979.
It’s way too early to speculate on the causes of the crash, and I’m not qualified in any way to do that. But it shocked me a bit that the UPS flight lost its left engine, the same as AA 191. Even stranger was the fact that the UPS jet was an MD-11, an updated version of the DC-10.
Dad and I flew into Chicago O’Hare about a week after the crash in early June 1979, and I remember looking down and seeing where it had happened. It was quite obvious, and scary. I also remember flying back from that trip, seeing a lot of DC-10s parked because the FAA had grounded them during the investigation.
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First in, first out
Here’s something that’s never happened to me before: I was the first voter into the polls this morning.
And the only voter for just about all of the time I was in there, even though it was about five or six minutes into the Election Day before I walked in.
Apparently you can get two “I voted” stickers if you are the first in.
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It’s that time of year
Wow, that escalated quickly. One minute, it was Halloween. The next minute, the turkeys are in the freezer case ready for Thanksgiving. Too soon.
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Still not a fan
It’s been two years since I’ve posted “Why I’m Not a Fan of Halloween.”
Guess what? The last 24 months haven’t changed my mind.
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A delicacy of childhood
When I was growing up, this was — for me, at least — the most gourmet of meals: Steamed clams.
I loved ’em. ‘Course, it helped, growing up in the Northeast and being not only close to many restaurants that served them pretty close off the boat but also having grandparents who lived right off the Atlantic Ocean and, especially, having a fisherman next door to them who gave us thousands of clams and quite a few lobsters over the years. I even loved the broth that’s made when you steam them.
I’ve even dug for clams, and especially mussels, myself, along the Massachusetts coast, and gone out on the water with that same lobsterman, as he tended his lobster traps. It’s quite a tradition.
I haven’t had them in a long time and I still didn’t have steamed clams this trip to Massachusetts. But I saw them at the fish counter at the restaurant we went to, Jake’s Seafood Restaurant and Fish Market, at Nantasket Beach, just south of Boston. (If you’re around, it’s quite good.)
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The Hub, from afar
Oh, hey, Boston.
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It’s that time of year
I’m just getting my arms around the fact that Halloween is less than two weeks away, and then I go to the store and I see the Christmas decorations.
Halloween, fall, Thanksgiving and Christmas decorations, all in the same section of the store. I didn’t see any New Year’s decorations yet. At least that’s still in the stockroom.
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Why I still write with a typewriter
I’ve never been one for fountain pens or bespoke keyboards, being a working writer and all. But I do hold one throwback habit.
This is my 1964 Galaxie II typewriter, one in a long line of Smith Corona machines in my family. I like Smith Corona because it was my dad’s typewriter of choice, it was based in Connecticut, and it has a “1” key. Done some of my better writing in my teens and 20s on a Smith Corona.
I’ll admit, you’ll have to pry my MacBook out of my cold, dead fingers. But every once in a while, and the last several weeks, I dug out one of the typewriters I have, and burst out writing.
There’s power in those keys.
The last couple of years it’s been a 1966 Olympia SM-7 I picked up for $36 at a Pittsburgh thrift shop just before the pandemic. A classic of German engineering, just about the BMW or Benz of typers. I also have a 1954 Royal Quiet De Luxe I bought for $20 from a guy in Beaver County.
This last time around, the Olympia and Royal fell short. And since this isn’t 1968, I don’t have a typewriter repair shop nearby.
But you know what never fails me? My trusty Smith Corona.
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About Me
Journalist and writer. Loves writing, storytelling, books, typewriters. Always trying to find my line. Oh, and here’s where I am now.
Nows and Forevers 
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