Down and Out in the Midwest
I’m sure you’ve read a lot about rejection because you’ve been rejected a lot. Me too.
Damned in Ohio
My immediate family was irreligious. My grandparents were raised in contradictory faiths, and their first grandchild was the singular blessing, the lone scandal, that could unite them in disbelief.
Derby Season is Almost Over
The thing about derby fans and derby drivers and derby organizers is that they are incredibly “in” on the joke, whatever jokes that can be made about them and their chosen vocation.
Hatchet-Throwing in Forgotten Places
I get sentimental about places, especially forgotten ones like Monarch Park. They’re a bit of a bummer, a bit sobering, a bit sad. But I think it’s a good kind of sadness.
Dreaming of Chicago with “The Bear”
The untamed energy of the show woke something in me. Carmy’s life in Chicago was real. Authentic. Social. I knew that restaurant and those people. How many times had I eaten at a joint like that?
That Good Night
By now I should understand that when every choice starts to feel like a miscalculation, a mistake, I’m up against forces bigger than myself. Yet I was secretly, irrationally angry at them for succumbing too willingly to death without any burning or raving or raging. If they’d just tried hard enough, I sometimes thought.
Days Between Stations
I think of Father Sullivan every time I pass, imagining him walking the circular path between the stations of the cross.
Stories Told Around a Campfire (That No Longer Exists)
Maybe that’s not enough of a story for some people to understand (or celebrate) the hunting instinct. What I know is my family has depended on it, right alongside the understory and the herds.
Kindness is Its Own Memory
On terrible pantyhose, bad sports writing, and the eternal kindness of the late great Franco Harris.
S & M in the CLE
I am in an S & M relationship with Cleveland. I am Cleveland’s slave. For me the “S” of Cleveland’s sadism stands for “seasonal.” All winter long, I withstand what Cleveland wants me to withstand.