August 5th, 2026

 

       For some reason, I have lights on my mind this morning.

  Lighting has changed quite a bit since the Winnie the Pooh night-light that sat on my childhood dresser, keeping the fog monster away at night. Back then, every living room seemed to have one of those tall floor lamps with an ashtray built into it. The fancier models had cigarette lighters added on. Nobody had to leave the recliner or interrupt Walter Cronkite to fire up another Winston.

    Years later, we all wanted the Italian leg lamp that arrived in the enormous wooden crate marked FRAGILE. It was ridiculous, gaudy and magnificent.

       But these are not the lights I am thinking about this morning.

  I am thinking about streetlights and headlights. The lights that guide us through the darkness. The lights that once illuminated the road without trying to put on a goddamn Las Vegas show.

    Chicago used to announce itself before you ever saw the skyline at night.

  On a cloudy winter night, the sky would turn orange miles before the buildings appeared. You could be driving north on I-57 from Kankakee or crawling along the Dan Ryan or looking east from some western suburb, and that soft orange glow told you the city was waiting.

   You didn’t need a GPS to tell you that you were getting close and Chicago was just ahead.

    The orange sky was not beautiful in the traditional sense. It wasn’t a sunrise over Lake Michigan or Christmas lights along Michigan Avenue. It came from sodium streetlamps, busy factories, parking lots, alleys, warehouses, and expressways.

      It was probably wasteful and it certainly hid the stars, but it was ours.

  The old lights cast a dull amber glow over everything beneath them. Snow falling through an alley light looked like something from an old movie. Wet pavement shimmering beneath the “L.” Parking lots glowed like campfires. Even the worst streets had a warmth to them. The city looked tired, dirty and alive just like the intro on Hill Street Blues.

    Today, much of that orange has been replaced by the clean white glare of LED lighting. The new lights use less electricity and they last longer. They need less maintenance and save the city a shit ton of money.

     All of that is good. Progress is progress, and there is no point pretending the old way was always better simply because it was old, but efficiency and beauty are not the same thing.

   The new lights may illuminate more pavement, but they do not provide the same comfort. Chicago changed colors while we were busy growing older. The orange haze disappeared so gradually that most of us never noticed until somebody showed us the before-and-after pictures from Elon’s satellite.

       Then it hit us. The city of our youth no longer looked the same from the heavens.

   I notice another change while driving at night. Modern headlights seem brighter and more piercing to my older eyes. Maybe my eyes are part of the problem. They have been staring into the dark for sixty years, but it is not just age.

   When I was a kid, my Oldman once received a ticket because one of his headlights was off-kilter and pointing slightly upward. The police considered it dangerous because the beam might shine into the eyes of an oncoming driver.

   Today, nearly every new car seems to throw its lights directly through your windshield and into the back of your skull. We have traded two simple round headlights for a full disco of LEDs wrapped around bug-shaped automobiles.

    The lights today squint, they wink or they shimmer. They stretch across the front grille and crawl around the rear fenders. Some of them flash when the driver turns the wheel, unlocks the doors or thinks about changing lanes.

     Headlights no longer merely light the road. They make a flamboyant statement about the personality of the automobile. Every new car looks pissed off.

     Bring back the tailfins, steel bumpers and round headlights that illuminated the pavement without trying to invoke road rage. Cars once looked like cars. Their headlights helped you see where you were going, and their taillights let the fellow behind you know when you were stopping. They had style and told you if it was an Oldsmobile or a Plymouth coming down the street. They didn’t try to perform a halftime show in your rearview mirror.

    I understand that we cannot go backward. The sodium streetlights are not coming back. Neither are the steel bumpers, cigarette-lighter floor lamps or the Winnie the Pooh night-light that guarded my childhood bedroom.

            That is how life works.

   The practical things are replaced by more practical things. The familiar is discarded for efficiency. One day, you look around and realize the world has been modernized without asking whether you were finished with the old one.

   Maybe that is what I miss when I think about the orange Chicago sky of my youth. I don’t just miss the color. I miss the people who lived beneath it.

    I miss my Oldman behind the wheel, even if one headlight was pointing toward the moon. I miss the cars that had weight, chrome and scars. I miss snow falling beneath the streetlamp on the corner and the orange halo telling me I was almost home.

   Okay Chalkheads, the streetlights are popping on earlier and earlier this month. Have a glorious Humpday…

August 4th, 2024

  

        This is today's Morning Chalkboard.

      The first thing that sticks out to me wasn't the quote. It was the sunset.

  Tonight the sun goes down at five minutes after eight o'clock. Before long we will have our last sunset after 8:00 p.m., one of those late summer milestones that quietly tells us Autumn is around the corner…

    I added the countdown to Labor Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas to give you Chalkheads a sense of where we are in the year. Thirty-four days until Labor Day. Less than two weeks until school starts. One season is winding down while another is already knocking on the door.

        As for today's quote...

             "What are men to rocks and mountains?"

   I don't have much wisdom to offer about this quote. I do know it is from Pride and Prejudice. I simply like it and the perspective it has, so I chalked it down.

      Not every quote has to come with a Jumbo sermon or story. Sometimes a few words are enough to make you stop, look around, and remember how small we are compared to the world. A joint that was here long before us and will be here long after we are enjoying eternal love.

         Enjoy your Tuesday, Chalkheads. 

      Summer is moving a little faster now, but it is Tuesday morning and I’m already in a daydream…

Sunday breakfast on the balcony

 I was sitting on the balcony this morning, having breakfast.
The tattooed runner took a lap past my balcony. A twenty-something girl walked out of the apartment building across the street, disheveled after a late Saturday night. The elderly gentleman with the middle-aged, handicapped son slowly made his way down the sidewalk, and several of the regular dog walking neighbors strolled past carrying leashes and poop bags.
As I was finishing breakfast, a car pulled up out front just before nine o’clock. Behind the wheel was an attractive woman wearing a floral top. From my angle, I could see her lush hip hop thighs beneath the steering column.
I decided to clean up slowly so I could bird dog this stranger visiting the Divorced Dad District.
Two minutes after nine, a little girl emerged from the building wearing pink shoes, a backpack, and a big smile. The car door opened, and the hot mommy ran toward her with open arms. The man who escorted what appeared to be his daughter out to the car was melancholy and frigid.
He stopped halfway between his front door and the mother’s car. I assumed he had spent the weekend with his baby girl during his visitation time.
Suddenly, the hot mom was no longer appealing, and the awkward man handing over the child looked painfully familiar. I know this exchange too well. Both as the child and as the father.
The one who loses on mornings like this is the little girl, forced to endure a difficult moment she did nothing to create.
As the car pulled away, clouds covered the sun and darkness fell over the DDD. The wind picked up, and I felt cold. Between pouring coffee and sopping up my eggs with toast, God sent me a reminder that life is difficult for all of us.
The signs are there. They may not solve the mysteries of our faith, but sometimes they help us recognize ourselves in the lives of strangers.

August 3rd, 2026

 

      "Take this sinking boat and point it home."

   That lyric from Glen Hansard's Falling Slowly has been echoing in my head the last week.

   Glen died suddenly, leaving behind songs that quietly found their way into people's lives. Most of us never met him. We didn't know what kind of breakfast he ate, whether he was messy or neat, or what kind of friend he was. Yet his gift became part of our story.

       It got me thinking about how strange grief can be.

   We mourn people we will never meet because they gave us something we will never lose. A song, a book, a painting, a performance or a laugh. They leave fingerprints on our lives without ever shaking our hands.

   When someone dies young, or at least long before we expected, the loss feels even heavier. We don't just grieve who they were. We grieve the songs they never wrote, the stories they never told, the gifts they never had the chance to leave behind.

        Fame isn't what we mourn.

  We mourn the silence that follows a voice that helped us make sense of our own lives.

    Maybe that's why Hansard's lyric feels so fitting now. His boat reached home. The rest of us are still steering ours, carrying a little of his music with us along the way.

    The first week of August is upon us. Both baseball teams are playing well and the sun had a smile…

    Happy Birthday Ceil...

August 2nd, 2026

 

    I met a kid early during my exile in Indianapolis. He was two years older than me and, on the surface, not someone I would have expected to hang around with as a seventh grader.

  He was a freshman at the nearby Catholic high school, a scrawny kid with long jet-black hair. From the moment I met him, I thought he was kind of a jagoff. He was standoffish and reluctant to let me join the neighborhood games.

  As the years passed, I realized I had misjudged him. He wasn’t unfriendly. He was simply quiet and introverted.

  Our friendship probably worked because we balanced each other out. He was low-key, and I was the loudmouth.

   The more I got to know him, the more similarities we discovered. We were both Illinois kids transplanted to Indianapolis because that was where divorced families landed at the time.

   We both worshipped the Chicago Bears, Dick Butkus, and Walter Payton. He was a Cub fan who forgot more about the Northsiders than I’ll ever know.

   He had three older sisters. The youngest had just had a baby out of wedlock when I moved into the neighborhood. She was still very protective for her little brother.

   His mum was the neighborhood nanny. She was from England, a war bride who followed her GI husband across the Atlantic to Freeport, Illinois. She spoke with a beautiful Manchester accent and made the finest Sunday roast I have ever eaten.

             She became my British mum almost immediately.

   She took a liking to her son’s loud, extroverted new friend, and I adored her right back.

   During my years in exile, our friendship grew. My buddy was good at everything.

   He was the best basketball player on the block. He threw a wicked Wiffle ball curve and launched home runs over the tennis court fence. Despite his size, he could tackle with the best of them.

   We spent countless afternoons playing Smear the Queer on a steep hill. You not only had to avoid getting your snot knocked loose. You had to run uphill while everyone chasing you had the downhill advantage.

   In the summer, we would sweet-talk the lifeguards into letting us “rock the pool.”

 With the help of everyone in our gang, we would leap in, jump out, and fire off cannonballs and belly flops until the little neighborhood pool looked like Disneyland’s wave pool.

      We also got drunk together for the first time.

    His older sister bought us a bottle of Jack Daniel’s when I was a freshman and he was a junior.

         He got absolutely ripped.

   I walked him home, propped him against his front door, knocked, and sprinted behind the bushes.

   When his mum opened the door, he fell face first into the house and landed in a puddle on the linoleum.

         She looked straight toward my hiding place.

    “Sheppey! I see you, Sheppey! What have you bloody done to my son?”

  She was the only person who ever called me “Sheppey.” Hearing it in her English accent always made me smile.

         Well… maybe not that night.

     We also made out with a few girls together. Between his long black hair and my beautiful baby blues, we did pretty well for ourselves. Mostly Broad Ripple and Chatard girls, but the occasional North Central and Cathedral girl joined the fun.

      We gained our carnal knowledge together while Bob Seger, Cheap Trick, and .38 Special jammed in the background. Those were the years when we thought life would always be simple and free.

         One memory stands above all the others. Super Bowl XX.

   His mum cooked us one of her magnificent Sunday roasts. As the Bears finally won their first Super Bowl, we celebrated over Yorkshire pudding, roast beef, and gravy.

   To this day, I can’t think about that championship without tasting Yorkshire pudding.

      Eventually my exile ended, and I moved back to Chicagoland.

  For years afterward we wore out I-65 visiting each other. We made the trip well into our twenties and early thirties.

    When he married, I had the honor of standing beside him as his best man.

 After he got married, our visits gradually stopped. His wife didn't appreciated the kinds of things we always did together. Sporting events, rock concerts, having fun and booze. Life has a way of changing priorities, and ours slowly drifted in different directions.

   Still, whenever I drove to Indianapolis to visit my mom, I made it a point to see him.

            Today is his birthday.

   Even though our friendship probably reached its peak forty years ago, he remains a huge part of who I became. Some people help shape our lives without ever realizing it.

         My old friend is one of those people. Happy Birthday, Gallipoli.

 

     August began with a soaking rain but today looks like one of those lush summer Sundays. Get your gusto up, Chalkheads. Astonishing things have a funny way of appearing when you decide to go looking for them.

August 1st, 2026

 
There is something about this Oscar Wilde quote that has me a bit confused this morning.
          "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
           I have been trying to figure out where I fit in that sentence.
  The truth be told, I have spent a fair amount of time in the gutter. Some of it I earned. Some of it just happened.
   I have made enough bad decisions to fill Soldier Field, and life has handed me a few I never ordered. Divorce, deaths, financial worries and raising three kids when I wasn't sure I was qualified to raise myself.
    If life were a baseball game, I have struck out enough times to know what the walk back to the dugout feels like.
       Maybe that is why this quote sticks with me.
          The older I get, the less interested I am in pretending the gutter isn't there.
   Youth has a funny way of bullshitting us that one day we all arrive someplace where everything finally makes sense. Then the decades pile up and you discover life isn't a destination at all. It is mostly patching holes in the roof while admiring the sunset.
    Joni Mitchell sang about looking at life from both sides. Maybe that is what age gives us. You can look down and see every mistake you have made, every scar you earned, and every disappointment that still whispers your name.
          Or...
           You can look up.
   At your son laughing at a dad joke.
  At your daughter rolling her eyes but still giving you a hug.
  At an old friend calling just to check in.
  At the first cup of coffee before the Chalkheads wake up.
  At the sound of rain on the roof.
  At the crack of a baseball bat on a summer evening.
  At a church bell on Sunday morning.
  At a cardinal sitting on the fence.
  At the first page of a new book.
  At someone who believed in you.
  At another chance to make today count.
            Funny thing about the stars...
                              …They have been there the whole time.
   Maybe they aren't there to help us escape the gutter. Maybe they are there to remind us that the gutter isn't the whole story. That the gutter doesn’t define us.
    August is here and it starts with rain in Chicagoland. Holding an umbrella doesn’t keep me from finding gusto and astonishment. It only kept me from chalking the sun with a smile.

July 31st, 2026

 

"I learned that a friend may be waiting behind a stranger's face."  Maya Angelou

  

    When we were kids, making friends was easy. You sit next to someone in school, end up on the same Little League team, or ride the same bus and before long you are spending every Saturday together.

          Then adulthood happens.

    We get busy, we become careful or we convince ourselves that everyone already has enough friends, but they do not.

      This morning's chalkboard got me thinking about all the chapters of my life and all the people who wandered into them.

    I started as a Chicago kid. Those neighborhood kids toughened me up. We settled arguments in alleys, on the gridiron and at the park. We learned that life was not always fair, and neither were the games. Looking back, they were preparing me for the world long before I realized it.

   Then my mom moved me to Indianapolis. Suddenly I was the kid with the funny accent. They laughed at my Chicagonese while I slowly picked up their Hoosier twang. Before long, the strangers became teammates, classmates, and lifelong friends. Funny how that works.

   The Oak Park years were different. Those were the years of young adulthood. We played softball all summer and drank Old Style afterward. We stood up in each other's weddings. We celebrated babies being born. We watched our parents grow older. Now we are all looking over the horizon, wondering how retirement arrived so quickly. Just yesterday we had to sneak into Fio's or Time Out Lounge

           Then came my years west of Mannheim Road.

   Those friends watched my family grow and they watched it fall apart. They were there for birthday parties, backyard cookouts, and Saint Cletus football. I found out who my friends were when life quit following the script.

      Then came Riverside and the Divorced Dad District.

   I arrived carrying more baggage than furniture. Somehow another group of strangers welcomed me into their lives. Invited me to their pool party, the block party and their dad band jams. They didn't know they were helping rebuild someone. They just invited me in. They became neighbors, walking partners, cigar friends and people I now can't imagine not knowing.

     Along the way there were colleagues who started as voices across a trading floor or acronyms on a trading jacket. Some of those people became dear friends.    

    There was a rugby club out in Lemont that taught me far more than how to play a game. They taught me to sweep the sheds, to do the small jobs without being asked, and that every person has value regardless of where they come from or what path brought them there. Rugby has a way of stripping away titles, giving you a role and leaving only character.

    When I look back at sixty years, I realize my life hasn't just been measured by birthdays or addresses. It's been measured by my friendships in….

Chicago, Indianapolis, Oak Park, West of Mannheim and Riverside.

    Every stop left me with friends I still carry and friends who still carry me. Every one of them was once a stranger. Maya Angelou was right; a friend really may be waiting behind a stranger's face.

      It is the last day of July. Labor Day is only thirty-eight days away and summer is beginning its slow turn toward autumn.

         Go head into this weekend with a little gusto. Leave room for a little astonishment. Keep an umbrella nearby and do not be afraid to introduce yourself.

       You never know who might become part of your next chapter.

July 30th, 2026

            "They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm."
     That it is a powerful line. The idea is that people who have lived through hardship, danger, or a constant shitshow often become restless when life finally becomes peaceful. The calm feels unfamiliar because they have grown accustomed to operating in crisis mode.
   The quote is by Dorothy Parker. She was writing about the addiction to emotional turbulence that comes with love. Ms. Parker missed the storm because calm felt empty.
        What I feel is completely different. I don't think the storm ever really ends.
  People tell me life will finally slow down as I get older. The children will become adults and find their voices. Retirement will arrive, and there will come a day when I no longer listen for the bids and offers.
      No more, "Dad, can you make me something to eat?"
      No more early morning fast markets or late nights at the computer working option orders.
       Truth be told, I kind of like making a sandwich for George, a pizza for Fritz, or Mickey Mouse pancakes for Hazel. I find joy in hearing loud chewing over sibling bickering.
     I enjoy buying low and selling high. I like having an opening bell that brings havoc. I get a strong sense of fulfilment when I get my customers the best fills.
          I guess what I am saying is that I enjoy the storm.
         Maybe that is because I don't see it as a storm anymore.
    Almost forty years on the trading floor or a trading desk has taught me that markets eventually settle. Sixty years of living has taught me that good days outnumber bad ones. Wounds heal, even if they leave scars.
     I have also learned that grief is a lot like laundry. It piles up in the hamper until it feels like a burden you will never get through. Then one day, the last pair of socks is folded and put away, and the basket is empty again. Not forever, just for a little while.
    Maybe that is the mistake we make. We think peace means the absence of storms, but it doesn't.
     Peace is knowing which storms no longer frighten you…
              ….and maybe that is what growing older really is. Not waiting for the weather to change but becoming a better sailor.
 
     August is almost here and today is National Chili Dog Day. My go to chili dog these days is Bishop’s Chili out in Westmont. I used to go to the original one at 18^th and Damen with my Oldman. They are both gone now. The location out on Cass Avenue and the Shepkids are a great replacement.
             Gusto, astonishment and extra onion on top.

This is no sea of mine, that humbly laves

Untroubled sands, spread glittering and warm.

I have a need of wilder, crueler waves;

They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm.

So let a love beat over me again...

       Dorothy Parker, from her poem "Fair Weather," published in the New York World on January 20, 1928, and later included in her poetry collection Sunset Gun.

July 29th, 2026

 

     “Reconciliation does not erase what happened. It simply refuses to let what happened have the final word.”

     The word reconciliation came to me yesterday while I was on my morning conference call to heaven. I was halfway through a Hail Mary when that word started bouncing around my noggin like a loose hubcap rolling across Cermak Road.

          Reconciliation. Reconciliation. Reconciliation. Reconciliation.

    I told the Virgin Mary, “Reconciliation is tomorrow’s Chalkboard.” She did not object, so here we are.

   We Catholics are lucky that we have the confession booth in the back of the church. We can drag our sorry asses into a confessional carrying enough guilt to make Saint Basil shake his head.    

    We tell the priest what we did, express our sorrow, accept our penance and receive absolution. Then we walk out feeling as if we just enjoyed a spiritual spa day. Only without the cucumber water and some stranger rubbing seaweed on our backside. Just some Holy water and a couple decades on our rosary beads.

   God gives us a road back to a guilt free life. Though it isn’t a free pass for every jagoff with a clever excuse. You can't take the liberty of bullshitting Papa God. 

   We must examine our conscience, confess honestly and own what we did. Mercy does not pretend that the sin never happened. Mercy tells us that our worst moment does not have to become our permanent identity.

         Once we get done with that, we are square with God.

  It gets tougher when the person we hurt has died. We can’t just call them on the telephone or sit with them at the kitchen table or buy them a beer at the tavern. We cannot look them in the eye and say, “I was wrong, I am sorry” and expect to hear them answer back, “I forgive you.”

    The dead leave us with silence, and silence can be a lousy conversationalist.

We can always bring our regret to God. We can also try and speak to the person through prayer. We can honor them by living differently, and then the reconciliation is no longer with the person who died. It is now between who we are today and the version of ourselves that hurt them when they were still kicking.

     Then there are the living who we must reconcile with. Reconciling with them takes balls and isn't easy.

   You must approach the person you jagged over and admit what you did. A sincere apology cannot contain the word “but.” The minute “but” shows up, the apology puts on a cheap suit and starts selling used cars in Melrose Park.

   You also can’t apologize simply because you got caught. That is not integrity, that is damage control. That is what famous people, the rich and the Smiths out in California can get away with....

           Grabowskis stuck in Cook County don’t have that luxury. A middle class guy has to strap it on and face the problem.

   The person you wronged may forgive you, but they could also tell you to go pound sand. Forgiveness is theirs to give, not ours to demand. Once we have spoken honestly, asked to be forgiven and stopped kicking the can down the road…  

          ...that is when we can wash our hands of the matter.

       Now we have come to the hardest reconciliation of them all, the one with ourselves.

  A priest can tell us God has forgiven us. Another person can tell us they forgive us. Yet we continue punishing ourselves and don't take time to reconcile our own guilt.

    Remorse should teach us. It should humble us, it should change us and make us less likely to repeat our stupid mistakes. Guilt was never meant to move into the spare bedroom in our heads and spend the next thirty years eating our groceries and drinking our Old Styles.

   At some point, we must accept the mercy we keep asking God to provide.

Reconciliation does not change what happened yesterday. It simply prevents yesterday from stealing tomorrow.

    Forgive yourselves Chalkheads, you are too magnificent to muck up your journey with guilt and pain.

    Consider today’s Morning Chalkboard your confessional. For your penance, I want you to look at the Buck full moon tonight and know someone who loves you is looking at the same damn thing…..

July 28th, 2026

 

   I started traveling more in the early 1990s. For my twenty-fifth birthday, my dad bought me a set of heavy canvas Land's End luggage in manly hunter green. My initials, JSS, were embroidered on both pieces. He gave me a tri-fold garment bag and a matching weekender duffel.

        Those bags saw a shit ton of miles.

  They made countless trips to New Orleans. They went to New York, Boston, San Francisco, Miami, Vegas and even London. They were thrown into the trunk for quick weekend trips across the Midwest. They saw overhead bins, baggage compartments, tailgates and hotel closets all over the country.

      A few weeks ago, I dropped them off at Goodwill. I took one last look as they sat in the collection bin. They screamed 1991 as I left them there all alone.

      I hope another JSS stumbles upon them someday. Maybe they will finally make it to Glasgow, Paris, Rome or Jerusalem. They still have a few good trips left in them, but I don't need them anymore.

      I have been well grounded for the last twenty years or so, and the truth is, I like being grounded. I don't need another passport stamp or a new set of luggage these days.

       In today’s quote, Hemingway wasn't really talking about travel anyway.

   He was saying that a change of scenery doesn't create a change of character. You can move to another city, take a different job, start a new relationship or buy a different house…

     … but wherever you go, your habits, fears, regrets and strengths come along for the ride.

    Life changes us whether we want it to or not. We adapt, we mature, we gain wisdom, but I have never believed the answer was somewhere else.

   My mom moved us across Chicagoland and then down to Indianapolis in the span of five years. It didn't improve her life, and it made mine complicated. Watching that taught me you can't outrun your troubles. I have spent my entire adult life within a ten-mile radius in Chicago's western suburbs.

   Once I found the trading floor at the Chicago Board of Trade, I never had to search for another career to make my life better. I was fortunate enough to work in one of those magical, romantic places that novels are written about. Every morning I walked into a world most people only knew from Rolling Stone magazine, newspaper stories or the movie Wall Street.

    It was loud, chaotic, competitive and unlike anything else. I never felt the need to chase a different career hoping life would improve.

   I remember an old girlfriend telling me when we broke up that people don't change and that I never would. Looking back, she was partly right. I didn't change, but I grew.

        And there is a difference.

   The beliefs my parents gave me are still my beliefs. My faith is still my faith. My sense of right and wrong hasn't changed. What has changed is the depth behind them. Experience, mistakes, good days, heartbreak, raising children, losing people along the way and simply getting older have sharpened those convictions into something much stronger than they were when I was twenty-five.

   You can't get away from who you are, but if you are paying attention, you can spend a lifetime becoming a better version of the person you have always been.

  Oh, shit Chalkheads! Tonight’s sunset is closer to eight o’clock than it is to eight thirty. Get ready to start tripping over a longer shadow.

    … and when it comes to adventure. Who needs to run with the bulls when you can simply drive Lower Wacker Drive. 

July 27th, 2026

 

The older I get, the more I think Thoreau was right.

    He wrote today's quote after spending two years living in a one-room cabin beside Walden Pond in Massachusetts. He was not trying to escape the world. He was trying to figure out how little a man really needs to live a rich life.

    His wealth wasn't measured in dollars. It was measured in mornings with the sunrise over the pond. Reading a good book with the sound of birds in the trees, and a walk through the woods on a quiet afternoon with nothing to prove.

  Those pleasures don't cost much.

  As I approach ten years of writing these Morning Chalkboards, I have started thinking about doing something similar someday. I would love to spend a little time alone in a cabin with a stack of books, a notebook, a pot of coffee, and no schedule except sunrise and sunset. Not to hide from life, but to remember what life is.

   Funny thing is, when I look back on my happiest moments, very few required money.

  Listening to WGN with my dad on a Saturday morning. Naps with George asleep on my belly. Watching Fritz chase another impossible idea and playing Barbies for hours with Hazel. Driving Betty, the Green Blazer with the windows down over to Parky’s for a hotdog. Sitting on the balcony with a cup of coffee or a cocktail waving to the neighbors.
        … and a morning conversation with all of you Chalkheads. The piece of chalk has become our therapist.

   Maybe Thoreau wasn't talking about being cheap. Maybe he was reminding us that the richest lives are often built from the simplest moments.

  We are coming to the end of July into the beginning of August this week. Let’s not start kissing each other on the mouth just yet over both of these winning baseball teams. They have shown us plenty of times that being in first on August first doesn’t guarantee they will be there in October.

    Let’s finish the month strong Chalkheads. I see plenty of gusto and astonishment in the dog days of summer.

July 26th, 2026

 

       "Our pain shapes us; erase it, and we erase part of ourselves."

       I read that quote this morning and, if I am being honest, I felt pretty lucky.

    I have walked this earth for sixty years and, compared to many people, I have never had to weather a truly devastating storm. Now, saying that out loud probably guarantees a shit show is heading my way, but it is still the truth.

    My parents divorced when I was a kid. It hurt, but life kept moving. Years later they both died, which is what parents are supposed to do. As much as I miss them, I was fortunate. They passed away in beds and not in a tragic accident or in a lonely house.

    There was a stretch when I was unemployed between the bond room and moving into the grain room. At the time it felt like a disaster. Looking back, it reinvented my career. I found a place in the grain business and somehow outlasted the trading floor itself.

    My marriage ended in divorce. That hurt too, but just like my parents unknowingly taught me, life keeps going. Eventually the divorce papers end up in a paper shredder, and what is left are the lessons.

   My children give me something to worry about every day. That is part of being a parent. As they grow older, more of life's weight shifts onto their shoulders and a little less stay on mine. My job now is to trust that I prepared them well enough to carry whatever comes next.

  When I look back over these first sixty years, I know I've been spared many of the tragedies that visit other families. I haven't watched a hurricane, wildfire or flood take away everything I owned. I haven't endured many tragedies that millions of people quietly live through every day.

   The truth is, most of the pain I have carried came from the assclown who stares back at me in the bathroom mirror. Bad decisions, poor judgment and a hard head. Most of my scars were self-inflicted, and they taught me lessons no one else could have.

   Maybe that is why this morning's quote struck a chord. I don't want to erase those scars. They remind me who I was and what I have become.

My goal for these last twenty years or so isn't to avoid pain. Life doesn't make that bargain with anyone. My goal is to stop manufacturing pain.

   I can't control illness, loss or bad luck, but I can control the decisions I make. I can be a better father, a better friend and a better man than I was yesterday.

   I don't want to spend the rest of my life earning new scars that don't need to be there

       Instead…  I want to hold the door open for a stranger. I want to hand an Old Style to a dear friend. I want to tell someone Casablanca is my favorite movie and watch them discover it for the first time. I want someone to tell me my prayers helped. I want to have jumper cables in my trunk just in case someone needs a jump.

    Those aren't remarkable accomplishments. They are just small ways to leave people with a little less pain than they had before we crossed paths.

      And I want to make sure you Chalkheads always know where the sun is...

              ...and that gusto and astonishment are always there for the taking.

July 25th, 2026

 

       Yesterday was my daughter’s thirteenth birthday.

        George and I drove over to her mother's house with presents and homemade cookies. Hazel locked herself in the bathroom before we got there and stayed there the entire time.

    The tension inside that dark little house was thick enough to taste. The curtains were drawn shut and the windows were closed tight on one of the prettiest July afternoons of the summer. It felt like the sunshine wasn't allowed inside.

    We waited around, hoping she would come out. Maybe we could watch her open her presents and sing Happy Birthday.

    George spent most of the visit bird-dogging the birthday cake. He really wanted a piece. We left without seeing Hazel. No hugs, no presents opened and no cake.

    The drive back across Mannheim Road has become one of the saddest drives of my life. This one wasn’t any different.

          I thought about the two gifts I picked out.

   One was The War That Saved My Life, a novel about a young girl in wartime England trapped inside a house by a troubled, controlling mother. I have no idea if Hazel will ever read it. Maybe she will never crack the cover. Maybe she will read it soon. I just hoped she would find a character who reminded her that life can become much bigger than the walls around you.

       The other gift was Abbey Road. Well...it's the Beatles.

  Those four Liverpool lads helped raise me. They carried me from nursery rhymes to the Rolling Stones. Hazel has heard those songs her whole life. More than once she fell asleep while I sang Golden Slumbers to her.

           Later Friday night my phone buzzed.

      "The Beatles? I don't even listen to the Beatles. And a book...geez, thanks a lot."

   I smiled a little. Not because it felt good, but because she is thirteen. I'm betting that book gathers dust for quite a while. The record, though...

   At some point she will put it on a turntable, and in a long time from now, Here Comes the Sun, Mean Mr. Mustard and Come Together may remind her of her grumpy Oldman the same way Gershwin, Bix Beiderbecke and Dvořák remind me of mine.

     Music has a funny way of carrying people long after words stop working.

  Many of you Chalkheads have walked beside me these last few months. You have sent prayers, stories and encouragement that have meant more than you will ever know. You have also reminded me that difficult seasons between fathers and daughters happen more often than fathers want to admit.

     I wasn't prepared for this chapter. Truthfully, I don't like it much, but I also know that thirteen isn't forever.

    Neither is adolescence. Neither is resentment. Neither is pain. Children grow up and parents keep loving them anyway.

    This morning I'm going to wash Felix the Ford Flex. I am going to fill him up with gas. Then I'm heading up to Oak Park Bakery for a chocolate éclair.

     Yesterday wasn't only Hazel's birthday. It also marked five years until my last payment to the mean lady west of Mannheim Road.

         Time keeps moving. Sometimes that is the best friend we've got.

   Go enjoy this last Saturday of July, you gorgeous Chalkheads.

         Gusto, astonishment...and custard filling.