I declared my Independence last Monday. That is, I resigned from the Democratic Party and registered as an Independent. For years, usually after another Dem disappointment, the idea of leaving the party would cross my mind, but it was a combination of my own laziness and the reality that, as an Independent, I wouldn’t be …
Banner photo: I shot this photo before a baseball game between the Chicago Cubs and San Francisco Giants, at Wrigley Field in Chicago, on the day after Willie Mays passed away. June 18, 2024. My wife and I were sitting, lower box, along the third baseline in Chicago’s Guaranteed Rate Stadium. The buzz started sometime …
“Should we just go ahead and sign up for Apple TV?” I asked my wife, Cora. “It’s only ten bucks a month.” “Sure why not.” “Alright.” I answered. “The Giants are on Apple tonight, though I think it sucks that they’re starting to stream sports. Anyway, I’ve been wanting to watch Masters of the Air.” …
Santa Claus strikes me as being a bit creepy. But I’m getting ahead of myself. After getting over my Bruceville gloom (see previous post), I set out, eastbound, for French Lick, hometown of hated former Boston Celtic, Larry Bird. “The hick from French Lick,” they called him. Still do I guess. Back in the day, …
“Leaving home was one of the easiest big decisions I’ve ever made. But once I left home, continuing the journey until it reached some kind of sensible conclusion or fully played itself out, was another matter – one of the hardest things I’ve ever attempted.” ~ William Least Heat-Moon, Blue Highways. ‘Just drive,’ I tell …
The aircraft is on approach, circling the regal city known as “La Dominante.” Forehead leaning against the window I look down and easily pick out the features. There’s the Grand Canal, busy with water traffic; vaporettos, working boats, and pleasure craft. I can even see the gondolas, little water bugs bobbing on canals big and …
Call this a memory jogger. Or call it a cautionary tale. Call it both. This is a look back to that period between June 15th, 2015 and, well, now. It’s also a peek into what America’s future might look like. The way we were We didn’t know it at the time, but that June day …
“Western fully understood that he owed his existence to Adolf Hitler. That the forces of history which had ushered his troubled life in the tapestry were those of Auschwitz and Hiroshima, the sister events that sealed forever the fate of the West.” ~ The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy Cormac McCarthy’s fictional character, Bobby Western, and …
Back when I was a tweener/teener, that is to say the olden times, when describing Mick Jagger as spry wasn’t meant as a compliment to a nimble octogenarian rocker, and Dick Nixon was seen as the ultimate in political corruption (Little did we suspect), my three favorite magazines were Playboy, Mad, and Sports Illustrated. Playboy, …
“Good food is very often, even most often, simple food.” ― Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly Food. Glorious food. Pure food. Real food. Food that you can taste just by looking at it. Food that you never knew could smell so fresh and look so perfectly beautiful. This is the food …
