July 6th, 2025

 I usually speak in a Chicago voice... gritty, blunt and often a little angry, but this morning I want to talk in a quieter, folksier tone, like something out of one of my favorite books, Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters.

I recently came across the story of Tim Alexander, an Indiana farmer who was paralyzed in a farming accident in the early ’90s and passed away this weekend. Tim’s story drew the spotlight, but the real heart was his wife, Susan, who stuck by his side until her death a couple of years ago. I want to tell their story in that Spoon River style.

Because Indiana and Chicagoland are my Spoon River and sometimes the story is about people that we have never met.

The Stewardship of Susan Jane

I was born Susan Jane Hoffman in the spring of ’57,

down along the Tippecanoe, where frogs sang at dusk and cornfields whispered old hymns.

Folks called me Suzy Q, Saint Sue,

sometimes just Mom or MawMaw.

I fell in love with Tim Alexander at sixteen.

He had farm boy hands and a strong grin that made chores feel like a slow dance.

We married young,

I graduated from Purdue and went back home to Winamac...

Raised hogs, planted grain, and raised three kids on a handshake, a prayer, and more work than sleep.

Then in ’93, the ladder gave way.

Tim fell while working on the grain bin.

Spinal cord snapped.

Quadriplegic.

Couldn’t move from the shoulders down.

I was 36.

Megan was 13.

The boys were just ten and four.

They say the divorce rate triples after injuries like that, but I stayed.

Not because I had to, but because I loved him.

Because stewards don’t abandon the field

just because the weather turns mean.

So I grew the farm.

Doubled it.

Worked at the bank, then the school, then got my real estate license.

I sat on boards, helped the animal shelter,

and never missed a spelling bee or ballgame.

But mostly I cared for Tim.

For over thirty years.

Morning, noon, and long past midnight.

He couldn’t walk across his soybean rows anymore,

but I could and I did.

In 2006, Purdue gave me their first Women in Ag award.

I smiled for the photo,

then went home to cook dinner

and fold the towels.

That was enough for me

I died in August,

at home, in the house we built.

The coffee was still warm.

The sheets clean.

My heart full.

And now my Tim has joined me.

He waited over three decades to hold my hand again.

And now, Lord willing, we are walking side by side,

across a field without fences, through rows that never end.

This isn’t just a story about a man who fell.

It’s a story about the woman who kept him standing.

About a wife who was also a farmer,

a mother,

a friend,

and a quiet kind of hero.

Our time as stewards is over.

The land belongs to someone else now.

But nothing done in love is ever wasted.

Not one seed, not one prayer, not one midnight breath.

If you are reading this, take care of what you’ve been given...

...the land, the people, the story.

Because someday, you'll pass it along as well. We only live as stewards to this great land of ours for a very short time.

July 5th, 2025

     Yesterday didn’t work out the way the schedule had it drawn up. It all started with another insane text from west of Mannheim and everything west of Mannheim just kept kicking me in the throat.

I was supposed to go to a party, too many cars. I detoured for ice cream instead. Too many people were in line for an ice cream. I drove home.

The five-layer taco dip I made for the party…..

Left it in the back of The Lemon and it had spoiled by the time I realized that it was sitting in the back of Betty’s replacement.

Later that evening, I was going to meet friends at Fitzgerald’s. I couldn’t find parking.

I tried another ice cream spot around the corner, it was packed.

All dressed up and nowhere to go. I drove home again and ended the Fourth watching Full Metal Jacket with Fritz and George.

“Do you want us to rewind it for you, Dad?”

That line stuck with me. Not just because of how kind it was, but because I realized how much I’ve needed rewinding lately.

I’ve become an introvert in recent years. Not in a romantic, “Thoreau in the woods” kind of way. More in a “crawl under the covers when things get loud” sort of way. I used to be the gregarious and grateful guy.

I’m not apologizing for being quieter, but I think I’ve let that quieter version of myself get away with too much retreat and that is where this morning hits differently.

I used to think comebacks were about headlines, big moments and public victories. The kind of stuff that gets applause and maybe a slap on the back from the folks who counted you out.

I’ve come to learn through the years that the most meaningful comebacks happen in silence. They happen in the morning when I lace up my shoes, shut off the excuses, and decide to stop bullshitting.

No cameras. No cheerleaders. No spouse or parent. Just me and that voice in my huge head asking if I'm ready to carry my big ass out the front door and quit being a crybaby.

This comeback?

It’s personal. It won’t be for revenge. Nor for validation.

It is an apology to the man who went to parties and concerts. The one who thrived on connection and not avoidance. The one who made taco dip and actually showed up to share it.

If you see me out walking, or hear me cracking a joke at the grocery store, know that every step is part of the rebuild. Not toward some shiny new version of myself, but toward the version that shows up to more than just going to work. The one who stops turning around when things get crowded.

Here is my therapeutic Morning Chalkboard for the day after Americas birthday. I hope it can reach out to a few Chalkheads going through the same grind.

July 4th, 2025

      Today’s Chalkboard came a little later than usual, but sometimes that’s how holidays go. Especially when the echoes of July 3rd linger in your head like a John Philip Sousa march played just a bit too loud last night. The hangover’s not just from a couple drinks, it is the full-throated weight of nostalgia, gratitude, a cigar and maybe one too many bratwursts.

These two days always remind me how damn lucky I am.

I live in a solid neighborhood. I have grown roots in a town that, for all its quirks, knows how to show up when it matters. They have supported me after my exile west of Mannheim.

Sure, Illinois might have its warts... between the taxes and the politics, some say it’s fallen apart, but I’d still take it over Delaware or Oklahoma.

And this country? This country has never let me down. It has protected me, provided for my family, and given me the tools and the rights to build a great life.

Last night at the town concert, I watched families dance, old friends catch up, and kids chasing each other under a sky that smelled of summer humidity and sounded like laughter and cover bands. This morning, I went to the parade, same spot I always sit. Sun or drizzle, it doesn’t matter. It starts the same every year: sirens blaring, fire trucks rumbling, and hometown heroes behind the wheel. The police chief waved and wished me a happy birthday, which, let me tell you, felt pretty damn good.

I got hit with a few pieces of candy and even scored a toothbrush, they must’ve seen me smile. I got some patriotic beads, a little American flag, and a mini bottle of Malört from Teddy Roosevelt. Who was actually Peter, the guy who runs Riverside Foods. How many people can say their neighborhood grocer channels the Rough Rider and hands out Chicago's weirdest liquor?

Only in Riverside.

There were shouts of “Hey Jumbo!” and “Happy Fourth!” all around. My Reagan/Bush ‘84 shirt got plenty of smiles, thumbs-ups, and nods of approval...

...turns out, nostalgia looks good in red, white, and blue.

A couple folks even chuckled and said, “You wear that well, Jumbo.” One friend leaned over and said with a grin, “You’re actually really nice… for a Republican.” I just smiled and said, “That’s my Reagan charm.”

Today will be filled with Sousa marches, hot dogs, corn on the cob, and juicy watermelon. And maybe, just maybe, a swig of that Roosevelt Malört.

We’ve been divided in this country for a long time, but not today.

Today, we are all Americans.

Proud ones.

Grateful ones.

Stewards of a place we didn’t build but were lucky enough to inherit.

Let’s take care of it. Let's take care of each other and let's leave a mark that will make the middle of this century glorious and astonishing.

July 3rd, 2025

 I’m going to keep my mouth shut today (edit)

that didn't last long....

I wasn’t planning on writing this morning until the drive to work.

As I pulled away from Riverside, Saturn greeted me from the east sky, hanging low and stubborn like an old friend who won’t quit on you. The early morning glow had just started to stretch across Lake Michigan’s horizon, promising another July day whether I was ready for it or not.

Halfway into the drive, the radio offered a familiar voice with some age old advice. Sir Michael Philip Jagger, knighted rocker and occasional philosopher, reminded me:

“You can’t always get what you want...

But if you try sometimes, well—you just might find...

You get what you need.”

That line has found me in different seasons of my life:

Boyhood.

Bachelorhood.

Fatherhood.

Divorcehood.

from trading pits and now screen pits.

from CTA platforms to parking garages.

from breakfast cereal and cartoons to martinis and hard bop.

from Edgewater to Riverside.

from being lonely to being alone

And mornings like this one, when I wasn’t looking for answers, but got one anyway.

Sometimes you don’t need a map or a Google search....

Just a lyric.

A planet.

A sunrise

And a familiar stretch of road that keeps showing up.

July 2nd, 2025 An ode to a broken down Arb clerk

I wrote this sitting on my balcony the night of my fifty-ninth birthday. The perfect nightcap to an uneventful day.

An ode to a broken down Arb clerk

I daydream about drinking a Sazerac in the French Quarter, quoting Baldwin or Bukowski to the ghosts who belly up at the Carousel Bar. The stool spins under me as I search for someone, anyone to hand my heart to, unwrapped and still beating. Just like most back alley routes, it ends in another dead end. Another boarded-up window where chances once flickered under the tavern sign.

We walk past invisible people every day. Then one morning, we wake up and we are one. Just a ghost in the glass, trying to tear out a page or two from our own biography, hoping for a fireplace big enough to burn the whole encyclopedia set.

I never caught the Illinois Central down to New Orleans, but I did take the CTA to the ballgame with my mommy, clutching her hand like it was the last holy relic left in my tiny world. The past and the path not taken... they don’t fight each other.

They slow dance to Preservation Hall, playing “Mack the Knife” for a crowd of Yankee tourists who only hear the notes and not the ache beneath them.

There’s no streetcar here in the Divorced Dad District. Just the glow of a first quarter moon sliding over rooftops and lighting up the slivers of wood on my balcony.

Across from Jackson Square... those iron railings hold stories.

Here on Lincoln Avenue... my porch holds the promise for one last glance at the tattoo runner and his lean for restitution.

Frost said happiness makes up in height what it lacks in length. He wasn’t wrong. I still duck beneath the same branch where a mourning dove croons like a widowed lover. I step over the crack in the sidewalk that I once tried to fix with silly putty and pastel chalk. I chase those smells that won’t die... GoldBond on a humid July morning, Vicks on a February night when everything felt broken.

If only Mom’s hug could still fix it.

I never stopped trying to make my parents proud. I’m ticking closer to them now. They don’t care if I’m just the guy chasing one last sunset or hunting for one more encore in a half-empty bowling alley.

The clank of the CTA over Lake Street is my hymn. The candy factory air is still holy. Maybe there is one more kegger in the forest preserve, one more one-night stand in the produce aisle…

…before I sit at the counter in the 24 hour diner just off Division Street, somewhere between memory and heaven’s gate.

July 1st, 2025

 We are always getting ready to live but never living.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

We spend so much time planning or drafting the life we want and prepping the moves that we will make once the conditions are just right. When we are not planning, we are waiting. Waiting for the right moment, the right sign, the right everything. Waiting to make it feel all alright.

Here is where the problem begins...

...while we are doing all of this planning and waiting, we miss the living.

We chase desire so hard we forget to feel the ground beneath our feet. Sometimes, preparation isn’t necessary anymore.

Sometimes, it’s just time to let go and show up unprepared and not give a flying fuck. Time to embrace the present and enjoy the active process of noticing shit do stuff.

The present moment, that is the real work. That is where the joy is. We started living years ago, whether we knew it or not. The world keeps evolving, and we keep growing with it. The trick isn’t to grow old, it is to grow older.

So go dribble a basketball. Throw a ball against the wall. Sit on a bench and let your ice cream melt a bit and go reread a book you cracked open in your younger years.

Let the words meet your experience:

“Call me Ishmael.”

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

“Stay gold, Ponyboy.”

“Beware: for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.”

“And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

“Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”

Go back to those lines and feel them land again. The difference this time will be felt with a lifetime of experience. That’s how you’ll know you are making progress through this magical shitshow.

It is another new month, Chalkheads.

Go get the Gusto and feel the sun’s smile upon your brow.

June 30th, 2025

 Last week, the car I just bought took a shit on me.

I brought it to my guy over at the Riverside Garage. He gave it a once over and told me the job was so big, he had to kick it to a bigger shop. He is honest as the day is long. I had just fixed the blower for the A/C and heat fan the week before. Two hits in two weeks on a car I just bought in late winter.

To put the cherry on top, I was driving home from the Southside Saturday night. I didn’t feel like taking surface streets, so I jumped on the 294. Somewhere along the way, a piece of trim near the windshield ripped off and flew into the expressway. I caught it tumbling in the rearview like a plastic tumbleweed.

So what did I do Sunday afternoon to collect myself?

I walked over to my local tavern, a solid Irish pub and sat down for a cold draft and some peace of mind.

About halfway into the pint, a woman walked in with a stack of flyers and a determined look. She went straight to Miro, the bartender, and asked if he was the boss. He hesitated but said yes. I figured it was business.

It wasn’t.

Her name was Barb. Her daughter had gone missing. Recently discharged from the nearby hospital with postpartum depression. She often came by the Chinese place next door to the pub, so Barb was canvassing the block. She asked if she could tape a flyer in the window.

I felt a wave of shame roll through me. I was feeling sorry for myself over a busted water pump, while this mother was out here, desperate to find her baby.

I told Barb her daughter, Anitra, who she lovingly calls Grace, would be in my morning prayers. She teared up, thanked me, and said she believed in the power of prayer.

After she left, I sat there with my beer in hand and felt a jolt. I'm sure it was my Oldman giving me a "you’ve got to be shitting me, son" straight from his eternal rest. Heaven is much closer than 220 South Lombard, which is just up the block in Oak Park.

All of it.... the timing, the conversation, the name Barb, a sacred family name. The postpartum connection, which I’ve always believed changed the course of my ex-wife’s life...

...it wasn’t just coincidence.

It was one of those signs from Heaven. And God has a way of delivering them like a steel-toed kick to the nuts when I'm in a "woe is me" mood.

I will drop three grand this week to get Francine the Ford Flex back on the road. That’s just life. Things break, you fix them, and move on... until the next thing breaks.

But that mother?

She might not get to fix anything. She might not get to hug her daughter again. Car maintenance pales in comparison to search parties and a possible funeral plan.

That glass of beer changed meaning halfway through. A glass emblazed with the Sox emblem. Which only added to the evangelical lesson that I was experiencing. Now Father Bobby from the Southside was involved in this signal from heaven

I finished my beer, had one more and went home to make George dinner. Before I handed him his plate, I gave the big magnificent son of a bitch a tight hug that lasted longer than usual. He asked me if I was alright and I told him that I loved him.

Something Barb might not ever get to do again.

Everything is temporary.

Cars.

Problems.

Even Keith Richards will play his final blues riff one day and Willie won't be on the road again.

So, as your Monday gets underway, say a prayer that Barb finds her baby girl.

And keep your eyes open Chalkheads for dimes on the curb and signs from heaven. They are out there and they are astounding...

June 29th, 2025

Another month draws to a close and summer has hit full stride. It is hard to believe 2025 is already halfway in the books, it barely feels like it has begun.

The only proof is in the calendar...

...we have moved through winter into spring and now the Summer of 2025, but it feels like I just put the Christmas tree away yesterday.

Years that end in “5” have always carried weight for me.

1975, I was nine. My parents were splitting up, I changed schools and I was learning that life doesn’t always go according to plan. But that same year, a new running back brought electricity to a Bears team still trying to find its footing out of last place.

By 1985, I was nineteen, caught in the limbo between adolescence and adulthood. That same running back was a seasoned pro who finally reached the mountaintop. I was still figuring out which way was up.

1995 brought early morning opening bells and late night last calls. I was driving a Cadillac, I bought a leather couch at Marshall Fields and I was standing in a trading pit making a decent living. I didn’t realize how good I had it. I had the world on a string and I was sitting on a rainbow.

2005, I was a newlywed on the edge of fatherhood. The White Sox brought home a title, and for a while, everything felt right.

2015 found me with three kids, a full home, and a marriage beginning to show its cracks. I was deep in the joy of parenting and the confusion of everything else.

Now it is 2025, and I don’t have the hindsight yet to sum it all up. What I do know is that I’ve gone from a young man to middle age and now into whatever comes next...

... something Sinatra called the autumn years.

I’m not looking at the box scores every morning. I can’t even tell you who won the last Super Bowl. I’m not looking ahead to 2035 with dread. I’m hoping by then, the Shepkids are standing tall in adulthood and I’ve transitioned gracefully from commodity broker to a man with more mornings on the porch than the pit.

Life moves fast. The decades turn over like pages, and each one teaches you something you didn’t know the last time around.

So here is to the start of July. The start of another chapter, maybe a quieter one, but no less meaningful.

Finish June strong you Chalkheads. Celebrate liberty and freedom this week. Keep the beer cold, check the propane and for heaven’s sake, change your bedsheets.

June 28th, 2025

     I could be snotty and say my life has been something Shakespearean... grand, tragic and layered with poetic meaning.

Though I would lean more David Mamet than William Shakespeare.

No iambic pentameter, but vulgar dialogue with a cynical, street-smart edge. Think Glengarry Glen Ross, but on a trading floor with Old Style bottles scattered on the stage.

That famous passage from Macbeth has been with me since I had to remember it in high school.

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day… Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more…”

It hits differently as I get older. I have realized that most of life is spent in the quiet moments between tragedies and punchlines. That I often carry the weight of every yesterday, learning to dress it up with humor and hindsight.

If my life were a play, it would not be a polished Broadway run. It would be a one-man show in a store front theater with folding chairs and a flickering neon light from a laundromat. A man talking to the ghosts of his own memories, chasing streetcars, lost parade routes, 24-hour diners and daydreams. Wrestling with the thin line between growth and self-delusion. It would be the story of an immature character trying like hell to grow up and rewrite himself scene by scene.

There would be plenty of laughs built in, but right behind the laughs would be the tears nobody sees. The ones that show up during intermission, when the house is dark and you’re alone in the wings wondering if the audience will still be there after the next monologue.

Maybe that’s the goal now?

Not perfection, not applause, but just putting on the damn play with the right balance of comedy and tragedy. Telling it like it is and not bullshitting the audience. Giving the people a few honest lines, a couple laughs and a good cry before the final curtain.

Alright theater goers, today’s sunrise already opened the curtain at 5:18 AM.

You’ve got stage time until 8:30 PM today. Strut around with passion as your conquest for a windmill leads to astonishment.

June 27th, 2025

 It is already the last Friday of June...

Our life.... flies by so quickly. We are slotted into a stretch of time like a bookmark in the middle of a chapter that we didn’t get to start and won’t get to finish.

I was placed on this path during the last part of the 20th century and walked it into the first half of the 21st. From climbing trees while Elton John sang through WLS to watching the Weather Channel before I go to bed, before the streetlights even flicker on.

That is the arc. That is the slide.

Most of the ride, it seems, we are meant to suffer. The rest of it, we are masking that pain, but I’m done with the mask and I’m damn well done worrying about the pain.

I have seen the evangelical right hijack one party and the socialists put the other in a sleeper hold. I watched my baseball team, my football team and my hockey team win it all, but my basketball team fell down this week. Still, I keep watching. That’s the thing that we always do, we keep rooting for those teams from our youth.

I get this strong urge to call someone on a payphone. Not a contact. Not a screen name. No caller ID, I want you to guess who’s calling.

I want to hear my mom pick up the line and shout, “WMAQ is gonna make me rich!”

.. and for a moment, believe her.

Give me a Larry Biittner card flapping in my spokes. Give me a world where I don’t know what a boob feels like and a French kiss is still a mystery.

I want to get yelled at for leaving my plate on the table. I want to throw a tennis ball against the front stoop and have my Oldman yell at me from the porch.

I want my mom cutting up my hot dogs and putting a plop of ketchup... yes, ketchup on my Hong Kong Phooey lunch plate. I want to watch a game on a TV with rabbit ears and not give a damn about not having cable television yet.

I want Orion Samuelson to tell me where pork bellies are trading and Wally Phillips spinning an Ellery Queen mystery before school.

My muscles ache now.

My breath ain’t so deep.

My hair is wiry and my skin is starting to spot just like Aunt Tillie’s did, but I am still here.

It is already the last Friday of June 2025. Next June, we will be getting riled up for the semi-quincentennial. 250 years of this wild, stupid, brilliant American ride.

And me?

I went from little league

to my first solo CTA ride into the Loop

to popping my cherry

to my first lap dance

to my first steak at Gene & Georgetti

to my first diaper change

to receiving emails from AARP.

All of it, just like that... tucked into this sliver of history. From one century into the next.

Friday night, maybe I’ll sit out back, listen to the ballgame on my transistor, spill a little mustard on my shirt and yank an Old Style out of a cold bath of ice. Gershwin on low in the kitchen, Sacred Heart on my mind and Shabbat peace humming through my heart.

We’ve done it, haven’t we?

We made our parents proud.

We didn’t make it all the way perfect, but we showed up and showing up is half of the battle.

We made sandwiches.

We gave rides.

We bought a Weber grill.

We tucked them in with all of our heart.

We said, “I love you” even when it burned.

Now all that is left is to leave this motherfucker a little better than we found it and maybe, just maybe, we can make someone else feel what we felt when the phone rang and we ran to answer it, not knowing who it was, but hoping it was someone who loved us.

Astonishment.........................