Category: Uncategorized

      WASHINGTON, D.C. — Just a short walk from the fortress that is now the White House, isolated from what its present inhabitant apparently fears is the terrorism of public opinion, are the words of a flawed but arguably great president and eloquent speech-maker, Franklin D. Roosevelt, carved in the granite of his […]

December 11, 2017 By Arthur H. Gunther III BLOG: thecolumnrule.com NYACK, N.Y. — It has been a long time since I haunted Main Street as a shopper in this forever charming village north of New York City, a place never to be confused with Gotham. It has its own vibe — it’s not the city […]

December 4, 2017 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com I have a friend in Colorado, a former Rocklander, one whose family roots go back to before the Revolution, who would walk into a room with sun trying to pop its buttons through a brilliantly lit window shade and focus just on that, even if the […]

November 27, 2017 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com Doors can hold fascination because they are portals and keys to the ordinary things we do each day, like leaving the house or coming home and because they are metaphors for life, such as leaving a job or coming into a new situation. No matter what, […]

  By Arthur Henry Gunther III thecolumnrule.com Since printing began and the first sheets of paper brought information to the masses, newspapers could count on people buying enough copies to keep the profession going; to support advertisers; to hold circulation stable; most of all to protect democracy by reporting and commenting on the news. Now […]

September 13, 2017 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com All professions have shop talk, but that rhythm is more likely to play in tune not in the daily grind but after the job, most often in retirement. Such was the conversation the other night at an arts gathering at the Edward Hopper House in Nyack, […]

November 5, 2017 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com NYC — A parent has the right to “kvell,” even if you are not of the Jewish faith. I am not, but having been raised in a community of so many delightful descendants of Abraham, I picked up a few words and phrases that come in […]

  October 28, 2017 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com After weeks of little rain, this part of the greater patch — slightly upstate New York — is at this writing getting very wet, the bath due to a storm with its sights set more on Long Island and Cape Cod than Rockland County. Still, […]

As one of the many volunteers in the Rockland Interfaith Breakfast Program and as a strong supporter of the overnight/outreach program Helping Hands-Safe Haven, I was asked to write the following. By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com It is 1940, and the Great Depression is persisting after 11 years. At Maud Gunther’s Spring Valley, N.Y., home, […]

October 16, 2017 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com A very long time ago, I bought a nozzle for a garden hose so that I could water new shrubs at a new house. There was then just one child, who at almost three would turn the spray on me. That hose, with that nozzle, took […]

October 9, 2017 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com NYACK, N.Y. — It was easy, at this fund-raiser aiming to protect and restore a 200-year-old village house, to imagine social gatherings in the 1930s-‘50s at which Helen Hayes and Charles MacArthur held court. Easy to picture, leaning against the 1800’s living room molding. Lawrence Olivier […]

THE FALL SEASON October1-2, 2017 By Arthur Henry Gunther III thecolumnrule.com Once, so very long ago, almost in another age but I know it still must relate to the accumulation of living, just part of me, you see, gave someone a small birthday present. It was the first gift for a new someone, and I […]

“Talking Skyscrapers”   September 25, 2017 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com NEW YORK, N.Y. — The area where I live is just north of this famous, at times infamous, metropolis, enough distance in my youth to have enjoyed a life apart —rural countryside, building huts in the woods, traipsing through fruit orchards, riding with […]

September 18, 2017 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com NYACK, N.Y. — This Hudson River village has a park with a usual name, Memorial, just like the one I played in as a kid in another community, though this also was an occasional spot for imaginary doings when my parents shopped here on long-ago Saturdays. This […]

  Der Einfluss,’ acrylic on wood panel. September 4, 2017 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com In German, “Einfluss” means “influence,” and so that is how a recent painting gained its name. I was intrigued by a photograph taken by a Deutsche designer and decided to do my interpretation via acrylics and wood. She deserved […]

August 28, 2017 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com Received a chatty, welcome letter from a special friend whom I have not seen since 2006, and before that the early 1990s, and before that 1981 and 1966. Might seem odd that there was a letter at all since what sort of friendship meets on just […]

August 21, 2017 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com NYACK, N.Y. — As a former trustee and now volunteer at the Edward Hopper House Art Center in the birthplace home of the famed American realist painter, I have heard noises here in the early morning quiet of a Federalist/Queen Anne structure that gives off warm […]

By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com If, at the 11th hour of the 11th day in the 11th month of each year, from 1918 on when “The War to End All Wars” was over, you would begin to toll a bell 20 times a minute for the 37,468,904 total in casualties, it would take more than […]

August 7, 2017 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com One of the givens in growing up in the semi-rural county of Rockland, New York, in my 1950s years was that we were surrounded by diversity. It had always been that way, since the Dutch days and before that those of the various, mostly intinerant Native-American […]

July 31, 2017 By Arthur Henry Gunther III Not all eulogies are truthfully written, because there is a natural spin to comments made about the departed, much like the wailing of a relative or two at a wake for someone they actually disliked in life. The good-form factor seems to kick in, in the balance […]

July 24, 2017 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com One of the customs of an old-style newspaper hot metal composing room — where printing type was cast in lead by brilliantly designed mechanical marvels called Linotypes and then placed in page forms called chases so that the process could continue to the presses and then […]

July 17, 2017 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com Manhattan — It is said that the Statue of Liberty beckons  the “ huddled masses,” but this past Saturday in New York City, the great spectrum of people came to midtown instead. The area, from Grand Central at 42nd St. on the East Side to the […]

July 10, 2017 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com   College is not for every one, and even for the collegiate, there may be a best time to go. It’s an individual moment, and getting there can be tough. I was there, once, actually several times before the degree was conferred several years into actual […]

July 4th Weekend, 2017 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com NYACK, N.Y. — You would expect July Fourth weekend — and the gathering in public area that comes with that — to be boisterous, noisy, of course, celebratory. It is all that in this village along the Hudson River just north of New York City, […]

June 26, 2017 By Arthur Henry Gunther III thecolumnrule.com With Paris under recent attack in a discordant world in which bad people exploit differences and legitimate need, in a beautiful city of proud and diverse citizenry, there is a constant hum that cannot be quieted. It is reassuring in the punctuation of bombs and terrorism, […]

By Arthur H. Gunther III Bahgunther@yahoo.com If you are fortunate, before you grow up but as you so quickly 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 […]

June 12, 2017 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com SAN ANTONIO, Texas — If music is a leveler, the proof is here. This city of mixed heritage, constant politeness and high temperatures seems to sing its way through the day and evening with song. There is music everywhere. This traveler, however reluctant, did finally make […]

June 5, 2017 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com If you could see a person’s emotions, thoughts, likes and dislikes, even the soul, you would be looking at an abstract painting, for the elements of each reveal existence. Line, form and color are the abstract, however jumbled some or even many may term the painting, […]

By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.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 as you, but I could not show that […]

“On a Hill,” acrylic on wood May 22, 2017 By Arthur Henry Gunther III thecolumnrule.com Every child, kid, needs a place to get lost. You can’t always be with parents or siblings or even friends. There has to be your own spot, be it imaginary, through reading or day-dreaming, or actual. I day-dreamed enough to […]

“APPLES AT SINK” May 15, 2017 By Arthur Henry Gunther III thecolumnrule.com In the Rockland County, N.Y. of my late 1940s into 1950s youth, taking the same, long bicycle ride twice but a month apart often meant witnessing a disappearing landscape. This was post-World War II suburbia, and rural land so close to New York […]

May 8, 2017 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com My grandmother was used to seeing road-worn men in old but once-pressed suit jackets at her back porch in Spring Valley, N.Y. They were there during the 1930s Great Depression, hobos off the Erie line looking for a bit of work and the sandwich to follow. […]

May 1, 2017 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com I needed a large circular template for a painting, and since neccesity is the mother of invention, I glanced across the basement and saw an old 33 rpm vinyl record, and the roughly 12-inch disc did the trick. It was a bit of irony that the […]

By Arthur H. Gunther III Thecolumnrule.com I live in Rockland County, N.Y., a semi-rural land when I was young but now a New York City suburb that is graying with older housing stock, demands for more urban-like density, rising infrastructure costs and other threats to the quality of life. It is the typical U.S. suburb, […]

April 16, 2017 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com When my son Arthur IV bought his small Upper Nyack, N.Y.,  house from Leroy Buckout, the owner explained that he long ago had adopted a way to deal with the lack of closets, not uncommon in a 1929 home. “When I buy a shirt, I get […]

April 10, 2017 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com Some time ago, at a table of friends and family through marriage, the talk was of newspapers — media in general, actually — and how you “can’t believe what you read, what you hear, maybe even what you see.” One person in particular, a good man […]

April 3, 2017 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com In Nyack, N.Y., just a few hundred yards from the great historic river named the Hudson, the shores of which will soon be joined by two new bridges to replace one just 62 years old, stands a small barn so classic in shape and so reminiscent […]

March 27, 2017 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com When we come across the Jacob Riis photographs of late-1800’s lower New York City poverty, in his book “How the Other Half Lives,” most of us feel sad yet grateful for our family’s escape, if forebears had lived, say, in Irish Five Points, as some of […]

  March 20, 2017 By Arthur Henry Gunther III thecolumnrule.com One of the benefits of social media (and there are significant downsides) is that much information is presented, all of it requiring prudent review. But so deep are the vaults that many looksees are self-educating, even the “fake news.” Included in the social media explosion […]

March 13, 2017 By Arthur Henry Gunther III thecolumnrule.com My week just past had two “JR” moments, and the thought of that had me smiling. In a time when simplicity and common sense, just the basic black and white of things, seem to be obscured by grayness, slowness and complexity, the get-it-done, no-big deal method was […]

STILL RIDING ABOUT March 6, 2017 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com I wrote “The Column Rule” as a weekly– at times semi-weekly — newspaper essay for 25 years, principally because I had the opportunity, and there was never a dearth of subjects in my countryfied suburb of Rockland County, N.Y. The column had readership, […]

By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com There was a moment when the day was better spent riding on roads through state parks or hiking trails than focusing on the timepiece that ticks away your life. Call it education. Not all learning happens in school, though you feel guilty if responsibility nevertheless calls for hitting the […]

  “Beach,” acrylic on canvas, AHG 2017 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com Waterside — it’s an endless frontier, a blank canvas, with the sea’s waves your personal brushes. If a calm, still lake, that’s meditation. In retirement, people move to homes near water perhaps because the turmoil of life — jobs, raising family, paying […]

February 13, 2017 By Arthur Henry Gunther III thecolumnrule.com Some say all Americans should declare they are Muslims, so that the re-energized prejudice, meanness and even hatred of 2017 can be nipped before there is horror. If enough Germans had stood with fellow but Jewish citizens, millions would have lived. There is a time for […]

February 7, 2017 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com Tea may be for reading leaves, but there is more to the brew. There are reasons why the Irish, the English, the Chinese, Indians and those of so many cultures not only enjoy their tea but are tethered to it, for it is a port in […]

  January 30, 2017 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com Couches are for more than potatoes, of course, though in my working years it seemed I never tarried long enough on one before falling asleep. These days a comfy sofa — davenport, chesterfield, divan by other names — near a fireplace on a coldish night, […]

January 22, 2017 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com I  do not know at which point you realize there is less road in front of you than behind, but for me it came on the supermarket line just the other day. I was the only Caucasian in a four-person queue, and I suddenly thought that […]

  January 16, 2016   By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com The first photograph above this column is a 2016 shot I took of the Austrian Alps from the Königssee, Germany’s third deepest lake and with water so clear that only electric boats are allowed. What we saw was beautiful, with snow still in the […]

January 2, 2017 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com “The Front Page,” a reverent bow to the once more-irreverent news profession, written by Nyackers Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur and recently revived on Broadway, could have been staged in the 1930s-1970s city room of the original Rockland Journal-News just blocks away from Hecht and MacArthur […]

  December 26, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com Rita-Eileen Glynn Smith, a former Rockland County, N.Y., resident, notes on Facebook that she owns her great aunt’s Singer sewing machine, complete with accessories and the equally famous oil can. She has history in her possession, the nation’s, that of the earlier emerging middle class, […]

My son, Arthur Henry Gunther IV, inhabits this space each holiday season. Here is his 2016 story.   By Arthur Henry Gunther IV ​     It had been a strange year. One of those years where cynics seemed to stand up a little straighter, like some kind of posture I told you so. One […]

  December 12, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com It was not surprising that my childhood friend, Rose Marie Strippoli, appeared calm in    announcing via Facebook that her beloved cat, Maggie, had passed after 18.5 years. I recall an earlier serenity under stress. Living then — spring 1952 — in south Spring Valley, […]

December 5, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com      It was a crisp fall morning, and the third-grader had 15 cents in his corduroy pants pocket, a rarity since it was usually empty except for the tissue his mom stuffed there. The kid was always sniffling.      Feeling rich on the nearly […]

November 21, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com “All the News That’s Fit to Print” has long been the masthead motto of the New York Times. The intention and obligation of that phrase to help keep a society free cannot be underestimated. It also is in sharp contrast to today’s social media postings that […]

November 14, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com      The most important thing about trying to do good is that you have to do it in silence, which means no horn tooting, certainly, but also no emotional self-rejection if, occasionally, the person you help could care less. It happens — people in need, […]

November 7, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com      For a third grader on Nov. 5, 1952, the day after President Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected, the ordinary was still in place, in my neck of the woods anyway. We boys were wearing winter corduroys, and the girls still had to freeze in […]

October 31, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com      For this writer, there is an early Tuesday morning ritual, about 3:30, when a coffee break allows brief respite from volunteer cooking duties in my childhood village of Spring Valley, N.Y. Been doing this for awhile, but now an added twist is like dessert with […]

October 24, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com Americans are stressed by a presidential election that is removed from the vaulted experience most of us were taught to expect. Though there have been many rancorous contests and too many unqualified Oval Office candidates (and presidents), 2016 is a special disaster that has pulled us […]

October 17, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com Bob Dylan, this deeply gifted soul, poetically defined lives and direction so far back. Fan or not, we might hear again what he had to say, especially in this world and nation nearly gone mad. He did warn. Garnering the Nobel Prize for Literature should be […]

  October 10, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com A tall, gaunt man with the cares of the world deeply set in the lines of his craggy face walked into the big room and sat in the back as two presidential candidates “debated” in the current contest. The man was black, though not recognizable […]

October 2, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com I once knew of — I didn’t get to know — a witty, young woman of strong intelligence, humming work ethic, high standards and deep lust for living. By all accounts, she has gone on to the exact life she sought from early on, perhaps with […]

September 26, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com A long silence in the car, but it was not the dulling sort that makes you fidget and wish for time to fly because you are this and she is that and you no longer meet on common ground. Nor was the still moment the one […]

By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com Curiosity, we are warned, killed the cat, but the naysayers never tell you about the nine lives. There are other chances. In the University of Higher Education that is life, you can earn a doctorate via Curiosity 101, 201, 301, 401. Curiosity was a welcome push for Thomas Edison and […]

  September 11, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com In Germany, where the two world wars largely of that nation’s doing are old history to the present generation, there is still reminder of sadness in the town platz memorials to the dead and in the rebuilt cities. Yet there is also the deliberate mindset, […]

Sept. 5, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com This is crazy time in America, though if you subscribe to the thought that things happen for a reason, maybe we will learn why. But Labor Day is supposed to be free of deep thinking, so I guess any of that should be on hold. It’s […]

August 28, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com If you go up the Hudson River a bit from my area in Rockland County, N.Y., say about 30 miles to Beacon, there remains a quiet that has largely left the busy suburbs, parts of which have become hybrid urban and have taken on that rhythm, […]

By Arthur H. Gunther III We’ve got this Irish lass in the food program, you see, and wouldn’t you know that the gal from down Dublin way just has to have her tea first thing before the servin’ of the breakfast. It’s a right fine thing to do that, to have the lady’s tea, Barry’s […]

August 15, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com On a Sunday morning when I had finished my own 6 o’clock coffee and was headed over the mountain to downtown Nyack, N.Y., I saw this fellow and his dog, the mtan maybe 60, the collie 5-6. Both had left their pick-up on Clausland Mt. Road […]

August 15, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com On a Sunday morning when I had finished my own 6 o’clock coffee and was headed over the mountain to downtown Nyack, N.Y., I saw this fellow and his dog, the man maybe 60, the collie 5-6. Both had left their pick-up on Clausland Mt. Road […]

August 8, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com     Now retired, I wrote hundreds of newspaper editorials endorsing candidates — local, state, national, These  days I often cast another in my mind to make an election choice. And so it is with the presidential contest. HILLARY OUR ONLY CHOICE; TRUMP DANGER TO WORLD  If U.S. […]

  By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com I am a self-discovered “painter” of limited ability, but there is satisfaction nonetheless, especially in a retirement where no longer are there the now-cherished deadlines of my newspaper past. It is more than something to do, for I assign myself, and I hit the job just like I […]

July 25, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com With all the sadness in the land over the deliberate targeting and killing of police officers as well as the harming of citizens by law enforcement, I will tell you of two local encounters that perhaps simplify but also articulate the issues today. Last week, at […]

July 18, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com Just before the pre-suburban explosion of the 1950s in my part of lower New York State, in a fruit orchard area fittingly off Cherry Lane, a young fellow, second grader, had just left a dream world adjacent to his backyard, a former polo field and then […]

  July 11, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com Equal time for Hillary in an unequal presidential race, in a time of sad national inequality. The last mildly satirical column suggested The Donald doesn’t want the presidency, that he never thought his sales job would connect, that he’ll give up the nation’s highest office […]

July 4, 2016, weekend By Arthur H. Gunther ahgunther@hotmail.com So, “The Donald” won the presidency, and now we all wear red baseball-style caps with  the imperial slogan (“Let’s Make America Great Again”), purchased exclusively through the Trump Store. Seriously, if the former TV reality star, casino operator,  office space builder and bankruptcy court attendee wanted […]

June 27, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com Photographers, the inspired ones, the gifted, are observers who emphasize the essence of their subject, who snap the shutter as reporters of an expression, an event, an emotion, yes, but who, because of an innate sense of knowing the right angle to set the composition and […]

June 19, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com Father’s Day is a time for special reverence, especially when your dad is gone. It’s almost easier then, sad to say, because you don’t readily recall the difficult moments. All children have them with their fathers. All fathers have them with their children. Maybe even more […]

June 13, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com The terrible news that a gunman walked into a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., and destroyed 50 people, leaving 53 others hospitalized in the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history has to bring national tears and renewed debate on selling automatic weapons so freely that sick […]

June 6, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com NÜRNBERG, Germany — This once-again beautiful city in the center of Deutschland, removed for more than 70 years now from World War II bombing and almost complete devastation, is both typically German and Bavarian: There is the no-nonsense, can-do, will-do national work ethic and the good […]

May 30, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com When my double Great-Grandfather Robert Wilhelm Guenther left Appomattox and then his mustering-out as a Union soldier in June 1865, he accomplished the greatest feat of his four-year “career” — he survived. So many of his comrades did not — in the First and Second Battles […]

May 23, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com A shiny new hotel has opened in Nyack, N.Y., a Hudson River village that for decades was the work home of newspaper stiffs like me. I hope The Time Nyack enjoys success, but I wish today’s media had added color to press reports of its opening. […]

May 16, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@yahoo.com Weiden, Germany — On a recent walk here in the centuries-old farmland of this Bavarian region while visiting family, I came upon a war memorial, a bit worn and not as cared for as when it was dedicated perhaps 20 years ago. Such remembrances often suffer […]

By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com Even if people once in our lives have left us or we them, or if circumstances — changes — took them away, there is certainty in familiar shadows, a feeling more than apparition actually, that besides you is the person long gone. You may be walking down a childhood street […]

May 1, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com Americans share a “document of intent” with our British cousins. For our former royal mother country, it is the 1215 Magna Carta, which actually was reissued, modified and was more relevant to the rights of 13th century barons than those of the common man. The American […]

April 24, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com No man, no woman, no child is free as their god intended if their history, their inheritance, their rightful destiny are lassoed by another master. That was the Irish in the British occupation from the 12th century, in the 1800 Act of Union that merged the nation […]

April 18, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com Having just returned from a family trip to Germany and Austria, and immediately thrown as an American into the country I cherish, the horizon has been expanded that I cannot fully come back. One half the mindset is elsewhere. I realized this even before I left […]

By Arthur H. Gunther III Ahgunther@hotmail.com MUNICH, Germany — The fifth-generation descendant of a Prussian family that had an umlaut over the “u” in Gunther has returned to a sort of fatherland. I arrived here Friday to visit my son and daughter in law, who is a U.S. Army physician in Bavaria. To get to Germany, […]

  By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com All periods in history have their idiosyncrasies, stylized to the individual, the mojo of the moment, the then-current trends, the arts, the music, whether there are wars or economic difficulties or actual progress of the species. If we live long enough to take the local and the express […]

  March 28, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com Why is “The Donald” popular? This one sentence tells us why. When the media, and that includes some of my colleagues, enables a showman, a magician, an entertainer, then the person becomes all of that and more so. Trump, the likely Republican Party presidential candidate […]

March 21, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com They buried Risa last week, a woman of just 57 years, 30 or so homeless. A strongly independent individual, her cancer came quickly and thoroughly, but it could not easily quiet her voice. That was a fight. We at the Rockland Interfaith Breakfast Program in Spring […]

‘ROOM AT THE TABLE’ March 14, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com One good-natured joke as we approach St. Patrick’s Day is that if you want to read in Heaven, saddle up to an Irishman or woman for the titles, but if you wish to concentrate, hide behind a tree, for the wee leprechauns […]

March 7, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com In my youth, in Spring Valley, N.Y., we school kids were all Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, and at Christmas time, we sang songs for both the holiday and Hanukkah. But beyond these events, there was no one pointing to another and saying, “Here’s the Italian kid,” […]

  By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com Each person’s creative process is suited to the individual. For example, if I write a column, I may have an idea on the spot or one a longtime before, squirreled away until it has stewed enough to be further seasoned, prepared, delivered, and, hopefully, digested. I never think […]

February 22, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com Not sure how the man born on this date, Feb. 22 in 1732, would have fared in the recent tumultuous presidential primary voting or if the “father of our country” would have been elected in November 2016. Such are the dynamic shifts following the waves of […]

February 14, 2015 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com If we could count the number of valentines not sent on this day in seasons past, they might amount to many unanswered letters. For that is what a valentine is, a response. Perhaps beyond the teacher-inspired handmade cards that you were to bring home to your […]

February 8, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com Any good farmer knows that if you don’t plant the best seed in cultivated soil and nurture growth against nature and other adversity, the pickings will prove slim. Simple truth, but the basics are often overlooked. There is also the true story of a prize-winning corn […]

February 1, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com The scene was a stage set of sorts, and as with all theater, the place, the people, even the time were of less relative importance than the happening. And it was that, a telling moment. I was at an elementary school concert of third-through-fifth-grade chorus and […]

January 25, 2016 By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com The news clip said that New York City and its suburbs were “paralyzed” by the snowstorm, which dumped two inches per hour and which totaled more than in the famous Blizzard of 1888. OK, but the date was not Jan. 23, 2016, but Dec. 26, 1947. Life, […]

By Arthur H. Gunther III ahgunther@hotmail.com Literally, if you think about it, re-tying one’s shoes can pause your life just enough to alter things. It’s the same argument that if you had left the house one minute later, you might never have seen her face. Write your own story, but you see what I mean. […]