Eggcorn genius

My friends from South Jersey are different than Okies. They eat hoagies instead of subs, dip their ice cream cone in jimmies instead of sprinkles, and they vacation at the shore rather than the beach. And, if they ask you for a drink of water, you might bring them back a lumberjack. Language is fascinating […]

Questions without Answers

My son spent every waking moment of 1996 as a three-year old child repeating one word, “Why?” Why are there big red balls on some electric power lines and why can’t he wear his socks according to thickness instead of color and why do arrows on signs point up into the heavens where cars can’t […]

The Funniest People: Tom Achey

My brother-in-law lives near the edge of the New Jersey Pine Barrens. His 56-year-old hair lives on the edge of a Bon Jovi mullet and a Lynyrd Skynyrd hippy frazzle. His laid back demeanor along with the hair masks the fact that he is one of the funniest people I know, while belying his career […]

The Funniest People I Know: Introduction

When I began writing again this past December, my intention was to shed light on good things and good people. Isn’t there enough angst already? Yesterday, an idea lit my corpus callosum like a pin ball machine hitting 100,000 points. I’ll write about the funniest people I know. They are everywhere…you just have to look […]

There’s a tornado in my coffee

My son is writing his undergraduate thesis for Honors Meteorology on the topic, The Genesis of Tornadoes. I was wondering if The Revelation of Tornadoes might be easier to write. Tornado prediction is a non-linear dart tossed into the misty morning fog. It’s fraught with downdrafts of hope and gusts of unfounded certitude. Yet we […]

Mosquito Dancing in the Fire Hall

My wife Karen was born in Trenton, New Jersey and spent most of her childhood in the small town of Tabernacle on the edge of the pine barrens about halfway between Philadelphia and Atlantic City. I first visited her home during our courtship and I remember the drive from the Philly airport with Karen and […]

15 minutes of fame and paranoia

A had a fifteen minute interlude yesterday at the airport that began in relational euphoria and ended in paranoia. Moments occur daily that signal my grasp of human relations, the mastery I have in moments of stress, the ability to charm and placate, to create world peace with a warm smile and a few charming […]