Saturday, July 19, 2025

Connie Francis (1937-2025), "Lipstick On Your Collar."

›
As her New York Times obituary notes, Connie Francis is mostly remembered for dreamy ballads like her first million seller, Who's Sorr...
Sunday, June 22, 2025

Music recently lost two greats: Sly Stone and Brian Wilson

›
I've been crazy busy, but I feel I must join, if belatedly, in commemorating two brilliant artists we lost recently, both of whom profou...
Saturday, June 14, 2025

Remembering my father on what would be his 111th birthday

›
  Today, June 14, is the 111th anniversary of the birth of my father, Claude Moreland Scales, Jr. It's also Flag Day, and the birthday o...
Monday, May 19, 2025

The Who - Won't Get Fooled Again (Shepperton Studios / 1978) - Happy 80th, Pete Townshend

›
This performance of a perhaps timely song shows Pete's guitar and vocal heroics at their most manic, with Roger Daltrey singing and doin...

Another Finger Lakes Venture; This Time for Tea, not Wine

›
On Thursday, April 24 our friends  Chris Bennem  and Lisa Moore took Martha and me in their car from Brooklyn to  Glen Hollow  (photo at lef...
Tuesday, April 29, 2025

Wall of Death, by Richard and Linda Thompson

›
This song has been going through my head for several days. I suppose it's a metaphor of the time we're living now, when everything s...
Sunday, April 27, 2025

The Mets have the best record in the Majors. Can we stop the season now? A fan's notes and remembrances.

›
 Last year the Mets had a  slow start , but  things improved . They went on to get a wild card slot, won the wild card playoff, then beat th...
Sunday, March 16, 2025

Patrick Street: The Humours Of The King Of Ballyhooley

›
  It being the time of year, sure 'n' begorrah we've been listening to lots of Irish music the past few days. This delightful di...
Saturday, March 08, 2025

Two "Tech Sisters": Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) and Admiral Grace Hopper (1906-1992)

›
There's a lot of talk about "tech bros" now, most of it not flattering. This being International Women's Day , and March b...
Sunday, February 09, 2025

Chief Justice Robert M. Bell, of the Maryland Court of Appeals, who made Black History twice.

›
In September of 1967 I arrived in Cambridge to begin my first year at Harvard Law School. I had some trepidation, thinking I was entering a ...
Tuesday, January 28, 2025

Robert Burns' birthday, and my wife's, celebrated thanks to Repast Baroque and Anna O'Connoll

›
This past Saturday, January 25, was the 266th birthday of the Scottish poet and lyricist Robert Burns (1759-1796), and coincidentally that...
Sunday, December 29, 2024

Rest in Peace, President Carter

›
I can't think of words more eloquent to mark our nation's great loss than  those of Robert Reich , who served in President Carter...
Saturday, December 21, 2024

Bing Crosby - Adeste Fideles (O Come All Ye Faithful) (Visualizer)

›
This isn't the same Bing Crosby rendition of Adeste Fideles my parents had on a Christmas album of his from the early 1950s, but it'...
Wednesday, December 11, 2024

"I grow old ... I grow old ..."

›
 "I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled." When I was in high school and first read this couplet from T.S. Eliot's (ph...