It’s mid-December on a snowy Saturday, 1970-something, in Madison Wisconsin.  My sister Valerie is home from boarding school.  She’s blind, so I remind her that there is a Christmas tree in the corner of our small living room where the hi-fi normally is kept.  Sometime...

Teachers.  Classrooms. Standardized testing.  No child left behind, supposedly.  All aspects of a conventional education.  But here’s the thing – learning is seldom conventional. Lessons are constantlyswirlingaround us.  Everyone has taught someone, something without r...

My mom was nearly 4 years old when Mickey Mouse was first presented to the world.  Her father, Salvatore Fiore, Americanized to Sam, was 28 when they lined up to see “Plane Crazy“ on what I'm guessing was a cold night in November, 1928.  

My grandpa was a...

My next book is a memory piece called Corn.  It is inspired by but not entirely faithful to childhood recollections.  Consequently, I’ve been living in the world of memories a little more often these days.

            Today while heading to lunch “We Didn...

This is being written on Father’s Day, which like the day for mothers, is bittersweet for the childless person whose parents are dead.  The perfect gift, cards, families out celebrating – it’s something in which you no longer participate.  You’re left alone to ponder w...

We all have people in our lives that transcend time.  Who they’ve been & who they are manages to live in the same spot in our hearts concurrently.  They linger in ways we don’t even realize.  The way we do or don’t express ourselves, the way we drink our coffee, the wa...

There's a caricature of me that used to be in front of the Comedy Warehouse.  In it, I'm playing basketball. When the artist drew it he was pushing the thought that comedy is a sport, and make me seem more butch.  He had a good point with the sport analogy, with my mas...

Matt is away tonight which is always a little bittersweet.  Time alone in your home is nice, but you build the home to share it with people you love. Life intrudes.  Work demands.  I resigned myself to dinner alone and picked up some stuff to thaw.  I don't cook for my...

The Princess died today.  Usually I find celebrity grief off-putting; as though people are diminishing their own lives and people they actually know.  This is different. Carrie Fisher seemed to live without fear.  She went big and today she went home.

Mos...