Orel Family

Cider pressing, that is. The season starts as the summer descends in to its 2nd half. The days are still hot, and tart juice explodes from the transparents on the early tree. Pressings must start late, else the wasps may make things impossible. In the heat, the juice cannot be allowed to sit too long. The kids help, sometimes friends or cousins or neighbors (that's Cousin Elise with Aaron and Elianna in the picture, from a pressing in early October). At the 2nd half of summer extends, the evening pressing is punctuated by the song of thousands of crickets. The first of the crickets make their presence known at the beginning of August, and by September the evenings are full force concerts. That ends, finally, with the first frosts in October. The juice is light, sweet and crisp. It is safe now to let the juice drip for several hours, to maximize the yield. Then, autumn. The leaves fall, and even when crushing apples a jacket is necessary. I start taking inventory o...

As my friend Karen and I sat in the seemingly interminable delay on the Blue Water Bridge in to Canada yesterday, I realized that we'd miss the start of last night's concert. We still had 3 and a half hours to drive -- if there wasn't another delay crossing back in the United States to get to Buffalo. We hadn't been set on tickets until 3pm, so it was the best we could do. Karen and I went through the openings we'd like for last night's concert, so long as we wouldn't be there: "Glory Days!! Yes, he should open with Glory Days! And then, maybe something from Devils and Dust." My foot turned to lead as I imagined the horror of my mission to see the final show turning in to witnessing only the encores. We screamed through Niagara Falls at 90 (and I don't mean kph), and then a miracle happened: no line at the bridge. As I walked in to HSBC Arena last night, Bruce was building a house. I could check the setlist later, but at least I hadn...

GOOD EVENING OHIO!! It's national news, now. And, yes, tonight Milwaukee got "Good evening, Ohio," too. Guess he needs to write a new song. Call it "In Ohio." I even have lyrics he can use. He wrote 'em in Kalamazoo, Ohio.

Bruce Springsteen at The Palace, November 13, 2009. When I was growing up in New Jersey, the state had a bit of an identity crisis.  It was the suburb of New York and Philadelphia.  When the Giants and Cosmos moved in to Giants Stadium, they kept "New York" as part of their name.  Bruce Springsteen helped change things for us; from his very first album he proclaimed himself to be a New Jersey man. Michigan, on the other hand, is a big state with no history of being someone else's suburb; Bruce has played here at least once every year since 2002. Imagine, then, Bruce coming onstage and greeting the crowd with a salute to Ohio! And then sticking Ohio in to the lyrics of "Wrecking Ball"; of course, a Michigan audience tends not to object too much to lines such as, "tonight Ohio is going down in flames." Finally, Bruce put Ohio in to the story for "Working on a Dream." This last actually managed to get a few boos, and prompted Stevie to...

Six years ago, Rush Limbaugh went on national TV and said, regarding Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb: Sorry to say this, I don't think he's been that good from the get-go. I think what we've had here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn't deserve. The defense carried this team. Much has been said about Limbaugh's now ended effort to be part of an ownership group for the St. Louis Rams. Outcries over things he supposedly said, or in some cases about things he never said. But to me, whatever may be in discussion (including another remark comparing NFL football games to gang fights), that one remark about Donovan McNabb was the key. More than his "conservative" politics, more than his positions on race (and, let's be clear: Rush is too smart to say explicitly many of ...

20 years ago today. Has it really been so long? As I start this note, the clock reads 7:43pm EDT. In about 20 minutes it'll be the exact time. Me? I was in Section 9, Row 10. The ticket stub says so. Overlooking the Marina, Tuesday afternoon, October 17, 1989 During the summer of 1989, I began to realize that the best two teams in major league baseball were the two in the Bay Area, and that there was a good chance of a Bay Area World Series. When the Giants offered up guaranteed post-season tickets to anyone who committed to buy a 20-game season ticket plan for the following year, I took it. Sure enough, the Giants won the division, and then the National League playoffs -- though I had to miss the final two games as they were both played on Yom Kippur. The Oakland A's won the American League playoffs, so the Bay Area series was set.  And I had tickets to the first home game. Before the shaking. October 17. The most perfect Bay Area day... ever. My...

September 25, 2009 10 years ago this weekend, I saw Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band play a pair of shows in Philadelphia to mark Bruce's 50th birthday. Tonight, Bruce joined Elvis Costello onstage for a taping of Elvis's show "Spectacle," at Harlem's Apollo Theater. Not so much to mark Bruce's 60th, but to have an evening of talk and music in an intimate setting. First things first: The Apollo is as magnificent in person as its reputation. Beautiful theater in great shape, and with amazing acoustics. It felt like an honor just to be in the building -- a good thing, considering that my seats were in the last row all the way to the side. "Spectacle" is Elvis Costello's talk/interview show. Apparently -- I don't have Sundance Channel so I have not seen it -- it is a one hour show, culled from a taping session that can last as long as 4 hours. Tonight's session came in just under 4 hours with a brief intermission, which I...

After the ride. WE DID IT!! Tour de Cure 2009 is in the books. For the first time, all of us did the ride. This morning in Brighton, Aaron and I participated in the 25-mile bike ride out of Brighton, and Lori and Elianna participated in the 10-mile ride. I am incredibly proud of both kids. For Elianna, it has barely been two months since she learned to ride a bike. And for Aaron, what a ride: All the hills. No walking the bike. No stops at all between the rest area, except for a very brief moment when our path crossed with Lori and Elianna. Conditions were perfect, nearly erasing memories of last year's excruciating heat. Perfect, except for the one moment on the way home when my bikes decided they'd like to fly right off the car (fortunately, they stayed attached). Business part first: Now, then: Donations may still be made through the remainder of June, 2009, via the American Diabetes Association Tour de Cure website. Our pages: Me: http://tinyurl.com/ma...

When Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released one fine late fall day in 1979, I went with 16 of my closest friends in Millburn High School to a screening at Essex Green. We had to be there when Admiral James T. Kirk and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise reunited on the bridge. And if the loving shots of the ship took too long, and if the movie itself was little more than a regurgitated TV episode (most obviously relying on a 2nd-season episode called The Changeling ), so be it. Many of had seen all 79 episodes of the original TV show, many, many times. After all, Star Trek aired in re-runs every night on Channel 11, right at dinner time. Three decades later, Star Trek has long since passed from being “must see.” The movies got better, for a while, including with the brilliant Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home . Then came the TV shows. Star Trek: The Next Generation was the first and best; besides making a catch-phrase of “sexy bald man,” it became compelling in its own righ...

I tried my best this year to avoid all of the Super Bowl hype. Sure, I've been watching them at least since Otis Taylor made mincemeat of Bud Grant's secondary, but I have long since grown tired of all the pre-game festivities. So, I tuned it out. Even with Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band finally on the bill as half-time performers, I did my best to ignore the details, paying only glancing attention to the interviews and none at all to reports from people at the rehearsals. I could be surprised live, along with most of the rest of the country. When I thought of writing something, of course my reason was to write of Bruce performing. After all, one of the famous apocryphal stories of Bruce was of his former manager, Mike Appel, attempting to get Bruce on the bill for a Super Bowl pregame show, in part by dangling an otherwise unknown song called "Balboa vs. the Earth Slayer." That was in 1973. Bruce was releasing a new album two days before the big g...

Bruce Springsteen's "Working On a Dream" is due to be released on January 27. It finally leaked all over the internet today, so I've spent an some time with it this evening. Some of the early chatter I heard for this album was pretty bad. So... it's, it's, it's not as bad as that. How 'bout that? There are a few high points, and maybe at this point that should be enough. From the beginning. ok, there's "Outlaw Pete." What is this thing? I listen, and for whatever reason I'm hearing "Funeral for a Friend" or some such. But while I suppose a song can repeat the same 5 notes over and over and over, and over and over and over again and again and again, and be interesting and good ("Born in the USA," for example), "Outlaw Pete," isn't. At least not yet. To me. On first listen I don't really take in the lyrics, but with a terrible clunker in the 2nd verse ("a mustang pony he did st...