I don’t have any hobbies, at least in the sense most people understand them. Hobbies generally require time, tools or equipment and some level of skill. Hobbies are considered a good way to pass time, maintain an active, alert mind and stay healthy. There are people who paint, garden, collect, er, collectibles, restore classic […]

   It wasn’t that Carol had been awarded a grand prize – for her and a guest –  that had me thinking it was a scam; it was more a case of it not being a scam that had me hoping it was. Three days at a wellness spa in either the invigorating desert air […]

   Carol’s daughter was in the midst of a search for a specific ottoman that had eventually turned into a quest. Every time she thought she located the piece, it turned out to be a phantom. Given my standard daily posture, I know how important an ottoman can be. Heck, an entire empire was named […]

   My right eye has been weepy of late. As with most physical developments that don’t cause pain, my remedy is to ignore it, and then live with it. Carol, ever on the alert for my style of preventative medicine, will pick up on any physical anomaly (primarily as it has to do with hair, […]

Careful the tale you tell That is the spell, Children will listen…    I still remember the moment, as if it had just happened. I’m 17, and I’d been passing around to classmates some absurdist prose I’d begun experimenting with. The reaction I was getting from them surprised me. Big laughs. Really big. That explosive […]

   The recently concluded Masters tournament was the first one I’ve watched with interest, but not passion. I’ve lived in cold climates, where this tournament, held during the second weekend in April, conjured strong feelings of springtime and getting my own clubs out of the shed. Not this year. If a sport is capable of […]

  Len Kasper has left the television booth, where he’d been the play-by-play broadcaster of the Chicago Cubs for the past 16 years. He left to become the play-by-play radio announcer for the Chicago White Sox. Radio. Kasper said it has always been his dream to do baseball on the radio. There’s nothing more Old […]

Photo Credit: Carol Madigan    When I was a boy, in the weeks leading up to Opening Day, I’d read my Chicago White Sox yearbook over breakfast every morning. My baseball heroes growing up were not Mickey Mantle or Roger Maris but Luis Aparicio and Nellie Fox, two players many of you might never have  […]

Photo Credit – Carol Madigan    This year the streets of New Orleans on Mardi Gras day looked like scenes from an episode of Life Without People. While, personally, it would have been “the best Mardi Gras ever” to be able to walk the streets completely empty of Fat Tuesday drunks, I have mixed emotions […]

   There was the time I walked into a theater with Carol for a showing of The Book Club. A youngish woman (I’ve attained the age where they’re all more or less youngish) who passed me in the aisle said, “You’re like the third dude in here.” I didn’t know whether to feel special for […]