Leah Daskalakis Casner
FREELANCE WRITER
Former Fellow at CUNY Writers' Institute Specializing in Current Events Commentary OpEds Humor
The River Reporter
Blurbs
A still from "Grapes of Wrath." The Grape Cluster of Damocles attacks in the horror classic. Grapevines wreak havoc on humanity in revenge for the end of Prohibition.
Actual New York Times blurb:
“Pride and Prejudice: Jane Austen classic about five sisters out to nab husbands… the better to produce an heir to save the family farm.”
Coming up this week on New York’s Classics channel:
“Gone with the Wind”
The best Oscar-winning adaptation of Martha Mitchell’s bestseller. The O’Hara family suffe...
The River Reporter
Eye of the tiger
Back when I was commuting, on the way to work one day someone stepped on the back of my shoe. I had to stop and bend down to slip my foot back in, which in the stampede of people getting off the Staten Island Ferry at rush hour is a hazardous maneuver.
And I thought, I am so sick of getting stepped on. Bumped into. Banged with a shopping cart. Walked through. So much so that when an assignment in a writing class was to make myself a character in a story, I wrote about killing the man who cras...
The River Reporter
It’s not about the bike
"I am NOT one of those happy smiling old people strapping on their helmets and taking leisurely rides down well-paved country roads."”
After reading the anti-ebike Atlantic magazine article, titled “Ebikes are Monstrous!” I dashed downstairs to my garage, but—whew! My ebike was not “pervaded with murk,” as the writer had declared. I was greatly relieved.
To the bikelash I encountered as a bicycle rider in New York City, we can now add ebikes as targets for random hate. As that writer said, ne...
The River Reporter
After all, small is beautiful
Tiny Equinunk has a lot to offer
EQUINUNK, PA — While the census-designated area of Equinunk stretches miles to the south and east, the tiny, exquisite Equinunk Historic District sits at the intersection of Equinunk Creek with the Delaware River, eight miles below the birth of the Main Stem of the river at the confluence of the East and West branches.
This northeastern corner of Pennsylvania, known as the Upper Delaware region, is part of the glaciated low plateau section of the Allegheny Pla...
The River Reporter
Rolling in the deep
Like many of my things, my house is a franken-house, patched together from disparate and not-always-compatible parts. The kitchen and first floor bedroom (a courtesy title bestowed by the selling real estate agent on a mud room) are a portion of the original 1880s house, some of which collapsed about 70 years ago.
The ruins of two stone walls outline a space in the yard. Instead of rebuilding the collapsed portion, the earlier owner added a stacked three-level addition on the opposite end: a ...
The River Reporter
Scrappled, brains?
I’m scared of scrapple.
Wikipedia charmingly describes it as a “semi-solid congealed loaf.”
Congealed is a creepy word. Semi-solid might be an accurate description, but it just doesn’t sound the way food should be textured—it is not a phrase you would read in food critics’ reviews, though they unashamedly will write “dried lacto-fermented,” “carbon-negative vodka,“ “beguilingly unctuous,” like a come-hither slime mold and “salt-macerated,” in just one essay alone. Semi-solid has a gloppy, muc...
The River Reporter
The pen marks at midnight
Before I could leave it behind forever, I had to squeeze whatever money I could from New York.
After 20 years at home and half a philosophy M.A., a year of pavement pounding and ten thousand resumes emailed into the void, of course I had to end up there: the graveyard shift, midnight to 8 a.m., proofreading 401(k) reports.
It wasn’t quite a bloody horse’s head in my bed, but the cruelly smashed blue pencil laid at my computer station still spoke pretty loud. The trainee typesetters were on my...
The River Reporter
Don't crone for me
Recently, while noticing my feet in the bathtub, I realized it has been decades since I had overheard indirect meant-to-be-overheard comments on my appearance as I walked by. Things like “I don’t like her hair” or “She should wear more makeup.”
Going about my everyday business was the equivalent of parading on a stage in front of judges at a beauty contest, though the people making those comments did not themselves appear as qualified as judges, or decent human beings, as the judge who repeal...
The River Reporter
Country manners
Twenty-five years ago, on a very tight budget, we brought the kids to the Shawangunk Mountains to climb and romp. The bargain motel we stayed in would have been a great setting for a creepy out-in-the-woods-type horror movie, as it came supplied with badly fitted doors which creaked when the wind blew and when it didn’t, mystery stains on the bedspread and non-familial hair in the tub.
On Saturday morning I was up somewhat before nine, before the rest of the family, and went out for a walk in...
The River Reporter
Call Waiting
Verizon agent
Appreciate you for waiting on the queue. You have been connected to a live agent. According to our message assistant, this is about having a network issue. Is this accurate?
Leah Casner
yes
no cell service sixth day now
Oh my… I’ll check what’s going on and find your best route on that network issue. For verification, may I please have your name?
Leah Casner.
I was told on chat yesterday there was a network issue, but no outages are showing up on the Verizon site where it says o...
The River Reporter
You really got me
My algorithms haven’t learned as much about me as they think. I would have assumed relocating to a very different environment—from major city to major country—would have made Facebook, Google and Twitter change their offerings to me. But I’m beginning to doubt the smarts of the artificial intelligence which is computing, which thinks I will be interested in curated ads for “Singles near me” all of whom are absurdly handsome and named Steve.
Those singles were ”near” me in Staten Island, and a...