Game Seven: It’s more than just two words

Game Seven of the World Series is more myth than reality. I would estimate that my friends and I, in games of wiffleball or whatever in our parents’ backyards on Cleveland’s suburban west side, probably played in "Game Seven of the World Series" maybe fifty more times than the event has taken place in the history of Major League Baseball. (For the record, this year’s is just the thirty-seventh.)

2016-11-03T22:49:05-04:00November 2, 2016|

Archie the Talking Snowman

I wasn’t having any of it. My mother brought my older sister and me to Chapel Hill Mall each year to visit with Archie the Talking Snow­man. But I wasn’t fooled. Snowmen don’t talk, and I didn’t trust the disembodied voice that floated from above.

2019-01-07T14:12:39-05:00October 18, 2016|

Slavic Village: A Guide

To visit Slavic Village, preferably wait until a bitterly cold evening in February, and in the dark and the snow, take the I-77 North exit for Pershing Avenue. Turn west, and as the road becomes a dead-end, ignore the sparseness of the streetlights and the horrifying industrial shapes rearing up from the barbed-wire fences on either side of you.

2016-10-25T04:36:22-04:00October 4, 2016|

Right Here, Right Now: Introducing the Buffalo Anthology

This is the book I wish existed when I moved to Buffalo. It’s a book for long-time residents who want to spend a few minutes or an afternoon thinking about their city. It’s for those who’ve moved away but still feel nostalgic when they get a whiff of Cheerios or see a towering elm or watch the Bills fumble in the end zone.

2016-10-07T10:45:15-04:00September 29, 2016|

The Ecology of Ruin

As a grad student in ecology, I spent a lot of time in the woods with a camera for company. I was living in upstate New York, studying how plants recolonize forests growing up on old fields, and why some return faster than others.

2016-09-26T10:01:26-04:00September 26, 2016|

Akron’s Audio Alchemist

On a balmy Friday afternoon, I’m nervously careening through downtown Akron without my GPS, trying to prove I haven’t lost my touch since leaving the “330.”

2016-10-14T10:15:59-04:00September 22, 2016|