ClimbingSky

Why Baseball, Books, and the Grateful Dead matter

December 2025

  • THROWBACK THURSDAY: “Looking for a Sunset Bird in Winter” by Robert Frost

    Throwback Thursdays” at ClimbingSky feature posts I wrote over a 15 year period for various blogs. This was first posted on December 11, 2011. Winter has come to the North Country. Last year by this time we were already buried under snow and had much more still to come. This year there has been just two dustings, Read more

  • BOOK REVIEW: Mist-Walker by Barbara Fradken

    I have said it before here at ClimbingSky: I love a good Police Procedural. The book I am reviewing here today, Mist-Walker by Barbara Fradkin, fits the bill well. Mist-Walker does a wonderful job of blending the tension of a Police Procedural with the eerie pull of Psychological Suspense. Set in a rugged, fog-shrouded landscape, the novel follows Inspector Michael Green as he’s drawn Read more

  • SHORT STORY REVIEW: “Christmas Meeting” by Rosemary Timperley

    In addition to Christmas Mysteries, another British tradition is the Christmas Ghost Story. The most famous of these Christmas Ghost Stories, of course, is A Christmas Carol by Dickens. There is just something wonderful about sitting in front of a fire reading tales of murder and haunted houses. And even if you do not have a fireplace Read more

  • MUSIC MONDAY: Courtney Marie Andrews

    Here is one of finest singer/songwriters I know, and a regular on listening rotation, Courtney Marie Andrews. I first saw her at 7th Street Entry in Minneapolis sometime before Covid and have been following her career since. Here is a link to her Tiny Desk Concert. Enjoy! Read more

  • BOOK REVIEW: The Various Haunts of Men by Susan Hill

    I am a huge fan of Susan Hill’s ghost stories, especially her masterpiece The Woman in Black. I have had her Simon Serrailler Detective Series on my To-Be-Read list for a long time. The only reason I hadn’t started it years ago is because I was “saving” it for the time when I would need a great mystery. Finally, in early November, I caved. Read more

  • On Preparing a Poetry Manuscript

    It has been two years since I last sent something out for publication, and almost three years since my last publication. One of my goals for 2026 is to start sending stuff out again. I am starting with a book-length manuscript of my poems and am asking Sue (my wife) to help me compile it. One thing I think Read more

  • FRIDAY FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Merton on Humility

    Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real. ~ Thomas Merton Read more

  • THROWWBACK THURSDAY: Blogging in December

    Throwback Thursdays” at ClimbingSky feature posts I wrote over a 15 year period for various blogs. This was first posted on December 2, 2017. December has arrived in the North Country. Not with the usual cold and snow this year. But warm and mild. We know the other proverbial shoe will drop, but for now we enjoy Read more

  • SHORT STORY REVIEW: “The Murder of Santa Claus” by P.D. James

     “The Murder of Santa Claus” is a Locked-Room Christmas-Mystery (two great sub-genres for the price of one!). It can be found in a volume called Sleep No More: Six Murderous Tales by P.D. James. It is a story told 40+ years after a Christmas Eve murder in an atmospheric Cotswold manor house. P.D. James uses Read more

  • BOOK REVIEW: Reading Kidnapped Again

    I have lost count now of how many times I have actually read this classic adventure. Yet in October, I got an urge yet again to give Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson another rereading. Stevenson and Arthur Conan Doyle are the prose writers who have the most amount of work that I regularly find myself returning to Read more