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December Deceleration
My relationship with Christmas has evolved along with my advancing life stages. As I child, I of course loved Christmas. As a teen, I still liked it but tried not to let on how much for fear of appearing uncool. As a young adult, I tried hard to feel the elusive “Christmas spirit” and felt Continue reading
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Leaf Peeping & Graveyard Creeping
Last week, I posted about our unseasonably warm and green October. Right on cue, shortly after I published that post, we experienced a stretch of rainy and cold weather. Pretty much overnight, the leaves began changing color. This weekend, the weather got nice again and we decided this afternoon would be a good time to Continue reading
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52 Pickup
Today, I finished reading Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. When I logged the title into my Goodreads account, I noticed that it was the 52nd book I’ve completed this calendar year. That seemed noteworthy as it puts me well ahead of a pace of one book per week — a volume of reading Continue reading
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Green October
Fall 2024 has been a rough-weather period for large swaths of the United States. At this writing, parts of Florida sit devastated in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton and significant portions of the Southeast are still reeling from Hurricane Helene. Meanwhile, my little corner of upstate New York is playing the part of a meteorological Continue reading
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Eternal Recurrence
Yesterday, I was doing some lecture prep for the course I am teaching in Integrated Marketing Communications. This week’s module delves into communication theory and how traditional communication models can be used as a framework for understanding advertising, public relations, direct marketing, etc. The textbook features a standard model of the communication process very much Continue reading
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The Other Side of Summer
The calendar says that summer of 2024 ends on September 21. Tradition says it will end the day after Labor Day. For me, summer is effectively over on this, the evening of August 25. Fall classes start tomorrow at SUNY Oswego, and I will be there on day one teaching a section of Integrated Marketing Continue reading
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Corning Museum of Glass
Back in 1980, my sixth-grade class took a field trip to the Corning Museum of Glass (CMoG). I wasn’t all that excited about the museum going into it, but I saw a few things there that made an impression on my young mind, including a shard of glass dating back to ancient Egypt. My final Continue reading
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Summer Reading: On the Road
Jack Kerouac’s On the Road is a book that I’ve seen referenced all through my adult life, but I never thought much about actually reading it. To be completely honest, I didn’t even realize it was a novel until a few months ago. For the longest time, I was under the impression the book was Continue reading
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Stanwix Redux
My wife and I have decided that we want to, over the course of however long it takes, visit all 429 sites in the U.S. National Park System. No, really. To butcher an old proverb, a journey of 429 sites begins with a single step. For our first step in this undertaking, we chose to Continue reading
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Wolcott Falls
This past weekend, I got it in my head that I wanted to visit a waterfall — not the shallow, industrialized falls that we have here in Fulton, but something out in nature with some height. Fortunately, there are a lot of options within a reasonable distance from home. (When it comes to waterfalls, this Continue reading
About Me
Researcher. Marketer. Teacher. Father of adult children and dogs. 20th Century holdover. Central New York native. Long-suffering Buffalo Bills fan. History nerd. Traveler. Vintage advertising enthusiast. Hat wearer.
a.k.a. V.J. 