Dave Brigham's Blog, page 10

I Heart Vermont

Somehow, we've never taken our kids to Vermont. Amelia's not yet 6, but Owen will be 11 next month and he's never been to the Ben & Jerry's State. Well, we're gonna rectify that.

As a kid, I traveled to Vermont with my family with some regularity. My grandmother lived in Perkinsville, a small village in Weathersfield, just a few miles outside Springfield. She lived on the top floor of a big old house; one of her sisters, Helen, owned the house with her husband, Henry. They lived downstairs.

I...

Review -- The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America

Reading a memoir about traveling across America, while simultaneously working on the same type of book, can be dangerous, especially when that memoir is written by Bill Bryson, who, in addition to being a best-selling author, is the chancellor of England's Durham University.

The book -- The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America -- is the second of Bryson's I've read, the first being A Walk In the Woods: Rediscovering America On the Appalachian Trail. I really liked the Appalachian Tr...

Holy!

I'm not at all religious, but in recent years I've come to really appreciate churches for their beauty.

As a kid, I went to church school at a few different houses of worship: the First Church of Christ in my hometown, Simsbury, Connecticut, and the Unitarian Church of Hartford, which is hands-down one of the oddest looking churches you'll ever see. Check it out.

My parents eventually made the move from the latter church to the Universalist Church of West Hartford. There, I was in the youth g...

A Peek Behind the Memoir Curtain

I'm knee-deep in my road trip memoir. Sometimes I feel a bit schizophrenic, living in The Now Times with my wife and kids; in 1988, when I traveled from New England to the Southwest with three buddies; and in the future, when I can revisit some of the places we hit along the way.

I like the way the book is coming together, but I still have plenty of work to do on it. I have no idea if it's a viable product for a traditional publisher. I plan to push it in that direction, but will go the prin...

Cloning

Driving home from Connecticut last weekend I saw gold everywhere along the highway.

In the woods, buried under generations of leaves. Scattered across the fields, hidden 'neath the soil. Even deep below the foundations of houses.

I found myself wishing for a metal detector, or at least a very good and magical shovel. And some clones, so I could be everywhere at once, digging in my backyard; exploring sites in my hometown in Connecticut, with which I've become newly fascinated with in recent m...

Remembrance

Yesterday, just four days before the eighth anniversary of the death of a childhood friend, I learned about the passing of a woman I knew back in the mid-'80s. Julie was 48; my childhood friend, Bene, was 39 when he died in 2005.

Bene and Julie knew each other, too, a little bit. I grew up with Bene (pronounced "Benny"). We played on the same Little League team, the Yankees; toiled together in the junior high school band, he on trumpet, me on clarinet; and went through all the highs, lows and...

Yet More Music By Caldor

I credit my brother for my occasional love of the groove.

Through the years I've gone crazy for Southern rock, New Wave, punk rock and classic rock. But all along I've had a taste for funky stuff, too.

Since college, I've gotten hooked on classic stuff ranging from James Brown and Funkadelic, to rap such as the Beastie Boys and Run-DMC and electronica by the likes of Gus Gus and Fujiya & Miyagi.

The stuff that laid down the base (and the bass) for me, though, was as follows.

My brother was in...

Forlorn Forties

I went for a quick walk in the Waltham section of Auburndale Park earlier this week. I was hoping to snap some pictures of a small, shuttered building that housed bathrooms and storage and perhaps more at some point. I planned to post them on my other blog, The Backside of America.

I hadn't been to this area in a while, and discovered that the building was gone.

I wandered around the park, along the Swamp Trail and the path out to what's called The Knob, a small raised area that overlooks an...

More Music by Caldor

As promised, here's the second installment in my series that looks back at 45's my brother, sister and I bought in the '70s (see January 23, 2013, "Music by Caldor.").

Today, I picked three random little discs out of the battered pink case that's held our collection of 45's since back in the day. Over the years, I've become the de facto music archivist in my family, gathering up some of my parents' old LP's, and scattered long players and singles that my siblings and I bought over the years a...

Music by Caldor

Other than a brief fling with anti-apartheid activism in college, I've always kept my politics mostly to myself. Sure, if you know me well, you know I'm a liberal Democrat. But I don't speak out much about my views except in close company.

So you might be surprised to learn that the first 45 (remember those?) I bought was "Give Ireland Back to the Irish," a political screed written and recorded by Paul McCartney & Wings.

OK, screed might be too strong a word, but considering the song was writ...