Author: thecolumnrule

COINCIDENCE?

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

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.

NOT EMPTY

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 […]

STILLNESS

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’ AWAITS

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 […]

THE AIRPORT BENCH

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 […]

ONCE, AT THE CAPE

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 […]

HER SOUL

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, […]

SAVE THE CHILDREN

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 […]

OUR REPORTER

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 […]

GRAIN OF SALT

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 […]

OPTIMISM

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 […]

THE OLD POST OFFICE

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 […]

MY TIME

‘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 […]

HAPPY TO HELP

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, […]

THE ANNUAL VISIT

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 […]

‘GOTHAM ABSTRACT’

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, […]

POWER OF LANGUAGE

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 […]

STILLNESS

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 […]

UNFINISHED STORIES

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 […]

OF A QUIET EVENING

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, […]

TETHERED

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.      […]

BE KIND

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 […]

MESSAGE AT CHRISTMAS

     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 […]

OLD IS NEW

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 […]

THE GUNTHER BOYS

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 […]

A FELLOW’S MORNING

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, […]

THE FINKELSTEIN

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 […]

‘OUT OF SORTS’

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 […]

IT’S LIFE

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 […]

FOR ELECTION DAY 2022

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 […]

AT THE WINDOW

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 […]

THE PORTRAIT

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 […]

AMERICAN STORY

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 […]

THEY ‘SUNG’ FOR US

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, […]

TRUST

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, […]

‘WE WALK TOGETHER’

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.    […]

TO NEVER FORGET

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, […]

LABOR DAY EXAMPLE

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 […]

CUPCAKES: ‘ANTIDOTE’?

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 […]

RED LIGHT FOR ALL

  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 […]

THE STASH

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 […]

THE HEAT

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 […]

‘IRISH PHILOSOPHY’

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 […]

A ‘SOUND’ MEMORY

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 […]

‘NIGHT CARPENTER’

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 […]

GOING ‘HOME’

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 […]

THE REPUBLIC

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 […]

BEGINNINGS

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, […]

LAYERS OF HISTORY

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 […]

WE NEED A HOEDOWN

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.      […]

EDWARD HOPPER IN NYACK

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 […]

THE FALLEN SPEAK

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 […]

A SIMPLE (OR NOT) REPAIR

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 […]

PLUMS IN SEASON

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 […]

EDUCATOR

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 […]

OF NECESSITY

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 […]

PULL-CHAIN LIGHTS

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 […]

GOODNESS OVER ALL

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 […]

THE ‘RIGHT-TIME’ D.A.

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 […]

LIBRARIES

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 […]

GIFTS, ALL

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 […]

ELAINE

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 […]

KEEPING IT SIMPLE

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. […]

WE ARE ALL UKRAINE

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 […]

FITTING IN

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 […]

THE IMAGINARY THINGS

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 […]

A VALENTINE

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 […]

GROWING OUT OF IGNORANCE

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 […]

NO FAST LANE

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 […]

WHO WILL TELL US?

  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 […]

PAVLOVIAN IN NYACK

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 […]

TREE OF LIFE

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 […]

AUTUMN

‘FALL’/gunther October 25, 2021 By Arthur H. Gunther IIII thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      Autumn arrives as a state of mind, prompted by the foliage change to wonderful hues or by memories of fall’s past that tug at your senses.       The light is different, incrementally as the weeks pass, but soon the imperceptibility becomes […]

APPLES

October 18, 2021 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com About this time of year comes the memory of the apple smell, sweet fragrance that for me opened the door a bit to Heaven when I was a child at my grandmother’s house. She made apple pies, as many nanas did and do, from scratch. […]

THE UNORDINARY CAT

October 11, 2021 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      There is the unordinary cat, thank heavens.      Remember kindergarten? Teachers encouraging individuality. Playing games together but drawing separately. Come the next grade and the ones afterward there are desks, increasing structure, necessary standards, all for progress, yes, but much more for […]

ONCE THE MUSIC

October 2, 2021 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      The cadence of life is the music we exist by, live by, endure by, thrill by, emote by, give birth by, laugh and cry by, die by. It is to each a unique song. Some sing better, some are almost tone deaf. Some […]

‘PROGRESS’ AND MOLD

September 27, 2021 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com Once in my parts, a section of the Northeast where as yet not all the woods have been bulldozed by “Progress,” we measured fall’s coming by morning humidity on the side of a white clapboard garage. The glisten was subtle, almost like a fine spray […]

SAVE ‘NEWSPAPERS,’ SAVE DEMOCRACY

September 20, 2021 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@hotmail.com If true readers were the only people newspapers and Internet information providers had to be concerned about, there would be little reason for this essay. They are hooked on the news, educated and brought up and matured to understand the value of a free press […]

ALTERED BEAT

Twin Towers steel at Haverstraw Bay Park, Rockland County, N.Y./gunther photo   September 11, 2021 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 20 […]

A GOVERNMENT OF ‘US’

Painting/gunther By Arthur H. Gunther III the columnrule.com ahgunther@hotmail.com   America’s Labor Day has morphed beyond the usual public time off — picnics and other respite — that recognizes workers. Now it is also 24 hours of heightened uncertainty. There is worry over whether the job you have now, if you are working, will be […]

ROCKIN’

August 30, 2021 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com  ahgunther@yahoo.com      I have now over-saturated my ears in tribute to Charlie Watts, last week late of the Rolling Stones, who must be rockin’ Heaven. Don’t care for Mick Jagger’s on-stage theater but Charlie, the classy, low-keyed drummer, was the yang to that yin, and […]

SKILLS FORGOTTEN

August 23, 2021 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com One of the qualifications of “progress” is that as new technology replaces the old, or brings it on in the first place, tried and true habits honed by trial, error, ingenuity, make-do and survival are lost. For example, in this age of air conditioning, a […]

‘KETCHUP PASSED MUSTARD’

  August 16, 2021 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.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., when you instinctively pulled up your feet as the floor guy came by, splashing Clorox and […]

THE NEWS PILE

  By Arthur H. Gunther III  thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com If you could capture images of the past and store them as memory files that could be flashed on a computer screen, then I would show you what my bedroom in Hillcrest, N.Y., looked like at age 19, in another century literally.  My room – almost 60 […]

IN THE MIX

‘COLOR’/gunther 2021 August 2, 2021 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      In these colors – black, white, brown, red, yellow – there is humanity and inhumanity. We do not see clear colors, untouched by others – that is impossible no matter the prejudice. You can live and die in one color, but […]

THE RIDE

July 25, 2021 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com One recent day, I took a car ride with an intriguing woman (all are), and we had conversation. Never sure where those mutual talks lead, as I draw from a stream of consciousness, and the partner usually does the same. That means you are in the […]

DEFINING A PLACE

photo/gunther   July 19, 2021 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com   Every home has its entrance, perhaps a front porch or steps or inside foyer. So it is with places, usually introduced by paths, then roads. In Rockland County, N.Y., close to Gotham but oh so many miles away ifrom urbanity there is […]

DOORS

July 12, 2021 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com (ahgunther@yahoo.com)      Stare at a door long enough, and it will open by itself. No, this isn’t telekinesis, merely but sometimes profoundly, a memory trip.      We open and close, leave open and close doors throughout our existence, letting people, thoughts and life itself […]

THE POTENTIAL

Painting by gunther July 4, 2021 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      TAPPAN, N.Y. – “When in the course of human events” begins the document crafted for July 4, 1776, a federal holiday now recognized as Independence Day. That the American Experiment has barely begun is as obvious as fireworks. As explosive […]

‘CHANGEABLE’ WORLD

June 28, 2021 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com        I did not have to look up, as I was arranging my pocket money, to know the age of the fellow counting my change. He had to be about 62 or older. The clue? The bill was $11, and I gave him […]

JUST DOING THE JOB

June 21, 2021 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      While away from the daily deadline of the newspaper business (regrettably), I forever remain one of the irreverent, questioning, doubting souls with a heart that melts. So in this born-again era of claimed “fake news,” once termed, “You can’t believe everything you read […]

WORDS STILL TO BE READ

The McCullers home, South Broadway, South Nyack, N.Y. /gunther photo June 14, 2021 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com In a coincidence, if there is such, recently I walked past the late writer Carson McCullers’ Broadway house in South Nyack, N.Y., went home, and on TV was the film of her 1940 first novel, […]

SOME OLD WAYS …

June 7, 2021   By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com Envelopes — legal sized or not — may be an anachronism in the digital world, in this morphing time of Tweets, Facebook posts and cell phone text shorthand, but using them can prompt memories that probably will not happen if you hit the smartphone […]

IF THEY COULD SPEAK …

  By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@hotmail.com No Memorial Day, USA or elsewhere, is without heartfelt words and tribute, parades, wreaths, re-mourning. What is missing are the voices of the fallen. Would that we could hear them. What would they say? “Mom, I was as scared as you, but I could not show that with […]

‘SANCTUARY’

gunther photo May 17, 2021 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@hotmail.com In the virus time many have found the slower pace and solitude that eluded them in the ordinary hustle-bustle of making a living, holding things together, joining the masses on the ever-more-crowded commuter highway. Not exactly lemmings to the sea, but a march […]

A NEWSPAPERMAN

May 10, 2021 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com      Royal Clinton Taplin or RCT, as this longtime newspaperman was either admiringly or derisively called by reader, public official and wrong-doer, has hit the last keys on -30-, the traditional end for a story, joining the irreverent ones in whatever heaven, hell or […]