Rainey Blogs on Some Days

I painted the basement electrical room today.  It always feels good for a Midwesterner like me to complete some sort of home repair activity successfully.  Here in North Jersey , it's not all that important to fix things yourself.  In fact, out here in the East it is more impressive to have someone else do the work for you.  But where I come from it is shameful to have to hire someone to do your home repair or mow your yard.  So for me, there is often a battle between the old Midwesterner and the new Northeasterner in me.  There are other battles between these two diverse dispositions inside of me.  The Midwesterner in me desires food in bulk, which means all-you-can-eat buffets and smorgasbords are the preferred eating establishments.  The quality is not nearly as important as the quantity.  Why not have a taco appetizer along with some fried okra from the food bar while waiting for the sirloin steak to come with the baked potato dripping w...

“I woke up this morning to an empty sky.” (Bruce Springsteen, “ Empty Sky ,” The Rising ) As we neared the ninth anniversary of 9/11 this week, I pulled out Bruce Springsteen’s tribute album to 9/11, The Rising. In “Empty Sky,” he perfectly captured the sense of direction the twin towers gave us here in Northern New Jersey and New York. On a clear day, you could see the towers from twenty miles or so away, and for those living in the metropolitan area the towers marked our proximity to home. Whether we were coming up the Turnpike from a short trip to the Shore, or returning from spending the holidays in Illinois, the first sight of the towers meant we were almost home. Still, to this day, I look for those towers when I see the New York skyline, but the sky is still empty where they used to be, and we all know how that happened. We have picture of my Mom, Marcia, Alyssa, and me sitting at a window inside the South Tower observation deck on the 107th floor, looking back waving. Beh...