Dinner in the Field and other stories
I find you can discover your strengths at any age. For example, I find I’m a better writer than I am an editor. I have a full-length draft of a memoir that I’ve devoted countless hours to, and it’s finally finished. I’m anxious to move on to new material. But finishing the book is not the same as completing the project. Doing it right, I’m told, entails a less than...
LIfe is Changing
Forgive me for the big gap between blog posts. I’m hung up on what I want to say about a trip to the city, an artist, an idea. So I’m putting it aside for a while and moving on. Just thought I would check in. Sometimes you feel yourself change. As many of you know I’ve been on the shelf so to speak following an ankle operation April 7. I...
Those Poor Poets
On this last day of Illinois’ fiscal year, on the brink of the financial abyss, I have chosen not to rant politically but rather to blog about POETRY. Poetry sadly is seldom read these days. It is I think the most beautiful use of language ever to have been imagined, let alone created. Poems are written every day by millions using every language. They seldom find their way to print and...
Garden by Committee
It’s so ironic in this spring and summer of 2017, when I didn’t take a step on my newly put together left ankle from April 7th to June 5th , have walked only clumsily since with the help of a knee rolling scooter and crutches, and am still not cleared to bear full weight on my ankle; that my garden looks great. Better than years in which I got around...
Politics as Theater
Following up on last Friday’s blog piece, it turns out Stacy Keatch had a heart attack on stage which prevented him from delivering his lines in the one and only Chicago staging of “Pamplona”, a one man show at the Goodman theater about Ernest Hemingway. Keatch reported he felt “like this great fog had come over me. It was the most bizarre moment of my entire career.” He didn’t make...
Write Hard and Clear
I still get the Tribune delivered to my door and save clippings from it for blog posts I intend to write. The shack is filling up with pieces of paper about Bruce Rauner and the Illinois legislature. I have started this piece many times and deleted it. It’s painful. But just today I read an applicable quote in another article I saved, on Stacy Keatch totally blowing his lines in a...
Mom Pushes a Ford
The piece below is a memory of my Mom in her fifties. It is taken from my nearly completed and upcoming collection of farm stories. Mom Pushes a Ford My Mom was so strong. When I was little and had finished my bath, I would stand up in the tub and she would wrap a towel around me and swing me up into the air with a whoop and stand me on the toilet...
Read the Labels on Your Drugs
How about a short miscellaneous blog entry to stay on schedule? I fell off there for a while. In my mind I have the idea I should write you more or less once a week, and the longer I’m retired I lose track of the days. But here’s a rare Saturday account of this and that just to stay in touch. Last night my wife took me for a car...
Do Not Rescusitate-Conclusion
Remember what I said about my surgeon yesterday? Plain talker, not pretentious, good guy? When you think of the hospitalist think the opposite of those qualities. This doc gave me the distinct impression that rather than listening to what I was saying he was always thinking of what to say next. When the hospitalist came in the room he sat in a chair for our initial conversation. It seemed rehearsed. ...
Do Not Resuscitate-1 of 2
I spent a couple of days in the hospital getting my ankle fixed. Rebuilt in a way. It was elective surgery to fix an old problem. I think of it as restoring a vital part of an old tractor; a two cycle John Deere say, or an old Minneapolis Moline. The details are boring and often constitute the vapid medical discussions of people I’m afraid have nothing better to talk...
Recommended Reading
The most striking thing about reading to a class of four year olds at Opportunity School was seeing their eyes on me. Ten pairs of clear, bright, hopeful eyes; looking up at me from where they sat on the floor, waiting to see and hear happens next. I’m not used to it. I’m used to being here, tucked away in the shack, by myself, unnoticed. Those twenty young eyes took...