You know the world has gone absolutely bat-shit crazy when the New York Yankees allow their players to have facial hair after a 50-year club ban. You still won’t see any long locks on their swelled pin-striped heads since that rule remains intact. Also, current team owner Hal Steinbrenner (son of George) has put the kibosh on playing Frank Sinatra’s iconic song “New York, New York” over stadium loudspeakers after a Yankee loss. It will still play when they win, but they’ll rotate through a number of different tunes after a loss, such as “That’s Life” by Ol’ Blue Eyes and others, to soothe fans. I’m hoping for a soulful…
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Shining Stars
At a time when it appears there is clearly no bottom to the dark state of all things foreign and domestic, I am confident that sunlight is the solution, and definitely not because we’re in Florida. Bear with me. The well-known quote “Sunlight is the best disinfectant,” from the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, refers to the benefits of openness and transparency. As in, sunlight shining on something being the most effective way to expose and prevent corruption or unethical behavior. Like a disinfectant, public scrutiny cleanses issues when brought to light. Or at least it used to in the “before” times. I know it sounds ridiculous, but…
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Rebuild
BRADENTON BEACH, Florida – Well, it appears that we won’t be getting a free mattress. Michigan’s own Gardner White Furniture can rest easy now because, as our Jazzercise friend’s husband, Roger, posted on the newly unchecked Book of Face: “So much for the free furniture.” Back in mid-July, the local retailer ran a promotion tied to the Detroit Lions winning (yes, winning, not just playing) the 2025 Super Bowl. Everyone in Michigan would get a rebate for their entire furniture and mattress purchase bought during a set period last July. Our enthusiastic salesman told us about it when we bought the thing and that the family-owned, 112-year-old company had taken out a…
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To your health
Starting the new year off right, I have resolved to be more patient and proactive. We must set reasonable goals, which is why there is no mention of a fitness membership. Yesterday, I took down most of the Christmas decorations Rebecca insisted we put up after Thanksgiving, and then I did what naturally follows an exhausting afternoon of storing excess holiday crap in a cluttered basement: I signed up for Medicare. Yep, as my late Aunt Nores used to say, “You’re approaching another speed limit, Jin.” That meant my next birthday was a “big one,” ending in a zero or five. This April, I’ll be 65 and Medicare eligible. Whoa.…
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Oh … fudge!
What kind of world allows this sort of injustice? Where’s the outrage? If my blog software allowed them, I’d use a cluster of “hair on fire” emojis right now. Reading a Detroit Free Press story last week about a special, one-time screening of the 1983 movie “A Christmas Story” at a local theater, I learned there was going to be a pre-show Q&A with actors Zack Ward and Yano Anaya, the two little turds who bullied and terrified kids walking to and from school. They’re better known as Scott “Scut” Farkus and his sidekick Grover Dill. To be honest, Rebecca saw the article first and thought I’d like to go. She knows…
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Open table
Last Friday, I was meeting two dear friends at our (mostly) monthly breakfast club, and for the first time in history, I beat them there. A chatty waitress met me just inside the door, and I explained that there’d be three of us and perhaps one of them was already there. She said oh yes, she’s in the “little girls’ room.” Why is that phrase still allowed in 2024? Anyway, I nodded, saw a mobile phone pseudo-paperweight atop a stack of assorted crap on the table that looked like it could belong to my friend Joanie. So, I sat down. About four minutes later, a dark-haired woman I did not…
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Stumped
You know that moment in the old TV Westerns when a gritty, exhausted man on a horse rides into town with grim news: “We’re on our own. The cavalry isn’t coming.” It’s when the town folk realize that no one else is going to save them. Suddenly, reality sinks in, and everything becomes crystal clear. They accept the hard truth: We must save ourselves. It’s been a helluva couple of weeks, my fellow Americans. And I’m pretty certain the cavalry isn’t coming. Frankly, I’m still in disbelief after the 2024 presidential election results. As one distraught friend said, they’ve been staring into space a lot trying to understand why decent people voted for that man. I don’t get it either. How is it possible that once again the American people chose the worst person in…
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Legends of the fall
For starters, let me just say I doubt I’ll ever be able to order an Arnold Palmer again. Or drink one. What a crazy couple of weeks are in store for us, my fellow Americans. Honestly, Tuesday, Nov. 5 can’t come too soon, and not only because my beloved is leaving me home alone for the first time since the last presidential election. Yes, I’ll be “batchin’ it” for two whole weeks next month. As in solo mio time. When the cat’s away, the mice will … reorganize closets, cupboards and junk drawers? Can’t wait. But I digress. Last week four of us drove up to Traverse City, driving through…
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Calendar boys
It has been said that baseball breaks your heart, and it’s designed to do so. The game begins in spring, when everything else renews again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings. And then, as soon as the chilly rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. Ironically, this distressing analogy is attributed to A. Bartlett Giamatti, the actor Paul’s father and former commissioner of Major League Baseball, who served only five months in his term before dying of a heart attack. This is the same man who refused to reinstate “Shoeless Joe” Jackson (the outfielder remembered for his association with the…
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Just dribble
The key to writing memoir — a form of creative nonfiction — is honesty. Readers of the memoir genre demand authenticity. They want the raw, unvarnished truth. Otherwise, they would just read fiction, right? As writer Steve Almond signed in his book, This Won’t Take But a Minute, Honey, to a struggling creative nonfiction writer in 2012: “Jennifer, run toward the darkness and shine.” Yeah, that was me, absorbing the concept of radical disclosure. I had no idea what that meant back then. But a dozen years later, I’m much more open to it. Here goes nothing, my dear demanders of brutal honesty: For some unknown reason, since my partial knee replacement surgery, whenever I…
