Mount Rushmore took a big hit last Monday. Tom Petty’s passing left a gaping hole in the Beagle Man’s personal musical stratosphere.  TP’s nine-and-a-half songs in My Favorite 300 Songs Ever rank second — behind only The Boss, and ahead of the Rolling Stones!  (The “half” represents “Stop Draggin’…

Eleven-thirty, Friday night, September 8.  I’d already opted for an E.T.B. (that’s sleepaway camp terminology for early- to-bed) — when I heard screams and commotion coming from the first floor.  I wasn’t inclined to go back down and investigate, because a.) this was Carol’s annual husband-and-wif…

Yesterday’s excitement started shortly after Kemba’s daily first-thing-in-the-morning beach session (pee/poop/fetch-sticks-in-ocean).  The sky was already beginning to look ominous, and a thunderstorm was in the forecast — but I had planned to go for a run, and you all know how much I love changing…

I’m not gonna lie:  We didn’t hit it off right away, Rosie and me.  It felt kind of like one of those arranged marriages you hear about.  Just because Tana and Beagle Man want to hang out on the bench in front of Jack’s Coffee with their breakfast sandwiches and their cold brews, doesn’t mean me a…

“Hey, could you bring down some rope from the house so we can cordon off our section of the beach to stop the crowds from pouring in?”  I said this to Robby’s friend Gabe.  It was my attempt to make fun of myself before my sons and their buddies could start doing it for me.  We were an hour-and-…

I pulled up to the fence outside Jack’s Coffee in Amagansett on my bike.  Greg and Kelly were already there, sitting on one of the benches.  Greg had just finished his workout across the street at Barry’s Bootcamp.  Kelly had driven over from Montauk, where she’d done a SoulCycle session.  Baby Ry…

Hey, it’s me.  Kemba.  Again.  Yup, that’s three posts in a row from me:  A MY PALS (Ruckus); a Duck Dog Speaks (Salty Dog), and now another MY PALS.  Anyone get the feeling that Beagle Man isn’t doing a whole lot of blogging while we’re out here at the beach?  He keeps saying that he’s working on…

My first summer out here in Amagansett — the summer of ’15, when I was 10 months old — I did something that really freaked out Beagle Man and Mom.  Beagle Man had gone for a bike ride, and I was hanging with Mom on the deck outside their bedroom.  Then she decided to go for her walk, and assumed I…

Of course my first MY PALS column is about Ruckus:  He’s more than my pal — he’s my brother. We do everything together.  Everything.  If I pee, he’ll pee right over it.  Same spot.  And vice versa.  When we get separated, we’re both really sad.  While we’re together, though, we play nonstop.  Ruck…

In my most recent post, I wrote about the dogs who crashed my high school reunion two weeks ago.  What I neglected to tell you is that just five days later, Kemba crashed the after-school Writing Club I run at Bryant Elementary School in Bridgeport.  Okay, so he didn’t exactly crash:  The kids hav…