GARLANDblog

 What follows are my Southern-tinged observations (a blog, if you will) on the world around me, largely in and about New York City—my personal Oz. 

THE JOURNEY

Artists can mold black and white, parsing it and parceling it out into shades of gray that portray the past, or just the rural life, as a time and place of easy and simple living. It has a certain appeal. But there is something within many of us that calls out and demands more. Some enticing force urges a chosen few to know the nuanced complexity of color, to spread our wings and search out a life Read the rest of this entry »

 My elbow nudged the mug off the corner of the bathroom sink. It toppled to its side and slid gently into the basin. The good news was that the hot tea was captured and drained immediately. The bad news was the mug suddenly was a mug no more. It looked like it had been mugged, and it was a fatality. What had once been a singularly useful object had been instantly partitioned into an unholy trinity: a three-quarter near-mug, an elongated sliver of porcelain, and an almost circular finger-grip handle that then attached only to air.

It had been a good companion. I felt like giving it a eulogy. My cup of kindness began its life with me back in Read the rest of this entry »

Okay, so it’s been quite a while since I wrote for this space. I’ve been busy. Have you tried becoming a first-time New York City co-op owner? Yeah, I’ve been busy: The “three months buried under a mound of paperwork” kind of busy. Did I mention that the process entails at least four sets of lawyers delightfully burning and slashing as they cut a path through the red tape, sparing the wallets of neither the anxious seller nor the impatient purchaser? Read the rest of this entry »

The most amazing view in all of New York City is not what can be seen in the lights at street level in Times Square, or from the rails while riding the waves of the Staten Island Ferry, or even taking in the views from the soaring ramparts of the Empire State Building. By land, sea, or air the winning scenery sits along the two-stop, above-ground section of the subway’s F Line, where it crosses high above Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal.

That largely industrial landscape, dominated by its soaring train trestle, certainly caught my eye the first time I glided over it by train: bleak is the word that came to my mind back then. That was seven years ago—when I first moved here from the South, knowing nothing of the nuances of my newly adopted home. I was not prepared for the metamorphosis that was yet to occur—not of the Brooklyn landscape but of my own mindscape.

There is a hot season of excitement for every new resident who is drawn to this Read the rest of this entry »

Ah, the power of Facebook. One day recently, I received a mysterious Friend request. It had no details, just a name—one I didn’t recognize. Or did I? Something about it was vaguely familiar. Soon afterward, another request came in. This one said, “Could you possibly be the Larry Garland I knew back in my college days in Tennessee?” Read the rest of this entry »

I’m home today, not in my office, because I chose not to share my newly acquired … cold? … with my colleagues. To take my mind off my misery, I decided to sort through some of my stored Letter to the Editor submissions to the New York Times. In doing so, I came across one I had written five years ago that gave me a chuckle.

Sadly, that Old Gray Lady, perhaps suffering from declining hearing, paid no mind to my call for consideration—other than thanking me for my submission and reminding me, with a matronly poke of her dagger, that many letters are received but space (Ha! Make that inclination!) permits use of only a few. Well, I liked it when I wrote it, and I believe it still shines, even though Father Time has spent these past few years testing its mettle. See if you agree that it’s worth a read. The gist of my letter follows:

I grew up just a few miles from Lynchburg, Tennessee, home of the Jack Daniels Distillery. When I read “Whiskey’s Kingdom (Pop. 361),” by R.W. Apple, Jr., published March 17, 2004, recollections stirred in me. I wasn’t thinking of the whiskey itself, as I have never been a connoisseur of fine spirits—I was recalling a droll incident with my grandmother who has long since passed away. Read the rest of this entry »

As a married couple with young children, the protagonists have settled for less in their lives than they imagined they would—settling, literally, in suburbia. The wife dreams of moving the family to Paris, finding their true paths, finding themselves. She sells her husband on the idea, and now the fun begins. In revealing their plans to family and friends, they evoke reactions quite unexpected  and wholly disappointing. Read the rest of this entry »