Sidewalk Ghosts

I reflect on the good and bad of my father. A good man, yet for all his positives, he was equally flawed. We all have histories, and as living #humans, experience ranging from great joy to deep pain. No one is exempt, not ourselves, not our parents, nor their parents and on and on. Some had it easy, others, not so much. Why some are dealt unfair cards? I wish I had a reasonable answer. It’s easy t...

I’ll just call her Aunty, and there we were, two people from drastically different backgrounds, sitting together in her living room. Around us walls filled with a mix of photographs, recognitions, tribal masks and musical instruments that symbolically told of African roots and her 81 years of life as a black American...

The echoes of snores and other embarrassing body sounds bounced off the granite walls, as all around me hundreds of families huddled into makeshift homesteads. The clock struck 12:03 am, and with the second announcement of what seemed a boarding school inspired lights out, I wiggled to find any comfortable sleeping position. A sadly impossible proposition as, with perfect comedic timing, my air ma...

On a humble little shelf sat family photos, black and white images, some faded. On the front of the stack, an 80-year-old picture of a little boy sitting on a pony. Is that you? I asked...

Rikki was her name,and in reviewing her narration, it seemed she tapped into a most personal and intimidating question: WHAT IS OUR PURPOSE?

And until that night, he was a stranger to me. An unknown shadow under a flickering streetlamp just outside a neighborhood haunt called Casey’s Tavern...

Stir crazy is an understatement, and even though I’ve managed to stay very busy planning the future of my now still-watered business, as well as a being able to spend a bunch of quality time with my family, this third week of home isolation is starting to take a toll on my spirit...

I’ve been chewing on a most audacious topic. One, that at only twelve episodes into my newfound life as a podcaster; has slapped the world in the face. But her I go anyway. A middle-class self-employed guy sharing his feelings on a subject he has no credentials to represent. That being, the full and ultimate impact Covid-19 will have on the now, and even grander, what’s ahead...

Her voice heavy with French accent she told me of a father who was very negative, a dad who worried about everything. And under her smiling exterior, could be seen the reach of a powerful woman who had looked into the face of her past. A person who had tenderly embraced the stressed child she carried within...

Her name was Stephanie, and, in releasing the words that originally polarized me from her, I found the heart of a Doll...

Extroverted and strongly opinionated he was. The kind of guy many would call intimidating, aggressive, or for some, maybe even annoying. But as he dropped his salesman pitch, he exposed a softer underbelly.

Then, like a purifying lightning bolt, it hit me. Rachel’s most romantic comment called me out as I thought about what’s ultimately ahead for us all... 

She appeared about fifty yards to the right of where I stopped. A red light to change – a left turn away from the beginning of my drive home. Over her shoulder a bike, around her neck a flat inner tube, and in her hand, a dismantled rim and tire. Her face was grimaced, and once having to carry my broken bike for three miles out of mountain bike disaster, I knew how she must have been feeling: cold...

So it is with this subtext I’ll talk of a stranger I met on a hot summer day. A giant of a man who I ran into as he sat under the cooling shade of a tree, silent and withdrawn he was as his sheer stature took a dominant section of a city bench. Intimidating is an understatement to describe him, and it would have been way too easy for me to cast a profile. To make assumptions as to his attitude or...

The day started at around 8am, a morning split between in-laws homes as a functional/dysfunctional mix of family dynamics, that dependent on who got the most sleep, rose and fell. Yes, it was the day before Christmas and dinner prep was front and center, and with it came all the usual distractions one might expect at a family gathering...

He looked into my eyes as I asked him a leading question as to who he was… He paused, and as many a good Rabbi does, poised himself in contemplative thought. I could almost her the still air as the room grew silent, then he said, “Maybe it’s not me you want to know about, perhaps you’re on a journey to find yourself.”

He stood at the edge of the sand, a walking path where in his almost nude, most likely waxed, and very public form; he twisted his barbershop quartet mustache as a not so assuming tourist posed by his side... 

"It was as if an Angel had reached past the darkness of temporary scarecrows and brought forward ghosts in the closet. A whispering voice that did not originate in my sub-conscious, but rather flowed out of her eyes, and as it did, it ran into my very soul..."

"His greeting was more than a passing hello..."

She burst through the doors! Head tipped back, snarling sighs echoing, pupils rolled back into her head, the whites filling the fullness of her eye sockets. Mocking, she exclaimed for all to hear, “Do you have a dime? Unbelievable!”