Orel Family

One of the great Star Trek  rules was always, "Don't piss off a Vulcan." And, of course, there was an extension to this rule: "Don't fight a Vulcan." Captain James T. Kirk found this out the hard way in an episode called Amok Time. This is one of many details that is "right" with the new movie  Star Trek: Into Darkness.  That, and many one liners, name-checks of characters from the original series, remind us that yes, this is still  Star Trek , and it's the cast of characters we all loved so well. With better hair and kinkier inter-species romances. Still... still... still... When the new series was conceived, I think the one thing most fans could agree on, was,  don't simply re-do the old episodes . In an interview after the first reboot alternate timeline Star Trek movie, director J.J. Abrams said, "I don’t want to approach the second film as a remake of episodes we’ve seen in the past." And yet, here we are. I tr...

This past Friday evening at a recording studio in Birmingham, about 50 people gathered to witness Stewart Francke and his band record a DVD. The invitees included those who had contributed to a kickstarter campaign for Stewart's excellent new CD, Love Implied . The session, however, wasn't simply a rehash of the album tracks, but a bit of a career retrospective. Spanning two full sets at 23 songs, it included several that I had never seen him play before; songs that hopefully will have some listeners checking out some of his earlier work. While the main focus of the set was on tracks from Stewart's last 3 albums ( What We Talk Of...When We Talk , Heartless World , and Love Implied ), a key highlight was a rare performance of a composition that predated those albums: Letter From 10 Green , written as a letter to his children when Stewart was a patient at Karmanos Cancer Center, at a time when he didn't know if he would live to return home. It is difficult and person...

15.5 seconds remained in the second period. At center ice, Yale's Clinton Bourbonais banged his stick against the ice several times as he waited for the face-off. Just a few minutes earlier, Bourbonais had taken a bad penalty, giving opposing Quinnipiac an extended two-man advantage. But Yale had survived it unscathed, and looking toward center ice, I smiled. Bourbonais looked ready. Despite an almost frenetic pace, including extended two-man advantages for each team, and nearly 50 total shots on goal, the National Championship game between Yale and Quinnipiac had yet to produce a goal. Bourbonais won the face-off. Yale's defense played the puck in to the Quinnipiac end. I allowed myself a brief sigh of relief. Yale appeared to be feeling the effects of the game's pace, and the puck being down in the other end meant there wouldn't be any late bad surprises; it'd be no worse than tied going in to the third period. The puck came to Quinnipiac's All-Amer...

March 23, 2012: Extreme heat caused cherry trees to bloom a full month early, dooming the crop. In March 26, 2012, I wrote a blog piece titled, Cooked and frozen - the looming disaster for our tree fruit.   Due to a ridiculously warm March and the near inevitability that temperatures would return to normal, I could foresee the impact: "Tomorrow evening, the low temperature here is predicted to be 28 degrees. Assuming that prediction -- or another one for later in the week -- is accurate, our cherry crop will be wiped out. We have no rational or affordable defenses against it." Sure enough, a frost on March 27th -- it got down to 27 degrees here -- wiped out the cherry crop. What a difference this year! Oh, we've had freezes. 10 of the last 11 nights, including three that were colder than that coldest evening last year. But we haven't been outside to run water to the trees. Haven't even looked. Because this year, the trees haven't bloomed. The hollyhocks ...

I went to Yale . In 165 prior blog posts I've never mentioned that, but it is true. Boola Boola. I played in the band at Yale. In the winter, we had the Yale Winter Wonder Band (an offshoot of the more celebrated Yale Precision Marching Band ); we'd follow the hockey team around. At home games, we'd take the ice between the 2nd and 3rd periods, and play a mini-show before the Zamboni came out. I got a car before junior year, and drove band members and instruments to Dartmouth and Harvard and Brown and Providence, and, most memorably, to Cornell. I'd drive, and the backseat passengers would make signs to put in the windows for people in other cars to see. The signs weren't always G-rated, but only one or two people actually tried to run us off the road. During my time in the YPMB. The hat is long gone, along with the hair. Our hockey team was always good, but, it seemed every year we'd come in 9th place in the 17-team ECAC, and only the top 8 made the ...

I Played the Fool The first time I saw Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes , I hadn't yet seen my first Springsteen concert. It was May, 1980, I was a high school senior in New Jersey, and the Great Adventure Amusement Park had an event called "senior night" aimed at us on warm Friday evening. Mt. St. Helens had recently erupted , and as the volcanic ash drifted eastward we'd get glorious sunsets unlike anything we'd ever seen. After school that day we wedged many of us in to two small cars and headed down the New Jersey Turnpike to exit 7A, and eventually to the amphitheater, which was basically a round concrete slab with a stage on one side. Southside performed 3 shows that evening, though we went only to the first. The band featured the famed horns, as well as "The Girls," decked out in spandex suits. So I can say that I saw Patti Scialfa perform live before I saw Bruce Springsteen perform live. That first show, I couldn't even persuade...

The late, lamented Michigan Schedule 2 Over the weekend, I finally sat down with my documents and TurboTax, and settled in to my 2012 taxes. It's still a bit early for me, as I don't have all of my documents yet, but I wanted to get a sense of where I'd be this year. I finished the Federal taxes, leaving gaps for the unreceived documents. Then I got to Michigan. I completed the 1040 and Schedule 1, and went to fill out Schedule 2. That's my favorite. It's where the "Nonrefundable credits" are. For many years, Michigan has had a "different" tax system. Michigan didn't mimic Federal taxes for deductions, Michigan ignored most of those while giving direct credits for select favored items. The credit was 50% of a donation, up to a modest limit, for gifts to Michigan colleges or universities, Michigan public broadcasting stations, homeless shelters, and a few other select recipients. For 2011, my nonrefundable credits totalled $361. For 20...