In my day job (when I am not thinking about professional wrestling, or guitars, or rock music, or movies, or other distractions) I am a history teacher and college counselor at Wyoming Seminary, a boarding school in Northeastern Pennsylvania. I have previously written about my teaching, and with the 2014-15 school year right…
On January 10, 2014, the Sassy Librarian and I were treated to a night out by our awesome friends, Harry and Meredith. And not just any night out, but tickets to the WWE live event at our local arena in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. If you’ve been following this blog you know that I’ve been a…
As a history teacher, I am often asked to rank and evaluate things (like “who is the best/worst President of all time?”) and as a musician, the temptation to rank artists is omnipresent as well. Sometimes I combine these two identities, such as when I declare that the electric guitar was the most…
I’ve written about music before in this space, and those posts have proven to be among the most popular. As of this week, my post on guitar solos has received over 230 hits, my post on songs about the radio has over 380 hits, and my post on the album Layla And Other…
If you’ve followed this blog over the past few years, you would know that professional wrestling is a huge interest of mine. I’ve already written about cage matches and about “the original Pearl Harbor job“, but this post will focus more sharply on the aspect of professional wrestling characters, specifically those who are…
As I mentioned in my last post, I spend a lot of time teaching my high school students about the American Civil War. Or, to be more accurate, I should say “the Civil War era”. As I tell them on the first day of the school year, I’m a pacifist, and I don’t…
So in my day job I teach American history (and since I work at a boarding school, it is often my night job as well). One of my classes is a survey course on U.S. history. I believe that it is impossible to understand America without understanding the Civil War, so every year…
Six months ago today I had my back operation (a microdiscectomy and laminectomy of L5, if you don’t remember). While the initial recovery had its ups and downs, overall I am reasonably pleased with my progress. I saw my surgeon a few weeks ago and he told me that I should feel free…
On Thursday, October 4, 2012 I was the guest speaker at the kickoff to a film discussion series hosted by Penn State Wilkes-Barre at Movies 14 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. The overall theme of the series is movies that have to do with the end of the world. The first film chosen was Stanley…
So tonight is the first night of the quadrennial multi-day event known as the Laff-A-Lympics Democratic National Convention. In typical fashion, the mistakes began well before the convention ever started—by scheduling the convention of the party of labor in a “right to work” state, with the lowest labor union membership in the nation. …