The story is fiction. The issues are real. Some moments call for a good man with stones. **********      It was a Thursday. Not unlike any Thursday in any small town. An unassuming grey-haired man in his late fifties quietly parked his forest green pickup truck in the downtown...

The original version of this story 1st appeared in the June 17, 2021 on-line edition of the Adirondack Almanack      I had an interesting conversation with my brother a while back in camp. It began innocently enough, with an observation he made about the difficulties the Saranac Lake Elks...

A Wood Duck Celebration in Haiku   Haiku is a traditional Japanese short verse form written to celebrate some aspect of nature or life. While it has numerous nuances and variations, in my rudimentary understanding, a Haiku basically consists of three lines of verse written in a non-rhyming pattern,...

An SLHS ’81 Classmate Collaboration By Jackie Ely & Dick Monroe (With a cameo assist by Karen Barrow Pittman) Winter’s Long March Behind Me Birch Trees Framing My Thoughts Sitting Alone in a Park Contemplating Ice-Covered Mountain Lake Waters Quietly Waiting for Spring (And waiting…and waiting) Soaking In April’s...

I’m not sure what made me choose the drums over other instruments. My first real musical influence was listening to my parent’s vinyl recording of the music from “Jesus Christ Superstar”. I learned all the lyrics by heart to every single one of those songs. I even learned to...

Author’s Note: I drafted this poem many years ago for my wife. My handwritten notes simply bear the date “1990”, so I must have written it shortly after Robin and I married. For reasons unbeknownst to me at this point in life, it sat all these years gathering dust...

     I awoke to the sun. Its warm morning rays gently knocking on my bedroom window. I sat up, yawned and stretched, kicking back my hand quilted comforter.      I looked out from my second story vantage point across Stevenson Lane to the day. To my left was Carpenter’s...

The Day I nearly lost Khalisi. My true canine rescue story. A close call, a hard learned lesson, and a warning.      It happened several years ago, right about this time of year. It was late February or early March. The ground had just refrozen right behind an early...

Author’s Note: What a beautiful day today! Everything sparkles after last night’s fresh snow. The sky is so blue. The sun shine’s such bright warmth.  I took my canine companions out for a snowshoe “paw patrol” stroll. The poem below formed in my head while the dogs explored and...

     ********** I remember, as a young boy, attending various north country elementary schools; Stanfordville, Duanesburg, Northville, Lake Placid, Saranac Lake, where we were taught one universal lesson. We ran drills. The announcement came from the principal, over the loudspeaker:       “When the alarm siren sounds, immediately hide under...