Blue Notes

Rummaging through a basement bookcase the other morning for an old mystery novel, (just finished reading "The Blood-Dimmed Tide" by Rennie Airth, which I can recommend), I discovered a thin, paperback-sized New York Rangers Blue Book from the 1965-66 season with Harry Howell and Stan Mikita on the cover. Cost a buck back then.

Sat down, paged through the hidden gem and was briefly spellbound. The hunt for the novel was abandoned.

Yeah, life is full of detours and in these hectic, no-time-to-smell-the-roses days, some of them can be quite enjoyable.

Perhaps this venture will be one of them.

As in the late 1960s and 1970s, when the best music came from free-form radio, this endeavor won't have a defined structure or timetable, although I envision some regularity: One or two daily posts, regular updates on prospects in the system, report cards on the team at various points during the season.

In a way, this will be a running travelogue, from practice in Westchester to the dressing room and press box at the Garden to the morning skates in Montreal and Toronto.

Please check back here for observations, quotes, inside info and presumably, some hidden gems on the Rangers and the NHL---and rock and roll, jazz, art, television, movies, hotels, restaurants, weather, lost highways---that you won't easily find elsewhere.

M.C. Richards once wrote that "poetry often enters through the window of irrelevance." Writing about the Rangers here will be far from poetic, in fact, much of this may trend closer to hurried dispatches from the battlefront.

But hopefully, these Blue Notes will act as a relevant gateway, and for fans, maybe strike the right chords.