October 19th, 2026

 
   There is a difference between being a traveler and being a tourist, and it doesn't have a damn thing to do with how many stamps you have in your passport.
    A tourist goes through the motions. A traveler uses his senses.
    A tourist looks at the scenery. A traveler becomes part of it.
    A tourist takes a bus to see something worth photographing. A traveler gets off the bus, wanders down the street, follows the smell of something cooking, hears laughter coming from a tavern, and walks inside to find out what the hell is so funny.
         One takes pictures of the world. The other experiences it.
     You don't have to go to Paris, Rome, or some little village in Tuscany to be a traveler. You can do it on a Tuesday afternoon in your own hometown. You just have to be willing to participate in the life happening around you.
     I have mentioned before that I do a lot of things alone. I will go to a concert, a restaurant, a festival, or a ballgame without giving a second thought to whether somebody is coming along.
        I may be alone, but I am never lonely.
         There is a big difference.
   Being alone means you showed up without somebody. Being lonely means you haven't figured out how to enjoy the company of the world around you.
    I have discovered that the world is full of interesting people if you are willing to put down your phone, look somebody in the eye, and say hello.
    The other day, I wandered into the York for a burger and to watch the Indiana football game. That was the entire itinerary. A cheeseburger, a cold beer, and a few hours of football.
     I ended up meeting a couple from Oklahoma who were in town for a funeral.
       Think about that for a moment.
  Two people had traveled hundreds of miles under unfortunate circumstances. I had traveled a few miles because I was hungry and wanted to watch football.
       Somehow, our paths crossed in a neighborhood bar.
We talked, we laughed and we shared a little piece of our lives that none of us had planned on sharing that afternoon.
    I went looking for a hamburger and a football game and came home with a story about two people from Oklahoma.
       That is traveling.
    A couple of weeks ago, I went to an Oktoberfest celebration. I ended up spending the afternoon with a group of visitors from Canada and England. Complete strangers when the day began. Before it was over, I was taking them to a German restaurant on Chicago's North Side, a place they never would have discovered on their own.
    They came to Chicago as tourists. For a few hours, we were all travelers and that is the beauty of it.
  Nobody planned the afternoon. Nobody made reservations for a friendship. There wasn't a tour guide holding up a little flag or a bus waiting at the curb.
Just a handful of people who happened to be in the same place at the same time and decided to enjoy each other's company.
    I suspect that is how some of the best moments in life happen.
  We spend an awful lot of time planning our lives. We make schedules, set appointments, establish routines, and convince ourselves that a successful day is one in which everything goes according to plan.
Wake up.
Go to work.
Come home.
Eat dinner.
Watch television.
Go to bed.
Rinse and repeat.
    There is nothing wrong with a routine. Sometimes we become tourists in our own lives.
   We ride the same train every day, stare out the same window, and never bother to get off and see what is happening on the other side of the street. While we are busy checking things off our daily list, life is putting on one hell of a show.
    There is an old man sitting at the end of the bar with eighty years of stories nobody has bothered to ask him about. There is a musician playing his heart out in a little neighborhood joint for twelve people. There is a trail along a river on the other side of Riverside that is just as interesting as the Seine or Thames.
    There is a stranger sitting next to you who might have something to say that changes the way you look at the world or maybe he just tells a dirty joke that makes you laugh.
       Either way, you have gained something.
    I think one of the great mistakes we make is believing that we have to go somewhere extraordinary to experience something extraordinary.
   We save our curiosity for vacations. We save our sense of adventure for long weekends. We save our willingness to meet new people for places where nobody knows our name.
    Then we come home, unpack the suitcase, and put our curiosity back in the closet until the next trip. What a shitty waste of a perfectly good life.
    The world doesn't stop being interesting just because you have returned to your own ZIP code.
     In fact, I would argue that the older we get, the more important it becomes to keep traveling through the ordinary days of our lives. Not necessarily farther, just deeper.
   Pay attention to the smells coming from a bakery on a chilly morning. Listen to the conversation at the next table. Feel the autumn leaves crunch beneath your loafers. Walk into a place you have never been. Order something you have never tried. Strike up a conversation with somebody who doesn't look, think, or live like you.
     Get your hands dirty and use your senses. Be curious enough to ask a question and patient enough to listen to the answer, and don't be afraid to do something by yourself. You might discover that being alone is sometimes the best way to meet somebody new.
    I have collected a shit ton of things over the years, most of which I should have thrown away a long time ago, but the things I treasure most are not sitting on a shelf collecting dust.
   They are the conversations, the laughter, the unexpected friendships, and the stories that began when I walked out the door with absolutely no idea what the day had in store for me.
    The best souvenirs in life aren't things we bring home. They are the people who become part of our story.
         So, travel through your life, Chalkheads.
Touch it.
Smell it.
 Hear it.
Taste it.
Feel it.
     Do not spend your days sitting behind the glass of a tour bus, watching your own life pass by while somebody else tells you what you are looking at.
            Get off the fucking tour bus.
   Take the unfamiliar path. Walk along that river. Sit down next to a stranger. Buy somebody a beer. Ask a question. Listen to a story.
You don't need a passport, a suitcase, or a plane ticket.
     You just need to open your eyes, open your mind, and occasionally open your mouth.
    Because someday, when the journey is over, nobody is going to care how many pictures you took along the way, but there might be a couple from Oklahoma who remember the guy they met while watching a football game in Chicago. Somewhere in Canada or England, there might be somebody telling a story about a Chicago guy named Jumbo who took them to a German restaurant after an Oktoberfest celebration.
     That is a pretty good way to leave your footprints on the world.
   Do not just pass through your life. Get your hands dirty, make new friends, raise a little hell, and be astonished by the gusto you find along the way…

October 18th, 2026

 
   I ended up in a cemetery on a beautiful autumn afternoon because I was tired of watching a stressful football game.
   It didn't help that the weather outside was more enjoyable than sitting in a tavern full of televisions showing college football. The sun was shining, the leaves were turning, and I decided that spending a little time with the dead might be more relaxing than watching the living beat the shit out of each other over a football.
        So I went to visit my father-in-law.
   Ed Bergmann has been resting at Bronswood Cemetery since late 2023. We called him PopPop. He was a brilliant man, and someone whose wisdom I still find myself reaching for long after he stopped handing it out.
     I placed my rosary on his headstone, pulled a cigar out of my pocket, and settled in for a visit.
    It wasn't my usual cigar. A friend had given it to me for my birthday, and I figured an afternoon with PopPop was as good an occasion as any to light it.
    When I visit the cemetery and find myself the only living person in the neighborhood, I talk out loud.
     I pray out loud.
     I swear out loud.
     I ask questions out loud.
           …And occasionally, I get answers.
   Yes, you read that correctly.
         I have conversations with people who reside in heaven.
   Before you start looking for a psychiatrist's phone number, understand that I know perfectly well PopPop isn't sitting behind that headstone smoking a cigar, but sometimes the people who knew us best leave enough of themselves behind that we can still hear what they would have said.
         …And Ed Bergmann always had something to say.
   My biggest question that afternoon was a simple one.
                   "When the hell can I stop worrying?"
    His answer came almost immediately.
              "I worried right up until my last breath."
      Well, that wasn't the fucking answer I was looking for.
   I had driven over there hoping for a little peace of mind, and the old man had just informed me that worrying was apparently a lifetime subscription.
              Then he asked me a question.
      "Do you have a roadmap in your glovebox?"
                         A roadmap?
     I haven't carried a roadmap in my car since the Clinton administration. Somewhere along the way, Rand McNally lost its place to a voice working inside my dashboard. A stoic voice that tells me where to turn and always reminds me that I missed my exit.
       PopPop wasn't talking about getting from Riverside to Bronswood. He wanted to know if I had a roadmap for my life.
      Yesterday's Chalkboard was about my uncle, another one of the smartest men I have ever known. My father-in-law belongs on that same short list. Another brilliant man who had spent a lifetime accumulating knowledge. Now he is informing me that I would worry until I died and then asking me to retrieve an atlas that doesn't exist.
     I am fairly certain Rand McNally never published The Life and Times of Jumbo Shepley.
     If they had, it probably would have come with several pages missing, a few wrong turns, and a warning not to follow the driver's instincts after dark. But the more I thought about his question, the more sense it made. There isn't a roadmap for our lives.
    We spend an enormous amount of time worrying about where we are going, whether we are headed in the right direction, and what will be waiting around the next bend. We want to know how the story ends before we have finished living the middle.
       We want guarantees.
   We want a clearly marked highway with rest stops, gas stations, and a big red arrow telling us we are going to be all right.
     Unfortunately our personal map isn’t stuffed beneath a pile of old napkins from Parkey's and a flashlight with dead batteries.
        Good luck finding your destination with a map that doesn’t exist.
   Rand McNally does not print our roadmap. It is imprinted on our hearts and written into our souls. Every person we have loved, every mistake we have made, every loss we have suffered, and every unexpected kindness we have received has left a mark on it.
             The roads appear as we travel them, and sometimes the roads we never wanted to take turn out to be the ones that teach us the most.
     I was thinking about all of this between puffs of my cigar and Hail Mary’s on my rosary.
    As the afternoon passed, my cigar grew shorter. I looked down at the unfamiliar band wrapped around what remained of it.
         Printed in small letters were five words.
             GOLD IS TESTED BY FIRE.
                  Well, I will be damned.
 There is an old proverb behind those words, and its meaning reaches back thousands of years into the Bible.
   In the Book of Sirach, we read that gold is tested in fire and those acceptable to God are tested in the furnace of adversity.
   The First Letter of Peter uses a similar image, comparing the testing of faith to gold being refined by fire.
    The ancient idea is simple. Gold is placed in a furnace because intense heat separates the precious metal from its impurities. What survives the fire is revealed to be valuable.
            Human beings are not all that different.
   We are tested by disappointment, heartbreak, illness, financial troubles, broken relationships, and the deaths of people who we thought would always be there.
    We are tested by raising children, watching them grow, worrying about their futures, and discovering that being a parent doesn't come with an expiration date on anxiety.
    We are tested by loving people we cannot protect from everything life has waiting for them, and sometimes we are tested simply by getting out of bed and facing another day.
     The fire doesn't always make us stronger. Sometimes it leaves scars. Sometimes it takes things from us that we will never get back, but it can also reveal something about us that we didn't know was there.
     Patience, compassion, Faith, forgiveness, and the ability to keep loving after loss.
      Maybe that is the gold.
    I looked at PopPop's headstone and thought about the answer he had given me.
        He worried until his last breath.
                    Of course he did.
   He was a husband, a father, a grandfather, and a man who cared deeply about the people in his life. Why would I expect someone who spent a lifetime loving his family to suddenly stop worrying about them?
       Maybe worrying isn't always a sign that something is wrong. Sometimes it is simply the price we pay for giving a damn.
     But there has to be a difference between caring about tomorrow and allowing tomorrow to steal the joy from today. That is probably what the old man was trying to tell me.
        I can't eliminate every worry. I can't predict every turn, and I sure as hell can't unfold a map that shows me exactly where this life is taking me.
        What I can do is enjoy the stretch of road I am traveling right now. I can sit in the sunshine. I can smoke a good cigar. I can say a few prayers. I can remember a man I loved and laugh at the advice I imagine him giving me, and I can accept that some of the finest things in life are temporary.
         A cigar is a perfect example.
   You light it knowing that eventually it will disappear. Every puff brings it closer to becoming a little pile of ash, but nobody lights a cigar hoping to preserve it forever.
     The pleasure is in the smoking. The conversation, the company, and the moment.
   A cigar eventually becomes ash, but the conversation you had while smoking it can last a lifetime.
    As I finished mine, I looked again at the words on the band.
                        Gold is tested by fire.
  The cigar needed fire to become what it was meant to be. Without the flame, it would have remained nothing more than rolled tobacco.
     And without the fires we have walked through, perhaps we wouldn't recognize the precious things that remain in our lives.
    I had arrived at Bronswood trying to escape the anxiety of a football game. I left thinking about the much bigger worries that follow me through life. PopPop didn't give me a roadmap or the answer I wanted to hear. He didn't promise me that the road ahead would be easy, and he definitely didn’t tell me that I will stop worrying.
       Instead, I came away with something better.
A reminder that I don't need to know every turn in the road to appreciate the journey, and that the things worth loving will sometimes be the very things that keep me awake at night.
     I said goodbye to Ed, packed up my rosary, and headed back to the car.
The cigar was gone. The afternoon was slipping away, and the shadows were bending across the gravestones.
     I don't know what the hell tomorrow will bring, but I know that I enjoyed a beautiful autumn afternoon with my father-in-law…
            …And for a little while, that was enough.
        Okay you Chalkheads! Go find the gusto and astonishment that October 18^th brings.

October 17th, 2026

 
    I have an uncle who is one of the smartest men I have ever known. A brilliant mind, a thoughtful husband, a father, a grandfather, and a man who has spent the last several years sitting in a nursing home while the world he once knew continues turning without him.
    That brilliant mind is still there somewhere, but the memories that filled it have slowly slipped away.
     My aunt visits him every day. After more than fifty years of marriage, she is still showing up for the man she promised to love through better or worse.
  Life has been better, but now the days are worse, and she should not be eating lunch with him in a nursing home cafeteria. She should be sitting on the patio with him on a beautiful morning, sharing coffee and a cinnamon roll. She should be enjoying a martini beside him while watching the evening news. She should be reminding him to brush his teeth before climbing into bed.
    Those are the little things that make a marriage. The ordinary moments that become extraordinary only after they are gone.
     My cousin should be able to call her dad and tell him about his granddaughter. They should be sitting together in a gymnasium, watching the next generation of the family knock down three-pointers. He should be cheering, offering advice nobody else can give, and bragging about a young lady who carries a little piece of him into the future.
     Instead, they are left carrying memories he can no longer share.
    I am not sure why today's Chalkboard quote immediately made me think of my uncle.
           "Happiness is the ability to forget."
   At first glance, that seems like a strange philosophy. We spend our lives gathering memories, collecting experiences, and hanging on to the moments that give our life meaning. Why would forgetting any of them make us happier?
    Perhaps because there is a world of difference between forgetting what hurts us and forgetting what makes us who we are.
    The human mind is our personal historian, but a lousy judge of what belongs in the archives. It remembers insults longer than compliments, failures more than triumphs, and those embarrassing moments that everyone else forgot twenty years ago.
    We carry around grudges, disappointments, and old arguments like they are valuable treasures. Every once in a while, we dust them off  and allow them to ruin another perfectly good Saturday morning.
      What a shitty waste of happiness.
    My uncle didn't choose to forget. Nobody would willingly trade fifty years of love, laughter, family dinners, Christmas mornings, and a magnificent nephew for an empty page.
       …And yet, those of us fortunate enough to remember everything often choose to fill our pages with things that make us miserable.
     There has to be a cruel irony in all of that.
    Maybe happiness isn't really the ability to forget. Maybe it is the wisdom to know what deserves remembering.
    Forget the damn insults and the useless grudges. Forget the bastard who cut you off in traffic. Forget the argument you won twenty years ago that nobody gives a shit about anymore.
      …But remember the cinnamon rolls. Remember the martinis during the evening news. Remember the laughter around the dinner table and the sound of a basketball bouncing across a gymnasium floor.
    Remember the people who loved you, especially when remembering becomes something they can no longer do for themselves.
    My auntie remembers enough for both of them now, and perhaps that is the most beautiful, heartbreaking definition of love I can imagine.
   As for the rest of you Chalkheads, there is a smiling sun on today's board. Take a moment to stand beneath it and measure the length of your shadow. The longer that shadow stretches, the more yesterdays we have been fortunate enough to collect.
    Some of those yesterdays will hurt and others will make us smile.
We don't get to choose how long our shadows grow, but while the sun is shining, we can choose what we carry with us.
Never forget where the sun is in your life and never forget the people who helped make it shine.
    Have a fanfuckingtastic Saturday, you gorgeous Chalkheads.

October 16th, 2026

 
     Happy Friday!
   The weekend is knocking, autumn is settling in, and my favorite holiday is finally making its appearance on the horizon. Thanksgiving is just 41 days away! Forty-one days until turkey, stuffing, family, football, and the wonderful excuse to loosen your belt without giving two squirts.
    The weather is playing its usual October tricks. A little rain, a few clouds, and the sun peeking around the corner. Let us cherish those brief moments of sunshine. Before long, Old Man Winter will be kicking down the door, and we will be begging that smiling sun to come back.
       Today's Chalkboard offers a little wisdom worth pondering.
         "We suffer more in imagination than in reality."  Seneca
  The ancient Stoic philosopher understood something about the human mind that remains true two thousand years later. Our imagination is a gorgeous gift, capable of creating dreams, inventions, and endless possibilities.
    Unfortunately, that same imagination can construct suffering from events that couldn’t happen and probably never happen.
    Fear borrows trouble from tomorrow and demands payment today.
 The mind rehearses disasters, invents conversations, anticipates disappointments, and constructs entire tragedies. Reality, meanwhile, patiently waits for its turn.
     Seneca was not suggesting that suffering is imaginary or that life's hardships are not real. He was reminding us that anticipation often adds a bullshit burden to whatever difficulties eventually do arrive.
    There is a difference between preparing for tomorrow and being frightened by a tomorrow that exists only between our ears.
      Perhaps wisdom is learning to recognize that difference.
 The clouds may be gathering, but that doesn't mean a storm is coming, and sometimes, just around the corner, the sun is smiling.
     Enjoy your Friday. Do not borrow tomorrow's troubles when there is still sunshine, shadows and gusto to find!

October 15th, 2026

     Thursday brings us a rainy day and another reminder that autumn has officially settled in. We may have seen the last of eighty-degree weather until next spring. Time to put the shorts away and find out if the furnace still works.
    Today is National Cheese Curd Day, not to be confused with Cheez Whiz and that great line from The Blues Brothers, “Ya got my Cheez Whiz, boy?”
    All this talk about cheese has me craving a bowl of Wisconsin beer cheese soup from Goldyburgers.
    Years ago, while having lunch at Goldyburgers, my dad shared one of his great pearls of wisdom.
    “Moose, you can tell a good joint by the effort they put into their soup. Good soup, good joint. Horseshit soup, never return!”
   My Oldman wasn't a restaurant critic. He didn't need five stars, a glowing newspaper review, or some jagoff restaurant critic on channel two telling him where to eat.
        All he needed was a spoon and a bowl of soup.
   His philosophy was simple. If a kitchen cared enough to make a good pot of soup, chances were they gave a damn about everything else coming out of it.   
         …And if they couldn't get the soup right, why the hell would you trust them with a cheeseburger or a turkey club?
    There is probably a bigger lesson in there about life, pride, and putting effort into the little things.
        Or maybe my Oldman just really liked a good bowl of soup.
   Either way, all these years later, I can still hear him saying it.
         “Good soup, good joint. Horseshit soup, never return!”
     Not bad advice from the Oldman.
  …And certainly worth remembering the next time somebody puts a bowl of horseshit in front of you.
          Have a great Thursday!

October 14th, 2026

 

     I woke up this morning feeling sorry for myself.

    No dramatic event, no fresh catastrophe. I just opened my eyes, felt tired before my feet hit the floor, and realized I couldn’t name one thing coming up in the near future that had me excited. I have nothing to circle on the calendar to count the days until.

     I could tell you everything I have to do, but I can’t tell you what I am looking forward to.

     That is a shitty way to start a Wednesday.

      I get up, I go to work, I finish work and hurry home.

    I love my children, but I also get tired. Those two facts live in the same house.

    Parenting an autistic adult has brought challenges I didn’t understand when George was little. Being his father means I’m still learning, still worrying, and sometimes running short on patience.

    With Fritz, I am trying to help him find his way into college, find his voice, find some confidence in his own footing.

   With Hazel, I worry about how small her world has become and how to help her feel comfortable stepping into a bigger one.

     Three children, three different roads and their Oldman is standing at the intersection, trying to direct traffic.

       Somewhere in all that directing, I have lost track of where I would like to go.

    I went to a wedding this past weekend and saw old friends. I had been looking forward to it for weeks. There was something wonderful about having a date on the calendar that meant laughter, familiar faces, and a few hours when nobody needed me to solve anything.

      Then it was over.

       Now what?

        That question followed me into the kitchen this morning.

   I know people are carrying heavier loads. People are sick. People are out of work. People are grieving someone whose chair will be empty this Thanksgiving.

    But I don’t think we have to hold a pity party before admitting we are worn out. Somebody else’s trouble does not make mine disappear, but it ought to make us a little more patient with each other.

          “Everyone is fighting a battle,” says today’s Chalkboard.

  Some battles are easy to see. Others look like a man going to work, making a joke, answering the phone, and doing what he has always done. You would never know he spent the morning wondering when he gets to have something to look forward to.

    So, pray for each other and check on each other. Call the friend you keep meaning to call. Sometimes an invitation means more than the person extending it realizes.

    I don’t have a grand revelation this morning. My coffee didn’t give me enlightenment.

     I need a date on the calendar to look forward to. I can’t keep waiting for every worry to settle down before I make room for a happy occasion.

   With three kids and a working life, I might be waiting until the priest is telling me that it is last call.

    This morning, I am tired, I am worried and I am feeling fucking sorry for myself, but I will still answer the bell. 

    The Latin in the grabber section means to pray urgently. Pray for the Pope. Pray for each other and remember we all have some sort of shitshow behind the scene.

October 13th, 2026

 

    I took Fritz to a college open house on Monday. We went to learn about his future. There was also room on the schedule for an examination of his Oldman.

    The first thing that hit me was the diversity. What stood out most were the young women wearing islamic headscarves, hanging out together. They looked young and happy.

         Fritz caught me looking.

      “What are you thinking dad?”

 “These girls are here getting an education,” I told him. “They can’t do that in the shitholes they come from.”

     The young Shepley didn’t appreciate his Oldman’s frankness. He told me I was wrong.

    So, I pointed toward the purple-haired girls and the theater boys prancing through the quad.

    “Not only would those girls get stoned for trying to learn in mooslim countries, those wackos over there and that kid heading into the lecture hall could get thrown off a building for being who they are.”

    That earned me the announcement that my generation is closed-minded.

We hadn’t even gotten to financial aid, and Dad was already on academic probation.

     As we headed to the next event, a Jewish man in his mid-thirties came walking toward us. Amid the Free palestine shirts and islamic headscarves, his traditional Jewish clothing caught my eye.

    He looked at me. I smiled.

     “Shalom,” he said.

      “Shalom,” I answered.

   He had gone about three steps past us when he turned back.

        “Are you Jewish?”

  “No,” I said. “But I’m your friend.”

        He thanked me and continued on.

  Fritz looked at me again. His Oldman was turning out to be a more complicated elective than he had anticipated.

            “Why did you tell him we were his friend?”

   “Because that man would give us bread if we were hungry, water if we were thirsty, and protect us if somebody was hurting us,” I told him. “And we ought to be willing to do the same for him.”

     That was what I believed when I looked at him. A stranger, sure, but a brother, too.

   We went into our next presentation and turned our attention to the business of college: computers, engineering, tuition, and how many internal organs Dad might need to sell to pay for it.

    When we came out, our Jewish friend was standing in the hall. It looked like he was there to help prospective students learn about Jewish life at the university.

     He recognized us.

         “Are you interested in Jewish life here?”

  “My son might be if he comes next fall,” I said. “We are Catlicks, but we are with you.”

        He thanked me and gave Fritz and me a blessing.

  When we walked away, I felt that familiar tingling I get after going to confession. That faithful flush that leaves me quieter inside, even when my mouth spent the morning running without supervision.

     I don’t know whether that belongs among the mysteries of my faith. I do know that it stayed with me as we walked away.

    I kept thinking about that man. About the hatred Jewish people face. About what it takes to walk into the world wearing your faith where everybody can see it, knowing somebody might hate you before you have even opened your mouth.

        He opened his with “Shalom.”

                           Peace.

    I have lost acquaintances over my support for Israel and my love for Jews.

I give two shits.

    I am also a friend of the homos and lesbos and my soul brothers and sisters. If you want to hurt any of them, Jumbo will not stand for it.

    My vocabulary might not get me invited to chair the campus sensitivity committee. I can live with that. When somebody needs a friend, I intend to show up.

    Fritz challenged me Monday. Good, I am glad he has the backbone to question his father. We can keep talking. I will keep nurturing and showing my crude look at the world. That is part of his education.

   We learned about financial aid, computers and engineering, and campus security. We talked about who belongs, what freedom means, and what we owe a stranger.

    And a Jewish man blessed a couple of Catlicks in a university hallway.

Today’s chalkboard says, “A small act is worth a million thoughts.”

       I am still thinking about Schlomo and what he took from meeting the Shepleys.

          Go team!

October 12th, 2026

      We get all worked up over the White Sox, and every autumn besides 2005, we end up wondering why the hell we did that to ourselves again.

   Then we get all worked up over Ditka passing away and forget there is still a football game to play. I was guilty, I figured the Coach arriving in heaven might give the Bears a little divine timing against the Packers.

   Apparently, heaven doesn’t take requests from the Bears’ front office.

The Packers beat the living crap out of Iron Mike’s team on Sunday. How are all those assclowns who have spent the last ten months chanting “Green Bay Sucks” feeling this morning? That chant would sound a whole lot better if we occasionally gave them a reason to believe it.

   I’m not sure any of this bullshit matters nearly as much as we let it.

    Over the weekend, I added three more people to my daily conference call to heaven. The list never gets shorter; it only gets longer. Some mornings, I spend more time talking to people up there than I do to people down here.

      Now I have to put Pope Leo on the fucking prayer list.

   I got so carried away with having one of our guys in the Vatican that I figured God might finally look favorably upon his baseball and football teams. Meanwhile, Father Bob has to have some cancer removed this week.

That puts a loss to the Indians and an ass-kicking from the Packers in their proper places.

    Our guy in the Vatican is still a guy. A Southside guy who can get sick, fall down, and needs our prayers like anybody else. We are so busy being proud of him that we can forget to worry about him.

       But the more I think about it…  nine innings of baseball, four quarters of football, and five decades of a rosary have something in common.

    Each gives us a reason to stop for a while and to believe something good might happen. To share a little of our lives with somebody else.

   Sometimes we get a victory. Sometimes we get our hearts broken. Sometimes we finish the prayer and still don’t understand a damn thing.

       Then we get up and keep moving.

There is another game, another season and another morning when somebody needs us.

     …And in my faith, there is a season beyond all of this that never ends, Eternal life. I am counting on a pretty good crowd when I get there.

       So, let’s go, White Sox, let’s go, Bears, and let’s go, Papa God.

   Today is Columbus Day. I’m grateful for the courage of people who took chances, crossed oceans, and risked their lives. The road that brought us here was ugly in places, and we ought to be honest about that.

    When you order a steak, you are mostly thinking about the plate when it lands in front of you, but somebody did the work to get it there.

    America came to us through the work, courage, mistakes, and suffering of generations. Now it is our turn to take care of what we’ve been handed and leave something better for our kids.

     This morning’s chalkboard says, “Keep moving forward, even if you have to crawl.”

     After this weekend, crawling sounds about right, but I’m still moving, still cheering, still praying.

         Gusto, astonishment, and a prayer for Leo.