Hail to the Hobgoblins!

(c) Scott Nickel 

(Scout Life Magazine)

With a shout out to Ma and Pa Christen, anniversary celebrants are they, and to the little ones who shall be out and about (hopefully under the watchful eyes of their Moms and Dads), costumed and on the prowl for candy, may your Halloween be happy and safe.  

The Missus, Joe, and I are trick-or-treating for a quick minute this afternoon at the Walgreen's in Edison, New Jersey where today's goody is a third dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.  On the Halloween treat meter, it is not nearly as cool as a king-size Snickers or Reese's Peanut Butter Cup but it sure kicks the crap out of candy corn.

Then again, does not everything kick the crap out of candy corn?

Be careful out there.  

-AK 

 

Longfellow and the Blue-Eyed Man

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Pete Townshend, twin sons of different mothers? 

You scoff, no doubt, but perhaps you should not.  They are more like-minded than you might have realized.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Behind Blue Eyes" 

-Pete Townshend 

Consider it a morsel or two of thought to keep you company on this final Saturday of October, with a nice ear worm for your listening pleasure to boot...

-AK 

 

Flexing the Muscle

 

One week from Sunday is the 2021 New York City Marathon.    As you may have heard, I am participating in it, again, this year for the great folks from Stomp the Monster.    The cut-off date for donating to the cause of a charity runner, such as Yours truly, is this weekend.  Thanks to the generous support of all you good folks, I have earned my keep as a member of Team Stomp the Monster.  Truth be told, you all did it.    

As this first finish line comes into clearer view, I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who is supporting Stomp the Monster for your support.  Your selflessness and your generosity are nothing short of extraordinary.   

-AK 

For Those Who Run Towards Danger

 

Today is National First Responder Day.  It is the fifth annual National First Responder Day, having been created by a Congressional Resolution in 2017.   

If your family, like my family, is one that includes a First Responder, then you know how extraordinary your loved one is and how extraordinary the work he or she does every day.  Yesterday.  Tomorrow.  Today.  Especially today.  

-AK 

The Beginning and End of Everything

 

Today is Margaret's birthday.  My wife is the great miracle of my life and only those grading on a curve so generous that had Gladys Katrausky employed it in my 11th grade Pre-Calculus class I would have had a puncher's chance of passing it harbor any delusion about me actually being worthy of her.  I do not.  

To borrow a line from the great Brian Wilson, God only knows what I'd be without her.  Neither he nor I is in any particular hurry to find out. 

Happy Birthday and much love, Shmoop! 

-AK   

Breaching the Peace

Betcha did not know that we are fast approaching the third anniversary of the publication of an underappreciated American classic?   

Do not be too hard on yourself.   If you actually purchased a copy, then believe me when I tell you that you are a member of a very exclusive club.  Very exclusive indeed.  

At the risk of giving away the ending, there are thirteen Pop Pop Rules.  In my humble opinion, Rule Number Thirteen is the most important one:  The most important thing you can attain is Peace. 

There is nothing at all wrong with being happy.  

Happiness however is not the "end all and be all".

It is nothing more than a component part of a far bigger,

more important thing, which is peace.  

Understand that by peace I do not mean global harmony.

Rather, when I speak of peace I speak of it being within 

the four walls of your home and, even more critically,

being inside the space between your two ears. 

Peace is what energizes you.  It is what renews you. 

It is what gives you what you need to get up every day

and go out in the world to do what you do to fulfill yourself

and to provide for yourself and your family.

Regardless of where you live, with whom you live, 

and what it is you to do earn your living, your goal - 

your pursuit - should always be on attaining peace in your life.

Once attained, you must do all you need to do to cultivate it,

to preserve it, and to ensure that it forever remains a part of 

your day-to-day.  As a very wise - albeit fictional - man named

Coach Eric Taylor used to drill into his young football players,

"Clear eyes.  Full heart.  Can't lose." 

It is peace that permits you to have eyes that are clear

and a heart that is full.  Go after it, get it,

and then do all you can to hold onto it.

On Saturday, Margaret and I bade our official farewell to our little piece of Paradise by the Sea.  In doing what we did, we honored what I have always understood to be one of the golden rules of real estate.  We bought low and we sold high.  

317 New Bedford Road

Lake Como, New Jersey

Time shall tell the tale whether we have violated Rule Number Thirteen.    

It always does. 

-AK 

10 25 86

Thirty-five years ago on this very day, standing in the student section in a jam-packed Folsom Field, I bore witness to the most extraordinary sporting event I have ever seen live and in person.   Coach Mac's Buffaloes began the day as decided underdogs against Tom Osborne's undefeated and third-ranked Nebraska Cornhuskers.   They ended it ten points better than the Huskers. 

It was a day featuring lots of Buff razzle-dazzle, courtesy of Hatch Boom and Soupy...

Jeff Campbell Reverse = TD 

...and O.C. Oliver and Lance Carl...

OC to LC = TD 

If you have nothing better to do on this most glorious of late October days, for instance if you live in Nebraska, then sit back and enjoy...

Before that afternoon thirty-five years ago, the Buffs had not beaten the Huskers, against whom they played annually, in nineteen years.  They had not beaten them in Boulder since 1960, during the final few months of the Eisenhower Presidency.   

Sunday Boulder Camera 

October 26, 1986

Shoulder to Shoulder, baby.  Shoulder to Shoulder. 

-AK 

 

Forever Young

In the history of the National Football League, only one player has ever died on the field.  Fifty years ago today, with sixty-two seconds left in the fourth quarter of a game at Tiger Stadium against their long-time rivals, the Chicago Bears, Detroit Lions' wide receiver Chuck Hughes had a heart attack, collapsed to the turf, and died in front of the 54,418 fans in attendance, whose number included his wife Sharon.  She was twenty-five.  He was twenty-eight.  He would forever remain twenty-eight.  

Although I consider myself to be a football fan, born into a family of football fans, I had never heard Chuck Hughes' name or heard his story until just the other day.  His story is one of the American Dream, right up until it heartbreaking final act.  Hughes was from Abilene, Texas, attended college, and played football at Texas Western (now the University of Texas El-Paso).  In his senior year, under first-year coach Bobby Dobbs, the Miners went from 0-8-2 to 8-3, capping their season with a 13-12 win against TCU in the Sun Bowl.    The Miners were powered by their offense, led by quarterback Billy Stevens and his two favorite targets, receivers Bob Wallace and Chuck Hughes, who between them caught one hundred and forty of the two hundred and seventeen passes Stevens completed that season. 

Chuck Hughes, Billy Stevens, and Bob Wallace

Texas Western Miners

(c) Detroit News

All three men, who were close friends as well as teammates, are now members of their Alma mater's Hall of Fame.   This fall, the fiftieth since Chuck Hughes' death, the Miners are experiencing a renaissance.  Under fourth-year coach Dana Dimel, they have won six of their first seven games and are already bowl-eligible.  

Sharon Hughes was just twenty-five when she was widowed on that terrible October Sunday afternoon fifty years ago, left to raise the couple's two-year-old son, Shane, without Chuck.  Twenty-five is too goddamn young to transition from wife to widow.  Far too goddamn young.  

Forever young. 

-AK 

Like an Ocean to a Shore...

Everything must have an end

Like an ocean to a shore

Like a river to a stream.

Like a river to a stream,

It's the famous final scene.

"The Famous Final Scene"

Bob Seger

Our little piece of Paradise by the Sea has not been ours, legally, since late Tuesday afternoon.  Margaret and I have confirmation of the wire transfer into our bank account as proof.  Today, however, is the day we shall leave it for the final time.  The movers came yesterday and with Yours truly able to use work to mask his cowardice, Margaret was the one on-scene overseeing what they did and making sure everything proceeded according to plan.  

This morning, she and I shall do - in reverse perhaps - what we did the morning after we closed on our little piece of heaven in early May 2015, which is give it a good, throrough cleaning in preparation for its new owners.  The people to whom we sold it are beneficiaries of a much higher baseline than were the Missus and me seven and one-half years ago.  

We leave it in much better stead than we found it...

...a favor which it has reciprocated, I assure you.  

Take us out, Mr. Seger...

-AK 

 

At the Point of Intersection between Speed and Distance

Two weeks from today, I will take what I firmly believe and certainly intend to be my final ferry ride from Port Imperial in Weehawkin, New Jersey to the Javits Center in New York City to pick up my bib and my race gear for the New York City Marathon.   

I think, but I do not know for certain, Margaret will accompany me on the trip.  In years past, she has never done so.  However, she knows better than anyone else, except perhaps for me, just how hard this year's training cycle has been for me - and on me.  

She knows that even I, the consummate bullshitter who has tap-danced my way through life while humming a blissful tune of self-denial, cannot lie to myself any longer.  Well, not on this point at least. 

Squarely confronting the reality that for me there shall be no 'next year' has permitted me to dedicate myself to the task at hand, which is racing money for a kick-ass organization (Stomp the Monster) comprised of great people doing great work for cancer patients and their families, this one last time.  It is a task, of course, I am entirely incapable of performing by myself, which is why the real heroes of this tale are those who have contributed and who shall contribute to it.  It is your selflessness - not mine - and your sacrifice that is helping save lives.  

For that, I thank you.   On Marathon Sunday, I shall do my level best to prove myself worthy of it.  

-AK 

 

The True Secrets to Success

It saddened me on Monday to learn that Colin Powell had died.  He was eighty-four years old.  Apparently, he had been battling various significant health issues for several years, including myeloma, which had compromised his immune system.   Despite being fully vaccinated, he contracted a breakthrough case of COVID-19, and was hospitalized at Walter Reed, which is where he died.   He is survived by his wife, Alma, to whom he had been married since 1962, and the couple's three children, Annemarie, Linda, and Michael.  

He was neither a saint nor a perfect human being.  I do not offer either of those observations as a criticism.  Based on everything I have ever read written about him, everything he has written himself, and everything he has ever publicly said, I feel I am keeping pretty good company with General Powell writing what I have written.  He never attempted to pass himself off as either a saint or a perfect mortal.  

He was, however, the personification of the American Dream.   He devoted a sizable portion of his life to being in the service of this country and its people, whether during his extended military career or as a civilian.  Was he flawless?  Of course not.  

However, when he made a mistake, he did not run away from it.  

He owned it.  

-AK 

 

Saying Hail to the Chief

This evening I am doing something that I rarely do.  I am not heading directly home from work.   Rather, I am spending a bit of time at the Pines Manor in Edison, New Jersey at the Middlesex County Bar Association's Retirement Dinner honoring the extraordinary Presiding Judge of the Civil Division, Judge Jamie Happas, P.J.Cv., who retired from the bench earlier this year.  

As a lawyer who has practiced in and around Middlesex County for the entirety of my twenty-seven year career, I had the pleasure of appearing before Judge Happas more times than I can actually or accurately recount.  Although I know she shall have no memory of it, I first made her acquaintance before she ascended to the bench.  When I was a baby lawyer back in the day, doing plaintiff's personal injury work - and some municipal court defense work - at a small firm in Plainfield, I not only had a couple of cases in which she represented either the defendant or one of the defendants but I had several municipal court matters in which my ne'er-do-well of the week committed his transgression within the geographical boundaries of Piscataway Township, the court in which she was the Municipal Prosecutor.

Judge Happas has always been - and shall always be - a lawyer who is a credit to our profession.  More than that, she is a human being who is a credit to our species.  It is my pleasure and privilege tonight to lend my admittedly off-key voice to the chorus of voices thanking her for all she has done and wishing her well on all that she shall do.

-AK 

Closing Time

By day's end, if everything goes according to Hoyle, the Missus and I shall no longer own our little piece of Paradise by the Sea.   In the seven-plus years since we bought it, I have repeatedly referred to its purchase as the smartest money I have ever spent.  

Here is to hoping I do not spend the rest of my days referring to its sale as the dumbest money I have ever made.

Time shall tell the tale. 

-AK 

Days Turn To Minutes

 ...and minutes to memories.

I had not seen Maggie, Cal, and Rylan in a couple of Sundays.  The Missus's trip out west to spend some quality time with the Colorado branch of the family business, including our dual princesses, Abigail and Shea, returned her to New Jersey's geographical boundaries shortly before six o'clock last Sunday night.  As a result, the weekly ritual of Sunday "Nana's noodle noodle" with Suzanne, Ryan, and their power trio at our house was held in abeyance last week.  

In a perfect world, I would see all five of my grandchildren daily.  Spoiler alert:  The world in which I live - and you as well - has the postal code of a locale somewhere decidedly south of perfect.  

So, I simply enjoy the time I have with them, whenever and wherever it presents itself.  

Time spent with any of my grandkids is a B-12 shot.  Truth be told, there is never an inopportune time for a B-12 shot...

The old man kept talking 'bout his life and his times

He fell asleep with his head against the window

He said an honest man's pillow is his peace of mind.

This world offers riches and riches will grow wings,

I don't take stock in those uncertain things.

"Minutes to Memories"

John Mellencamp

-AK 

The Speed of Life

It has been an extremely busy last few weeks in the life of this middle-aged curmudgeon, which undoubtedly has made me even more of a delight to my fellow man than I would otherwise be.  Yesterday, having finally been presented an opportunity to come for air for the first time since I cannot remember when, I availed myself of the chance to catch up with - and to say goodbye to (at least for the time-being) - an old, dear friend.

On Friday afternoon, Margaret and I spent a bit of time in the company of one of my former law partners, Louis Karp, who is our real estate attorney, signing the requisite paperwork in advance of this Tuesday's closing on the sale of our little bit of Paradise by the Sea.  I had not set foot inside the four walls of Weiner Law Group since Irish Goodbye Friday way back when at January's end.   As had been the case for every day of the twenty-three-plus years I worked there, I made the firm money from my presence on the premises.  The more things change, the more...well you know that old saw.  It contains at least a kernel of truth I suppose. 

This one does as well...

Do whatever you can to not miss it.   As was the case with Ferris Bueller's Day Off,  life is a production for which there is no sequel.  Squeeze all the enjoyment out of it that you can as you be-bop your way through it.  You shall never pass this way again. 

-AK 

Wait, It's Not a Beach?

Food for thought for a Saturday at the beach...

Indeed it does.

-AK 

Fail Better

Three weeks from Sunday is the 50th New York City Marathon.  As you may have heard, I am running it this year as part of a team whose efforts benefit a simply terrific Monmouth County, New Jersey-based not-for-profit Stomp the Monster.  Stomp the Monster provides critically-needed financial assistance and emotional support to cancer patients and their families.   They are great people doing great work.  Me?  I am a decidedly mediocre person doing an indisputably small thing in support of their effort.  If you are able to help me help them and are inclined to help, then please go here to do so.  

I was unaware until just this week that Samuel Beckett is apparently my marathon spirit animal.

No six words more succinctly capture my experience as a marathon runner.  My stated goal for this - my final New York City Marathon - is to run it in five hours or less.  This training cycle has produced decidedly inconsistent results for me on my long runs.  Three Saturdays ago, I felt so good and ran so well that I almost broke my own rule and ran a longer-than-scheduled long run.  Perhaps I should have.  Two Sundays ago I ran terribly.  It was a knife fight from start to finish and by run's end, I seriously was questioning just why the hell I thought I could do this one last time.  Then, last Saturday, I slogged my way through my longest training run to date.  While it was far from effortless, over the course of eighteen miles I was approximately one minute per mile faster than I shall need to be on race day to hit my goal.  

Will I attain it?  Truthfully, I have no idea.  I know simply that while I cannot predict the result, I can control the effort.  

As long as I control the effort, then I shall fail as well as I am capable of failing.  

That shall be enough.  It shall have to be. 

-AK   

The Long-Term Impact of Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

"Frazz" (c) Jeff Mallett

If there is a Hell, then for fans of the New York Yankees such as Yours truly it surely must be this:  Boston Red Sox vs. Houston Astros in the American League Championship Series.  Talk about your "no-win" situation.   

While I love rooting for the Yankees, ever since Mariano Rivera threw that comebacker over Derek Jeter's head and into center field in the bottom of the 9th inning of Game Seven of the 2001 World Series, which helped set the stage for Luis Gonzalez's Series-winning heroics, they have been chasing their own tails.  Where once upon a generation ago, when Gene Michaels was active (behind-the-scenes) helping guide their baseball operations, they acted and forced the rest of baseball to react to what they did.  For the past two decades, they have been a reactionary force, responding to changes foisted upon them by organizations run in a more aggressive, forward-thinking manner.   

Remember the only World Series to date the Bombers have won in the 21st century, way back when in 2009?  It is time for Yankees fans to stop deluding ourselves into thinking that 2009 was the template for success - the blueprint, if you will, for how the Yankees get things done.  It is time to come to grips with the fact that it was an aberration.  It was the exception that proves the rule.  

Strap yourself in and join Sherman and Professor Peabody in the WABAC Machine for a journey back to the dying days of the Yankees dynasty in early November 2001.  Having lost a classic World Series to Arizona, a team that boasted two #1 starters still at the top of their game in Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson and that, at times, made the Yankees' bats look anemic, they reacted by sloughing off Tino Martinez and replacing him with Jason Giambi, whose offensive prowess had masked his defensive limitations when he mashed the ball all over the yard as an Oakland Athletic but who proved to be a high-priced bust for the Bombers.  In short order, Giambi was joined in the Bronx by other big-name sluggers such as Alex Rodriguez and Garry Sheffield.  The Yankees put together one hell of a fantasy baseball team or - perhaps - a Sunday slow-pitch beer league softball team.  Entertaining as hell to watch but at day's end, incapable of delivering the goods.  

Their infirmities of course were not limited to the offense.  Over time, they bade farewell to stalwarts such as Andy Pettitte, foolishly believing that gritless posers such as Jeff Weaver, Javy Vazquez, and Kevin Brown could man his post.  It was as if they believed in the old cliche about "the uniform making the man" and presumed that simply putting on the pinstripes with the interlocking "NY" on the front and no name, of course, on the back would elevate the player.  Over the course of the past two decades, their belief in that old cliche has bitten them in the ass too many times to count. 

So, as the Bombers head into yet another winter of discontentment, with a roster of statuesque sluggers, mediocre starting pitchers, and young players who (with the notable exception of Aaron Judge who is simply extraordinary) have not only failed to live up to the hype that heralded their arrival in the Bronx (I am looking at you Messrs. Frazier, Sanchez, and Torres), but have been drowned by it, they will undoubtedly spend at least a portion of their time trying to figure out how to bridge the gap between themselves and the top teams in the American League, whose number includes not just the Astros and the Red Sox but also the Tampa Bay Rays, who won the American League East again this year.  

What's that old saw about the importance of being the lead dog?  

But for one magical season one dozen years ago, the view has not changed for the Yankees in two decades.  Here is to hoping that they do what needs to be done to change this narrative.  

-AK 

There Are No Rules To This Thing

Whether you agree with him or not, it really is a very interesting idea...

-AK 

 

Records and Measuring Sticks

A reminder courtesy of the great Hall-of-Fame Coach of the New York Giants that deeds are what matter.  

Not words.   

Today is a perfect day to take a moment or two to measuring the gap between the two in our day-to-day and recommit to putting in the work necessary to bridge it. 

At day's end, no lie is more injurious than the one we tell ourself.  

-AK 

A Toast to Alone Time

Food for thought on Columbus Day...

-AK 

Wooden's Wisdom

 

The late, great John Wooden is a person for whom I have always had a great deal of respect and admiration.  Not only is he enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame as a player (All-American at Purdue University) and a coach (multi-time National Champion UCLA Bruins), but his approach to his day-to-day was so fundamentally sound and so pragmatic that it truly fits practically every person and every life, irrespective of whether you are a world-class athlete, a middle-aged man simply trying to survive, or someone altogether different.   

Coach John Wooden - "The Pyramid of Success" 

One of Coach Wooden's oft-repeated declarations was, "Failing to prepare is preparing to fail."  It is one that I hold particularly dear each time I train to run in a marathon.  You might have heard that I am running this year's New York City Marathon on November 7, 2021 on behalf of Stomp the Monster, a great, New Jersey-based not-for-profit that provides support (emotional, financial, and otherwise) to cancer patients and their families.   

More than two months ago, I signed up to run in the 49th Annual Long Beach Island 18 Mile Run, which is being held this morning.  It is just what its name suggests, which is a south-to-north run on Long Beach Island from its southernmost part, Holgate, to its northernmost part, Barnegat Lighthouse.  However, this week the weather gods have opted not to smile on us in the State of Concrete Gardens.  Not only is rain in the forecast but as of Friday night the race organizers had sent an e-mail to all registered participants advising that a "Coastal Flood Advisory" had been posted for this morning and that the race-day decision whether the event would go forward was in the hands of the police and local emergency management officials.  

I have no issue whatsoever with the race organizers and their decision.  In fact, I applaud their willingness to acknowledge that this decision is best left in the hands of public safety professionals.  I especially applaud their decision to let those of us signed up to run know as early as Friday night that this morning's race may not be able to go forward. 

Armed with that timely information, I channeled my inner Peyton Manning and called an audible.  Yesterday became "long run" day and today, while I shall have any number of things on my plate to keep me busy (the joy of trial preparation is that you never seem to run out of preparations to make) before I head to Newark Airport to pick up the Missus on her return from the Rocky Mountains, I shall not drive the ninety-plus miles each way to and from Long Beach Island.  

Thanks, Coach.  

-AK 

Not So Many As We Used To Be

 I remember the Summer of '85,

it was the last one of my youth...

I was unaware, until I saw something posted on social media earlier this week, today is Homecoming/Fall Fair Day at ye olde high school alma mater.  A lifetime ago, when I went to school there, Homecoming was my favorite day of the school year.  The stakes seemed much higher in each team's Homecoming game than they did on any other fall Saturday.  Were they?  Truthfully, at this stage in my life, I cannot answer that question with any semblance of certainty.  The twin disablers of time and age have wrought havoc on this old man's memory.  

A lifetime ago, the Class of '85 was comprised of fifty-seven students.  Fifty-seven.  While I cannot pretend to have kept abreast of the life movements of all my former classmates, I do know that time has thinned our ranks, claiming to date at least five of us.  

It did so again just the other day.  

Wardlaw-Hartridge School Class of '85

Tempora et Mores

...It was when I finally finished growing up,

and learned to face the truth.

-AK 

Only Way To Start A Fire

A morsel of thought for October's second Friday...

...even if we're just dancing in the dark.

The weekend beckons.  Be careful out there. 

-AK 

 

The Most Important Things

It has been one hell of a week.  The Missus left yesterday to spend an extra-long weekend with the Colorado branch of the family business. Work has been, well, busy (an admitted understatement) as I have been preparing three cases for trial this month.  

Work is what I do so busy times at work are nothing new and frankly, when I made the decision to go to law school a lifetime ago, I knew what the job entailed.  The hellacious aspect of this week has not come from work, it has come from disappointments in the non-work areas of my day-to-day, specifically The Many Saints of Newark and the New York Yankees' playoff disaster, the viewing of each made me want to vomit in my own mouth.  

But then, everything changed.  

A great, long-time friend sent me a text message telling me that a genuinely good human being with whom we had both attended W-H a lifetime ago, and with whom I had reconnected only recently, had suddenly died.  Mark Petrocelli was a man who never did another human a bad turn.  It was behavior of which, I believe, he was simply incapable.  It is a cliche to say of someone after he has died that he was universally loved.  In Mark's case, it was not a cliche.  It was the truth.  

Having died far too young, he leaves behind two kids, one of whom is a freshman in college and the other a junior in high school.  It is a situation that is beyond sad.  Far beyond it as a matter of fact. 

Bad movies are bad movies, even when they are not simply bad but atrocious.  Disappointing baseball teams are just that - a disappointment.  In the larger scheme of things, neither is particularly important.  

-AK 

Searching for the Light

A morsel or two of thought for October's first Wednesday...

...that is excellent advice irrespective of the month of the year or the day of the week. 

-AK 

1 and Done or 1 of 12

This evening, under the lights at Fenway Park (for we live and play sports in the money-driven 21st century where just about every baseball post-season game is played at night), the Bronx's best apostles will battle the homestanding Red Sox in the winner-take-all American League Wild Card Game.  Loser goes home.  Winner goes to Tampa Bay to face the AL-best Rays in the American League Division Series.  

If either the Yankees or the Red Sox shall win this year's World Series, then they shall have to win twelve games.  This evening is either one and done or one of twelve.  

The last time the Yankees and the Red Sox played a winner-take-all postseason game was Game Seven of the 2004 American League Championship Series when the Sox obliterated the Bombers in Yankee Stadium to complete a historic comeback from a 3-0 Series deficit en route to winning the franchise's first World Series since 1918.  One year earlier, Aaron Boone etched his way into Yankees lore (and positioned himself to be awarded a managerial job fifteen years later in spite of zero experience) when he hit the game-winning home run off Tim Wakefield leading off the bottom of the 11th inning in Game Seven. 

Twenty-five years before Boone's blast into the Bronx's night sky, Bucky Dent had broken the hearts of Red Sox Nation at Fenway Park on an October afternoon.  For it was on October 2, 1978, in the season's 163rd game, which was needed to settle the issue of who would win the AL East and with it one of the then-two spots in the AL Playoffs, when the Yankees shortstop - batting in the top of the 7th inning with two on, two out, and the Yankees trailing the Red Sox 2-0, hit a Mike Torrez offering into the screen atop the Green Monster...

...and into history. 

Here is to the resumption of hostilities in baseball's best rivalry. 

-AK 

So I Turned Myself To Face Me

I watch the ripples change their size

But never leave the stream of  warm impermanence

So the days float through my eyes

But still the days seem the same.

"Changes"

-David Bowie 

I am an obstinately change-resistant human being.  By way of example, I have gotten my haircut in essentially the same manner/style (whatever you call it) for the past four-and-one-half decades, although never as well as Pat has done it for me these past few years.   It is significantly grayer now than it once was (when I was twelve for instance) but other than that, it is now as it has always been. 

2021 has proven to be anything but a "it is now as it has always been" year for me.  After having spent the better part of two decades at one firm, on February 1 this year I joined a new firm (new to me, not to the world), which has been a bit of an adjustment.  As far as I can tell (no one has changed the lock on my office door or denied me access to the firm's computer network), thus far it has gone pretty well.  

As if changing my employer in my mid-fifties was not sufficiently anxiety-inducing (and I assure you it was), Margaret and I have decided to sell our home in Lake Como and, in fact, anticipate having the closing not later than mid-November.  It is my refuge against the world.  It is my safe haven.  It is my reservoir of peace.  Sadly, it is simply not big enough to suit our long-term needs, which include making the beach our year-round home in the not-too-distant future.  The housing market in Monmouth County and Ocean County is, presently, insane.  So, with heavy hearts we opted to take advantage of it.  When and if we shall find a new little paradise by the sea to call home remains to be seen.  Only time will tell. 

Time will also tell if the decisions I have made thus far in 2021 were the correct ones.  Then again, it always does.   

After all, time may change me but I can't trace time. 

-AK

These Three Words

Mom died fifty-two months ago today.  The great hero of my life, I think of her and I miss her daily.  Some days it feels to me as if she was here just yesterday.  Others?  It feels as if she has been gone for a lifetime.  

In the aftermath of the death of one we love and one who loved us, we have just two options. 

Option One: We collapse into a gelatinous mass of hurt and self-pity, doing a disservice to ourselves and to their memory.  

Option Two:  We soldier on.  We acknowledge the punch to the heart that Life has delivered to us, we pick ourselves up, we dust ourselves off, and we keep on keeping on, honoring our loved one's memory and repaying the debt we owe to them by living our life.  

Spoiler alert:  There is really only one option.  

We remember but we do not dwell.  We mourn but we do not wallow.   It is by doing so and in doing so that we pay homage to a loved one lost...  

...the way the great hero of my life taught me to do.  

Forever loved.  Forever missed.  Forever honored.  

-AK 

Kneeling Before the Altar of the Many Saints

The Missus and I have several streaming services (Netflix, Prime Video, and HBO Max), each of which adds at least a modicum of value to our day-to-day, although rarely if ever at the same time.  

This weekend, it is HBO Max's turn.  

While I understand the frustration of actors/artists who have lamented - and shall continue to lament - Warner Brothers' decision to release its films simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max, its streaming platform, as someone whose general discomfort with (and disinterest in) being in the company of strangers began shortly after my arrival and five-plus decades prior to COVID-19's, I applaud it.  My favorite way to watch a movie - perhaps not surprisingly - is identical to my favorite way to watch sports, which is from the comfort and privacy of my living room.  

Tonight, I shall unwind from what was a very busy and long week in the practice of law by getting reacquainted with some old friends and getting introduced to some new ones.  

Enjoy your Saturday.  

-AK