This week, my mother would have turned 95. She’s been gone a while, but I think of her often, and how she schemed and fought for what she believed was right. She didn’t win all of her battles—it’s tough when the deck is stacked against you—but she wo...
I found a dead opossum in the yard this morning. It was a youngster and I’m saddened, as my dog may have had a paw in its death. Opossum are occasional visitors to our yard and the dogs go berserk but hadn’t harmed one before. Typically, the opossum...
The first person who suggested I might become a writer was my eighth grade English teacher, Mrs. Recht (pronounced wrecked). The irony was that she wasn’t trying to encourage me; she was humiliating another student. She’d given us a book report assig...
When my father died, he had seven boats. No, he wasn’t an international shipping mogul. He merely liked to fish. But… But, at some point, his interest in boats superseded the interest in fishing. When you drive past someone on a bridge with a line in...
The 4th of July is this week. For those of you outside of America, it’s one of the big six holidays here, meaning the trash collection is delayed a day because even the trash collectors get to take July 4th as a holiday. The big six are New Year’s, M...
The best advice I ever received was to never start a land war in Asia, but that’s basically where I’m at now. The Asia part is my back yard and I’ve fallen into the trap of fighting because of suburban America’s obsession with green lawn. Growing up,...
Back in the 90s, I worked at an office here in Lansing where a group of coworkers, all men, were primarily focused on three things: Second breakfast Meter maids Sex workers We worked on the eighth floor and had a view of Kalamazoo Avenue. Around nine...
My kid asked me about the ten-cent beer night at Cleveland’s Municipal stadium for a Guardians (nee, Indians) baseball game back in 1975. They had heard about it on a podcast. Of course I remember. Back then, the Guardians played baseball to an almos...
I had the pleasure of attending my brother-in-law’s funeral last week. The pleasure was not in seeing Bucky dead, but in having the chance to see family. Also, this was in a small town in western Wisconsin, and I’m a sucker for small towns. The first...
Thirty-seven years ago, I was driving east through the mountains of Pennsylvania along Interstate 80. It was winter but I’d caught a break in the weather: it was smooth sailing, as I like to say. Certainly no reason to think something bad would happe...