This morning we returned to that rink in the mall, Ice Town, for a dramatically different skating experience. I had wondered, “Who puts an ice rink in a shopping mall?” The rink could be fun for kid and teen shoppers, but little more. My bad. A lot more.
Ice Town packs in the serious skaters. My daughter returned during the Tuesday morning Freestyle session, where there were plenty of high-level skaters, including a young man representing Mexico in world competition.
Vacation 07 had to include skating practice for my 13 year-old daughter. My wife did some Internet research and located a rink fairly close to our motel. But when we got to the address, we […]
We don’t vacation often, because it costs just too darn much to travel. Besides, there are plenty of attractions in Washington, D.C. Everybody comes our way to see the monuments. Anyway, we flew out to San Diego last […]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwBIzkp4V6Q] Overnight, one of the teens in our community died after falling while skateboarding. We can’t offer deepest enough condolences to the family, which lost their youngest child (he was 18) and only […]
When I was 14, the local radio station—with 50,000 watts of power—broadcast from neighboring Presque Isle, Maine. I found one DJ, whose name is lost to memory, quite exciting. One summer afternoon, the he put […]
Today’s New York Times column “An iPhone Changed My Life (Briefly)” hits at the device’s fundamental problem: Hype. There was too much of it—and not really from Apple—that may have over-raised many people’s expectations. The issue Michelle Slatalla raises is one of returns. Will she return her iPhone? She writes, “I have started thinking seriously about returning the $599 phone, despite a 10 percent restocking fee. It hasn’t really changed my life in the ways I’d hoped”.
But she may have started with overly unrealistic expectations, which the runaway hype helped foster. The name includes “phone” for a reason. Apple didn’t promise a device that would cure cancer or feed the starving.
I started photographing bugs; snapped this baby praying mantis through bushes. Bad angle, bad lighting. I’m shooting with Canon EOS 20D dSLR and Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM lens. My main lens is the EF 135mm f/2L USM. Right now, these are my only lenses, as I transition from zoom to prime lenses. In the meantime, my Nokia N95 cell phone covers any close-to-subject shots.
Last week’s Nature—that would be the June 7 issue—blows one hell of a hole in one of the proof points for global warming theory: Increasing number of hurricanes. If I rightly recall, former vice president Al Gore used increasing numbers of seasonal hurricanes in movie “An Inconvenient Truth“.
Good science isn’t about what you know but what you realize that you don’t know. Too many of the proof points for global warming are nothing more than seemingly related observations that probably aren’t as interconnected as they might first seem. Gore and others have attributed warming seas—presumed by-product of global warming—as reason for worsening seasonal hurricane cycles.
While my daughter and I sat in a Popeye’s this afternoon, we could hear this little kid excitedly talking behind us. We both burst out laughing when he proclaimed: “I want to be 27 inches […]
The best definition I have seen for describing U.S. conservatives and liberals came from a sociology book, which used analogy of a pie and who gets it.
The liberal philosophy is equal share, that everyone should get the same slice of the pie. By contrast, the conservative philosophy is equal access, that everyone should get equal chance at the pie but not necessarily equal piece.
I was 14 when my mother saved my life. It was, in fact, my 14th birthday.
Dad, mom, my three sisters, and I had gone to my grandparents house to celebrate. Nana made tasty pork chops, for which I had no appetite. For dessert, there was fresh baked chocolate cake—yum, my favorite—and actually two. I had no taste for cake, either. Instead, after picking at my food, I lay down on the couch. My sister Annette, who is closest in age to me, also was ill. We both had fevers, and I assumed that we shared the same flu.
My 30-year high school reunion will take place this year—if it hasn’t already. But, sigh, I have no high school where to return. During my junior and senior years, my mom moved the family from the town where I grew up to Maine’s second-largest city in the south. While other kids wallowed in the memories, I walked the hallowed halls like an odd duck. I was a stranger among strangers. I left my memories and friends 300 miles away, in the town where I was born and there the school system that educated me. No memories. No prom. No graduation parties. No fun.
I regularly cut classes in the new school, which was quite unusual for me. I had bulked up on extra classes through junior year and was one-quarter credit shy of graduation going into my senior year. I only needed to sustain grades for college.