Tag Archives: Long Island

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Throwback Thursday: the fabled rotating comic stand!

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Yep.  When I was in kid on Long Island, it would be either war comics (especially Sgt. Rock), Conan the Barbarian (or his himbo spiritual cousin, Ka-Zar the Savage) any of the various Archie titles, or a horror comic.  (I thought superhero comics were stupid when I was a kid.  In order for a comic to entertain me, it had to include war, swords, Archie or monsters).

When I was in the fifth or sixth grade, my dad would occasionally  pick me up titles that only seemed available in Manhattan, where he worked as a bus driver — books like the 1980’s iteration of the Blackhawk Allied commandoes or (joy and rapture) The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones.  (Maybe Indy’s title adhered more loosely to the rule of thumb I cited above, but that was forgivable, because it was the greatest comic book ever created.)

The last time I saw a rotating rack like this was … 1993?  1994?   For a while, it was neat little fixture of the 7-11 along Route 1 just outside Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, Virginia.  You could make a run for coffee or nachos at any hour and snag a comic while you were at it.  By then, I was thoroughly entrenched in the DC and Marvel superhero pantheons.  (A really cool goth kid in my freshman dorm had shown me Frank Miller’s work, and I was hooked.)

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“Kerry,” by Robert James Nolan

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My father was a poet too.  He wrote this for my sister Kerry for her 16th birthday.

There are a couple of references here that might be confusing … Longwood was the name of our high school.  (Students were known as “Lions” and the cheerleaders were “Lionettes.”)  And my sister wore an eyepatch when she was very young to correct a vision issue.

“Kerry,” by Robert James Nolan

I’ve a daughter (name of Kerry), she is my second born,

She’s as pretty as a sunset and as graceful as a fawn.

And, though not really a healthy child (we once thought she was dying),

She beat all the odds against her, ’cause she tried (and kept on trying!)

When just a babe, she had to wear a patch upon her eye,

And she wore it, though she couldn’t understand the reason why.

She wore it when she played jump rope, and jacks and Barbie dolls,

She wore it playing hide-and-seek in Forest Park’s green knolls.

She wore it when she went to school (I know THAT was hard to do.)

She wore it and she didn’t complain (hey girl, we’re proud of you)!

Now she’s all grown up and popular (her friends are always callin’).

And at school it is for Kerry Jeanne the boys are always fallin’.

She is a famous Longwood Lionette and a rising Longwood Track star,

And everyone who knows her says, “That girl is sure to go far.”

And Kerry’s quite the baker (baking is a family trait).

She makes chocolate chocolate-chip cookies that really are first-rate.

She can swim like a fish and dive like a seal with hardly a splash or bubble.

And does gymnastics routines with an elegant ease (though the times tables still give her trouble).

There’s a whole lot more that I could say about our Kerry Jeanne,

And the tings that she’s accomplished (though she’s still not quite sixteen).

But instead I’ll ask the question. “Kerry, wouldn’t it be fun …

“To memorize the times tables before you’re 21?”

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Morning in Salem, Virginia, January 2025

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The picture below illustrates something that I still find novel about Southwest Virginia, simply because it is so different from the interminably flat landscape of my native Long Island.  When viewed from a distance, mountainside buildings have the illusion of being at the level of treetops.

Those look like really nice townhouses, and they are indeed on level ground.  (There is a road beyond them.)  But their position at the top of that rise makes them seem a little bit like mountain fortresses to the kid in me.

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The Piker Press publishes my photo of the Admiral David G. Farragut statue in Washington, D.C.

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I’m so happy to see The Piker Press today publish my photo of the Admiral David G. Farragut statue in Washington, D.C.’s Farragut Square.  You can find the picture right here.

Farragut Square is a great place to stop and relax on a sunny day if you’re catching a train out of The District.  It’s a couple of blocks from The White House — and there are plenty of food trucks with interesting fare.  (You see, Virginians?  Long Island is NOT the only place who has those.)  DC residents can be surprisingly friendly too.

Thanks, as always, to Managing Editor Sand Pilarski for letting me be a part of the creative community of The Piker Press!

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“Smiling Among Inert Shipwrecks” selected for the upcoming Gathering Poetry Anthology

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I received some really nice news this morning — my poem “Smiling Among Inert Shipwrecks” has been selected for the upcoming Gathering Poetry Anthology.  The anthology is being developed by Local Gems Press (which I was surprised to realize today is actually based on my native Long Island, New York.)  Gathering is also being created by Poets Anonymous, which has provided a venue for poets since 1991.

This is a wonderful opportunity to share my voice; I am grateful to James P. Wagner, Publisher of  Local Gems Press, along with Lesley Tyson and Megan McDonald at Poets Anonymous.

poets-anonymous-gathering-cover_orig

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Throwback Thursday: Action Park!

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I never actually went to Action Park — the infamously dangerous 80’s-era  amusement park in Vernon Township, New Jersey.  But the name alone conjures childhood memories because it was a perennial source of rumors and urban legends for kids at the time.  (And we all lived a few hours away in Eastern Long Island.)  I remember the commercials too.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard the name mentioned since that time.  (The park closed in 1996, in part because of the same recession that was giving my generation so much anxiety in our first  post-college job searches.)

So I was surprised when a friend in Britain, of all places, sent me the first video below.  Not only does Action Park’s infamy live on, it extends across the Atlantic.

Anyway, it turns out that the park was one dangerous place.  There was even a 2020 documentary about it on HBO Max.

Wild.

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Throwback Thursday: Laura Branigan’s “Gloria” (1982)

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Weird world — Laura Branigan wasn’t the first vocalist to perform her signature song, “Gloria” (1982).  It was originally an Italian pop song performed in 1979 by Umberto Tozzi.   (That’s the second video below.)

Anyway, for a lot of people in my age bracket, this remains a quintessential 80’s tune.  Branigan even performed it in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade the year it was released.  I still remember people commenting about how beautiful she looked.

If you’re wondering whatever happened to Branigan, there’s a bit of a sad postscript here — she died in her sleep at a relatively young age, 52, from an undiagnosed brain aneurysm.  By that time she’d become a fellow Long Islander; she’d been living in East Quogue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQlle-L0cT4

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Newsday printed my letter to the editor about the 20th anniversary of 9/11.

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I’m honored today to discover that Newsday published my letter to the editor about the 20th anniversary of the September 11th terror attacks.  (It is an edited version of the letter that I submitted.)  If you are a digital subscriber to Newsday, you can also read it online here.

Newsday is not only the newspaper that I grew up with — it is also the third largest paper in all of New York State and one of the largest in America.  It has a weekday circulation of 437,000, and reaches nearly half of Long Island’s households.  The 80-year-old publication has been the winner of 19 Pulitzer Prizes, with nominations for 20 more.  I am especially grateful to its editorial staff for selecting my letter for such an esteemed newspaper.

 

Newsday letter B

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Throwback Thursday: “The Lone Ranger” (1949 -1957)!

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No, I obviously don’t remember “The Lone Ranger” during its initial run between 1949 and 1957.  (At least I hope that’s obvious — I’m a couple of full decades younger than that.)  But I absolutely do remember this show’s reruns from when I was a baby … maybe around 1976, if I had to guess?  I would have been about four years old.   (I was five when my family moved out of that house in Queens, New York, to rural Long Island.)

I know that people who claim early childhood memories are often viewed with skepticism — I get it.  (And I think many of us are more prone to confabulation than we’d like to admit.)  But I’ve actually got a few memories from when I was a toddler — and this is one of them.

I can remember my Dad putting “The Lone Ranger” on in the tiny … den or living room or whatever, to the left of our house’s front door and hallway.  You see the part in the intro below where the horse rears up at the .31 mark — and again at the 1:53 mark?  That was a verrrrrry big deal to me as a tot.

Go ahead, tell me I’m nuts.  I can take it.  You and I live in an age in which conspiracy theories have gone completely mainstream.  If I share something online that seems implausible to others, I figure I’m in a lot of company.

Anyway, I pretty much forgot about The Lone Ranger after that.  There was a 1981 television movie, “The Legend of the Lone Ranger,” that was remarkably well done — especially for a TV movie at the time.  I remember being pretty impressed with that — its plot-driving scene where the good guys get fatally ambushed was unexpectedly dour.

But I never bothered with the infamous 2013 film.  I occasionally enjoy movies that everybody else hates — something that earns me a lot of ribbing on Facebook — so maybe I should give it a shot.  Hell, the trailer makes it look decent.  And HBO’s “Westworld” has really whetted my appetite for westerns … which is weird, because “Westworld” is decidedly NOT a western — that’s sort of the point of its central plot device.  But still.

 

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It’s a bird … It’s a plane …

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I took this video a few hours ago, just before that brief thunderstorm over Roanoke. This looks like one of those AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) planes that the military uses, doesn’t it?  (See the dish-shaped radar device atop it.)  It was circling the area.

I remember seeing these in the 1980’s as a kid on Long Island (along with plenty of F-14 “Tomcats” buzzing our neighborhood), because Grumman Aerospace had a major plant out in Calverton.  They actually designed and tested new fighter jets there — which the kids thought was pretty neat.) The AWACS aircraft were the planes that could detect incoming planes or missiles from Russia.  (Nowadays, Senate Republicans would block funding for that sort of thing.)

I suppose this could be a civilian plane … I can only imagine that the radar technology has other applications.  I honestly don’t know.