February 13th, 2026

 

There wasn’t a Morning Chalkboard Thursday and there won’t be one today.

     Wednesday, I gave my son Fritz a shout out and he decided to pay me back with an emergency appendectomy later that night. It all happened quickly before it suddenly slowed down and scrambled things enough to make me ask that famous Talking Heads question, “How did I get here?”

   I went from thinking my son was jerking off from school with a headache and a tummy ache to hearing in the ER, “We can’t wait until Thursday morning, this vile flap needs to be taken out immediately.”

  We went from the immediate care office to the emergency room, to the operating room in six hours. I wore the same clothes from early Wednesday morning to late Thursday afternoon. I needed a pitchfork to finally dig my underwear out of my booty.

   Fritz never complained and he never gave the pain more than a five. The next morning his pain was a one and we left the hospital after lunch.

   I wasn’t comfortable with my child having surgery in the same hospital that botched his brother’s birth, almost killing George and his mommy. The same hospital that couldn’t put Fritz’s PopPop back together and keep him from going to heaven a couple years ago.

  We had a doctor named after a tragic Old Testament fable, and to top it off, Fritz might be the size of a middle linebacker, but he is still the age of a child. We were placed in a room in the pediatric unit with those yellow cartoon characters with goggles and one eye plastered on the walls. They look like lipstick vibrators. I think Fritz called them Mini-Ones.

    Surgery went well and Fritz now has three little scars on and around his bellybutton. I couldn’t tell my sixteen-year-old they looked like hickeys and someday a jealous girlfriend is going to question him.

     I can only picture that conversation….

           “What do you mean, Dad?” Confused look on his face.

                                    “Girls can really do that?”

                      “They can, son… and it is a delightful situation.”

    I sat up all night listening to my kid sleep off anesthesia, getting stared down by Mini-Ones in the shadows of the IV machine while a baby cried all night across the hall.

       Here is where my faith humbled me and kept me from feeling sorry for my fat ass.

  My son will be home with me eating hot dogs at Parky’s next week. Who knows what will happen with the painful cries down the hall? What are those parents going through?

    My son is sleeping peacefully with three hickeys around his bellybutton. Their child is screaming in pain, and they are desperately struggling to know why.

    I will be able to change out of these crusty clothes, have a couple slices of pizza, and tuck my son into his own bed later.

       Who knows what the parents down the hall have stored for them?

    Everybody around us is going through a shitshow, and many would trade places with you in a heartbeat.

     I didn’t expect a five-day weekend. I never miss work, and I was floored when Fritz’s mom thanked me. I couldn’t tell her that I cried for her at three in the morning as I thought about the last time I slept in that hospital. Kate Bush’s A Woman’s Work echoing through my head as George was wrapped in an umbilical cord and his mom bled profusely in the delivery room. That was the most vulnerable day of my life.

 

  Fritz is home safe in Riverside with a grumpy dad keeping him warm. I can’t wait to see what damages Blue Cross/Blue Shield has in store for me. Just another crying baby down the hall reminding me how lucky I am to have insurance and a great job.

     Listen to your instincts and love your babies. Things can flip in a heartbeat, so stay agile.

    The Morning Chalkboard will be back Saturday morning.

                Astonishment and Gusto for you Chalkheads.

February 11th, 2026

 “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.”

That one came from Fritz. He texted me Tuesday night:

“Hey dad, I got a chalkboard quote idea.”

He saw it flash across the screen after the Super Bowl halftime show. Bad Bunny, he said. A newer artist. “Ask Hazel who he is.”

Then he followed it with Dr. King: “Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.”

I asked him if he thought it was true. “Most definitely,” he said.

Me too.

We sealed the text the way we always do with an aohm from Fritz followed by an AOMH from me. It means "All of my heart," and we have been using that since day one.

Pizza confirmed for Wednesday night dinner at the end of the text.

Fritz is my middle child. He was given that role in life when his sister showed up and made him both a little brother and a big brother. He became The Glue, a tricky assignment for anyone. He handles it without complaint and performs it flawlessly.

Fritz keeps things together between George and Hazel. He keeps the temperature down. He keeps the rhythm steady.

Frederick Edward Shepley.

Named for his great uncle Frederick Bergmann and Joseph for his Grampa Donald Joseph. We call him Fritz and "The Glue."

He is a witty little jagoff with strong math skills and two roads in front of him, engineering school or the union hall. Either way, he will wire something important. Buildings or bridges or systems or maybe even people.

But before all that, he still is finding his voice and balance. Figuring out who he is separate from the role life handed him at a young age.

I quoted Bad Bunny...

... Because I do not care where the words come from, halftime stage or a pulpit. As long as they point Fritz toward more love than hate. Less grief and aggravation and more astonishment and gusto.

If that’s the path he walks, I will take it.

All of my heart Freddie...

February 10th, 2026

 I chalked something on the board this morning that won’t leave me alone: It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. Oscar Wilde wrote it

That line isn’t supposed to be advice, but more of an accusation.

We all started out copying someone else when we were young. You watch who survives and cling to it. You borrow the voice that gets listened to the most. You learn which corners not to cut. That isn't cowardice, but more apprenticeship.

But apprenticeship is supposed to end.

Somewhere along the line, copying turns into cover and before you know it you have Milli-Vanillied your life... You search for your own tone. You try desperately to find your posture and your own balance in life. You end up keeping the version of yourself that doesn’t cause trouble. Not because it’s true, but because it works.

Here is the question I don’t like asking, which usually means it is the right one: Who have I been playing all these years?

Not who I was at work.

Not who I was supposed to be at home.

Not who kept things moving and didn’t complain.

Who am I when I stop selling the facade of someone else?

Originality isn’t about being different. That is a cheap flashbang. Originality is about being accurate to yourself

Accurate to what you have carried on your back.

Accurate to what you have lost down the line.

Accurate to the way you see people when no one is grading you.

Failing as yourself hurts. There is never a cushion when that happens, but living as a copycat... That is a long, quiet rot.

Pitchers and catchers are starting to report to camp. I'm not really excited about the prospects that my ball club possesses.

I long for the day I had to wrap foil on the rabbit-ear just to get a signal for channel 44. Today you gotta shell out thirty bucks a month to listen to horseshit announcers candy-coat a crappy baseball team.

Not for me......

February 9th, 2026

 Thorns don’t mourn, they just stay as a reminder of beauty lost.

You bump into them when you are not paying attention. When you think you are past it or when you reach for something that used to be easy.

They don’t care what day it is or what is on the calendar. The rose is gone, that must be settled. What is left is a reminder that is sharp and honest. So you keep moving. Life doesn’t slow down because something beautiful didn’t make it. You just learn to carry the weight and get on with it.

Today is National Pizza Day. That makes your Monday night dinner plans much easier.

February 8th, 2026

    My Oldman used to say that opinions are a lot like assholes. Everybody has one, and they most often stink.

Social media handed all of us a microphone and told us we mattered. I’ve grabbed it plenty of times and I am guilty as charged. But I am starting to realize that nobody gives two shits what my stand is on religion, politics, sports, music, movies, or Thai food.

Movie stars should stick to making movies. Rock stars should play their songs in packed arenas. Athletes should compete hard and finish strong.

Being number one at the box office, winning a Grammy, or standing on a podium with a gold medal doesn’t make you an expert on climate change, human rights, or political correctness. It just makes you good at the thing you’re paid to do.

All we do now is argue until everybody gets mad. Nobody debates anymore; nobody talks things out. Every conversation turns into a performance filled with grandstanding, gloating and keeping score. That is why I rarely do social gatherings much anymore. They have become pageants where everyone is a contestant with two minutes to impress the judges.

Remember Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel's, At the Movies? They couldn’t stand each other, but they talked about the movie... deeply, passionately with either Thumbs up or Thumbs down. They disagreed, filmed the show, probably told each other to fuck off afterward, then showed up the next week and did it all over again.

That is an opinion done right. It left room for you to decide.

We built a government to represent neighborhoods and towns and send statesmen to Washington. Instead, we’ve got snake oil salesmen pretending to be politicians.

I watched a political ad the other night for a senator. I like the guy. He seems smart and sincere most of the time. But the whole commercial was him screaming about fighting some politician from the other party who isn’t even in his race and won’t be around in two years. That is all fine and dandy, but what does he stand for?

Is he going to fight for better education?

Will he care for veterans who are physically and mentally broken?

Will he make sure someone competent is wiping Grandpa’s rear end in a clean nursing home?

Just shut up and represent the people who elected you and not the special interest groups.

Most opinions aren’t even original anymore. Most people haven’t had an original thought since Google showed up. We have fewer well-read people and more full-time viewers of CNN and Fox News surrounding us. Turn on a camera and everyone turns into a mealy mouth. Turn on a computer and everyone becomes a keyboard bully.

Somewhere while chalking this morning, I got opinionated. It is hard not to. Which brings me back to my Oldman. We are all just assholes with big mouths.

One hundred forty-six days until the 250th birthday of the United States of America. We are going to hear people trash it, and people praise it. Which brings me to another quote from the Oldman.

"You talk like a man with a paper asshole.”

I never quite figured that one out. I just knew I heard it whenever I said something stupid. That is how I learned to say less stupid shit around my dad.

Maybe we should all stop listening and saying stupid shit and bring more astonishment, love and gusto into the world?

There is a smile on the sun and a decent temp up in the corner. Supposedly there is a football game tonight, but I will be watching the final episode of "All Creatures Great and Small" on Masterpiece Theater instead.

Be kind, rewind..........

February 6th, 2026

 

February 5th, 2026

 Worrying feels productive, but it isn’t. It’s just paying interest on a debt you may never owe. Instead of worrying, take a shower with someone.

There are several National holidays on my calendar this morning. National Chocolate Fondue Day, National Optimist Day, National Weather Person Day and National Shower with a Friend Day.

I don't do fondue. I haven't done fondue since I burned my areolas back in 1998. That date didn't turn out well.

I support optimists wholeheartedly, but sometimes they get annoying. I can take them here and there. I prefer a stoic optimist, but they don't have a National Day of Recognition for them.

Weather people are usually wrong and are given too much credit nowadays. Most of the time they stand in front of the map dressed to go to a dance club. Tell me when National Weather Girl Fetish Day is and I will put it in the Grabber section.

So, we are going with taking a shower with a friend day. Observed annually on February 5th. A perfect day to start the romantic month of February.

Go find a Chalkhead, soap up the loofah and take a shower today. It will cheer you up during this cold and lonely time of the year.

February 4th, 2026

 Friendship is that check-in text out of the blue.

It is the birthday present from a quick trip to Walgreens or the long conversation about Janet Jackson's nipple at the Superbowl.

It is the showing up without announcing yourself, but bringing a growler of BuckleDown and an Alpine sub.

Friendship is calling your friend's mom and thanking her for bringing their child into the world to become your friend.

It is knowing when to speak and when to sit quietly and listen.

It is shared memory of cold opening days at Sox Park and watching parents fade away.

Friendship is knowing all the stupid shit and still supporting one another.

A true friend shines brightly when the world is dark.

If you are someone's friend... remind them that today is National Sweater Day and to leave that ugly one from 1994 in the drawer.

Friendship is for sharing gusto and astonishment.

Happy Birthday B.H..

February 3rd, 2026

 I borrowed a piece of a Churchill line this morning: “To be perfect is to change often.”

That sounds good for the Tuesday Chalkboard. It sounds noble and strong, but it just doesn’t fit me.

I’m not close to perfect, because I’m not built for constant change. Subtle change sure, but abrupt change has zero chance. I am a creature of habit, and I wear that badge comfortably. My bed has pointed north–south for most of my adult life so the sun knows exactly where to find me. Right in the morning and left in the afternoon. I still own shoes and coats that have been with me for thirty years. I am a white undershirt guy. Probably instilled into me after a dozen years of a Catholic school uniform. My coffee is strong and black like my running back, Walter Payton.

I have had to deal with some big changes through the years. Life, of course, had other plans. They closed my trading pit and handed me a computer monitor. They stopped printing my newspaper, and instead of folding it just right, I squint at headlines on a mobile phone. I still trust my radio more than a playlist or whatever they are calling those things now. Napster, PandaBear, iTunes........

Give me an Old Style over an IPA, a tavern over a bistro, and a dart board that doesn't make noises with flashing lights.

This Sunday, I will be watching the Super Bowl. Not this Super Bowl, the one I have on a beta tape from 1986.

I still call it the Sears Tower. My baseball team plays at Comiskey Park. A Daley will always be the greatest mayor this city ever had.

When I make it to Mass, rare, but sincere... I get looks because my words are older than the room. When the priest says, “The Lord be with you,” you will hear my old Board of Trade voice boom back:

“And also with you, Father.”

So no, I’m far from perfect, but I am perfectly consistent.

I will keep watching the sun, the moon, and the stars. I will take sausage and onions on my pizza and no ketchup on my hot dog. Give me a strong can and a subtle breast. A day game over one under the lights and an autumn night with a glass of bourbon over that summer night with a mojito.

Change happens, but some things are worth keeping exactly where they are.

February 2nd, 2026

Langston Hughes understood something most people spend their lives dodging. A dream isn’t a luxury, it is a load-bearing wall. In Dreams, he doesn’t romanticize the idea. He warns, without dreams, life doesn’t merely disappoint, but it stops. It becomes a bird with a broken wing. A field locked in ice.

Now we drop Ned Ryerson into that frozen field.

Ned isn’t a villain. He is worse. He is what happens when motion replaces meaning. He is cheerful, persistent, relentlessly upbeat and completely unchanged. Every morning he pops up the same way, armed with the same pitch, the same smile, the same certainty that today will finally be the day it works. Ned has no dream. He has only a script, and because of that, he is trapped in repetition without growth.

How do we connect a poet from the Harlem renaissance and a movie from the early 1990's?

Langston Hughes is talking about dreams dying. Groundhog Day shows us what happens when they never existed in the first place.

Ned lives, but he doesn’t move. He speaks, but he doesn’t progress. He is animated proof that energy without intention is just another form of paralysis. The alarm rings. “Bing!” The day resets and without a dream, tomorrow is just today wearing a different tie.

Hughes’ frozen field isn’t quiet despair... it is loud routine. It is showing up without becoming. It is confusing hustle for hope. It is believing that repetition alone will eventually turn into purpose.

So, the warning is sharper than it looks... Don’t let your dreams die.

Because the most dangerous life isn’t broken. It is functional, friendly, and frozen. It is the life where the sun doesn't smile and astonishment doesn't exist.

My alarm goes off every morning at 3:33am. For the last ten years it has been ELO's Mr. Blue Sky. I think it is time to change the song.......

February 1st, 2026

 February is a short month, but it carries a strange weight. It bridges the freshness of a new year with the tail end of football season and the slow, stubborn approach of spring. It is a month caught in the middle, never fully one thing or the other.

Sure, we get our February markers: Groundhog Day, Saint Valentine’s Day, and a late Super Bowl. A game that doesn’t quite carry the same electricity it once did. Six Nations rugby helps, it always does, but February still asks you to be patient. The first match is this Thursday afternoon, Ireland versus France. The James Joyce will be showing the match if you need a place to cheer and have a pint.

Today’s grabber is really just a note for me to tune in to WDCB at noon. They are airing a documentary on the making of Kind of Blue, a record that still feels like it fell out of the sky fully formed. Jazz doesn’t get much better than this Miles Davis masterpiece.

The sun looks like it plans to show up today, riding in on the heels of last night’s full moon. I left my old wool argyle sweater on the door handle for a Saint Brigid blessing. Now it is meant to keep me warmer and maybe heal me when I get sick.

Alright, Chalkheads, let's start the new month with gusto and a little astonishment. The sun is lingering longer into the afternoon and has a smile today. Smile back and let yourself feel renewed.

January 30th, 2026

 Last Friday of January with a full moon showing up on Sunday.

January 29th, 2026

 Wisdom isn’t knowing the road...

... it is knowing why you keep taking the same one.

January 28th, 2026

 A line today from Maya Angelou, after a day that threw a few punches but never knocked anyone down. Some days test your balance, other days test your patience. Especially the kind that remind you why certain warning signs were posted in the first place.

I saw the red flags once and mistook them for character. That is a mistake you only make if you believe too hard and listen too little. Lesson learned and the price still paid.

I could have ridden off, but I didn’t. I could have disappeared on the Saint Charles streetcar, but I didn’t. That isn't weakness, that is choosing to stand where you are and finish the damn job.

I won’t be laid out defeated and carried off quietly, and I sure as hell won’t let the elevator bring me down.

Today is our first post–5:00 PM sunset across Chicagoland in 2026. The light is staying on a little longer. That gives us more daylight for astonishment.

January 27th, 2026

 Harper Lee reminds us that “the one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”

That truth lives in the story my dad carried with him throughout his life.

His mentor bore a grizzly tattoo on his left arm. A five or six-digit number burned there by the Holocaust. A number meant to reduce a man to inventory. Auschwitz was built to erase names, futures, and conscience itself. Yet that man refused to let the mark finish the job. He lived past the brutality. He worked and he mentored a callow Don Shepley into a long, honest career, and in doing so turned an act of absolute cruelty into a quiet gift. That man molded a young draftsman and mechanical engineer. Giving him a solid foundation in a long railroad career.

That is the part that should stop us today and make us ponder.

Every person murdered by the nazis wasn’t just a victim. They were a teacher not yet met, a mentor not yet given, a kindness not yet passed along. The world didn’t just lose lives...

... it lost generations of guidance, craft, patience, and wisdom.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day isn’t only about remembering how evil looks when conscience is abandoned by the crowd. It is about honoring those who, even after surviving hell, chose to live as proof that conscience still matters, and mourning all the good that never got the chance to happen.

That number on his arm was meant to dehumanize him. Instead, it became a reminder of how much one human life can mean to another.

And that is something no majority gets to vote away.

January 26th, 2026

 Forty years ago today, I watched the Bears win the Super Bowl with my best friend, which is the kind of thing that sounds ordinary until you realize how few people are still around that you can say that about.

We were Bears fans exiled in Indianapolis together, which in those days felt like being stranded in the wrong religion. So, we stuck together the way young men do when they are far from home and not yet aware how easily life separates people who swear it never will.

We watched Twenty together...

...Walter Payton, the 46 defense, the whole thing. A game so lopsided it felt less like a contest and more like a settling of old scores, 46–10, no mercy required because none was needed.

At the time, the 22 years between championships, from 1963 to that 1985 season felt endless. Like a personal injustice handed down to two kids who weren’t even alive the last time the Bears had mattered, and who had already grown tired of explaining loyalty for a team that rarely returned the favor.

Life, as it turns out, doesn’t care much about loyalty either.

The years pulled us apart quietly; jobs, families, geography, long stretches of silence. The kind of separation that doesn’t involve slammed doors or dramatic endings, just fewer calls until one day you realize you no longer know the details of another man’s life.

Someday one of us will go first, and the other will be left carrying the memory whether he wants it or not. Which in my case will always be that Sunday afternoon in 1986, two exiles in a borrowed city watching the Bears finally be great and washing away, if only for a few hours, the mediocrity we had grown up with.

Most seasons since have slipped by without much worth remembering, and we are no longer close. Barely in touch at all, but anytime the 46 defense or Walter Payton comes up, I don’t think about schemes or statistics. I think about my old friend, that day, and how quickly forty years can disappear.

Bear Down Bobby G...

January 25th, 2026

 Today’s quote is an old-world saying with deep European roots. Passed down by grandmothers who understood life well enough to tell a child...

... sometimes in the same breath that they were both a piece of dirt and a piece of heaven.

I imagine more than a few kids walked away scratching their head after that lesson. Eventually, life explains it. Humility comes for all of us. At least for those raised properly by a generation older than ours. A generation that believed in punishment and praise, correction and confidence.

If the bitter cold hasn’t handcuffed you over the last 36 hours, the snow piling up on your sidewalk and driveway will remind you exactly what season we are in. That is why I am offering a small glimmer of spring in the grabber section.

The Cubs open their season at Wrigley on Thursday, March 26, against the Washington Senators. The Sox follow a week later at Comiskey against the Toronto Argonauts. That should give you Chalkheads something to lean toward.

Until we see base hits and taste bratwursts, the depth of winter is still packed with astonishment...

... as long as you are willing to bundle up and notice it.

Today is National Irish Coffee Day. Have one before your walk through the wonderland. Have one during the walk and have another when you get home.

You have earned it.

January 24th, 2026

 Saturday morning couldn’t be any more comfortable than starting the day with a Dr. Seuss quote.

We grew up on him and Mr. Rogers, and Winnie the Pooh, and The Muppets. Throw in a clothespin and a baseball card flapping against the spokes of your Schwinn, and life felt complete. No apps, no noise, just motion and imagination.

Back then, I heard my Old Man and his contemporaries compliment damn near everyone they crossed paths with.

He made sure the morning guy at White Hen knew how GD good his coffee was.

He told the CTA employee at our stop that his entrance and platform were the best maintained on the Lake Street/Dan Ryan line.

Father Coogan was the best homilist in the archdiocese.

The baker down the street made the best chocolate éclair in Cook County.

... But the neatest thing my dad did that stuck with me was how he made the women around town feel good. He complimented lipstick, hairstyles, dresses, shoes. Always with taste and always with style. Never creepy and never cheap.

One long weekend when I was in high school, I came up to visit him and something was off. He wasn’t himself.

“What’s wrong, Dad?”

He told me he had been reported at work for complimenting a woman. She reported him to the higher-ups. He was reprimanded and forced into an ethics class. He was never the same after that.

Sure, he still complimented the men around town, but he stopped altogether with women. That was the early 1980s. Then in the mid-1990s, his railroad got swallowed by a bigger railroad and he was forced into retirement.

That was when I noticed another change. He went back to complimenting everyone. Wherever Don Shepley went, there was a smile left in his wake.

Today is National Compliment Day. It is also National Beer and Peanut Butter Appreciation Day, two things I love dearly. I might need a PB&J for lunch and a growler from BuckleDown later.

... But more importantly, I’m going to compliment everyone today. The grocery store owner in town. The person passionately filling my growler. The dry cleaner that cleans splattered French fry grease from my shirts...

...And yes, especially the hot moms who cross my path.

The world needs more compliments, and it starts with a Chalkhead.

Blanket up.

Crockpot up and tell someone they are a fanfuckingtastic human being.