Brian Jay Jones's Blog, page 34

Washington Irving, C Blocker?

Rebecca Gratz

Claire Salisbury — who's doing terrific work bringing to light the life and letters of the 19th century philanthropist Rebecca Gratz over on her blog,  Rebecca Gratz and 19th Century America — has two fun entries this week on a a good friend of Rebecca's . . . an aspiring young writer named Washington Irving.

Irving and Gratz had an interesting and decidedly non-romantic relationship — one based on mutual respect, good conversation, and similar senses of humor.  In fact, there...

Quiet As A What?

So, we've discovered we have a mouse living on the second floor of our house.

Our first hint was odd sounds in the middle of the night.  The first time we heard the noise–a very faint pit-pat-pit-pat–I made a 3 a.m. tour of the house with a baseball bat in hand, and when I saw the dog was sound asleep on the first floor (since developing hip dysplasia, Abbey has rightly determined, to her disappointment, that she can't make it up the stairs), I decided that we had likely opened up our house...

Where The Air Is Sweet…

Happy 40th Anniversary, Sesame Street! And if there's one important lesson I learned from the show, it's this: be careful when you sneeze that you don't blow your nose off.

Reviews in Brief: The Lennon Prophecy (Joseph Niezgoda)

One of the more fun and fascinating bits of Beatles lore has always been the whole "Paul Is Dead" hoax.  The story spun by that particular hoax is that Paul McCartney allegedly died in an automobile accident in 1966 – a "stupid bloody Tuesday" – and the heartbroken Beatles decided to soldier on without him, replacing McCartney with a lookalike, but planting clues of Paul's demise in Beatles songs and on album covers. Books could be written about the hoax – and, in fact, a few have – but now...

Hello, Goodbye…

Once again, my apologies for neglecting the ol' blog — it's been a busy week of editing, express mailing, and phone calls.  None of which means I have any news to report, but things have kicked up a bit on the excitement meter.  Over the falls! as Barb and I often say.

The mercury in central Maryland is beginning to hover in the mid-30s in the mornings now, and the trees have shed most of their leaves, moving from the showy to the mostly skeletal in a matter of days.  I'll likely make a quick...

This Is Halloween….

I love Halloween — though as I mentioned in my interview with Historic Hudson Valley, I'm more of a Christmas person than a Halloween person, mainly because I'm one of the world's great chickens. 

Don't get me wrong — I love horror movies and horror novels.  But I was one of those kids — and I'm now one of those adults — who can't get my mind to shut off once I go to bed.  I watch a scary movie, or read a scary book, then go to bed and lie there in the dark, the covers pulled up around my...

Slow Ride

Does anyone besides me think that Amazon's free shipping is taking significantly longer than it used to?

I'm one of those dopes who usually loads up my cart every time I go onto Amazon because I want to hit the 25 dollar floor needed to trigger free shipping.  And yes, I know it alerts you that free shipping usually takes something like 7 to 9 days — as opposed to, say, 3 to 5 for paid shipping — but in the past, packages delivered using free shipping have usually arrived within five days. ...

Trip Report: Blaze, Legends, and Sleepy Hollow

We had a great weekend up in Sleepy Hollow and the surrounding area — and the snow that was in the forecast never materialized.  Instead, we had a bit of rain, a bit of chill, but an otherwise perfect weekend for enjoying all that the area has to offer.  As Sunnyside curator Dina Friedman put it, "We like to think that we own the Halloween season here in Sleepy Hollow." And they do.

On Friday night, we attended the Great Jack O'Lantern Blaze at Van Cortlandt Manor, an old Dutch estate up at...

Off to Sleepy Hollow…

We're getting ready to get in the car and head to Sleepy Hollow for the weekend, where the weather forecast for tomorrow is calling for  snow.  But I'll be at Sunnyside come rain or shine or, er, snow on Saturday.  Come on out and chuck a snowball at me.  Or something.

In the meantime, here's a short interview with me over at the Hudson Valley blog, where you can hear me talk about Irving as the 19th century Elvis, and who I think would win in a fight between Batman and Spider-Man.

I'll be...

Everybody Scream!

One of our favorite things to do at this time of year is to get lost in an enormous corn maze.  Almost every year since Madi was a wee sprite, we've managed to find a corn maze at Halloween time where we can spend an hour–or sometimes hours–trying to find our way out. 

Each year, the Boys and Girls Club at the town down just the road hosts an enormous Halloween festival with haunted houses, hay rides, and, yes, a corn maze.  We went through their corn maze two years ago and got really, really...