Now (Old)

A snapshot of my life at the moment. Updated January 22, 2024.

🎧 What I’m Listening To

I’ve always highly valued music. As a sensitive kid with powerful feelings music consoled, confirmed, sustained, and inspired me.

Unless I’m with a client or somewhere I can’t listen, then tunes are playing. Rock 'n' Roll, Blues, Country, Soul, some Jazz, and whatever fits into the moment. I’m always listening to the Allman Brothers Band because I’ve been a huge fan for over fifty years. I love Stevie Ray Vaughan, Stevie Wonder, and Al Green. My musical palette is pretty broad.

I also listen to contemporary artists such as Marcus King Band, Alabama Shakes, Samantha Fish, and many others.

A recent band I’ve just gotten into are the Red Clay Strays and their recent release, Moment of Truth. They are a blend of genres I reckon, Rockabilly, Rock 'n' Roll, Blues and Country. Check them out!

What are YOU listening to? Drop me a line!

📚What I’m Reading

Like music, reading is essential to my existence and I always have a book going.

I enjoy memoir, historical fiction, whodunnits, and crime-thrillers. I like novels that have something original to say about relationships, family, friendships, money and career.  

Right now, I’m reading Wellness by Nathan Hill. I’m about halfway through the book and am greatly enjoying the main characters' musings on marriage, parenting, and family. 

I’ve had a great few years of reading as I have more time. Some recommendations: I love Don Winslow, Power of the Dog, The Cartel, and The Border. As a recovering person, I appreciated getting a more macro view of the addiction problem. 

I strongly suggest anything written by Patrick Radden Keefe, including Say Nothing, a well-thought out expose on the troubles in Ireland. I also loved the Snakehead about human smuggling into the United States and Empire of Pain about Purdue Pharma’s part in pushing opiates throughout the United States and how regulatory agencies looked the other way resulting in the opiate epidemic.  Keefe manages to humanize even the most odious human behavior while still calling out corruption and greed.

Paradise Alley by Kevin Baker weaves together several still pertinent themes while describing Civil War era New York, including racism, the draft and class. His characters are vividly drawn and the story will rope you in. 

Finally, I was nosing around Amazon one morning searching for something to read and I came across Andersonville by MacKinley Kantor. Written back in the 1950’s the book won the Pulitzer Prize. Kantor researched the book for seventeen years. It’s a dark book about man’s cruelty to man as he depicts with great detail the Rebel’s prisoner of war camp during the Civil War in Georgia. A big, thick tome that has one of the best endings I’ve ever read! Not for the faint of heart.  

I also read the Boston Globe (great sports section) the New Yorker and other periodicals, websites and e-zines daily. I’m obsessed with inclement weather and especially love and am fascinated by snowstorms and hurricanes. So, whenever there’s a storm brewing I’m trying to gain inside info and checking websites for the latest forecast. 

What are you reading? Send me some recommendations!

📺What I’m Watching

Okay, I’ll admit it. I love television! It has a calming effect on me. Often when telling people this, I’m often met with a snobbish, “We never watch television.” The fact is that a lot of television now is as good and sometimes as great as the best cinema. Consider most seasons of The Wire. Brilliant! How about Breaking Bad? Great! The Sopranos. Fantastic!  

We’re watching Shetland, a whodunnit series based in the Scottish isles. The main character leads a police team and has to deal with the pressures of his job while trying to co-exist in a small community. 

We are also watching the present season of Fargo. As always, the bad guys are deliciously bad and eventually they’re going get it, and get it good!  

📕My Book

I’m in the final stages of editing my memoir, Blasted.

Blasted is about generational trauma and my father’s alcoholism which ultimately blew apart our family. I developed my own addictions lost a marriage, a boatload of money and then found recovery. (see an except here). 

We are getting ready to start the querying process. I’ll update our progress here regularly.