From August of last year - “stringer” Dan Hickling’s thoughts about Ottawa:

OTTAWA — I remember a single from the 60’s by a British band, a no-hit wonder called the Glass Menagerie, whose gimmick was to put songs about suicide on both sides of the single. The “A” side was a cover of the Harry Nilsson song, “I Said Goodbye to Me”.

One of the lines in that tune goes like this…”ending the game is like changing the name of your favorite song”….

Change….which can go down hard….

Like the impending (so it would seem) change in the International League structure, which has Ottawa departing and Allentown coming in.

No slight to Allentown, but Ottawa is by far my favorite city in the IL. So I will miss coming here during the summer (thankfully, I do get to come back during hockey season).

One of the things I always look forward to on visits to Ottawa is a trip to “The Golden River”, an amazing little restaurant nestled in Ottawa’s little Chinatown district, which runs down Somerset Ave.

The thing about this place is that it’s virtually a one-man operation…the guy never sleeps, I guess….but he makes the best General Tso’s chicken and the best pork fried rice I’ve ever had….

I’ve become friendly with the owner over the years, but he knows me only as “that guy from Boston” (explaining that I’m from Maine might be a little complicated)… 

So I go into the River at lunchtime, and order my fave dish, and it is truly among his best efforts…but then he hands me a pencil and paper, and asks me to write down my email address….

He explains that he’s closing down the River….the rent’s too high….(sigh)…

The good news is that he’s going to try to open in a new spot…

Change….as Adrian Monk would put it, “I don’t  mind change…I just don’t like to be around when it happens”…

Maybe it can be a good thing. 

Fortunately for Dan, MLN covers Indy Ball so he may yet get to make a return to the Nation’s Capital and, near as I can tell, the Golden River still exists.