Then there are the family Thanksgivings that don’t even try to be special. They just naturally are. The Madigans Thanksgiving is in that category.    All I ever wanted from my own family’s Thanksgiving traditions was a TV tray table, a football game and getting through dinner without anyone hurling a combination of threats or fists […]

   I grew up believing the MLK maxim that the arc of the universe bends toward justice. When the Supreme Court overturned Roe, though, I had another thought. The arc of the universe is actually a sine wave, not an arc. It oscillates back and forth, not bending to anywhere. It might be better in the […]

   And no, this is not some sinister reference to Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, Nor is it an attempt to measure our marriage using the metric system. But earlier this week, Carol and I celebrated our 1000th day anniversary. How do I know this, and why am I choosing to measure my marriage in days […]

   Volts divided by watts equals amps. I’ve learned that now, even though I wouldn’t know a watt from a volt or an amp, were one to suddenly jump out of a wall and bite me in the…    I’d learned this tidy bit of electrical math as a result of a fried electrical outlet. We don’t […]

   Carol was explaining to her daughter a recent couch move in our living room. Pointing toward the end of the couch where I’m normally found and happened to be at that moment, she said, “This one sags.” Mind you, I was wearing a shirt which color matched that of the couch, a shirt that clings […]

   I thought this would be an emphatic but easy “no!” This time Carol had won tickets for something called the Willie Nelson Outlaw Music Festival. If anything sounded like a MAGA magnet to me, this was it. But after my third “no!” It was clear Carol wasn’t even listening to me anymore.  “It’s a festival. […]

   My mother grew up in an orphanage, and my father grew up in the bayous of Louisiana. Both their childhoods spanned the Great Depression. That harshness of that experience did not fade as they slowly clawed their way into a materially sufficient lower middle class. Not wanting their children to go without the way they’d […]

    Probably sixty years after I first read it, I can still recite the opening line to Babe Ruth’s autobiography: “I was a bad kid; I say that without pride…”    Growing up in the 1950s, baseball was THE professional sport, even in a non-professional sports region like New Orleans. (The New Orleans Pelicans were a AA […]

   I was 16 when Hurricane Betsy hung a U-ee in the Atlantic, wrapped itself around Florida and made a beeline for the Louisiana coast. It was September of 1965, and New Orleans was the bullseye of the storm.    The night of the storm, my father made me a highball to “calm my nerves.” My nerves […]

   Carol came into the living room smiling. “I just won $10 tickets to Hamilton for next Thursday.” You might think that direct quote should have been punctuated with an exclamation point. I mean it’s Hamilton, not Guys and Dolls, The Fantastics or Cats. I’ve seen it twice on stage myself and still can’t get enough. […]