Some sirens whisper not of proximity but frequency, and so it is with the view from the parking lot of the LaVale Wal Mart.

Not of carts, corralled and herded to endless task like the working men and women of the store and the working men and women who shop there, nor of humanity’s wide slice of taste and fortune affixed betwixt white lines, but of the heights that call out every time I push a loaded cart outside. Westward bound I lift my eyes to sunset side, and thoughts fly where heart resides.

The peak of Dan’s Mountain at power line cresting gives little cause for pause, until you’ve been up there, looking down. Not only of another day, the view speaks to better times, for just as the worst day fishing is better than the best day working, hiking the hills ...

Living has a way of knocking the life out of you, and so it is that I’m a bit bit miffed that a cool public radio station in Pittsburgh, Pa. just accepted my donation, but failed to pass along my call-out to its listenership.

But wait, even as the words are written, indeed they do, at WYEP, mention my name not once, but three, and not just “Richard” but “Richard of Maryland.”

They do so sharing a secret, and with barely discernible chuckles at its suppression, say something to the effect of “Richard challenges the people of Pittsburgh” to renew their membership, or become a new member at WYEP.org, or by calling 412-381-9900, the latter of which is what I did.

Echoing the fabled battle cry of Betty and Wilma, I charged it, and was surprised when she ...

Having never been to New York City, I did not appreciate the size of the Twin Towers, so that when I joined a handful of other Times-News staffers clustered about the newsroom TV set that beautiful, terrible morning, I thought for all the world that the smoke billowing from the North Tower was caused by a plane no bigger than a Piper Cub. And I wondered how stupid someone could be to run into one of those buildings on such a clear day.

It was, in those final moments of the American age that passed with the Towers’ collapse, a moderately curious news event.

Until the second plane hit.

 I was watching when zoom lenses trained on the smoky spectacle caught the great gray airliner hurtling into view and exploding into the South Tower, so that in the instant it occurred, ...

   Carpenters In The Forehead/  A Time For Going

All things come to pass.  Life changes, and off you go.