If social media has taught me one thing about life, it’s to reaffirm how ordinary I am.
Which is why one of my favorite writers is Wallace Stevens, an ordinary life insurance executive who wrote some of the world’s most extraordinary poems.
It’s his 142nd birthday today.
I love the…
This year I’ve again updated a Pinterest site of photos and stories recalling my former Verizon colleagues and their heroic response to 9/11. You can reach it at https://www.pinterest.com/bvar/verizons-response-to-911/ .
Newly added is a booklet from 2005 about the history and recovery of 140 West Street, the old headquarters building…
July 2021 was a month of remembrance… and discovery.
Remembrance of two people who died recently, and another who died last year.
Discovery, in thinking about them and in reading obituary details, of how great an impact their individual lives had on so many others.
I love technology; I love New York; I love art museums; I love taking photos; I love date night.
So I eagerly purchased tickets to attend one of the various “immersive Van Gogh” experiences now popping up everywhere following the wildly successful Atelier des Lumières installation in Paris in 2018.
…
This July 4, I want to remember one patriot whose career preceded the Internet Age: Stanley Fink.
Anecdotes about Stanley are impossible to find online these days, which is unfortunate, because the memory of him burns so brightly among those of us who knew him.
Two years ago, I left…
E.B. White is remembered in suburban New Jersey
A tree grows in New Milford, NJ… by way of Brooklyn… by way of a courtyard garden in Turtle Bay, New York City.
The writer E.B. White used to live in an apartment overlooking that garden. …
I’ve always tried to be a good boy. Too quiet, though.
Joining sides with the neighborhood bully, my first best friend threw rocks at me just days before his family moved to Parsippany NJ.
He hit me in the head.
That’s the way little kids say goodbye, and this is…
Photos taken in Central Park on March 6, 2021; captions in haiku.
Arthur Samuels would have been 94 last week; to me, he is forever ageless
Arthur died peacefully in the arms of Harriet, his loving wife of 55 years, just three months ago.
In my memories of him, I’ve discovered lessons that are more relevant in my life today than when he first tried to teach me how to play the violin.
I met Art…
Views of Manhattan in October 2020
All photos by me.
My poetry may be bad,
but I blame the news.*
Bob Varettoni
Posting here about writing, books, tech, family, baseball. More about me at bvarcommunications.com
