Dave Brigham's Blog, page 3

Blowin' Out to the Windy City

"Why do they call it the Boston Marathon? Only the last two miles are actually in Boston!"

As we headed from our home in Newton to Logan Airport, our cab driver raised a good question. I didn't have a good answer. Would people still flock to the Hub of the Universe, I wondered, if the 26.2-mile race were called the Race That Starts in Hopkinton, Progresses Through Several Towns and Ends in Boston?

Still, his gruff yet comical personality was a comfort as we made our way to our American Airlin...

Making a ConnecTion

Below is an essay I submitted to the Boston Globe magazine almost six months ago. I wrote it for the Connections column on the publication's back page, but since I haven't heard back I figured I'd publish it here.

I self-published a children’s book about students traveling through Boston on Green Line trolleys. A Wicked Good Trip! is selling modestly around Greater Boston, but it was recently translated into another language right before my eyes.

The book is inspired by my son’s, ahem, love...

Home Run Derby Final Result

I lost.

Now go read this.

Autumn Suite

Today I'm sharing a short fiction suite I wrote 20 years ago for a publication I put out sporadically for a handful of years. SLANK featured short stories, essays, editorials, cartoons, poetry and other art by yours truly as well as friends and family. It was the successor to another 'zine I'd done called frog spit, and a precursor, I suppose, to this blog and my other one, The Backside of America.

So, without further ado, I give you....

AUTUMN SUITE

1) Let Me Leave

I slept outside last nigh...

Bookin' It

I love to read but I'm not good at reviewing books. In junior high school I considered reading book reports to my classmates to be a fate worse than eating tofu-covered lima beans. Shrinking in my seat like an ashamed Rottweiler who's afraid to chase the mailman, I would agonize as student after student volunteered, hoping that somehow the teacher would exempt me. Of course she never did, and I never learned the lesson that going first means you get to kick back and enjoy as other kids stamme...

Happy Old Years

A new year has arrived, but I've been taking some time to look back -- way back.

While at my mother's house after Christmas, my sister, brother and I spent some time rummaging through the basement. I do this every once in a while to look at old photos and other mementos. This time, my sister found a shoe box with a treasure trove of old stuff that belonged to our grandfather, who died long before any of the three of us were born.

There are documents related to his time as a Mason in Vermont:

...

A Long, Strange, Wicked Good Trip....

I share the relief of Chicago Cubs fans. No, not because after more than a century their goat-cursed baseball team finally won the World Series. But rather because after telling people over and over during the last few years, "I'm writing my first children's book," I can finally finish that sentence with, "and here's where you can buy it."

I refuse to look back over my emails, documents and copy shop paperwork to see how long ago I started working on this book. Suffice it to say, it's been a...

Home Run Derby Final Result

Because I know you care, here's the wrap on my 2016 home run derby fantasy sports effort....

As I mentioned in July, my 15-man roster lost a man, Kyle Schwarber of the Chicago Cubs, just two games into the season (see July 5, 2016, "Home Run Derby Update"). Also this year, Lucas Duda of the New York Mets missed the lion's share of the season, and ended up with just 7 round-trippers.

So I essentially worked with a 13 1/4-man roster this year. But with one exception, the players I selected back...

A Deep, Dark Hole

On the eve of my 26th birthday, a woman was murdered in Cambridge, Mass., a few hours before two friends and I walked by the scene. We'd been having a few celebratory drinks in Harvard Square, and noticed police on the quiet street, outside an Armenian church. We had no idea about the crime until the next day, when it hit the news.

Mary Jo Frug, a professor at New England School of Law, had been stabbed at 9:00 p.m. while walking the short distance from her home to a convenience store. My gir...

Home Run Derby Update

The halfway point of the season seems like a good time to check in on my home run derby status. As regular readers will remember, back in the first week of April I posted my 15-man squad for the annual fantasy contest I take part in (see April 3, 2016, "Picking a Winner").

My wife's brother-in-law, Todd, runs the derby, and indicated at the outset that I had picked one of the most conservative teams, unlike in years past when I've gone with some risky picks and foregone obvious winners. Only...