I’m looking up at the sky. How many stars can I see in the night? Dozens? Hundreds? A thousand upon a thousand? My cell phone is screaming at me. An Amber Alert. Be on the lookout for a nine-year-old girl that may have been abducted in Lake George by someone in a white van, driving…
Read MoreAll articles filed in writing
What’s Up in the Neighborhood, July 12 2025
Good morning, my wonderful blog readers. Hope you’ve got lots of fun things planned for this weekend, and I also hope the weather cooperates with your plans. I’m making my final cuts and considerations for the New York State Fair’s and Altamont Fair’s photography competitions, and after going zilch-for-four in the Iowa State Fair, I’m…
Read MoreI am the man on Fifth Avenue.
With the passage of H.R. 1, colloquially known as the “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” I now know how I will die. I will die because the hospitals that take care of me either won’t exist any more, or they’ll charge me so much money that I cannot afford to seek medical care. I will die…
Read MoreWay down yonder in the cornfield …
In the late 1960’s, the most popular television show at the time was Laugh-In, a hyper-scattered comedy variety program that mixed surrealism with one-liners and ribald satire. Here’s the first episode of that series, and you can see the lightning as it flashes in the proverbial bottle. Laugh-In proved so popular that other television networks…
Read MoreThose rocks are NOT from my head.
My girlfriend has made some major upgrades and restorations to her backyard. What was once a collection of overgrown paver stones that were originally part of her home is now a fully replaced and beautiful concrete pathway. But there’s one portion – a triangular patch between the deck and the back of the house –…
Read MoreChecking on the Toll Gate Ice Cream store
The Toll Gate Ice Cream parlor was once a happy place in my life. It was a stop for homemade ice cream and tasty fried foods, all in a quiet, peaceful atmosphere. The building sat at the confluence of New Scotland Road and Route 140 in Slingerlands, and even in my adult years I could…
Read MoreComparing a Biometar to a Flektogon to an Orestegor
Unlike my Nikon camera bodies, where I can transfer lenses from one chassis to another without any problems, my Pentacon Six uses proprietary lenses. Now if I want to put a Pentacon lens on a Nikon camera, there’s an adapter for such a connection. But I can’t put Nikon gear on a Pentacon camera –…
Read MoreThe loophole that brought me back to the local trivia game
Last year, after nearly two decades of success in local and national bar / tavern trivia championships, I put down my pencil and walked away from the competitive bar trivia scene. I felt that I had achieved all I wanted, and in my mind there was no need to continue on. So at last year’s…
Read MoreThe finale of the Route 5 Rivalry was won by …
I had a horrible nightmare Saturday night. I dreamed I was at the scorer’s table of the finals between the Albany Patroons and the New York Phoenix, with both teams fighting for that one playoff berth for the next round. The game was tied in the final moments. All of a sudden, I heard someone…
Read MoreDr. Demento is retiring? NOOOOOOO!!!!!
Dr. Demento is a certified legend. An award-winning musicologist and historian, the man born Barry Hansen has championed the wild, the weird and the wonderful in alternative music for nearly 55 years. I listened to him on Sunday nights on WPYX in Albany, and later in life I met and interviewed Dr. Demento for various…
Read More
Chuck The Writer 
You must be logged in to post a comment.