Archive For The “Odds & Ends” Category
This piece is dedicated to Joe Henderson, the legendary running writer and editor. The guy who made Dr. George Sheehan sound coherent. Joe once told me – we became friends because I wanted to be just like him, only taller and faster – ‘you can reuse a piece every four years because your readership will…
If Southern white men are not careful, they will overreach themselves and public sentiment will have a reaction; a conclusion will then be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women. – Ida B. Wells-Barnett, The Red Record I saw a headline. Nine Black Teens Falsely Accused of Rape in Alabama And…
If not for you, winter wouldn’t hold no spring, couldn’t hear a robin sing. I just wouldn’t have a clue, if not for you. – Bob Dylan Got a note from Jay Birmingham. “I read something on your site that spurred me to compose.” Take that as a great compliment. So, here it is. Robin-Song…
Here’s to a long life and a merry one. A quick death and an easy one A pretty girl and an honest one A cold beer— and another one! It is better to spend money like there’s no tomorrow than to spend tonight like there’s no money! May you die in bed at ninety-five years,…
…Somebody “pulled the Negro out of the car by his belt.” The drivers “hit him several times with their fists and knocked him to the ground.” One of the drivers pulled out a knife. “Before you kill him,” he said, “I want to put the same scars on him that he put on Brown.” Said…
A love like that was a serious illness, an illness from which you never recover. – Hank Elisa Leonelli (1981) Q. You’ve been drinking constantly, California Burgundy and beer, ever since we got here, and in your books, like in your life, you drink all the time. Why all this drinking? A. Oh, drinking! Listen, I’ve been…
I love you. I hate you. I like you. I hate you. I love you. I think you’re stupid. I think you’re a loser. I think you’re wonderful. I want to be with you. I don’t want to be with you. I would never date you. I hate you. I love you…..I think the madness…
People hurried past, the others of the street, endless anonymous, twenty-one lives per second, race-walking in their faces and pigments, sprays of fleetest being. – Don DeLillo From Santee “Race Walk Capital of the USA” to Antalya and Paris by Foot! Welcome to the 2024 USATF National Marathon Race Walk Mixed Relay Championships & Santee…
My first Groundhog’s Day, February 2, 1947, I was forty days old in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. 301 Foundry Street. The less grand side of town. Big old Victorian owned by salt of the earth grandparents. Now a parking lot for a community college. Not many years later my uncle took me out hunting for the meteorological…
All I know is this: nobody’s very big in the first place, and it looks to me like everybody spends their whole life tearing everybody else down. – Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Published (February 1, 1962) Back in the mid-Seventies, I lived in a tiny bungalow, two…