Ralph Gardner Jr.

Eric Wilska said something in passing that I thought profound as he showed me around Shaker Mill Books. “Nobody can throw a book away,” he told me.

The call of a blue jay in the trees isn’t unusual. But the call of a blue jay that was, until recently, a family member, is. “He was released just yesterday,” Sue Geel told me as she led the way into Lucky Rehabilitation Center in Spencertown, NY. She added, “He comes down for snacks.”

Getting a new car was my wife’s idea, not mine. Our old car is virtually brand new. The odometer measures a mere 180,000 miles.

But Fogo de Chao is different, as both my brother and our waiter explained to me. The way it works is that you grab a plate and help yourself to the sprawling salad bar; smoked salmon, Caesar salad, hummus, black bean stew, and fifty other dishes.

Crossing the border leaving and entering the United States is no slam dunk these days, or so news reports would have you believe.

Uncharacteristically, last week I attended a major league baseball game, and a day game, and a Yankees game at that, with my friends Bruce and Mike.

I really ought to buy some art, I told myself recently. I can’t recall what prompted the thought. Perhaps I was looking for light amid the darkness. I remember when my grandfather, our family’s pater familias, died unexpectedly half a century ago. He and my grandmother had a lovely art collection and it offered solace and beauty in the days after his passing.

Embracing the well-worn metaphor that life is a road, there are certain mileposts that one can see from a great distance away. As early as second grade I used to marvel that in the unfathomably distant year of 2000 I’d be forty-seven ancient years old.

I’ve always been impressed by WAMC’s triannual fundraising campaigns. Perhaps this pegs me as a nerd but I listen to them for fun. Not all day, mind you. But an hour here, an hour there. If you’ve ever listened to other public radio stations’ exhortations for money their strategy seems to be to bore you to death until you cough up some dough, just so that they’ll return to regular programming.

Baltimore orioles began to alight on the white clouds of Callery pear trees blossoms lining our driveway on April 26th, more than a week earlier than they have in the past.