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...
The Garden is History
Measuring the success of a garden isn’t simple. If it was a farm, it might be. You’d go by the output: the size of the crop, bushels per acre, or money made. Those are objective large-scale indicators. I don’t think that’s what gardeners are after when they buy seeds and plants in the spring and imagine what can be eaten fresh and preserved to be eaten later after frost finally...
Problems with the Buick
I had a small problem with the Buick while filling it up at Thorntons the other day. I always use my credit card to pay outside. Doing so forces me to interact with the gas pump. Feels a little silly. Black print on a small gray screen asks for my zip code, which I provide, and asks me three questions every damn time, to which I always respond by pushing...
Heading North
COVID has changed even the simplest of things. Like the annual guys’ fishing trip to Canada. What’s simpler than going fishing? Assemble the group, get the deposits, book a cabin on a lake, buy food, check your equipment, pack up and go, right? Wrong. Last summer, pre-vaccine, the border never opened. Gary Robinson broke a 30-year string of planning and enjoying group trips to Canada. He thought the same thing...
June Visits the Doctor
In mid-April my granddaughter June had a two-month check-up with her pediatrician. At that visit, she received her first vaccinations. The midwife that helped with June’s delivery and the pediatrician had both briefed June’s parents about these shots, and they were prepared. June was not. Here are the vaccines June was given. · ACT/HIB by Sanofi Pasteur - an injection to prevent a range of infections caused by haemophilous bacteria...
June in July
After many twists and turns, literally, my wife and I got back to Chicago to visit our kids and our grandchild June. She was five months old on July 17 and very different from when we saw her on our last visit to Chicago in April. On this trip, we parked the car in Joliet and took the Metra. Coming into LaSalle Street station felt like old times like we...
Vegetables 2021
On a farm less than ten miles away, where I am fortunate to be offered space, I have a garden in one long row. It’s a much straighter row this year. I was subtly provided a string stretched tightly between two stout steel stakes. Last year, my first on the farm, I made the mistake of not looking behind me while planting. My row was shorter and bowed out in...
Saying Good-Bye
Dale and his sister Pat, the first of Francis and Lucille Flaherty’s six kids were Irish twins. You know the definition, right? Born within a year of each other. Often, as in this case, to Irish Catholic parents. Pat arrived May 21, 1940, a day shy of her big brother’s birthday in 1939. Every child was a blessing in the Flaherty family. In the 70’s I was working with a...
Life on the Edge of Town
It was 1976, our first winter in that house between the canal and the railroad tracks. We were one house away from the dead-end on our side of the street, and on the other side, Harriet’s trailer was dead last. If it wasn’t a travel trailer, it was the smallest mobile home I’d ever seen. A kitchen with living space at one end, a bedroom at the other, and a...
In Gratitude
I want to tell you about my eyes. I’ve been thinking more about eyes since I first held my granddaughter June and looked into hers. She has big blue eyes, that I’m told could yet change to brown. I’ve also learned newborns don’t see much besides shapes and light for a while. I don’t know how babies think, but by June’s face, it appears she is fascinated by what she...
Spring Cleaning
This spring is different. Not only are we busting out of darkness and cold, like all northerners who winter at home, we’re leaving behind the year-long isolation of a global pandemic. I approach St. Patrick’s Day with relief and joy. After shaving my beard and digging out my favorite green shirt I tell myself “I can do the rest of winter standing on my head.” Let it snow, it’ll be...