I long for a simpler time, a time of nickel Cokes and 23-cents-a-gallon gasoline, a time when “tweet” was merely a sound made by happy birds.But all that changed in 2006, when Twitter came along. It seemed like a cute idea at first, restricting tweets to 140 characters. Heck, it might even ...
Years ago my niece, then 7, had chickenpox, and the family promised her she would pull through just fine. She wasn’t quite sure. Ever one to stir the pot, I slipped surreptitiously to the kitchen and took an egg from the refrigerator. Then I sat next to her on the couch and gently slid the ...
I’ve been mostly in bed with back problems for the past three weeks. I have no TV in the bedroom, so I keep up with the events of the outside world mainly via radio (aka, pictureless TV) and my smartphone. Viewing the world on a 4-inch screen works wonders for your perspective. No politician ...
“So, how do you like retirement?” a friend asked this week.“It’s great!” I said.“What do you do besides play music?” he continued.“I write a column for a newspaper.”“They pay you to do that?” he asked, incredulously.His reaction didn’t surprise me. For most of my life, ...
First, there is no truth to the rumor that I was carried bodily from my home office last week to make room for four editors returning to Pittsburgh to take a remedial course on the use of the apostrophe for plural possessive’s.Yes, I was asked to leave, but only because my initial column had ...
Based on the prevalence of its signage around town, some people might think the name of the city at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers is UPMC.Maybe that’s why a local group wants to replace a landmark electronic billboard perched on the side of Mount Washington with a ...
