There are few things more painful than saying goodbye to your dog. On Friday morning, Oscar, my beautiful Brussels Griffon, died from congestive heart failure. He was just over nine years old. Though he…
Category: Munk’s Junk (Everything Else)
Blog posts
On Happiness: An Excerpt from Toni Morrison’s 2011 Rutger’s Commencement Speech
It’s graduation time so I thought it was the propitious moment for Stargazying to share something uplifting and commencemenntish. I found this lovely nugget from the May, 2011 commencement speech at Rutger’s University delivered by…
11 Celebrity Inventors (from The Book of Lists, 1990s Edition)
1. Edie Adams, model and actress In 1963 the widow of television comic Ernie Kovacs invented, and later patented, a cigar-holder ring. It was the one she used in her famous Muriel Cigar commercials,…
“How Music Began”: A Mid-Century Gay Myth for the Under-10 Set
In 1973 my fourth-grade teacher Mrs. Schindler taught a unit on Greek myths at the end of which each student was given the assignment of writing his own. My piece was called “How Music…
How You Can Make Your LinkedIn Profile Stand Out From the Rest
I recently created a new website called davidmunk.com—really more of a digital business card—to draw attention to my client communications work. (When I’m not writing this blog, I concentrate on writing everything from speeches…
Top 10 Pieces of 2013
This has been a wonderful year for Stargayzing. The blog has grown tremendously with each passing month and its consistent increase in readership has been a source of great satisfaction. While I take my…
“Beginnings”: How a Book I Read in 5th Grade About a Teenage Boy with Leukemia Taught Me My Favorite Chicago Song
In 2010 I took the photo on the left at sunrise at the lighthouse in Montauk, Long Island. When I looked at the digital image, I had a powerful analog sense memory, immediately recalling…
Rags To Bitches: The Little Reality Show That Couldn’t, or Didn’t, But Should’ve
In the aftermath of my involvement as an original cast member of the Sundance Channel/World of Wonder reality show Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys, people have occasionally asked me, “Whatever happened to the show…
#TBT Stargayzing Commentary: Nostalgic About Privacy on Facebook? Read This.
Dear Facebook friends (and hopefully, others), I’ve recently noticed that some of you seem very upset about privacy issues and have been posting messages all in caps (ostensibly to show that it is super…
25: An Elegy for Steven Stern
25 years ago today Steven Stern lost his short, brave fight against AIDS. I still haven’t wrapped my head around it. He’s been gone longer than the number of years he was physically here…
Shanghai’s Jinjiang Hotel Has Its Very Own Pop Song and It’s One Hell of An Ear Worm
One of the highlights of breakfasting in the dining room of the lovely Jinjiang Hotel in Shanghai, was the cognitive dissonance of reading the International Herald Tribune’s coverage of North Korea possibly restarting its…
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