Is August Sad?

This question was posed on Facebook by my friend Lisa Verge Higgins, a wonderful author, who I assume was experiencing a moment of end-of-summer melancholy as she took to the keys. (If you still have some beach time left, race out and buy one of her books. Your afternoon will be less sad, I promise.)

So I have not been able to stop thinking about her contemplative query. Is August sad? I lived in Los Angeles for 10 years and August meant nothing. It is summertime every day in L.A., which means it never feels like summer, and that is really sad!

August back east may be the month before Fall begins, but Fall to me is a time of cooler days and nights, brilliant colors, crunchy leaves and renewal. Labor Day is my favorite day of the year. Nothing happens in August, but it might in September.

This month we celebrated our 10th year at the Delaware Shore with dear friends. Two of our kids were born 16 years ago, within hours of each other. Now all four children are in college or on their way. It was a wonderful week. August can be nostalgic.

Last week I visited my mom at the tiny apartment in Westhampton Beach that has been in our family since the '60s. With my dad gone, it is lonely out there for her. The apartment is up for sale. As the sun sank low I knew it might be the last time I enjoy my three-jetty walk. I carried a couple of sea shells home in my pocket. August can be a little mournful, too.

My wife lives in Chicago where summer is a whole different animal. Her kids live for Lalapalooza, not clam bakes. I have to explain why we sit on the NJ Turnpike or L.I.E. in bumper to bumper traffic just to get wet and sandy. Lake Michigan is drop dead beautiful but no one is crawling along Linden Avenue at 2 mph to get to the beach.

Mobile technology has changed summertime. We carry our work wherever we go, but last week at Bethany I saw hardly anyone glued to their cell phone. The waves were perfect. Kites flew. Kids played paddleball down by the surf. On the night of the big S'more party, the place where we stay hired a deejay. He played Frankie Valli and Bruce Springsteen. People danced and drank icy cold cans of Bud. The sun set a little earlier I noticed. The days were definitely growing shorter, but no one looked sad at all. 

Menu Planning

Bright sunshine. Low humidity. Friends coming for dinner. Got my 36 square feet of hallowed Brooklyn back yard. Got my Weber. Got my charcoal. Got the Sangria marinating in the fridge. Got the coffee buzz percolating. Only thing missing? Ingredients! My favorite blank page in the world? The Grand Army Plaza Saturday morning farmer's market. Feet, deliver me to paradise. The rest...follows naturally. 

Summer Gig

Everyone remembers their first! 

Author as subject pictured in the newspaper where he first worked.

Mine was junior beat reporter for The Montgomery County Sentinel (where Woodward & Bernstein cut their teeth). I was in 11th grade. I worked three days a week after school and the occasional evening covering such exciting topics as dog-walking bylaws and Rockville City Council meetings. I might have made forty bucks a week. What I learned as a kid working in a grown-up environment was priceless.

My firstborn, Ben, is fast upon his senior year. Open your ears, read the news, listen to anyone and the word on the street is that he should be in a forward-thinking internship, digging irrigation trenches in Botswana, or at the very least working on someone's political campaign to build that resume. I will not get all high-handed and say we didn't consider it. 

Aspiring sports writer.

Of course jobs are hard to come by, internships even moreso, and those college level immersion classes on campus are more costly than a summer house in Tuscany. Had to ixnay that, too. 

So where did Ben end up?

"Bar-back" at a midtown eaterie, thanks to a good friend's recommendation, working 4-9 for the Grand Central/Hamptons pre-train/jitney crowd. Glitzy job? Not exactly. He's hauling ice, stocking bar, tapping Sprites, lugging kegs, juicing limes and lemons, and otherwise doing anything he is asked. Grunt work is the word we're looking for. And he is loving it! Making friends. Meeting interesting people (apparently the Commish of a major sports league was served his burger by my son last evening). And experiencing his first 9-5 in the middle of a steamy NYC summer, and pulling down a paycheck to boot! He was on the bar schedule five straight days last week. And in his spare time? He's volunteering in Harlem, coaching a 5-7 year-old kids summer baseball league for eight straight Saturdays.

Yes I am kvelling. And no, Ben does not pop out of bed at 7 a.m., fold the laundry, vacuum the apartment and unload the dishwasher. He's still a teenager, thank goodness. But as my wife will attest, I was freaking out (maybe just a little?) about what my big guy was going to do this summer. Especially with the all-important college application season coming up. 

I'm not sure any of these jobs will fuel a Krakauer-esque essay. On the other hand, Ben's "How I Spent My Summer" experience may open his eyes about what work feels like and where he wants to go. So I helped my kid get a job in a bar. Probably won't get voted Parent of the Year (for the 16th straight time!), but I could not be happier about the unexpected result. He's learning a little about pour time on a Guinness and an awful lot about life. 

The Unintended Consequences of Marriage Gone Awry

There's no Hallmark card that I know of for divorced dads. No unnecessary sympathies, no pity parties, no support groups I'd ever choose to attend. Like our wives before us, we soldier on.

We are a club, however. A somewhat exclusive one who has landed somewhere we did not expect. The laundry, the cleaning, the tutoring of algebra and the packing of lunches?  Wizened moms call it parenting. We call it survival mode. It is definitely not as easy as it looks.

Especially for my generation, our dads may have loved us, but I don't remember them changing band-aids. Making dinner. Leading class trips. Or holding us when we had stomach flu in the middle of the night. In our newly-minted roles, we have become both mom and dad.

As any parent can attest, every day is Mother's Day and Father's Day. It's just that the moms knew that long before we ever figured it out. 

We suffer the daily indignities, same as our previous wives and new partners and anyone tasked with the role of raising a child. But we also reap rewards we never imagined back when we just played the role of "father." Speaking for myself and every divorced dad I know, we wouldn't have it any other way. 

Why bother with the arts?

As a third-grader in Ardsley, NY I played second violin in the school orchestra. There was no pressure. It was something to do. My mother also used to take me to hear the Leonard Bernstein Youth Symphony at Lincoln Center. The music at those concerts enthralled me. I remember the pent-up excitement in the pit of my stomach when the lights would go low as she held my hand. I missed a lot of Giants football games for those concerts. I still love the Giants. Still love classical music. 

Last week I attended the Spring Musicale at LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts. My son Matthew sings in the freshmen choir. He also sometimes sings Italian opera in the shower. He does both extremely well. Prior to this year, I had no idea he was adept at either.

When you are tasked with raising 4 kids (2 of my own and 2 steps) in two wildly divergent communities (Brooklyn, NY and Chicago's suburban North Shore), you get exposed to a lot of different philosophies. At the top of the heap is the universal notion that every school experience has to count for something. I'm not sure violin counted for much of anything in my life. Except for teaching me music, inspiring creativity, and leaving me with a lifelong passion for emotionally charged endeavors that do not necessarily come with quick returns.

Matthew, to the best of my knowledge, sings out of pure joy. I have no doubt many of the kids we saw on Thursday night will end up on the big stage, somewhere.

 In the middle of the recital I looked over to see how my mom was doing. It was more than 40 years ago she held my hand at Lincoln Center and here we were a block away, listening to her grandson perform. I don't play violin any more and I have no idea where Matthew might go with his voice. But I'm glad Grandma was there. Back then, and now. 

Serious Parenting

SAT's. College tours. Finals. Summer jobs. Extracurriculars. Boosting that resume. Internships. Scholarships. Regents. ACTs. AP this, honors that. Four-point-what??? Who knew there was something higher than a 4.0?

In honor of every kid who is sick and tired of our silent fears, and every parent (you know who you are, read: all of us!!!) buckling under the mountain of obligations, keeping up, and the grievous lack of a playbook for getting any of this right, I offer this respite... 

...set to the soundtrack of:

"Let...the sunshine--"

"Let...the sunshine..."

"Let the sunshine..."

♫ The su-unnn...shine in!! ♫

Captured in Bokaap

Every once in a while when you travel, you hit one of those magical days. Below, a Muslim community inextricably tied to South Africa's long and complex history. A place of color and tranquility. I spent hours sipping cold Cokes and observing the street life. The pictures say it all. 

Table for One

My friend Todd at the office is on to me. Even though I get in most mornings before 9, he's noticed I rarely eat anything resembling breakfast food before 11. Lunch is a 4 p.m. affair. And as those who know me well (and marvel at my cast iron stomach) observe, my dirty little secret is that I enjoy dinner around 12:30 a.m. , often following a couple of Grant's or perhaps a Pernod, and usually accompanied by Anderson Cooper or Rachel Maddow. It all aids digestion and contributes to a good night's sleep. I probably won't be nominated for Surgeon General any time soon, though perhaps a guest appearance on Dr. Oz is possible. 

I know so many people who adapt their diets to their lifestyle. I model my lifestyle after my diet -- which means I usually eat alone!

I have always wanted to open a restaurant. Right after college in Middlebury, I imagined a wood-hewn spit & sawdust watering hole called Books, Brie & Boucherie, preferably in a refurbished 200 year-old barn. When L.A. proved to be a disappointing haunt for tortured east coast author types, I fantasized a clique-y NYers-away-from-home morning spot called Just Brood. Ultimately, I stopped and moved back to more nurturing pastures. Today's outpost would simply be called -- Raw. Because I cannot look at good ingredients without wanting to eat them fresh off the boat.

I believe we can attribute the roots of this odd behavior to my mother (hanging curveball, I know!), because myself and ALL the Carlton kids grew up stealing pinches of "chopped meat" out of the Pyrex mixing bowl when Mom made meatballs for dinner (she also owned a counter clamp-on meat grinder and sometimes ground her own.) 

Today, I either defy science or contribute to the latest research in praise of a healthy gut, because there's pretty much nothing I won't eat uncooked. Some people can call their wines and whiskies in a blind taste test? Me, I would stake a bottle of Lagavulin that I could pick out Fleisher's, Union Market, or Whole Foods (Skillman Farm's grass-fed) beef in a taste test 9 times out of 10. If you dare:

• 4/10 lb good raw meat 
• Sea salt
• A dollop of raw egg yolk
• Pinch of Progresso Italian breadcrumb
• Tsp or less of good Dijon mustard
• Shake of Worcestershire
• A little pepper, a whiff of cayenne, and/or a shake of any other fun salt that tempts your tastebuds (Lawry's, Crazy Jane's, Paul Prudhomme's, etc)  

Ground it all up by hand and add dry ingredients to taste until it looks and feels like a perfect uncooked burger. Serve as a patty next to a small salad or as tiny little meatballs, begging to be spread on a crusty baguette. Wash down with a heady Cabernet and 20 mgs of Lipitor.

Ken's "Blob," as coined by my dear friend and fellow carnivore Andrew Wittkower.

Boys to Men

I took Ben on his first college tour yesterday, a day trip from Brooklyn up to SUNY Albany and back. The weather was perfect, expectations, none. We listened to the school pitch. We enjoyed a tour of the campus. We scarfed huge submarines at Di Bella's on Western and they were very good. We listened to a Yankees day game on the ride home. Not so good. But mainly, I got to listen to my son flirt with his dreams and aspirations as he viewed the prospect of college from the passenger seat (for now!). We returned the rental car in the city and stumbled upon this. 

(Photo by Ben Carlton)

A day after the violence in Baltimore, Ben snapped a bunch of photographs of this peaceful demonstration and shared his views on what has been transpiring on the streets of America. He asked the excellent question that is on all of our minds: If not for the ugly scenes that keep unfolding, would anyone notice? After a little while, we jumped on the Q train home from Union Square. It was hours later, on the evening news, when I saw what transpired in this very spot, moments after we left. 

Just a few nights ago, Ben's 9th grade brother Matty  got home kind of late from LaGuardia. Always a diligent texter, he apologized for not keeping me abreast of his whereabouts. "Sorry Dad. Me and some of my friends attended an anti-violence rally in the city." As a father who very deliberately moved his kids from an idyllic village on the northern Massachusetts coast to Brooklyn, what was I supposed to say besides, "Hungry for dinner?"

Passages share real estate between fathers & sons. While my boys are busy finding themselves, I wonder every day, how I'm doing? Have I taught them anything worthwhile? Will they grow up a reflection of any of the values I hold dear? This week provided a few answers. And it's only Thursday. I'm excited for their future. Seems like they're asking the right questions.

Admissions Building, University at Albany.

Funny & Delicious

Okay. 4 p.m. lull, New York City. Pissing down rain, can't even sneak out for a dollar-slice. Eyes getting heavy. What to do???

Pop in on my new favorite foodie website, Bon Appetempt! She is funny. Her husband is funny. Her baby is funny. And her whole premise is, "Who cooks like this???"

Please. Take a gander. I am guaranteeing a smile.

Next, last night's dinner. Kudos to sous chef Ben Carlton. The concept? Recreate Han Dynasty (3rd Avenue & 11th Street, NYC) "destination food" spicy fish dish. 

1. Two lbs Basa (a cheap white fish that reportedly has seen Vietnam, while I have not!)
2. Couple of tbsps extra virgin
3. Garlic, onion, jalapeno
4. Sriracha or chili sauce
5. Teenaged son who loves chopping

• Have aforementioned offspring convert thick firm fish into 1" chunks
• Season with kosher salt
• Heat oil to medium in wok (or similar)
• Sauté fish until browned on one side, maybe 5 minutes?
• Flip around like you know what you're doing
• Add garlic & friends and toss until soft
• Hot sauce to taste, a few good shakes and then some
• Stir fry total time: 10 minutes tops

The key here? Spicy, not-overdone, and serve in a bowl so the cooking juices keep the fish moist and hot. (TIP: Grab a few of those frozen leftover wonton soup or pho broth ice cubes you've been saving in the freezer and add at end. It's done when the wok is steaming and your whole house smells amazing!)

Uncharted Roads

One week ago today I was driving from Jackson, Mississippi to Roanoke Virginia, intermittently listening to a 19-inning Yankees-Red Sox game on AM radio when Ben was in the front seat, and sharing an in-depth conversation about music when Matty replaced him.

Four nights ago, having only set foot in NY for a few hours, I found myself in one of the prettiest spots in Carmel, CA savoring Hendricks martinis and meaningful dialogue with two of my favorite people on the planet. Friends, colleagues, dreamers. Sunset over the Pacific was sublime. The martinis did not hurt.

Two nights ago I was back in BKLYN making dinner for my boys, planning college tours for Ben and opening a new high school bank account for Matty.

Tonight I am ensconced in a delicious and challenging novel on the green chair in Chicago, as my beautiful wife works across the room from me, cross-legged on the couch, on a new grant. I marvel at her tenacity. I am thinking about my next project. Producing FOOD FOR MARRIAGE: the movie? Launching a new environmental social media project? Shifting The Ramen Blog more deeply into my undying devotion to all things food? Or perhaps jumping on a very long plane ride, the kind where, for me, new novels are born?

I know a lot of lost souls these days. Many brilliant friends & family churning about the tank in search of their next passion play. I get it. I know how scary that is. I also know it is where the best stuff ultimately comes from. Hard to create from a place of total comfort.

Time for a cocktail with my "smart, sexy, playful Ph.D." (her digital tagline when we met through the serendipity of the ethernet.)  Sometimes, when the answers are not obvious, I turn to her. Lean on her. Am inspired by her.

Here are a few words from two who always inspire. Nice to carry along on your journeys...

3 Boys and an Atlas: A Father's Journey

Somewhere around mile 2000 on Day 4, Ben noted that he had no sense of time since we left California. That might have been because on the first afternoon I taped a ripped piece of a DQ takeout bag over the car clock. It relieved any sense of anxiety that we had anywhere to be or any hurry to get there. 

Time and space morphed into one seamless experience. We measured hours by the next meal and space was wherever we pulled over to stretch our legs or snap a picture. In southwestern Louisiana we jumped off the interstate onto a road you can barely find on a map (we navigated the whole way by our shredded 2003 Rand McNally.) We opened the sunroof and rolled down the windows to the hot gulf breeze. "The air smells so sweet," Matty said. It's moments like that you don't forget.

Prada Marfa, we agreed, was probably the weirdest and best stop along the way. We might have seen aliens during an Arizona sunset. And Ben is now a po' boy convert, after sussing out Rusty's in Vicksburg on Yelp. I'm sure it was the only place for a thousand miles serving 'til 10 in Mississippi on a Wednesday night (you can take the NYers out of NY, but...)

The 747 parked in a field -- that nearly got us chased by a guy on a Harley on a rutted 2-lane gravel-top -- stands out as the most threatening moment. The back roads of Louisiana made us want to come back for more. Pretty much all of West Texas left us in awe. 

The trip was too long and too short. We needed more days, but we were happy to be home. We spent chunks of time off the beaten path and despite the 80 per speed limits, never made dinner before 9 p.m.  We covered 16 states and 3,100 miles and yet it struck us: we hadn't even been gone a week. 

In Sicily Island, Louisiana, a friendly guy in a pickup truck saw us studying the atlas on the hood of the car. He looked at our NY plates and asked if we needed help. We'd bisected the entire state on the back roads in about 6 hours. I told him we were looking to get back to the interstate. He hooked one thumb over his shoulder and said, "go north. You can't miss it." I asked him which road? He smiled and said, "any." Two days later we rolled into Brooklyn.

"All/come/to look for/America"

It's hard to start each day on this trip not humming that oh-so familiar Simon & Garfunkel song!

Writing this late at night, Ben & Matty sound asleep, the 3 of us basically stuffed into our room at a La Quinta Inn, downtown San Antonio. Day 2, we spent most of our time on the back roads and ranch highways of West Texas. So little out there, so much to see.

All my life I've wanted to publish an art book of my images of faded signs and ramshackle buildings, scattered across the most barren landscapes imaginable. Every last one, someone's dream long ago, no doubt. A few captures from today, all set against the insistent whistling of a hot prairie wind.

Road Trip!

It's not every day you can identify where something started. I've been lucky that way. I discovered rock and roll the day I heard a song called "Stairway to Heaven" on my Sony ball radio on WABC radio. Thank you Cousin Brucie!

Writing: stories, screenwriting, fiction, the whole deal? It all began with the scene in The Graduate when Ben meets Elaine's boyfriend at the Berkeley Zoo. Karl! Katherine Ross and Dustin Hoffman forever etched in my heart. When Elaine and Karl stroll off arm in arm and Benjamin Braddock gazes mournfully at the chimps in the monkey house to the heartbreaking refrain of "Sounds of Silence" (on the harpsichord! oh-so 60s), I was toast. You laugh, you cry, all at the same time. Hello writing career. Where do I sign up?

This is not the precise moment I discovered my passion for the road, but it is darned close.  

That's "the Barn" and me atop my first apartment after college in 1981. We're in Berkeley. I was living with my girlfriend Jodi. Larry came out to visit. We played tennis, smoked weed, and took Jodi out to dinner at a restaurant called Ciao on 230 Jackson Street in San Francisco that, for some odd reason, I remember like it's yesterday. I lost track of Jodi a million years ago. The Barn is, sadly, gone. But way back then, Larry and I somehow convinced our mothers to let us drive cross country in high school between our junior and senior years. We used my mom's Chevy Nova. My dad gave me a carton of Newports as a going away present. Our CB radio "handle" was Day Tripper. We logged 10,090 miles in 2 months.

I cannot embark on a road trip without thinking of The Barn. Tomorrow me and my boys set off on a 2,400 mile jaunt from Palm Desert, CA to Brooklyn, NY. Oddly enough, yet again, I am setting off in my mom's car, as we haul it back east after her winter away from the cold. The boys chose this trip eyes wide open. We love our road trips. The Barn and I kept a hand-written log in a scratchy blue notebook liner. I'll do the same @kennyrcarlton on Instagram. Stay tuned. We are wheels-up Tuesday morning, 6 a.m.

Eastern Nevada, 1981. 

Spring. Break.

Garfield Place, Brooklyn

Lost Classics

So you are probably wondering:  what to do if you still cherish your vinyl collection, but the belt on your Technics SL-BD22 semi-automatic turntable is shot? Simple. Go to turntablebelts.com, order up spanking new six-dollar replacement part, and eagerly await for it to arrive by U.S. mail in a hand-scrawled envelope. Tear open, stare at flimsy rubber-band looking thingie with great trepidation, then remove metal disk plate from turntable.  Frantically Google "replacing belt drive," follow world's simplest instructions, and complete. Replace turntable plate, slip any album out of the collected memory of your lost youth, and happily spin away. (Neuropsychology note to self: Research why you cannot remember the 3 items you went out to the grocery store to get, but can sing along to the precise skip from the original Broadway cast recording of "Jesus Christ Superstar" which you have not played since Reagan was in office!)

The greatest joy of all from this exercise? Discovering that all six songs from side 3 of long-lost favorite double album are truly classic, even if not a one has not been played on a radio station since Allison Steele (The Nightbird) left WNEW-FM.

Can Anyone Really Make a Difference?

That there is a school in the hills of Kigali where children ran for shelter and were hacked to death by machete in a genocide that killed over a million people barely more than 20 years ago. 

That there is a generation of women who were systematically raped and deliberately left to live with HIV.

That these women survived and bore a new generation, also infected by HIV and yet thanks to the determination of a people to move on, Rwanda has not only survived, but thrived.

Ten years ago a doctor in the states received a call that there was a population in Kigali infected with HIV who could not get the antiretrovirals they needed to live. Meet Mardge Cohen. She answered the call,  flew in, rolled up her sleeves and went to work. Today the clinic she founded, WE-ACTx -- a small NGO by anyone's standards -- provides not only the meds, but social and psychological services to thousands of women and children who might otherwise not have made it. It is estimated that 90% of the 11 million people of Rwanda are still touched by the genocide. That means, as a visitor like myself, 9 out of 10 people you pass on the crowded streets will have suffered, or know someone who has suffered atrocities too unimaginable to recount. Spend an hour in the Kigali Genocide Memorial.  The horrific becomes all too real.

My wife, like everyone else at this clinic who would never deign to garner recognition, brought her research skills to the project and collaborated on a grant that is advancing the field of living with HIV. It also brought funding -- the lifeblood that keeps grass roots organizations like this alive and viable.

It seems to me there is a groundswell movement afoot to do better. To give something of one's self toward a larger cause than the bottom line. But it is sometimes hard to visualize how anything can really help. That the world's problems are simply too large, too far away and too insurmountable. 

Thanks to the work of Mardge's NGO, beyond the medical services, a women's collective has banded together to create glorious, homespun products that are sold worldwide. They are building self-sufficiency. 

An afterschool program provides music therapy, counseling and family to a new generation of Rwandan kids. Many of the instructors are called peer-parents. They were the first class to receive care from the clinic. And now they give back. Not such a bad lesson for anyone. 

12 Hours in Central Africa

If ever there were an essay best expressed by pictures alone, this would be it. I arrived in Kigali after the 28-hour trip at nearly two in the morning and my wife greeted me with a surprise: an overnight stay and daylong trip through Akagera. The park is nestled between Uganda and Tanzania in eastern Rwanda, about 3 hours from Kigali. We were the only guests in the lodge and the only people in the park. Literally! Here is what went down.

Sunrise over Lake Ihema.

Our guide Yasin keeps unwanted company from joining us for our journey.

All eyes on us as we depart!

While I have been to Africa several times, I have never been on a "safari." I always felt the word implied glorified tourist site. I also had some vague notion that you drive around in traffic with dozens of foreigners (like myself!) in jeeps, hoping to see a lion. I stand corrected. On all counts. 

Never thought of myself as a birder. A boat ride on Lake Ihema changed that!

We love Godfrey, our Park guide.

The park is about 50 miles long and 20 miles wide, so about 1,000 square miles. Rwanda is known as 'The Land of a Thousand Hills.' The single track roads are rutted clay, broken rock or shifting sand. In other words, precisely what the Land Rover was invented for. Ours broke down midway through the afternoon.

Haven't seen another vehicle in 4 hours. Hmmm, wonder if these guys can help?

My extraordinary wife, as usual, is completely nonplussed.

And all Yasin and Godfey had to do was rebuild the gas pump, siphon fuel out of the auxiliary tank and into the spare tire cover, and fill 'er up. We were on our way again!

I'm writing this at midnight on the eve of our departure from Africa. The photos were all taken with a $99 single lens point-and-shoot. We didn't see another soul all day except for the guys with the guns and the only glitch in the program was when our Land Rover broke down again (!!) on the ride home. The road was pitch black and within minutes a car pulled up. Yasin told us it was his colleague and loaded our bags in for the final 50 kilometers. Moments from home we asked our new ride if Yasin had given him our address. The driver replied, "Who's' Yasin?"

Chicago Style Winter

It has been suggested by a good friend that I am "meteorologically insatiable." Alas, I have no defense.

The writer in me strives to avoid the cliche and of late, winter has been done. However, last weekend I weathered a tremendous blow in Chicago and sensed there is a story here.

"They don't call it the Windy City for nothing," said an ESPN announcer, as reported by the Chicago Tribune a few years ago. The nickname refers not to lake breezes but to Chicago's long-winded politicians. The story dates back to the 1870s, when Chicago, Cincinnati and St. Louis all "vociferously claimed the right to be called the greatest city of the Midwest."

A tornado struck Chicago on May 6, 1876 and as legend goes, the Cincinnati Enquirer coined the term "That Windy City" in its headline a few days later.  "They used the term for windy speakers who were full of wind, and there was a wind-storm in Chicago," observed the Trib. "It's both at once."

That's the scoop. Here are the pics. 

Spaghetti, Airplanes & Snow

One need only call my kid sister to understand what these 3 concepts mean to me. She gets it and I know she is smiling as she reads.  A bowl of spaghetti with red sauce ( canned is fine), take-off (any flight, any destination -- and yes, Karen, I still smile when that plane yanks down the runway), and of course -- yesterday's much talked about snowstorm. Any combination of the above still lights me up like a child. 

Unfortunately, technology has conspired to dampen the joys of a good nor'easter. By the first moment the white stuff starts to swirl, you have heard so much about what's to come that it cannot possibly live up to expectation. And as came to pass in this instance, the botched forecast in New York was measured in feet, not inches.

Still, snow is snow and I long for the times when it simply just happened. As a kid, it meant a day off from school and shoveling our steep driveway with my dad. At college in Middlebury, Vermont, I'm not sure we even knew what a "winter storm warning" was. It snowed, a lot. We were never warned. It was great.

So ever since the advent of Doppler radar and the precision of advanced forecasting, I've adopted new rules. Once I hear it's coming, I shut down all media and hunker down for a good blow. We got one of those last night. I couldn't tell you the snowfall totals. But it was a totally wonderful 24 hours.

It Falls from the Sky: Manhattan

West Village, midday.

6th Avenue looking a bit deserted. Still, people have to eat...

Time to leave the office!

Ahhh, home. Good ol' Park Slope.

Bring it on!

The Morning After

In keeping with my media embargo, I ignored the emergency message that mysteriously appeared on my cell phone (ALL CARS OFF THE STREET BY 11 P.M.) and settled in for the usual blizzard fare: Pan-fried sea scallops with bok choy and mushrooms sauteed in olive oil and nam pla. Goes well with storm-watching and single malt at 2 a.m. I awoke to the wonderful sound of the silence of snow. One has to live in the city to understand. There is nothing that alters New York more than the sound of no sound. It is a rare treat.

My kids were 4 and 6 when my wife and I parted ways. The boys and I nicknamed our new digs "The KMB Club." We bought a couple of plastic blue sleds and for years, every time the flakes flew we made tracks to Prospect Park. 

The boys are both 6' tall now and in high school. I hope they had a fun day off. It's their mom's week. I have no clue. Their sleds are tucked away somewhere here in the apartment, long un-used. But today I couldn't help but tie on my boots and head up to the old sleigh hill. Ten inches or two feet? Nothing beats a snow day. Still!