Forget Dick Clark, Wolfman Jack and Casey Kasem. Saturday Night Live at the Oldies with Shadoe Steele makes these long gone disc jockey legends look like nerdy crew cut-wearing clerks peddling Beach Boys albums in a ‘60s record store. In today’s high-tech broadcast business Shadoe Steele remains alive, well and invincible. Celebrating 45 years on […]
We stood with about a thousand people outside the Lackawanna County Courthouse Saturday when a “No Kings” protestor commented on the “WHAT ABOUT GAZA?” sign my political scientist activist wife held. With a knotted American flag bandana twisted jauntily around his neck like an America’s Cup yacht captain, an obedient cellphone-photo-taking wife by his side […]
Kenny “Duff” Duffin died in 2023 without knowing he gave me the long-ago gift of his example to create a fictitious character in one of my novels, a Black hero who resists prejudice and fights for social justice. Duff’s strong spirit helps guide me as a writer to breathe resistance into America’s continuing struggle against […]
A long time ago some smart-ass started telling what came to be known as Pat and Mike jokes, slurs meant to mock the Irish. Irish Americans eventually laughed loudest. Countless descendants of the old sod even embraced the monkey-faced Notre Dame leprechaun as one of us, a mean-spirited caricature that proves a sad irony at […]
“Go with the flow,” Harry whispered to us a few weeks before he died. Harry shared this same mantra with me and his first cousin Stephanie Bressler when we stayed at the Lark in May. Stephanie and Harry grew up together as children in the ‘50s living a block away from each other in Tower […]
