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…
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Summer FLiRT
After five full summers among us, COVID-19 has settled in once again and become, well, a FLiRT. That amusing technical acronym is the name given to the latest variants, which now account for more than 75% of the new COVID-19 cases in the United States. There’s consistently been a bit of a seasonal uptick in summer and winter, kind of like our property taxes. For the last year or so, it’s the same symptoms but different variants, yet still COVID-19. Called FLiRT due to the technical names for its spike protein mutations, which include the letters F, L, R and T, FLiRT is a subvariant of last winter’s dominant strain Omicron, and…
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Driving joy
“Summertime, and the livin’ is easy Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high Oh, your daddy’s rich and your ma is good lookin’ So hush little baby, don’t you cry” ~ The first verse of “Summertime,” composed in 1934 by George Gershwin for the opera “Porgy and Bess.” Summertime, and the livin’ is … easy breezy. I’m feeling more like myself and walking less like a toddler with a loaded diaper. As proof, in the past few weeks we’ve gone to three classic car shows (including the Woodward Dream Cruise!), visited our good pal Gayle at her lake house and watched the Detroit Lions lose to the New York…
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Don’t worry
It is the last Saturday in July, and I’ve got to say that I’m feeling much better than I did the last Saturday in June. And not just because I’m off pain meds, which you may question after reading this blog post. Thankfully, I’m walking without a cane, climbing stairs and driving. (The new knee’s healing nicely, thanks. And the left one feels great, too, because I’m never doing that again. Hella no. Ask me in six months.) As I was saying, I’ve been a little worried this week because since last Sunday afternoon, I’ve stopped being very worried, and that concerns me. Honestly, I swear to you I drafted…
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Twenty
A tiny white heart marks a handful of photos on my phone in an album named “Us,” followed by a red heart emoji. It holds a funny Bitmoji of us driving in a car, a fan pic at a Detroit Tigers game, a family shot with Madison in her “guncles” pool and another taken somewhere on Anna Maria Island. We look happy in all of them, except for that silly “Are we there yet?” cartoon. The first photo catches my eye. It’s a professional shot from the mid-2000s taken around Christmastime about 10 years ago. Maybe longer. Simpler times, fewer worries. At least that’s how it appears now. Those were…
