As the Detroit Tigers continue their magical 2024 playoff run, a mirror into the past; remembering a different time, a different struggle, and a different Detroit Tigers team from 1967.

An Open Letter To the President, Vice President, Congress, And Anybody Else Who Won’t Listen:

Put the tax code on a diet, for crying out loud. And then put all those tax software developers, accountants, investigators, and such to work fixing the damn roads, or working on climate change, or something.

That would be much more useful than endless interpretations of somebody’s latest brainchild attached to some omnibus bill or other that adds yet another form, another instruction booklet, and another place where the software can go wrong, into an already ridiculously bloated mess.

As a kid, I thought it was perfectly normal for Mom to get up around five a.m. on her day off and start the process of Cooking the Thanksgiving Dinner. By the time I came downstairs and began the process of Wandering Around Aimlessly Waiting To Eat, the Mom Kitchen Factory was in full swing. This was when Mom cooked mass quantities of pasta. She had cooking pots that held bathtubs full of water, and when all these were going there was enough steam in the kitchen to take the wrinkles out of a ballroom of clothes.

What happens when magic dies?

The story of three siblings, their mom, one outrageous birthday cake — and why we carry our parents with us everywhere we go.

I remember that my wife asked me to ask the good doctor whether there is any rhyme or reason as to when snoring appears in the sleep cycle. Dr. Walrus responds with a combination of things that must be connected somewhere in his mind, ranging everywhere from the food choices we have in supermarkets, to the rise of the global middle class, to how REM sleep may or may not be significant, and on and on. I think that somewhere in all of this is an answer, but for the life of me I can’t locate it.

A walk through a forest in the winter is a special journey, from the crunch of snow under boot to the fresh clean bite of cold air on the cheek. Whipping across the open space of a lake, winter’s wind reminds you of nature’s power, its indifference to your need for warmth. Summer’s wind is different, often more sudden and violent, the product of storms, electricity and cyclonic power. Winter’s wind sweeps, and sweeps, carrying on its crest primordial ice.

65 is of course just a number. It represents the number of times this goofy, noisy world has circled the sun since the day I was born. I’m treating the day pretty much just like any other.

When I think of the people who passed from this world during COVID, isolated, intubated…when I pass an older person, masked and walkered, still out and about and shopping and living through this and having lived through much more — when I think of all this, and I take my air for granted on my walk, breathing in and breathing out as though it was the most natural thing in the world — then being a Shaggy Man is not a tough gig. Not a tough gig at all.

A lot of the stupidity in my house (aside from my spouse’s reference to my extensive personal stash) makes me do just a little thinking for myself. I have to remember that I’m running low on laundry soap, and how to sort whites and darks, and which fabrics do well on what wash setting; or remember when I bought that batch of asparagus or ground beef and therefore when to cook it before it spoils; or how to improvise in the kitchen when the ingredients fall short of what I thought I was going to make.

In short, I have to think about how I’m living.

Even after all is said and done, when those whose lives have been lived and whose memories have been recalled through others who, younger, have lived and died as well — we are the collective memory of all these things. I like to think that memories float through a world we cannot with all our science yet apprehend; that we are aswirl in these things, wisps that occasionally reveal themselves to us through suggestion, premonition, dream.

At some point, we pass through these tipping points, of pollution and ice and temperature and world diversity, and as we do so, like passenger pigeons stripped of their acorns we may well find ourselves short of food, short of water, short of breath, and short of life.

And nature won’t care if we die.

What of our own well-intentioned actions that gently strip from our loved ones those activities that once defined them as vibrant, active souls? We do it because we must, usually — but the effect is the same. What courage it must take, really, when you think of it: those first moments when you feel the solid ground of your younger self begin to give way under your feet — and then knowledge, certainty that tasks will become a bit harder, movements a bit slower, aches and pains ever more your friend. And yet such is the spirit to remain a part of the greater community that is our human experience, that many of us, faced with the question, “But how will you manage?” will answer, “I’ll crawl.”

Could it be that we map our words to our attention span? That as we spin faster and faster, and rely on the Internet for 140- or 280-character bursts of information (versus tedious blogs like this one) — as we spin through our Internet driven, interrupted lives, our words must also collapse?

Reflections on a remarkable day, when Mom would have turned 101.