Andy Hallman

Halloween is less than a week away, and both kids and adults are hurrying to make and purchase costumes for their parties. I have not attended a Halloween party for a few years, but the last one I attended was a memorable one. The year was 2007 and I was living in Mexico.Mexicans do not celebrate Halloween traditionally, although they celebrate a holiday around the same time with supernatural themes known as ...

The Washington Street Committee has been talking a lot recently about sidewalks and how to make the town safer for pedestrians. At the most recent meeting, I heard a suggestion to purchase mobile reflective signs that could be put around the square, or perhaps at other streets, to warn vehicles about heavy pedestrian traffic. The discussions I?ve heard have got me thinking about all the places I?ve walked to in ...

It?s well known that little kids are easily frightened of all manner of things from monsters under their bed to the boogieman hiding in their closet. Those things never scared me as a child, I?m proud to say! But there was something that terrified me throughout my childhood: extraterrestrials.I remember the exact moment in time I became fearful of aliens. My family and I were visiting friends of ours in ...

Participating in the band was one of my favorite activities growing up. I played the trumpet, taking after my mother and Chuck Mangione. At my school in Pocahontas, we started band in fifth grade, which was in the elementary school. The band room was in the high school, which was just one block north of the elementary school. It seems crazy in retrospect, but we rode a bus for one block from the elementary school ...

I have always been interested in strange names for people. You probably know some of the names celebrities have given to their children. Musician and composer Frank Zappa thought of some creative names for his children, Diva, Ahmet, Dweezil and Moon Unit. Sylvester Stallone, star of the ?Rocky? and ?Rambo? series, named his son Sage Moonblood. Actor Jason Lee of ?My Name is Earl? named his son Pilot Inspektor. My ...

You all remember the heat and sunburn advisories in July when we were going through a streak of 100-degree days. I certainly remember them, because I interviewed public health officials about the dangers of too much sun. I learned about the importance of applying sunblock not just once but every few hours that you?re outside. And yet, even armed with that knowledge, I still got sunburnt. I?ll tell you how it ...

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) ran a story on its Web site earlier this month about words coined in the United States, which are known as ?Americanisms.? The author, Matthew Engel, says Americanisms are now omnipresent in British English and many Brits don?t even know it.I was surprised to learn that words such as lengthy, reliable, talented, influential and tremendous were all born in the US of ...

This week is the first full week of classes for the students in the Washington School District. I talked to a few high school students about how they felt about returning to school. Most of them were not thrilled.I am young enough that I remember well what it was like to return to school. Heck, I started to feel down in the dumps as soon as Aug. 1 rolled around, because I knew that later that month school ...

Long before I had aspirations of being a reporter, I was interested in a career in comedy. It all started in fifth grade when our teacher told us to perform skits that had something to do with the short story we were reading that week. I was a big fan of David Letterman so I encouraged those in my group to do a skit in which I was the host of a late night talk show and that they, playing the role of the characters...

A friend of mine recently graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Apart from the knowledge he acquired through his book learning, there was one other fact he discovered in college: that he never wants to live in a big city ever again. He now lives in a town of 600 people in South Dakota. He absolutely loves it. He once told me that he prefers living in South Dakota over Iowa because Iowa ...

One of my favorite essays of George Orwell?s, and perhaps his most famous, is ?Politics and the English Language,? written in 1946. It is a criticism of modern political writing for being vague. Specifically, Orwell saw in the writing of his contemporaries several annoying habits which he believed had social implications. The thrust of Orwell?s complaints is that his fellow writers had a bias against plain ...

I have thought of purchasing a bicycle for more than a year. I went to the Optimists? Bike Auction in 2010 and saw some pretty nifty bikes. Not only that, but from the sounds of it people were purchasing quality bikes for very reasonable prices.I was not prepared to bid on one myself, though. I had not been in a bike shop in years, so I didn?t know what a good used bike should cost and how it would compare to ...

I am a loyal Chicago Cubs fan, and I?m disappointed to see the team get off to a rough start. We are a little more than one quarter through the season and the Cubs sit at 18-23. Early in the season, they accomplished something no other team had ever done. The Cubs lost their first game of the year and won their second, making them 1-1. The Cubs more or less alternated wins and losses for the next three weeks. ...

When I was a sophomore in college in 2005, I had a roommate who was an exchange student. His name was Li Xin and he was from Zhangjiakou, China. Before coming to the United States, he had spent the first few years of his collegiate career in Singapore. Singapore is an island-nation south of Malaysia in southeast Asia.My roommate got a scholarship to study at a university in Singapore, but the scholarship had a ...

What is the greatest band of all time? There are many contenders, but one stands out from the rest: The Beatles.The Beatles hailed from Liverpool, England, and consisted of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.There may be little sense in arguing over musical tastes. I have never heard of anyone learning to like a band after seeing a 17-step proof of that band?s greatness. Nevertheless, ...