[This Commentary originally appeared in the January 10, 1991 issue of The Mendon-Honeoye Falls-Lima Sentinel.]
Just over twenty years ago, a new game began sprouting among aging pinball machines in arcades across the land. Its instant popularity helped solidify the video game market. Two things distinguished PAC-MAN from its immediate predecessors and, especially, the granddaddy of all video games – Space Invaders.
Foremost, PAC-MAN employed a novel Continue Reading “PAC-MAN – A Last Look Back”




Tourist Traps to Timeless Landscapes
We’d long left Chicago’s skyline behind for the flatlands. Of course, before the wide-open spaces, we traversed Wisconsin and Minnesota. It’s kind of arbitrary, but somehow poetic, to declare that crossing the Mississippi River truly makes you feel “out West” for the first time.
I-90 crosses the Mississippi on the Wisconsin-Minnesota border immediately south of Lake Onalaska. Yeah, they call it a lake, but it looks like it’s part of the river. Stretching 4 miles across, this is the widest span of the Mississippi River (if you include the Lake).
Oddly, crossing the Mississippi didn’t immediately scream “out West.” Instead, my brain went Continue Reading “Tourist Traps to Timeless Landscapes”