December 30th, 2025

 Many a Board of Trade guy has gotten on the wrong train.

The first time I did was in the summer of 1988, on a Friday night, drinking Old Style with the older guys I worked with at Continental Grain. I was twenty-one, living back at my Oldman’s house in Oak Park, thinking I knew more than I did.

I jumped on the Lake/Dan Ryan line heading west and passed out somewhere between confidence and stupidity. Back then, Lake Street ran straight through the West Side and tied into the Dan Ryan which headed south. I slept through Ridgeland, all the way to the end of the line at Harlem/Lake. The train turned around and headed back toward the Loop with one drunk kid stretched out, learning a lesson the long way.

By the time we turned south again, rolling past Old Sox Park, past 47th, stopping at 63rd, an older Black woman leaned over and told me plainly: "You’re on the wrong train, in the wrong part of town, for a white boy.

She wasn’t rude.

She wasn’t dramatic.

She was a guardian angel.

I thanked her, got off at 69th Street, and stood on the platform waiting for a northbound train. My eyes wide open and my heart pounding. I didn’t sleep a wink the rest of the way home. I was scared the whole ride, and I deserved every second of it.

When I finally walked in the back door, my dad was sitting in the family room, awake.

“Where the hell have you been?”

I told him the story. He shook his head once and said, “Go to bed.”

I never passed out on the CTA again.

Years later, I made one more train mistake. I took an express by mistake out to Aurora when I was living along the BNSF line. Terese came and got me: George packed in the back seat. I figured I was headed straight to the doghouse, but George was having trouble sleeping, and that long drive knocked him right out. Sometimes grace shows up when you least deserve it.

I didn’t pay an expensive price for either trip. I learned and I remembered.

The longer you stay on the wrong train, the more expensive it is to get home. Luckily, I didn't get robbed and thank goodness George was cranky that night.

Today is National Bacon Day. I bake mine in the oven. Nothing says good morning like a couple of sunny-side-up eggs, hash browns with onions, buttered rye toast, a cup of black coffee, and four or five strips of bacon cooked medium to medium-well.

Sunrise today was 7:17 AM... still late but getting there. We are on the last fumes of ’25.

Finish strong.

Take the A Train Chalkheads, have some bacon, and don’t sleep through your stop.

December 29th, 2025

 What a difference a day makes.

Yesterday it was mild, temperatures pushing the upper fifties. Overnight, the winds howled in and delivered a cold, snowy commute to work this morning. That is December in the Big City for you. We had a Gray Christmas last week and a cold welcome to 2026 this week.

Do you think the same thing will happen Thursday night when we change the five to a six? Will the change in year bring a drastic change in life?

I’m not sure that every December 29th I look back at the year and think it was a horseshit year, but when I stack up all the horseshit years, I still see a tremendous run at life. Perspective has a funny way of doing that.

I am already looking forward to a couple of my favorite holidays. In fifty days, I will be celebrating Fat Tuesday. Then in 187 days, I will be celebrating the 250th year of this great country that I am blessed to live in.

Bundle up, my Midwestern Chalkheads.

Like Don Shepley used to say, “It’s colder than a witch’s tit in a brass bra!”

December 28th, 2025

I took my Christmas tree down yesterday, December 27th.

That might be the earliest I have ever de-Christmasized my home. No twelfth day, no hanging stockings, no lingering lights. Just back to regular life.
I remember my mom taking the Christmas tree down during Super Bowl XIII, January 21st, 1979. The Steelers beat the Cowboys. I remember that because I remember the feeling of Christmas being officially over at the latest date in my life.
Here is something funny about age and memory: if you were born in 1966, you can always remember how old you were when certain Super Bowls were played.
We were getting ready to turn twenty when the Bears beat the Patriots 46–10 in Super Bowl XX. We turn sixty this coming year as Super Bowl LX is played on February 8th.
That is how the high school Class of 1984 can keep time. Not with calendars, but with championship football games.
Remembering dates gets harder the older I get, not because my mind slips, but because the milestones pile up. There are more to remember.
2026 will be the 53rd anniversary of the day I mastered cursive. I walked up to the blackboard in Sister Francis Irene’s classroom and nailed the word little. Carefully crossing each t separately, the way we were taught when penmanship still mattered. That was the first time I felt mastery. The first time I knew I could do something cleanly, correctly, and on my own.
2026 also brings the semiquincentennial. That is a mouthful. For me, it will be “the bicentennial plus fifty.”
Years ending in six are my decade years. I turned ten in 1976. My parents were getting divorced. I turned twenty in 1986 when the Bears won XX. I turned thirty in 1996. That year is a little foggy. I turned forty in 2006 and became a dad when I met George. I turned fifty in 2016. My mom died and my marriage was running on its final fumes.
I don’t know what sixty brings in 2026.
My faith tells me good things will happen in 2026, but I’m old enough to be prepared for the worst. Someone I know will probably head to heaven. My company could shut down if business keeps slowing. I’ve lived through that kind of fear before, and once you’ve tasted it, it never fully leaves you.
My kids bring volatility into my life, especially the youngest. The daughter who turns thirteen in 2026. The one with the oldest dad in her class.
My neck is stiff. My knees, ankles, and hips argue with the alarm clock every morning. My ears ring constantly and I only use my schwantz to go pee.
2026 isn’t exactly advertising itself as a banner year. So, I will keep chugging and go with the flow. Just play it by ear and see what next year brings.
I think I am continuing down the path of becoming an introvert. I may even have to change one of the adjectives in my email signature. Yes, adjectives. Pronouns are limited and too political. I am not a him/he. I am gregarious/grateful. Though I’ve considered changing gregarious to unsociable in 2026, but let’s just get there first.
Hopefully one of the O’Brien sisters won’t be correcting me on January 5th for chalking the wrong year like she did in 2025.
Don’t worry, I am not changing my signature adjectives, and I will still be searching for astonishment and gusto in 2026. There will be days when I put a smile on the sun and days when I don't.
What are your adjectives?
If you use pronouns, maybe follow my lead and switch to adjectives in 2026. There is more freedom in an adjective. Adjectives give you more room to breathe.
Let’s call 2026 the year of positive adjectives. Let’s go with that, Chalkheads.

December 27th, 2025

 We were standing around the cheese and cracker table on Christmas.

Nothing fancy.... a couple fabulous dips, some sharp cheddar and a half-empty box of Carr’s water crackers. The kind of table people gather around because nobody knows what else to do with their hands. The conversation was easy and going well considering I was with my ex and her mom. We talked about the Shepkids. We talked about the weather. Old stories that still worked, the kind that make people smile without effort. The kind you tell when you are grateful nobody is digging.

Then the conversation zigged and zagged, like conversations do, and it landed in 2010. That was when my ex-wife said it.

"That was when you were 'incapacitated'."

The word didn’t fail.

It hung.

It took aim.

It hit me harder than Speckman ever did in an Oklahoma drill back at Dear Old Cathedral.

Her eyes were steady when she said it. Not dramatic... Not cruel, but mad, hurt, and sad... all braided together. That word carried weight for her. It carried memory and it carried cost.

She left it wide open. I could have shut it down and maybe steer back to weather and cheese, or I could walk straight into it.

I walked straight into it.....

I was between jobs in 2010. My position in the bond room had been eliminated, and for the first time in my career, I was unemployed. George was four and Fritz was a newborn. I took unemployment and became a stay-at-home dad. A short-term plan that stretched longer than expected. Somewhere in the middle of that hiatus, I pulled a full Burgermeister Meisterburger. I stepped over a toy on the stairs and ripped my quad clean.

Now I wasn’t just unemployed. I was unemployed and in a cast.

I slept on the pull-out couch in the living room. My ex suddenly had to carry a baby, a toddler, and an incapacitated husband. The tension started the moment I came home from the hospital. What I thought helped, actually made everything worse. The Vicodin prescription Hinsdale Orthopedics sent home with me. Three refills of ninety pills for a total of 270. It was perfectly legal at the time. It was perfectly normal and it was perfectly reckless. Today, you might be lucky if they give you ten.

I had worked on the trading floor in the late ’80s and through the ’90s. I saw addictions up close... cocaine, booze, ecstasy, weed. I also saw careers die. There were funerals for people that were still young. I didn’t think I was an addictive person, but if you give anyone that much of a drug that quiets pain and anxiety at the same time, you are going to find the soft spot.

I loved my Vicos.

I loved them with breakfast. I loved them with lunch. I played with George and rocked Fritz while I was clouded by this powerful opioid. They paired well with vodka, gin, bourbon and especially beer. As my rehab continued, the pills became my helper.

While my body healed, something else quietly slipped. I turned my attention into being a father and I stopped being a full-time husband.

I moved from the couch to the bedroom floor, sleeping with the Shepley brothers. Nights were about bottles and diapers, not conversation. The smiles faded and the hugs disappeared. Kisses became rare and the Vicos made sex nearly impossible.

Add in a move to a better school district, the weight of not working, and you can cue Earth, Wind & Fire’s "After the Love Has Gone." You could hear it without the radio. It became the theme song of our marriage.

For her, that word, "incapacitated" holds all of that. For me, at the time, it was shits and giggles. I was numb, I was medicated, I was detached.

Then the last bottle ran out and the brace came off. The crutches disappeared and so did the love. Here is the strange grace of it, when the last Vicodin was gone, I didn’t go searching for more. I didn’t spiral deeper, but the damage didn’t care. I hadn’t just ripped a muscle above my knee. I also ripped up my marriage.

I was tired of sitting around and being a loser. I went back to the Board of Trade one last time, the way I did when I was a snot-nosed kid looking for a shot. I walked around the bond room. It was empty, grim, filled with men staring into the end of something. Then I walked into the grain room, where there was still noise, still life. I met my boss and started immediately. I have been with the same trading company for fifteen years now.

One good thing came out of that hiatus, but at a high cost.

My wife and I fell out of love. The magic didn’t explode; it evaporated. We became guardians of the Shepkids. Partners in logistics only. We became Co-parents. No longer lovers and no longer friends. Just two adults carrying painful history.

... and all of it came flooding back from one word at a Christmas table.

"Incapacitated."

This isn’t a Christmas ghost story. It has no redemption arc or gifts of the Magi. There isn't a Red Ryder BB gun to shoot your eye out with. Just a chapter from the opioid prescription era, where a legal bottle quietly changed the trajectory of a family. No amount of money, reputation, success, or late apologies can reverse what’s already been lived. The past doesn’t negotiate and it doesn’t refinance. It just sits there with the ledger closed, daring you to tell the truth about it.

Today the tree comes down and maybe one last eggnog. Life keeps moving, whether we are ready or not.

December 26th, 2025

 “Someday soon we all will be together, if the fates allow…”

That line has always gutted me. It comes from the saddest Christmas song ever written. Sung by someone who already knew how the story bends. A person hoping, not promising that next year all our troubles will be out of sight. Until then, we muddle through somehow.

I don’t muddle and you Chalkheads know what I think about hope.

I don’t have time to muddle. There is no muddle dive or muddle sweep in my playbook. No safe little screen pass called just to survive the down. Muddle is for people waiting on relief instead of choosing action.

That song matters because it admits something people don’t like to say out loud: not everyone is having a happy Christmas. Some folks are carrying loneliness. Others are hauling addictions, finances, sickness, regret. Sometimes all of it at once. Christmas doesn’t cure that, it just shines a brighter light on it.

Christmas morning, I thought about feeling sorry for myself. That was a muddle option, a fake toss to a trap that was never going to get called in the huddle. So instead, I gathered up my sons, and we drove over to my mother-in-law’s house.

Ahead of us were my ex-wife and my daughter. One who hates me dearly. The other who thinks Dad is obnoxious and embarrassing. I didn’t have high hopes for Christmas Day.

Then something unexpected happened.

My daughter curled up next to me by the fire pit and she told me she loves me. Her mom and I got along. We finished each other’s sentences. We worked side by side in the kitchen. We laughed; we even smiled. I saw flashes of how it once was, Christmas past sneaking into Christmas present. I hope Hazel saw it too.

I did muddle a little later, smoking a cigar without PopPop, not getting a Christmas call from my Oldman or my Ma. I realized Christmas present is already sliding into Christmas past.

There will never be another Christmas with kids who are 19, 16, and 12. This might be the last one with Molly, our 13-year-old black lab, begging for scraps through the glass dining room table. There may not be many Christmases left in that house. A place I’ve gone to for twenty-five years, far too big now for a widow to sit alone in once the noise leaves.

When we packed up and drove away, I worried she might start muddling in the quiet. I thought somewhere down the road, there is a Christmas where I will be the one left alone. Left to remember an overcast day, a fire pit, my seventh-grade daughter, her mom, her grandma, all of us in sweaters on a mild Christmas Day. All of us getting along and enjoying that day. A day when fate did bring us all together.

As I get older, I start believing the day we will all be together is in heaven. Half the people who loved me are already there.

Until then, my job is simple: making Christmas a happy tradition for the Shepkids. Making sure they never learn to muddle and when they do, remember so many more are worse off.

Today is Saint Stephen’s Day or Boxing Day to some. A day to clean up, wind down, and gather again. Maybe in a pub, a church basement or a quiet kitchen table. Christmas present becoming Christmas past, with Christmas future less than a year away.

It may be cloudy today. Just remember, the sun is smiling somewhere, and your shadow is getting longer. Take a moment to admire the Christmas glow and the astonishment before it all gets wrapped up for next Christmas....

.... If the fates allow

December 25th, 2025

 Tonight I want to tell you the story of an empty stocking.

Once upon a midnight clear, there was a child’s cry. A blazing star hung over a stable and wise men came with birthday gifts.

We haven’t forgotten that night down the centuries; we celebrate it with stars on Christmas trees, the sound of bells and with gifts. But especially with gifts. You give me a book; I give you a tie. Aunt Martha has always wanted an orange squeezer and Uncle Henry could do with a new pipe.

We forget nobody, adult or child. All the stockings are filled…all that is, except one. And we have even forgotten to hang it up. The stocking for the child born in a manger. It’s his birthday we are celebrating. Don’t ever let us forget that.

Let us ask ourselves what he would wish for most…and then let each put in his share. Loving kindness, warm hearts and the stretched out hand of tolerance. All the shining gifts that make peace on earth.

Bishop Henry Brougham

Christmas Eve 1947

December 24th, 2025

 Every Christmas, without fail, there’s a quiet divide in living rooms across the world.

Is your tree topped with a Star or angel?

It shows up when the box comes down from the attic. Someone reaches in, lifts the topper, and the question gets asked, sometimes out loud, sometimes by habit.

So I’ll ask the Chalkheads straight: Star family or angel family?

We are a star family. Nothing against the angel. The angel belongs, but not on top of our tree. Angels usually announce that something is about to go down. They show up with news and instructions. They speak to shepherds, to Mary, Elizabeth, to Joseph. They tell you what is happening and what it means. The angel says, Pay attention, this is important.

That’s a good tradition, a comforting one, but the star tells a different story.

The star doesn’t speak.

It doesn’t explain.

It doesn’t interrupt your life.

It simply appears and waits.

The Christmas star didn’t announce anything to the powerful or the prepared. It showed up for the believers. The star appeared to the Magi and to the shepherds out in the field.

The star didn’t demand belief but invited movement and that is the difference. An angel delivers a message to you. A star requires you to go toward it.

Following the star meant packing up, leaving home, taking chances, risk being wrong. No guarantee the light would shine by the end of the journey. There was no assurance that the magi and shepherds would understand what they found when they arrived.

That is faith the hard way. Faith with mileage on it. Faith that requires movement. That is why the star sits at the top of our tree.

It isn’t decoration, but an orientation in search and discovery. A star says you don’t need certainty; you need conviction. You don’t need answers, you need the willingness to move toward something good, something true, even when the road is long and the night is cold.

There is another layer to it, whether people say it out loud or not.

The star echoes the Star of David. Light held in shape, heaven and earth overlapping with belief tied to action. It reminds us that faith isn’t just what you say but what you believe. It is what you practice, who you protect and how you show up. Whether you keep the light on when it would be easier to shut it off. For it is in giving that we receive.

The angel tells you what happened. The star asks you what you are going to do about it. We chose the star because it fits how we live. The star doesn’t promise ease, it promises direction and on the shortest, darkest nights of the year... that is enough for this rusted out old somabitch

So, I’ll ask again, Chalkheads: Star or angel?

December 23rd, 2025

 Here is a little Dickens for you on the eve of the eve.

Dickens isn’t scolding regret here, just cutting it off at the knees. He is saying regret is cheap if it doesn’t turn into motion. You can sit with sorrow, replay the tape, catalog the missed chances, but none of that redeems the time itself. The ledger doesn’t rebalance just because you feel bad about it.

That is why A Christmas Carol ages so well. Scrooge isn’t saved by remorse, but by action. The ghosts don’t ask him to feel worse, they force him to see clearly.

Past, present, future.

No sentimentality, no soft landings... Just truth. Once he sees that the clock is still running. He realizes he must start moving.

Every year or so I read this classic story just before Christmas. Every year a different man is turning the pages that contain the same words. One year it is about money. Another year it’s about time. Another year it is about people I thought would always be there. Dickens wrote a short book that somehow keeps pace with my dazed life.

Today's quote belongs on the Chalkboard because it doesn’t let anyone hide behind “if only.” It says: the only amends available are the ones made today. Not yesterday or maybe tomorrow. Not in thought, nor in regret... In behavior and in action.

That is the hard truth. It is an old truth. The kind that has always been right there.

Later this morning, when the sun shows up right on schedule, it won’t care how many times I have read Dickens. It will ask the same question it always does:

What are you going to do with the time that’s still yours?

December 22nd, 2025

    This is the time of year for rituals, memories and tradition. Brightness isn't about the hours of daylight, but the intentions that we have that shines the light. Go make this cloudy day shine Chalkheads.

December 21st, 2025

 It has been a heavy weekend on the Morning Chalkboard.

Saturday belonged to Nietzsche and Sunday belongs to Tolstoy. That wasn't accidental. When you put these two back to back, you are asking people to sit with discomfort instead of running away from it.

Tolstoy’s writings consistently challenged readers to look inward rather than outward, urging personal accountability before social transformation. Today’s quote distills that idea into one hard sentence... "everyone wants to change the world, but no one wants to change himself." It sounds simple until you realize how few people are willing to live it.

This past week has been relentless. Hanukkah is in full force and Christmas is barreling toward us. The calendar closing in on the end of 2025 with all the subtle and not-so-subtle reminders that time doesn’t negotiate. Add to that the background noise of stress, anxiety, and fatigue, and you have the perfect storm.

Then come the headlines.

Another school shooting, this one at Brown University. The massacre of Jews celebrating the beginning of Hanukkah in Australia. The murder of celebrity Rob Reiner and his wife.

It is this last one that I want to chalk about here..

All week long we watched old interviews, clips, and tributes. The one moment that stood out to me was an interview with James Woods. Woods is an actor we all know, but in recent years he has become well known for his far-right conservative views. Rob Reiner lived on the opposite end of the political spectrum. Reiner was far left, unapologetic and outspoken.

Here is the part that matters. They were close friends for over forty years.

They debated, they argued and they challenged each other. They didn’t hide their differences or soften their convictions. These were two of the loudest, most relentless voices on opposite sides of the political divide. Two of the biggest mealy mouths on Twitter, if we are being honest here. Neither one was shy about telling the world exactly what they thought.

Yet, when the noise stopped... they broke bread together, they showed up for milestones and they stayed friends. That isn't nostalgia from the Archie Bunker and George Jefferson days. That is a lost skill that we need to redevelop for the middle of this century.

Somewhere along the way, we have decided disagreement meant disqualification. That difference meant danger. That the goal was to defeat the person instead of understand them. We built our identities around being right instead of being decent.

History doesn’t reward that kind of bullshit.

The political leaders of the first half of the twenty-first century will one day lie beside Ozymandias. Shattered reputations scattered across forgotten sands. Power always fades and ego always collapses. Like I keep hammering into you Chalkheads, time eventually keeps a clean ledger.

This is the moment when we must look deep inside ourselves and ask what the fuck is going on. Not just with the world around us, but with us inside.

As these holidays draw to a close, it is time to winterize something deeper than our homes.

Winterize our hearts.

Rejuvenate our minds.

Patch the cracks in our souls.

Do the quiet work before demanding loud change from everyone else.

When we have done that, then we can start reaching out. Call the friend who slowly became a stranger. Read something you wouldn’t normally read. Walk a different route. Let unfamiliar ground teach you something. Find the part of yourself that needs to be reinvented, reinforced, or replaced.

Light your last candle tonight. Open your first present this week. Watch the clock turn toward a new year with intention instead of fear.

Today is the winter solstice. The world is tilted at 23.5 degrees. The shortest day is behind us. From here on out, the light returns slowly and steadily. Our days get longer, our shadows shorten.

Eat something decadent today and have a little gusto. Hug someone who loves you and enjoy that smile on the sun.

December 20th, 2025

 How about a Saturday morning with some Friedrich Nietzsche?

Nietzsche wasn’t attacking meaning. He was attacking delay. He saw hope, when applied to this life, as something dangerous, not noble or brave, but postponing. Hope whispers that relief is coming if you just wait long enough. That suffering has an expiration date. That the ledger will balance itself if you just stay patient. Nietzsche called that cowardice because it asks nothing of you except endurance without acceptance.

What he offered instead was harder and cleaner ... AMOR FATI, which is Latin for love your fate. You don't need to tolerate fate or negotiate with it. Love it, embrace it... all of it. Both the suffering and success welded together, inseparable.

Hope belongs to fantasy and not in reality.

The truth lands heavier the older that I get. Youth runs on hope because it hasn’t paid enough invoices yet. Life hasn’t collected. Over time, hope thins out and reality does what it always does. It shows up on schedule and charges interest. Loved ones die before we want them to. Marriages fail, cars break down, layoffs aren't just counted for CNBC, institutions rot, friendships end over spilled wine, kneecaps buckle and children suffer in ways we cannot fix.

Promises don’t age well. Somewhere along the line, I realized hope didn’t shield me from any of these things, it only made the waiting longer and the disappointment sharper.

That is where I am now. I have zero use for hope as a tool. I don’t trust it and I don’t lean on it. I don’t outsource my footing to daydreams. Let modern politicians mumble hope into microphones while offering nothing but recycled lies. Hope is cheap currency. It buys applause and delivers nothing.

Wasting time hoping doesn’t soften the blow, it sharpens it.

That isn’t bitterness.

That is clarity.

Don Shepley never taught hope. He taught me to position myself towards life's hurdles.

Square your shoulders.

Bow your neck.

Get low and push forward.

When the world fights back, you don’t ask it to be kind, you drive through it. That isn’t optimism, that is discipline. That is acceptance married to effort. That is amor fati in work boots.

Here is where people get it all wrong. Rejecting hope does not mean rejecting faith.

Hope wants outcomes, Faith doesn’t.

Hope demands guarantee, Faith asks for none.

Christ never said, “This will all work out.”

Not once did he waiver. In the garden, He didn’t hope His way out, He submitted.

“Not my will, but Yours.”

On the cross, He didn’t forecast relief, He entrusted Himself. That is my Faith stripped of illusion.

Faith isn’t wishful thinking.

Faith isn’t optimism with religious language.

Faith doesn’t bargain with reality.

Faith tells me that even if this does not improve, I will not abandon what is true. I will say my prayer and position myself to fight through and not sit there and daydream that the bullshit fades away.

Faith holds in good times without arrogance and in bad times without collapse. It doesn’t promise me a rescue plan. It promises meaning and meaning is enough for me.

You can lose hope and still have faith. In fact, sometimes hope must die for faith to mature. Hope wants the future to bend your way. Faith stands firm when it doesn’t. Faith lives in the present tense and always shows up. Faith shoulders weight and keeps moving without applause.

Hope decorates daydreams.

Faith carries load.

If hope ever returns, it won't get the steering wheel. It rides quietly in the backseat, where fantasies belong. The work up front is done by acceptance, integrity, discipline, and faith. Faith in ourselves, faith in showing up, and faith in the promise of eternal grace beyond this ledger.

Love life as it is.

Carry suffering without flinching.

Accept success without illusion.

The sun will rise this morning at 7:15 a.m. I won't hope it to rise. It shows up to shine on the good days and shine on the bad days.

Holy Crap.... I chalked a heavy Chalkboard for this Saturday before Christmas.

Have faith that today is astonishing.

December 19th, 2025

I’m getting a real kick out of celebrating Hanukkah this year.

Not because I’m trying to be trendy or make a point, but because it feels honest. I have only been lighting a menorah the last handful of years, but Jews have always been part of my life. In Chicago, that’s just how it was. You didn’t ask what someone believed first, you asked what neighborhood they were from. You asked them what parish they were in. Edgewater. Rogers Park. St. Edith’s. St. Basil’s. Parish before politics, street before slogans. It was common back in the day to hear a Jewish guy say that he was in Saint Gregory's or Saint Ita's.

When I was a kid in Catholic school, the Bible wasn’t divided by teams. The Old Testament was Judeo. The New Testament was Christian, Judeo-Christian. I honestly thought being Catholic meant you were Jewish too, just later in the story. My old man worked on the railroad with Jewish guys. They came to our house for Christmas parties and we went to their homes for special occasions. The food was unreal and the music sounded familiar. It felt a lot like the German side of my family, big tables, loud voices, history carried in recipes.

So yeah, I’m protective of Jews and supportive of Israel. Enough so that when Israel was attacked and I said so out loud, I lost friends. That told me more about them than me.

Here is the hard part, the part you don’t dodge if you are serious about faith. I carry hatred toward another religion. That is the hard truth and that truth scares me. Because I believe in heaven and I believe in purgatory.

I picture it clear as day... a chain-link fence between me in purgatory and my dad in heaven, and him saying, “Moose, I told you. You needed to get that hate out of your heart.”

That is my hypocrisy.

Loving one people while hating another and I know it.

I once told a priest in confession exactly that. His face froze, but confession isn’t for theater... it is for honesty. If you have a flaw, you name it and then you work on it.

So here I am lighting candles. Letting George say the prayers. On Sunday I will be finishing Hanukkah with neighbors, a menorah by the train station, and a box of sofganiyot from the Jewish bakery. A Riverside tradition that one of the Jewish neighbors has been doing since Covid.

Faith doesn’t accept defeat. It keeps working, it keeps wrestling. Keeps the heart open, even when it is uncomfortable.

The last weekend before Christmas. Last minute shopping and time spent with family and friends.

Believe and astonishment will follow.

December 18th, 2025

 Most stress and grief doesn’t come from failure.

They come from betrayal, not of others, but of yourself. Saying yes when your gut said no. Staying quiet when you should have spoken. Reaching for approval instead of standing on principle. Every one of those choices carries interest, and the bill always comes due.

Being faithful to yourself isn’t about ego or indulgence. It is about alignment. When what you believe, what you say, and what you do are pulling in the same direction, life gets quieter, not easier, but quieter. The noise drops. The second-guessing fades and you stop rehearsing conversations in your head at 2 a.m. because there’s nothing to defend.

People confuse self-faith with selfishness. That is wrong. Self-faith is how you become dependable. To your kids, to your work, to your word. If you won’t abandon yourself, you are far less likely to abandon anyone else.

Most people never get there. They live fractured with one face for work, one for home and one for survival. The ones who do learn it walk lighter and sleep better. They accept the consequences of their choices without resentment because those choices were honest. When you are faithful to yourself, life may still be tough, but it no longer confuses you.

Christmas Day is one week away...

December 17th, 2025

 Sooner than later, this chalkboard is going to come to an end.

When it does, I want it to end knowing I never held anything back. I didn’t stay quiet to make other people comfortable. I didn’t stop talking about the things that actually matter.

We hear plenty from parents whose kids are on the Dean’s List, headed to elite schools, starring on teams and collecting trophies. Those proud parents talk a lot and have every right. What we don’t hear about are the parents whose kids are struggling. The bad grades, the depression, the medication, the anxiety, the quiet pain. Those parents usually don’t talk and when they do, they are often judged for it.

I have been criticized for talking too much. For being too open. For saying things I probably “shouldn’t.” When it is all said and done, I want to be that guy. The one who pushed the pedal down, brought the hard subjects into the light, and made people stop and think.

I am not the parent with a child headed to the Ivy League. I am not raising a star athlete that everyone brags about. I am the parent of a child who is sad, who is struggling and who isn't doing well. This fall, my daughter went through her first and probably not her last round of rehab and psychological care for depression and anxiety. Some of that pain came from life. Some of it came from divorce. None of it came from failure to love her.

Parenthood is hard. Life is hard. It was hard when we were kids and it is harder now. These kids came of age through COVID, isolation, social media, and phones that never shut off. The world comes at them fast and without mercy. What used to be hidden now lives in their pockets.

Here is the truth we don’t say out loud enough.... If your family feels like a mess right now, you are not alone. If you are scared for your children, exhausted, unsure, ashamed, or just worn down... you are not alone.

We just want our children to grow up happy, healthy and secure in their independence.

If this chalkboard ever stands for anything, let it be that honesty matters and integrity matters. Parents going through a shit show need to know they are not the only ones.

We need each other.

We need prayer.

We need grace ...and sometimes, we just need someone brave enough to tell the truth.

Shakespeare had it right, it is a wise parent that knows their child and so do the parents who keep showing up every day, even when it hurts.

A week from today is Christmas Eve. Don't pout and don't cry.

I'm sure I don't need to tell you why......