: lower black pain.

In about 12 hours I will have been breathing on the planet for exactly sixty years. No mean feat to make it to the Digital Age from the Age of Aquarius - 6 groovy and happening decades of invention and constant adaptation to technologies that dissolved the gaps between time and space, past and future, and communities and individuals. Bell Telephone (the precursor of AT&T) had an advertising campai...

I’ve had, according to my resume, 8 jobs. I’ve had a few more than that: some not worth mentioning and a few I really don’t need to remember. But the major ones, the places where I stayed for years and years - those have been pretty interesting because I entered those companies as one thing and left as another. I came in to the first one as a secretary, and four years later left as a “mechanical a...

For over half of her four decade career, my mother taught fifth grade. A span of that length allows one to view societal trends and social constructs in detail: one class morphing into the next, bringing new behaviors, pressures, and responses. The perfect in-situ scientific laboratory to observe these shifts and changes was open every day - the playground. She shared an observation that early on,...

There are only two commercials for underarm deodorant. In the first, someone wearing a white shirt runs after a taxi, pushes their kid on a playground swing, or performs any other action requiring brisk movement: at the end they enthusiastically wave with their hand high in the air and give someone a tight hug. All is bliss. In the other, someone gets on a full elevator and when they raise their h...

Calendars were not invented on “day 1”. That’s what I thought as a kid - that if you wanted to know how old “calendars” were, you just counted backward from, well, now until you were back at 1. Then I remembered about all that “B.C.” time, and then… I just looked it up. The Gregorian Calendar, which we purchase each year on sale in mid-January in the Barnes and Noble bargain section, was created i...

Spring Cleaning: the opening of windows and freshening of linens and dusting off of bookshelves and vacuuming in the corners of ceilings, an annual frenzy of “getting ready” for the longer and warmer days of the year - which ironically are most frequently spent outside. ’Tis the season for that kind of thing in New Zealand right now, where Winter is just ending, which is odd (also, the water there...

just six weeks to 60and i’m feeling fine (’til then i’m gon’ party like i’m fifty-nine) there’s not all that much difference in how I speakbut when i move now there’s an audible creakand a slight subtle wincing that plays on my face‘cause the creaks never seem to come from the same place just six weeks to 60and i’m feeling good though probably not sleeping s’much as i should my Apple watch tells m...

The beginning of fall marks an annual celebration of learning: Back to School Time again. I did buy a new cool metal lunchbox this summer, though I’m reticent to take it to work (a grown up place that does not seem to lean toward whimsy in any fashion). Instead I am engaging in the season by (again) dedicating myself to learning One New Thing. Last year it was “How To Play The Banjo”. I initially...

[1 - 8x10] My most consistent historical visual record was compiled through time capsules delivered in paper envelopes with cellophane windows: my annual school photo. The Mondrian-like layout of large, medium and impractically small shots were all on one page, which (because I did not grow up in a fancy X-Acto knife house) we could never quite cut out perfectly. The assortment was designed to sat...

We used to have framed photos on the walls of our apartment: * there we were, on a rollercoaster. * there we were, wearing cowboy hats at night, illuminated by an endless garden of neon lights. * there we were, smiling beneath a windmill. After a time ( measured in decades ) these treasured memories began to overtake their allotted space. They dominated their canvas rather than artistically augmen...

Thanks, Technology. We appreciate the assists when we start our car with a button instead of a key, or warm something up in the microwave (unless it’s frozen and then we have to do that thing with the spoon where we wait for the glacier in the center to thaw just enough that we can use a tablespoon to break it apart like a polar ice shelf of marinara and then hope the blazing hot moat on the outsi...

I was looking for a photograph yesterday, from a while ago - of my wife and a friend out in front of a convenience store at night riding one of those giant toy animals that moves when you put in a quarter. It was winter and my wife was wearing bright purple leggings and our friend was wearing bright green leggings. They were laughing. I looked through our pictures and I couldn’t find it. I searche...

The nice folks at the American Association of Retired People sent me a brochure about five years ago, which I tossed in the recycling, unopened, chuckling to myself at the blatant inaccuracy of their mailing list. Three years ago I got a large envelope from them in the mail, promising the gift of a roomy insulated travel tote upon the return of their membership postcard. I clucked my tongue as I t...

Last week I purchased an empty bottle of mouthwash. It arrived from eBay very well wrapped and protected with paper and another type of paper in a ziplock bag surrounded by bubble wrap, in a box. It was very inexpensive, mostly because it’s an empty bottle of mouthwash. I am writing a series of short essays about the home my grandparents lived in; they bought the house in 1949 and lived there for...

This is my sixtieth summer. I don’t quite have the hang of it yet. I’ve done all the important research: Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon were fantastic professors, taught me all about beach culture and how to “hang ten” on a surfboard and sing my summer feelings in groovy song. Admittedly, the majority of their wisdom did not effectively translate to my landlocked Kansas City existence. I eve...

Hyperthemesia sounds exhausting. It’s exhausting to say, quite honestly. It is the rare ability to accurately remember nearly every day of one’s life in absolute detail - what you wore, ate, saw, said, and did. Every day. Of course there are days that I remember…well, pieces of days. Mostly glimpses: brief sequences - photographs, edits. My memories are clearer and more distinct when associated wi...

We live in a Brooklyn apartment; no basement or attic, so we have to rent a storage unit in one of those huge warehouses that used to be a factory for something. What’s stored there is a point of mild contention - things we thought we might need someday before we actually got to Someday, memorabilia of moments we’ve already forgotten, and tons of books, cds, tapes and tools that have since been re...

Commencement speeches are engineered to inspire those beginning a new phase of life. They are meant to be epic, a benediction offering direction, courage and motivation, an address to the fresh battalion, a manifesto unique to a specific group of people and moment in time. I’ve been watching a lot of them online recently: movie stars, scientists and comedians dressed in colorful and entirely unear...

They were free but did not know But they were always free until somebody kidnapped them transported them by sea and took their language, names and history and held them in captivity until December 1865 when that was legally abolished and prohibited across the USA good news for all law of the land peace in our time all bonds released new national reality no human would be property but they did not...

Allow me to begin by firmly stating that every day is a “loving day” at our house, a so-pleasant stream of consideration, kind words, pleases and thank yous, and (very often) unsolicited cups of tea. Which is all very nice, but during this exact time of year such Loving shines a bit brighter, as we collectively remember that the legal right for our family to exist in the United States is one and a...

I don’t know if you believe in UFOs, astral projections, mental telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance, spirit photography, telekinetic movement, full trance mediums, the Loch Ness monster and the theory of Atlantis, but your disbelief can calmly hover regarding the existence of time machines because I have one - and this week, I’ve used it to bring my very first guest to this column: Judge Cordell D. Meeks...

I realized this week that there is a story I have skipped, a fixed point in my timeline that was seminal to my understanding (such as it is) of the world. Given the “generational grimoire” intent of this column, I will tell it now. Perhaps the telling will reveal the reasons I took so long to tell it. Let’s see. Velcro. I loved it in high school. An engineering miracle. Velcro was a piece of The F...

Each night at our home, in those twilight moments betwixt dinnertime and bedtime, I wash the dishes. It’s the end of the day, days long and deep and somewhat stressful, but a wholesome meal and bright conversation at the dinner table have soothed me, and all I have to do is make a clean bridge from that delicate balance to well earned slumber… …so I wash the dishes. But every so often, there at th...

I used to have to read the book before I saw the movie. My prime example is Jack M. Bickham’s “The Apple Dumpling Gang”, a 1975 summer family film that I earned a ticket to upon completion of the paperback. Disney changed a great deal from the original novel (its first line is, “ The fact that John Wintle was drunk didn’t matter .”) and I had to discuss, compare, and contrast the two versions of t...

This time of year is CRAZY busy, with May Day and Mother’s Day and Star Wars Day and Cinco de Mayo and our anniversary and Eurovision and Beltane and Free Comic Book Day… the days are just packed. Mixed into this is the birthday of this column, which is technically the second Thursday in May, which means that this is the week we mark the completion of four years of :lowerblackpain , together. Some...