August 11th, 2026

          My loudest voice is the inner one.

   It has been chirping my whole life, but only recently has it climbed up on the stage with me and stepped into the spotlight.

   My inner voice takes on a shit ton of roles. Sometimes it is the disciplinarian telling me to get my big ass out of bed and get it done. Sometimes it is the wise man, although I am still not entirely convinced he knows what the hell he is talking about. More and more, it has become the voice of experience. A voice that has made enough mistakes to recognize them before making them again.

    Sometimes that voice comes from heaven. I hear my parents in it. Words and lessons I ignored when they were standing in front of me have somehow become louder after they left the building.

   More often than not, though, the inner voice is my conscience. It steers me toward integrity and honesty. It reminds me that doing the right thing and doing the easy thing don't always share the same road.

           But then there is the other voice.

   When my inner voice gets pissed off and starts flirting with mischievous ideas, the battle begins. I picture that scene in Animal House when Larry “Pinto” Kroger has the little angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other, each giving him advice on what he should do next. My version has been playing for sixty years. The costumes have changed and the arguments have gotten a little more sophisticated, but those two bastards are still sitting on my shoulders.

         …And I'm not sure I want either one to disappear.

   The disciplinarian has value. So does the wise man. Experience certainly does. My conscience keeps me pointed toward the man I need to be. The voices from heaven remind me where I came from and even that mischievous son of a bitch serves a purpose. He keeps me from becoming too careful, too predictable and too old before my time.

   Maybe wisdom isn't finally discovering which voice is right. Maybe wisdom is realizing that I get to decide which voice gets the microphone.

    That is the challenge going forward. Listen to all of them. Learn from all of them and argue with a couple of them. Laugh with them, but understand that when the argument is over, I choose the louder voice.

       I wrote these numbers on the bottom of today's Chalkboard:

   143 days until 2027.

   508 days until 2028.

   874 days until 2029.
   1,239 days until 2030.

    I have spent my life thinking of those years as somewhere far in the distant future. Put them into days and suddenly they don't look very far away.

     There will come a day when forward isn't forward anymore, and when that day comes, all those voices that have followed me through life…

      …the disciplinarian, the wise man, experience, conscience, heaven, and that mischievous bastard sitting on my shoulder will finally go quiet.

     What will remain is the life I lived after listening to them and the final impression will be decided by which voice I chose to make the loudest.

   Choose your louder voice you Chalkheads. Don’t listen to the mealy mouth and make sure the voice of gusto and astonishment get a word in today. The clock is running and that is the reason to live louder, not quieter.

August 10th, 2026

 

    Why would I chalk “The sun is new each day” when I am predicting a cloudy Monday with a chance of thunderstorms?

    Because the sun might be behind the clouds, but it doesn’t give a shit what happened yesterday.

    It doesn’t give a shit what happened last week or last month, and it sure as shit doesn’t care what happened anytime in the past.

   The sun came up on August 10th, 1977, when the Cubs and Sox were both having surprisingly good summers. It came up later that fall when both teams finished well out of first place.

        Guess what…

               …the sun didn’t give a flying F.

    Hey, both sides now Chalkheads.

The sun shines on some days. On other days, clouds get in the way. Either way, it is still up there.

           And Mondays?!?!

   I do not let Mondays bother me. I haven’t since waking up one Monday morning on a balcony in the French Quarter, hungover from a rocking Sunday night. Mardi Gras beads for a pillow. A Mardi Gras flag for a blanket. Honky Tonk Woman blasting out of a bar on Toulouse Street at seven in the morning.

      Now that was one helluva Monday morning.

   Life is a dramatic comedy filled with experiences that should teach us something and lift us up at the same time. Some days we get sunshine. Some days thunderstorms. Sometimes we wake up on a balcony wondering exactly how the hell we got there.

      “Out, out, brief candle!”

           Not on my watch.

 I am a player strutting my big ass across the stage, and sometimes Mondays fall in my path. Actually, they fall in my path every damn week. As long as I take care of business, every Monday can be Lundi Gras.

    The Sox and Cubs are both playing above .500 baseball right now. That is not a bad way to look at life. You do not have to go undefeated. Only the Dolphins and the Hoosiers can pull that off.

   Just play above .500 and get a few more wins than losses. When you strike out, grab the bat again. When you make an error, get ready for the next ground ball. String together enough good innings and see where you are when the season winds down.

      The sun is new each day. So are we if we choose to be.

   Let’s get it on, Chalkheads. We are rolling into the middle of August.

Get some hits. Score some runs. And make your world astonished.

August 9th, 2026

 

   I turned eight in the summer of 1974.

    That summer, I climbed trees at the park and finally conquered my fear of catching a baseball. Before then, I mostly played catch with a rubber ball or a tennis ball. A hardball coming at my face scared the living shit out of me.

     I had a transistor radio with a strap on it. At night, I hung it from my bedpost. During the day, it was the perfect size to fit in the satchel on my bike.

    My bike was a red Schwinn. I considered it a little boy’s bike and desperately wanted something bigger and cooler. It had no speeds and no hand brakes. It was an old-fashioned coaster-brake bike my parents gave me for my sixth birthday.

   I dreamed of a Schwinn with five speeds and a banana seat. I finally got one for my tenth birthday.

     Six weeks later, somebody stole it while I was inside Kresge buying baseball cards. My dad made damn sure I understood that the thief may have stolen the bike, but it was my fault for not double locking it.

            That lesson of the stolen bike stuck with me for the rest of my youth, but that was the summer of 1976.

      The summer I want to chalk about today is 1974, the summer I turned eight. Of all the memories from that year, the one that sticks with me more than climbing trees, baseball games and bikes was a major change in my life…

         My bedtime moved from 7:30 to 8:00.

   Turning eight bought me another half hour of daylight. That was a big damn deal for an eight-year-old.

    From kindergarten through second grade, 7:30 was bedtime. It didn't matter that other kids were still outside. It didn't matter that there was daylight coming through the windows. When 7:30 arrived, I was done for the day. Finally that summer I got to stay up until eight.

     Last night, I took a shower and climbed into bed. It was eight o'clock, and it was the last night of the summer with an eight o'clock sunset.

     Fifty-two summers ago, eight o'clock meant I had finally been granted another half hour of childhood. Last night, eight o'clock meant this old bastard was ready for bed.

        Somehow, without noticing that it happened, life had come full circle.

   In the summer of '74, my dad hounded me to brush my teeth and wash my face. My mom would come into my room, tuck me under my NFL blanket, kiss me on the forehead and say, “Good night Pumpkinhead.” Then she would remind me to say my prayers.

   The moment the door closed, I would shorten the Hail Mary’s and reach for my transistor radio and turn on WLS.

   Under my nightlight, in the fading dusk of a Chicago summer, I would listen to Elton John, Roberta Flack and Paul McCartney until I fell asleep. Later, my mom would quietly sneak back into my room and turn off the radio so I wouldn't kill the batteries.

   Last night, an hour or so after I fell asleep, George quietly came into my room. He turned off my light. Then he turned off my radio and pulled the blanket over me.

       … And there it was. The whole damn thing. A lifetime contained in the click of a switch.

    One day my mommy was standing beside my bed, turning off my radio and making sure her Pumpkinhead was tucked in for the night...

   Then came school and jobs and girlfriends and marriage and babies and taxes and ballgames and heartbreaks and birthdays and funerals and all those ordinary Tuesdays that we foolishly assume will keep coming forever.

         …And now my oldest son is standing beside my bed, turning off the light and radio that his Oldman forgot to turn off.

         It happens that quickly.

  We spend most of our lives in the enormous space between being tucked in and someday needing someone to tuck us in again.

    When we were young, we couldn’t wait to stay up later. Another half hour felt like freedom.

     Then somewhere along the way, after all of those summers disappeared, eight o'clock is time for night-night all over again.

The streetlights still come on at dusk. The sun still goes down. The radio still plays, but the person reaching for the switch has changed.

   There are a lot of moments between childhood and the autumn years. Most of them pass without ceremony. Most of the time we don't realize the important ones when they are happening.

   Maybe that is what makes getting older both painful and beautiful. If you are lucky, there is someone there at both ends.

   Someone who loves you enough to come back into the room after you have fallen asleep. Someone who turns off the lights. Someone who turns off the radio.

Someone who makes sure you are tucked in for the night.

       In 1974, it was my mommy and last night, it was Georgie.

    Sunday Funday you Chalkheads….

     Go play catch, climb a tree and reach for the gusto that today brings and ignore the sunset time that I chalked today…

August 8th, 2026

       “Occupy thyself with few things, if thou wouldst be tranquil.” 

           I like this quote.

   Maybe because I am sixty now and I am finally beginning to understand something Marcus Aurelius figured out a couple thousand years ago.

    It is time to sweep the shed. I mean that literally and figuratively. It is time to declutter my life.

   I don't need the hand blender that I have used two times. I don't need pants that haven't fit me in fifteen years and, even if they somehow do fit, they probably won't be stylish in whatever remaining years I have left.

   I don't need drawers filled with power cords that don't connect to anything.

   I don't need the shot glass collection that has been sitting in a box since I got married. I can't remember the last time I did a shot at home, let alone at the tavern.

        Why am I keeping this stuff?

   Maybe we spend the first half of our lives collecting things and the second half figuring out what the hell to do with all of it.

   Though I don't think Marcus Aurelius was talking about hand blenders and shot glasses.

     There are other things cluttering the shed. Like old grudges and old regrets. Things I should have said. Things I shouldn't have said. People I should forgive. People I should probably ask to forgive me.

       Maybe it is time for a trip to the confessional box and talk to Poppa God about some stupid crap.

    There are cobwebs that I have known about for a long time. I have walked past them, promising myself that I would clean them up later. Well, later has arrived and it is time to sweep the shed and come clean and simplify…

              …And while I am at it, maybe I can declutter my head.

    I don't need every piece of information the world wants to shove in there. I  don't need every email. I don't need every headline. I don't need to spend valuable hours being angry or anxious about things happening hundreds or thousands of miles away that I cannot control.

   Marcus Aurelius would probably tell me that is just another kind of clutter.

I have enough things within my control that could use my attention.

My family.

My work.

My Faith.

My friends.

My home.

And myself.

           Those are enough things to occupy a man.

    There is some practical housekeeping to do as well. I should probably open that old footlocker and go through the photographs from the last century. There are undoubtedly a few pictures in there that the Shepkids don't need to discover while cleaning out my belongings someday.

     Though I am keeping the picture of me with the Houston Oilers Cheerleaders at Caesar's Palace. Marcus Aurelius can kiss my ass on that one. Some things are historical documents, but everything else is fair game.

     I need to cut the inventory, clear the drawers, empty the boxes, delete the useless data and reply to that email.

       Maybe tranquility isn't something I need to find. Maybe it has been sitting there all along, buried underneath all the crap I have accumulated since 1966.

          …And today seems like a good day to start digging it out.

             Today is 8/8. The eighth day of the eighth month.

   Here in Chicagoland, we are reaching that annual milestone when our long summer evenings begin surrendering to autumn and the sun slips below that magical 8:00pm line.

       We also remember 38 years ago tonight, 8/8/88 when the lights came on at Wrigley Field for night baseball for the first time.

    The Cubs played the Phillies under the lights at the Friendly Confines. Mother Nature apparently wasn't ready for night baseball on the Northside and dumped enough rain on Wrigley to wipe the game from the books after 3½ innings. The first official night game came the following evening.  

    Still, nobody remembers 8/9/88 quite like they remember 8/8/88.

    There is something about today. Eight-Eight. Every year it marks earlier sunsets and also when the lights came on at Wrigley.

         Another Saturday has been handed to us, use it wisely.

      Run your errand. Clean the drawer. Open the pantry. Make your phone call and take a trip to Goodwill.

          Sweep the sheds Chalkheads...

            … be astonished on this 8th day of the 8th month and find that gusto.

 

August 7th, 2026

     One More Ride with Clementine

I drove past The Saint Cletus practice field yesterday.
The grass was tall, the field was quiet, and Clementine was still sitting beside the shed. She hasn’t been hit by a young Cardinal in years. Her blue paint has surrendered more ground to rust, and those brand new blocking pads were never removed. Years of rain, snow, heat and cold have faded the bright red pads into a tired shade of pink.
She looks old now. Then again, so does the coach who once stood on top of her.
Clementine was our blocking sled. I would climb aboard while a line of Saint Cletus Cardinals lowered their shoulders and pushed that heavy old rust bucket across the field. With my weight added, she was difficult to move. The boys hated seeing me step onto her. They would groan, adjust their chin straps and dig their cleats into the grass.
“Get lower. Keep your feet moving. Don’t stop until you hear the whistle.”
At the time, pushing Clementine and Coach Shepley across that field probably felt like punishment. Today, I would bet every one of those former Cardinals would give almost anything to do it one more time.
The boys who pushed that sled are now in their late twenties and mid-thirties. They have jobs, mortgages, wives, a husband and children of their own. Some wake up with sore backs and aching knees, wondering how the years managed to move faster than they ever pushed Clementine.
When I coached them, I told their parents that my two biggest coaching idols were Bobby Knight and Woody Hayes. Neither man was perfect, but both believed coaching was about more than winning games. They believed in discipline, preparation, accountability and producing strong, successful men. That was always my goal at Saint Cletus. Football was simply the classroom we used.
Through the years, I have occasionally run into former Saint Cletus men and the two women who played for the black and the red. I am proud of the adults they have become. They may not remember every score, every play or every speech I gave them, but the important lessons remained.
Faith. Family. Friends. Football.
Straight F’s in life.
Those four things helped turn young Cardinals into good people. They learned to show up, do their job, protect the person beside them and keep moving when something heavy stood in their way. Clementine was teaching them about much more than blocking. They just didn’t realize it at the time.
The league is gone now. The helmets have been packed away, the shoulder pads no longer smell like August, and the whistle doesn’t blow in the shadow of the church anymore. The sidelines are empty. The coaches have gotten older, and the players have moved into lives of their own…
…But Clementine remains beside the shed, slowly rusting and holding our memories.
Look closely at that old photograph. Behind the orange traffic cone stands one of my assistant coaches, George Shepley. He was just a little boy watching his father coach football.
Next week, George turns twenty.
Life goes on. The years pile up. The grass grows tall, the paint fades, and little boys somehow become men.
I sure would like to blow that whistle one more time and watch those Cardinals push Clementine across the field.

August 6th, 2026

 
         This past week, Janie Hodge passed away. 

    Unless you grew up around Indianapolis, that probably doesn't ring a bell. For Hoosier kids who grew up in the 1970’s, it feels like one of the neighborhood grownups has left us.
    Janie felt like a family member. She felt like our favorite teacher. She wasn't a big celebrity outside of Central Indiana. 
    She sat in our living rooms almost every day. She introduced Popeye cartoons, sang songs, talked to puppets, reminded us to be kind and curious, and somehow managed to make every kid watching television feel like they mattered.
    Her passing made me realize something. She was the last connection to an era that can never exist again.
             I was lucky enough to have two childhoods.
   Growing up in Chicago, my television friends were Bozo, Ray Rayner and Garfield Goose.
   When I visited and then moved to Indianapolis, Janie and Cowboy Bob stepped in and somehow made me feel at home.
    Looking back now, it is amazing how local television could accomplish that. Chicago kids knew Bozo's Grand Prize Game like it was the Super Bowl. We all imagined ourselves throwing those ping-pong balls into the buckets. Ray Rayner made cartoons feel like hanging out with your favorite uncle while Cuddly Duddly faithfully sat beside him every morning. Garfield Goose, with his oversized crown and unmistakable desk tapping, somehow convinced us that a giant goose could run a television station.
       Then there was Indianapolis.
  Janie made learning seem effortless. One minute she'd be introducing Popeye, the next she'd be teaching music, talking about the zoo, welcoming Scout troops into her show or taking us somewhere around Indiana.
         And Cowboy Bob?
   Every kid wanted to ride along with Cowboy Bob. He sang campfire songs, cracked corny jokes, introduced cartoons and always made the afternoon feel like an adventure. His dog Tumbleweed was nearly as famous as he was.
    Those television shows weren't just background noise. They became part of the rhythm of childhood.
    Breakfast tasted better with a bowl of Cap'n Crunch, HoneyCombs or Lucky Charms while cartoons played before school.
   Summer lunches meant a ham sandwich on white bread, a glass of Kool-Aid and whatever cartoon happened to be on.
   After school meant dropping your books by the door, grabbing a handful of Oreos or another bowl of cereal. Because somehow cereal counted as a snack as we raced to the television before the show started.
     There were only a handful of channels back in the day. No streaming, no pause button and no recording it on a VHS tape or Betamax.
        If you missed it, you missed it. Funny how scarcity made things feel more special.
     Our television personalities weren't trying to become national celebrities. You would see them in Christmas parades, county fairs, shopping malls and charity events. Meeting Bozo or Cowboy Bob felt as exciting as spotting your favorite baseball player walking through the grocery store.
   Looking back, I realize they were doing something much bigger than filling television time. They taught manners without preaching. They encouraged imagination without expensive toys. They reminded us to read. They reminded us to share, but most importantly, they made us feel safe.
   For thirty or sixty minutes every day, the world was simple. Mom was in the kitchen, and dad would be home after work. Our biggest decision was whether to ride bikes, play Wiffle Ball or stay inside for one more cartoon.
     Janie's passing reminded me that we weren't just saying goodbye to a television host. We are saying goodbye to an entire generation of local heroes who quietly helped raise us.
   Today kids can choose from thousands of channels, millions of videos and endless entertainment. I still think we had the better deal. Chicago had Bozo, Ray Rayner and Garfield Goose. Indianapolis had Janie and Cowboy Bob.
    Most of all, we had people who climbed into our living rooms every day, asked for nothing in return and somehow left us believing the world was a friendly place.
        I hope today's chalkboard gives my Chicago and Hoosier Chalkheads one more Kodachrome look at the sunny days of our youth...
                            …because those colors haven't faded one bit.

  

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.