Author: thecolumnrule

COINCIDENCE? June 4, 2023 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com      There is every coincidence in life, whether by the gods, by seemingly directed unconscious thoughts, perhaps just by the mere of it all. But it happens.      You are reading a story about, say, a new dam in 1930s’ Colorado, and that […]

GIFT OF THE FALLEN Memorial Day Weekend By Arthur H. Gunther IIIthecolumnrule.com The writer is a retired newspaperman who can be reached via ahgunther@yahoo.com This essay is adapted from a first version.

May 21, 2023 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com      These essays are usually written in stillness, a completely quiet time when the spring birds are tuning up in early morning or the coffee pot is percolating its gathering scent in a colder moment.      Stillness is a gift that insulates you from […]

May 14, 2023 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com      These essays are usually written in stillness, a completely quiet time when the spring birds are tuning up in early morning or the coffee pot is percolating its gathering scent in a colder moment.      Stillness is a gift that insulates you from […]

GOLDMINE By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com      An artist’s painting is in the eye of the beholder, but the language is from the maker, and though the viewer may know some of the words, even sentences, the full narrative is the creator’s. The viewer can miss all of that for lack of interest […]

April 30, 2023 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com      Would that there be equality for all, that every little kid would have a Friday afternoon dream spot, a haven where after school he/she/they could leave the present and get lost in a mixture of the past, future and fantasy.      Such chill […]

April 24, 2023 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com      Time was when the family used to visit old Cape Cod for a summer two weeks, but as children morphed into adults with their own kids, and as the years and the money-elite changed too much of that New England landscape from a largely […]

April 16, 2023 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com      As a newspaper photographer, my images ranged from publicity to fires to politics to sports and other subjects. Now as a painter, I work in abstract, realism, abstract realism and primitive. In photographs and canvas I have tried to depict the essence of people, […]

Updated electrical code  can prevent fatal fires April 9, 2023  By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com      Remember your mom’s warning not to stick paper clips in electrical outlets? Saved lives. Today it seems some, hopefully few, in government in effect tell kids and adults to plug anything into a circuit. Not by intent […]

April 2, 2023 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com The daily birth of a newspaper is a wondrous thing, with news, commentary, photographs, the who, what, where, when, why and how of information light and heavy and everywhere in between. Each edition is from sweat and muscle and emotion held back in required detachment. It […]

March 26, 2023  By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com      In a world of super haba-daba lattes, designer donuts at $4.50 and your name written on the coffee container that you must pick up at another counter, it was reaffirming when this morning I reached for the salt shaker.  It was plain Joe, plain […]

March 19, 2023 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com      There is indisputable evidence that despite each older generation claiming  the young are going to hell in a hand basket, the truth is otherwise. Always has been.       Greed is in every generation. Some bad politicians are as well. Some “leaders” fail. Some […]

March 12, 2023 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com In a very simple time when things were still complicated for grown-ups of course, country children of the 1940s and ’50s found diversion in rustling through the woods, playing hide and seek with other kids and going on small errands with dad or mom. Absent the […]

‘OFF THE SOUTH MOUNTAIN’/gunther March 6, 2023 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com      On an early morning run in the Northeast, about 6, before the suburban/urban beings start their engines and rev up for the endless trips to shopping strips, the time is mine, and I relish the nearly empty roads and the […]

February 26, 2023 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com      The daughter of a Rockland Journal-News colleague from long ago when the community newspaper still existed at 53 Hudson Ave., Nyack, N.Y., recently sent me an unidentified photograph of her as a very young child, taken in the newsroom. Her mother is gone now, […]

February 19, 2023 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com      There was always anticipation in the 1939 Dodge my father drove to the ferries at Weehawken to begin our rare visits to New York City. A country boy living just 18 miles away, a walk in the fields was the usual day, not shivering […]

February 12, 2023 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com      There is mystery in Gotham, the generic word for any city, ancient or modern. Tall buildings dwarfing others, alleyways in daylight darkness, corners in street lamp shadow, anonymous individuals plugged into crowds on sidewalks almost never left untrod. Urban life is its own mojo, […]

February 5, 2023 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com      James Joyce, the writer who had to leave Dublin to narrate its soul, is remembered for more than classic works like “Dubliner” and Ulysses.” His story and character quotes are almost unbelievable pull-outs from the recesses of our minds.      “Shut your eyes […]

January 29, 2023  By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com      Despite the rotation, a doorknob has stillness. You may have gone on a trip, and the handle has not been turned. You will do so, and the great feeling of home will hit, no matter how fine the journey has been. Maybe this isn’t […]

By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com      “Unfinished Story,” the title of this painting inspired by an old doorway on Piermont Avenue in the Hudson River village, speaks for itself. We all have unfinished stories.      When I spotted the doorway in Piermont, N.Y., once a railroad town, then a factory town and […]

January 15, 2023 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com      For someone like my grandfather Arthur Sr., the Information Age began in his 20s with a flood of great daily New York City newspapers like The World, the New York Times and the New York Daily News. He also had a crystal radio set, […]

January 9, 2023 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com      There is this thing about a woman in the early morning holding her hands around a warm, even mildly hot cup of java or tea. In conversation or not, there is an anchor, and whatever her thoughts, the tether’s for a reason.      […]

January 1, 2023 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com      This is the traditional make-resolutions day, the get-fit, renew-yourself makeover start. Sometimes some of us actually do that. I’m still compiling a list from the January Ones of long ago.      Most of us have good intentions. We do want to improve, to […]

     December 25, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther IV      For some years, my son Arthur IV, a writer too, has offered a holiday story published in this space. Reprinted here is one of my favorites from some years back – AHG III.      Franklin was a man of routine. Perhaps such […]

December 18, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      There’s this thing about radiators. Not long ago they were old-fashioned but are now in vogue with home renovators overpaying scrap dealers. They are unheard of in many parts of the nation that don’t need central heating. And they were once a best […]

December 9, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      Your younger sibling should not pass before you do, though my brother Craig William Gunther always appeared as the older one. He was handsome with blond hair and blue eyes, a different look in a family of brown tops and eyes. He was […]

December 4, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      More or less at 6:15 a.m., an older fellow moves across Western Highway in Blauvelt, N.Y., to a small grocery where contractors, refuse collectors, DPW workers and other musicians in the band that keeps daily life moving gather for the quick morning coffee, […]

November 27, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      You walked out the door not as a different person but with an added layer, as if you had visited a kindly elder who told you what you did not know. You had more chops.      That was often the experience in […]

November 20, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      There is a hot-metal printer’s expression – “running out of sorts” – which means the typesetting supply of a particular letter, punctuation, character, etc., is low. In civilian terms, if we don’t feel 100 percent, we are out of sorts. An apt comment […]

November 15, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      These virus-changed days have many office workers toiling at home in PJs, unlike the cubicles of 2020 and, blessedly before that regimented isolation, the large open room filled with desks, in turn overflowing with individual collections of paper, coffee cups, stick-it notes, Rolodexes […]

By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      A long-ago story, Election Day 2022 relevant.       In spring 1960, the General Organization of Spring Valley High School (N.Y.) held its presidential election for the next school year. There were two candidates, both capable of filling the student government office. One was more popular […]

October 30, 2022_  By Arthur H.Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      Our America, at times wonderful to the point of tears – emotional, caring, giving – is also in its citizens’ fear as mean as can be – from want, loss, uncertainty in great and challenging change. We then fall back on  the temptation that […]

October 23, 2022 By Arthur H.Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      A face is the door to someone’s being, the eyes the hallway to the soul. It can be a journey never forgotten.      As a photographer – I was on staff for a newspaper – while the job ends, the skills do not […]

October 17, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      America needs a good story, from sea to shining sea, in the hustings, in the gothams, on the farms, in the mountains and valleys, in the panhandle and among the poor, the rich, the in-between, the Republican, the Democrat, the independent, among all […]

October 9, 2022  By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      There is no workplace rhythm – this necessary, life-sustaining tempo, this melody, this song – without the interplay of people. Bosses, the ordinary grunts, specialists, the guys and gals who do the job, or who do the job better than others, the slackers, […]

October 2, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      A fall ride in early evening on a wooded parkland drive when the quiet is uninterrupted, when the moon is full and car lights seem unnecessary, when the engine purrs in low revolution, when the conversation between two is also at momentary idle, […]

September 25, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther IIIthecolumnrule.comahgunther@yahoo.com

September 18, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      In a September-near-fall when colored leaves drop in nostalgic scent, some of us can forget the crazy world of war, death, climate, challenged democracy. Some don’t have the luxury since they are caught up in what is not working, what is frightening.    […]

September 11, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com There is rhythm to our lives, and when it is seriously interrupted, the beat changes forever. And so it was with September 11, 2001. When  9/11 hit in terroristic horror 21 years ago, I was in the West Nyack newsroom of the former Rockland Journal-News, […]

September 4, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com On this Labor Day of late sleeping, barbecues, beach trips and general laziness for many but the same-old, same-old for those who are not “honored” but must toil, a memory trip back 123 years ago recalls a man, Hugh Bonner, who created an example of […]

August 28, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      There are in this life moments when you need a cupcake. Down day, low energy or maybe you just want to celebrate breathing. Back in the day, my father, who did the grocery shopping in a two-worker family, usually bought a weekly supply […]

  August 21, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      For many decades, from the very first automobiles, when horse-drawn wagons and carriages were still about, there was a right-turn path at a stoplight intersection in a little hamlet not far from me. It seemed to offend no one; I can recall […]

By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com     With recent early-morning temperatures hitting numbers not seen in months and with – hopefully – no more awful heat waves in sight, our house furnaces and boilers will soon be ready to kick in. For me, the change involves more than a turn of the thermostat […]

August 7, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com The rule of thumb is that the dog days of August are to be endured, that autumn will bring relief along with the wondrous color of falling leaves. But all this is hooey if August is also June and July, September too. At least in […]

July 31, 2022 By Arthur H.Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      The Irish lady from North County Dublin looked less than chipper, unusual for this get-it-done woman with a sharp sense of right and wrong and a non-nonsense approach to living. She was in the later years, not “old” yet by her definition but past […]

By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      If you are fortunate before you grow up, you’ll get to spend a few years with a patient, somewhat quiet, a bit odd grandfather like I did, who had a knack for fixing almost anything with a pocketknife or a squirt of oil from the old-style […]

July 17, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com Doors have a way of fitting in, just like long-gone Uncle Jack in town for a comfy visit. He gets that way fast. Or people who initially stand out and are somehow morphed into the crowd, hopefully adding to the whole. It’s as if the […]

July 10, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      ANY VILLAGE, USA — Times change, people do, communities certainly. “You can’t go home again,” literally, as Thomas Wolfe put it. Yet, the pull of one’s childhood place is mighty strong, despite the “better” land you may now live in, some memories you […]

July 4, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com       We eat picnic food, watch fireworks and chill out on July 4th in the national birthday celebration recognizing Independence Day, our 1776 Declaration of Independence from Great Britain over growing oppression and denial of human rights. The American experiment had begun. Our […]

By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      Not all essay writing comes in full paragraphs – sometimes the thought begins in shorthand. Perhaps a form of poetry, or if not to the expected quality level of such, a collection of thoughts worthy enough if the reader cares to nibble. Some such fodder: WOODS, […]

June 19, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      You don’t have to dig into eons past to see history.      A road beautification project in Pearl River, N.Y., a hamlet in the Gotham suburbs but in the country when I was young, has modern planners trying to “calm traffic,” as […]

June 12, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      When in the course of human events these United States, still in experimentation, requires a reset, it is necessary to have a big do – a block party, a hoedown, a hayride under a strawberry moon. Everyone invited, especially the prejudiced.      […]

June 5, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com      NYACK, N.Y. — Edward Hopper, famed painter of realism whose “Nighthawks” and other works articulate American solitude as mood, thought and destiny,  is ever-present in this village of his 1882 birth.      Hopper House, operating as an art gallery, museum and study center […]

May 30, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com       No Memorial Day, USA or elsewhere, is without heartfelt words and tribute, parades, wreaths, re-mourning. What is always missing, though, are the voices of the fallen. Would that we could hear them. What would they say?      “Mom, I was as scared […]

May 22, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      We live in an age of power tools, big-box home improvement centers and a throwaway culture, so when a leaning fence gate needs fixing, the modus operandi may well be to (1) buy a super-duper, lithium-powered hammer drill from the big box store […]

May 15, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com Once upon a time – this seems a fairy tale of sorts – a 14-year-old youngster with a huge quarter in his pocket – more money than he touched in an average year – found himself in a sudden heavy June downpour on a village […]

May 8, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      In the Spring Valley, N.Y., breakfast program, those volunteers retired come from every former vocation – professional, blue-collar, high-finance, the trades, at home, etc. And we bring our workplace habits with us.      For example, the late Bob Drennen, once longtime principal […]

Art Gunther image/May 5, 2022

May 1, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      Years ago, decades actually, this once young man watched as an older fellow carefully straightened bent nails taken from discarded wood. “Why,” I asked?     The man said he would reuse them, but I wondered why he bothered, since an ample-sized  box […]

By Arthur H. Gunther IIIthecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      Many of the older homes I walked into as a youngster had one- or two-bulb ceiling fixtures in the middle of the room, operated by a long pull chain that hit any tall fellow in the head. These lights, the fashion of the time when electricity first came […]

April,17, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      In this especially crazy world right now – “fakakta,” as the Yiddish word well describes, with media focused on the horrors of the war in Ukraine, the killing of children, the raping; in a moment when high inflation is threatening virus recovery; in an […]

April 10, 2022 By Arthur H.Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com     Take a “country” boy who earns a law degree and throw him into an emerging suburb with the first wisps of urban-like crime, and you have someone who calls himself the “Hayseed D.A.” Only the fellow proves no country bumpkin. Or maybe he was […]

By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      This is National Library Week, an annually booked observance that is seemingly unnecessary for readers since every week, even every day, celebrates the great adventure of not only running eyes over words but going to the places where they rest on shelves for the next visit […]

March 27, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      The Irish carry words in their pockets as others do coins. Even the spare change can become a short story or novel.      This essay is written after the Feast of St. Patrick and all the religious/cultural moments, parades and green things […]

March 20, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com       The passing of a friend leaves a space in life’s puzzle that you just keep staring at. Where is that piece – was it misplaced? The blurring of reality and the unreal continues as the waves of grief truly wash again and […]

March 14, 2022 Arthur H. Gunther IIIthecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      It may seem hilarious and even back-woodsy, but there was a moment, a long one, when at 2 a.m. in a diner, say Hogan’s in West Nyack, N.Y., you instinctively pulled up your feet as the cleanup guy came by, splashing bleach water at the terrazzo floor. […]

March 7, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      The Ukrainians of my small village in New York shed tears in 1941 when the Nazis occupied their native land during their death march to the Soviet Union. That was yet another horrible chapter in the long history of independence-proud people, attacked and […]

February 28, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com I think doors have a way of fitting in, just like long-gone Uncle Jack in town for a comfy visit. He gets that way fast. Or people who initially stand out and are somehow morphed into the crowd, hopefully adding to the whole. It’s as […]

February 22, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      At the end of instruction, some of our elementary school teachers used to read from classic books and stories, perhaps to decompress us after the hectic day, maybe even sedate us for the school bus driver. The effect on many, though, was not […]

February 14, 2022 thecolumnrule.com By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com Valentine’s Day is many things to many people and absolutely nothing to just as many. It is recognition of emotion, “love,” which in itself offers varied definition and application, and gathered appreciation. It is also overdue for so many.      The natural inclination for […]

February 7, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      The search for truth needs a full vocabulary.      I’m am not certain the 8th grader I often noticed at the very small but powerfully packed village library understood that as a flashing neon light against ignorance, but this constant reader was […]

By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com Blauvelt to West Nyack, N.Y. — Along the Western Highway, simply named centuries ago because so few roads existed that there was no need to use developers’ favored children’s monikers, a three-mile walk to the great hullabaloo of suburban growth that is a major shopping center brought quiet […]

  January 24, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com      The newspaper brotherhood is losing its working members, and that will make orphans of all who depend on information delivery as a public trust. Papers are dying, shot by a lessened  appetite for reading anything longer than a Tweet and the high cost […]

January 17, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com There used to be a bakery in Nyack, N.Y., name of Luleich. It was the typical but oh-so-welcome village fixture. Sometimes communities had more than one, German-style, Italian-style, etc. Depended on the neighborhood. Nyack, in the 1950s, my time there when my parents shopped in […]

January 10, 2022 By Arthur H.Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com There is a tree on the South Mountain in my Hudson Valley, N.Y., area that has looked at me since I was a young fellow. And that is a long time ago. It has – does – look at others, too. But its glance, perhaps even […]