Hey ,Forty years ago, after graduating high school, I worked diligently at playing slow-pitch softball. It was something I wanted and wasn't afraid to do. Slow-pitch softball was my sub-culture of choice. Some people like to ride motorcycles, some co...

Hey ,Before I get into my story for this Picayune, I'm sharing the link to my books because I got some feedback that I'm not showing up on Amazon searches. (My sales too small for Amazon to promote me--but I know that you all know it's a mistake on t...

Hey ,I went canoeing with my wife over the weekend. We want to canoe more often but we're not really canoe people. It came up repeatedly during the summer: "We could go canoeing..." But there was always something else going on, some "thing," just eno...

Hey ,Last Picayune, I told the story of how my father put me, a 12-year old kid, up for a fight with a couple of bullies. When I looked it over the next day, it seemed a little harsh. I should have added that he didn’t do anything to taunt me or emba...

Hey ,One day when I was 12, two kids started to taunt me, then they threatened me, then they tormented me. They were both bigger than me and I was afraid so I tried my best to get away from them. But I couldn't. I needed help. This was in Cleveland a...

Hey ,Did you ever have a life-plan that changed radically? Like you thought for sure things were going to take you to the north, but then something happened and you had to turn south? Last week, two events converged and forced me to consider one of t...

Hey ,A few weeks ago, I did something shameful.A door-to-door salesman knocked on the door, triggering our dogs, who barked wildly. I slipped out the front door and found a lanky young man, probably younger than my son, dressed as if he were going go...

Hey ,At my brother's going away party, back in 1985, on the eve of his departure for a job in South Carolina, a large-ish group of us packed into The Trio Tavern, a crappy, neighborhood bar in Cleveland. (It may have been a crappy neighborhood bar, b...

Hey ,My wife and I traveled to Portland, Oregon a couple of weeks ago to visit one of our kids who was there on a business trip. We had no specific agenda other than to check things out in and around Portland and so we ended up at the Multnomah Falls...

Hey ,This Picayune is written with a heavy heart, as America's far-too-easy access to military-grade weapons has caused yet another unthinkable tragedy. The grief and fear over gun violence is palpable, and to ignore it is inhuman. But I'll tell my l...