I went to see Renee Rosnes in Hartford’s Bushnell Park tonight and had two competing things on my mind. One was how great it was, not just the band, but the whole experience. The band was fantastic: Renee Rosnes on piano, John Patitucci on bass, Carl Allen on drums, and Steve Nelson on vibes. It doesn’t…
Jay Bruce retired from Major League Baseball thirty-four at bats into his fourteenth season. It’s always a little sad when a player retires, especially if the retirement is forced by performance or injury. In Bruce’s case, it was performance. He only had four hits in those thirty-four at bats. That’s a .118 average, much better…
I am not religious, but I love Gospel music. It’s funny, I find religion interesting, I just don’t have any religious feeling. The only time I come close to understanding what people get out of religion is when I’m listening to Gospel. I’ve always wanted to attend a black church just to listen to the…
Light pollution is a problem that doesn’t get enough attention, and it’s getting worse. Two astronomers, Chris Impey and Connie Walker, say that on average, it’s getting 9.6% brighter every year, or at least every year from 2011 to 2021 when they did the study. There is, of course, no reason to think that anything…
A while back, I wrote a post about an incident involving former Major League Baseball player and current ESPN analyst Doug Glanville and the West Hartford Police Department. It was kind of the perfect storm to set me off. I liked Glanville as a player and like him as an analyst. I find West Hartford to…
Back in February of 2012, I started a blog called Proof I Never Want To Be President (Of Anything). The name of the blog was a joke about the way the press covers politics. If a politician ever misspeaks, it is a “gaffe” and the press goes on and on about it. And, even worse,…
This started out as a post about gun rights, but as I thought about it, I realized that post wouldn’t make much sense without a more in depth talk about rights. So, I’m going to attempt my first ever two part post. This one will deal with rights in general and the next one will…
As they have bee for pretty much everyone, the last couple of years have been difficult. Even before the pandemic began, 2020 saw one of my dreams become a nightmare. I’d always imagined myself as a teacher, but when I was put in charge of a classroom for the first time, I realized that I…
A free press is supposed to be one of the necessary ingredients in a free society. It is how the citizens can make informed choices and hold the elected officials accountable. That sounds nice, but a free press only gets us part way there. We are currently experiencing a lot of the problems that a…
I’ve been following the news about the protests in Iran, mostly because police brutality is a subject I’m interested in and write about regularly. But it’s been hard to discern exactly what’s going on there because of the breathless way that American news commentators have talked about them. One phrase that’s continually thrown around is…
