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Howard Daniel, Pen-for-Rent Principal
Courthouse Square Reunified – More Than the Sum of Two Halves
/2 Comments/in California, History, North Bay, Places I've lived, Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, Writing & editing /by Howard DanielI wrote this article in December 2015 for the 2016 edition of the annual Santa Rosa Chamber of Commerce directory (aka the Santa Rosa Community Resource and Business Guide), which was published this week. Text begins beneath photo “Charming” … “tempting” … “idyllic” … “stunning” … “a jewel” … “a delight” … “great for families […]
Seven Centuries of ‘Sex, Lies But No Videotape’
/0 Comments/in History, Humor, Writing & editing /by Howard DanielA book whose contents I’ve been editing on and off over the past year and a half has now been published. Pancheri – Our Story is the life’s avocational work of an extraordinary guy, now a friend, Gene Pancheri, a retired chemical engineer living in Cincinnati, who discovered his family’s roots in a sub-Alpine valley […]
‘One of the Cowboy States’
/0 Comments/in Humor, Japan, Places I've lived, Recollections, Russia-USSR /by Howard DanielMy last Foreign Service overseas assignment was to Japan in 1985. This was no ordinary assignment to our embassy in Tokyo or one of the U.S. consulates around the country. No, this assignment was to the U.S. Pavilion at an international exposition, Tsukuba Expo ’85 (http://bit.ly/1RweFds), held that summer in Tsukuba Science City, 35 miles […]
‘Trumpenik’
/0 Comments/in Language, Recollections, Thoughts /by Howard DanielThe Donald and Il Duce: A more than passing resemblance? Hearing the name of Donald Trump, the blowhard candidate, makes me think of a Yiddish word, trumpenik, that my grandfather would use from time to time about someone he regarded as a lowlife. I looked it up online and found this (http://bit.ly/1pvJWXB) in connection with […]
Capturing a Voice
/0 Comments/in Writing & editing /by Howard DanielClients often tell me I’ve captured their voice in, for example, ghost-written speeches or newspaper opinion pieces (op-eds). The funny thing is that I have no idea how to capture someone’s voice and never spend time or effort trying to do so. What I do instead is simply write as clearly, concisely and engagingly as […]
Surreal Welcome to Leningrad
/2 Comments/in History, Places I've lived, Recollections, Russia-USSR /by Howard DanielBank Bridge over the Griboyedov Canal, one of many canals in St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad), sometimes called “the Venice of the North.” As a young Foreign Service officer, I arrived in Leningrad in early July 1976 to begin a two-year assignment at the U.S. consulate-general in that city, the second-largest in the USSR. I flew […]
The Fly
/0 Comments/in Brazil, Family, Humor, Places I've lived, Recollections /by Howard DanielThe following incident took place one evening in 1972 in our apartment, when I was working in my first Foreign Service post at the U.S. embassy in Brasilia. My wife (clarification: my “starter wife,” as a funny friend likes to call a first spouse to whom one is no longer wed) had gone to bed […]
What Car Is This?
/0 Comments/in Holidays, Humor, Places I've lived, Recollections, Russia-USSR, Writing & editing /by Howard DanielLyrics that I dreamed up for the benefit of our kids at Christmastime 1977 when I was working at the U.S. consulate-general in Leningrad, USSR. We had just washed our (very dirty) blue Saab. These lyrics were originally published in the Neva Neva News, the occasional newsletter of the consulate-general staff. Sung to the tune of the […]