I wanted to be a pharmacist. I liked the way our local pharmacist was always dressed in a nice white coat; he looked very calm, you'd give him money, and he'd give you something that you wanted to buy.
I've traveled around the country and I read local newspapers and all of that, and it's a sad, sad thing to go from city to city and see the small newspapers and they're tiny. They're tiny not only in size but also in scope.
The hometown economic elite - rich local families or individuals whom people used to praise or revile, read about in the society pages, and gossip about incessantly - disappeared from most American cities decades ago.
I love boxing. I box in a local boxing gym in London. I usually spar. But I've done two fights and I lost both of them admirably. I didn't realize how much it would hurt for them to actually hit me.
I guess I would definitely feel a bit of a void in what people are getting from music these days. And I think that the problem lies not so much on the listener. People kind of listen to what is presented to them, whether it be on the radio or at a lo...
There was this mountain village in Russia where my music was getting in on some German radio station. I remember this because music used to get up to Saskatchewan from Texas. Late at night after the local station closed down.
The local music community here was dying for a place to record, so we started doing acoustic, folk and bluegrass and then did rock projects for other bands, as well as for my son Tal and my own work.
With prurient absorption and only minimal risk, we can pretend to be the subject of the lead article on the front page of the Style section of our local newspaper for as long as it takes to finish our morning coffee.
The backbone of our nation's domestic defense against terrorist attacks will continue to be the men and women in local law enforcement and emergency services.
Traditional Albanian society was based on a clan system and was further divided into brotherhoods and bajraks. The bajrak system identified a local leader, called a bajrakar, who could be counted on to provide a certain number of men for military dut...
My entertainment was going to the local dollar movie theatre on the weekend, where I watched old black and white movies. If you wanted current movies, you had to drive to the big city.
I try to make myself do things for other people when I'm feeling down. Like, you can call your local hospital and help out in the pediatric unit.
In my neighborhood, everyone had an opinion on the local cantor. You didn't go to a synagogue to listen to the rabbi's sermon. You went to listen to the cantor. It was like a concert.
I was dishwasher, then promoted to chef in a local kitchen in a restaurant in Seattle, and I was working on a building site as well, putting in insulation and painting houses, and then doing some classes at a community college nearby.
It's all about fair trade, and helping people eating locally grown stuff. We're recycling everything. We're trying to tour in the most conscious way possible, environmentally and socially.
Priest organizations around the country, both local and national, should realize that their membership has a serious image problem and undertake programs to improve it.
Like so much in Singapore, admission to the Marina Bay's casino is hierarchical: Free for anyone with an international passport, costly for locals, off-limits to migrant workers altogether.
But the real growth I must say in terms of the public sector for the Labor Department is really at state and local levels. That's where the real opportunities are today.
I really think more fledgling novelists - and many current and even established novelists - should get out into the real world and cover local politics, sports, culture, and crime and write it up on deadline.
Local politics, like everything else, are not what they used to be. But the fact is that our political system - like our physical existence - still breaks down along geographical lines.
I'm confident that the commitment of the co-chairs of the Ferguson Commission - along with the work of other local leaders and the Missouri General Assembly - will have a very positive impact as this community works to move forward.
