For a number of reasons, I was laying awake, tossing and turning, my mind drifting to many places in that half-awake, half-still-dreaming state, when I finally gave it up and picked up my IPhone and punched up my old Cowbird account. I started reading some old stories. I read a bunch I wrote during the final days of Cowbird, right before they shut it down to new content, 4 years ago this month, in March of 2017. That was back when I used to write every day. This is my first story since March 12th, only my second story this…

“And here I sit so patiently
Waiting to find out what price
You need to pay to get out of going
Through all these things twice

Oh, Mama, can this really be the end,
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis Blues again?”

Bob Dylan, from “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again”

I have vaccine envy. Yes, that’s a thing. It started a couple months ago, when the facebook posts started popping up on my feed — “Got my first shot!” … “Got my second shot.” “I’m in the clear, I can go out to…

By the time I’d reached my senior year, I didn’t think I could take one more year in the all-boys catholic high school. My four older brothers had all gone to and graduated from there, but I was done after three years. I broke with family tradition and bailed. I just thought it was cruel and unusual to spend one’s prime teen years secluded from girls like that.

I’d had kind of a groovy thing going with Clare from across the street the summer after 8th grade. We’d hang out on her front porch, sitting on the porch-swing together, holding…

I was just re-reading a piece I posted 10 days into the new decade, in what seems like another lifetime ago, January 2020. That was a good two months before Covid changed the world forever.

We were fixing to embark on our second trip of the new year/decade. I’d mentioned that it appeared to be shaping up to be a year of journeys. Well, yes and no.

That second trip was going to be to Virginia Beach. …

I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I’d see you again.

James Taylor, Fire & Rain

I just learned that the guy who was probably the closest friend I ever made on the job in my 40 ½ years of government service, died of COVID last week. Harry was just a few years older than me, but he retired about 8 years ago. …

Four years and two months ago, I drove up to Gettysburg, Pa, to tour that famous battlefield with my friend Doug and several others. It was three days after an election that rocked our world, an election result that most deemed impossible, an election which was aided by foreign interference, a fact since proven by numerous investigations and reports.

However it came about, whatever shenanigans tainted the result in favor of the one who won (the one who shall not be named here), we all accepted the result. The loser conceded and bowed out gracefully, even though she knew it…

My father was a man who spent his life learning how to tune in to the world of the spirit. He was drawn to the Christian Brothers in his teens, and went off to begin his studies with the order at age 19 in 1938. He missed an opportunity to attend the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg that summer with his beloved maternal grandfather, Martin Hager, one of the few surviving Civil War veterans, because he had committed to begin his studies with the Brothers at the same time. His cousin Austin McGrath wound up escorting Martin in…

I have seen the impact that contacts from the beyond can have on people. When I was part of the Pilgrim Fellowship (PF) youth group in Connecticut — (that, in itself, such an unlikely place for me to have wound up, at the time) — I once had an experience with a fellow PF-er that gave me my first glimpse into direct contact with “the beyond”. …