"Why do they [write] for their money? Why do they [work] for short pay? They ain't getting nowhere and they're losing their share. They must have gone crazy back there." — Michael Burton (paraphrased)
Clinton, South Carolina, Friday, March 24, 2017, 9:45 a.m. On Tuesday night, I was having a lovely time sitting around in a circle, taking turns with others, playing guitar – most of the others could pick one – and singing while a fearsome storm raged outside. I was in a barn. There were refreshments. Meanwhile, …
Continue reading The World Gets a Little Larger When the Modem Dies
Clinton, South Carolina, Tuesday, March 7, 2017, 10:45 a.m. I haven’t really had much to do. Local sports, or at least my market value for writing about it, has subsided for a while. Bills are outstanding at both ends, which means I am both owed and owing a decent amount. I go to the mailbox …
Clinton, South Carolina, Saturday, December 31, 2016, 10:54 a.m. It’s the final day of 2016. The year will soon be tucked snugly in bed, and all the Trump partisans will have sugarplums dancing in their heads, that is, if they can get to sleep amid all the fireworks. That’s my metaphor for Year of Our …
Continue reading Not a Fond Farewell but a Farewell, Just the Same
Local sports are dying down, or at least the willingness of others to hire me to write about them, for now. The football teams have entered and exited the playoffs. Rain has returned to the Desert Southeast, and smoke from the mountains is at last on the wane. All I know to do is keep …
At least a dozen people today have told me they’re glad it’s about to be over, but it won’t be. The division of this country is at its peak. It won’t just stop when a president is determined. Oh, no. The losers are going to try to get the winners impeached. Maybe I’ve just been …
It’s not just another Thursday. I’ve been writing for most of two days. Come to think of it, I’ve been writing all week. I’ve been writing all month. I’ve been writing my whole life. If I didn’t love writing, I’d be tired of it by now. On Monday and Tuesday, I wrote about sports. Two …
My social calendar stays relatively free. Mostly, I get invited to events because people want me to write about them, or it, or them and it, whether they are ballgames, media conferences, or something else. I don’t think people trust me. They think I might write about them. Which is true. Not by name, though. …
So much to do. So little time. It wasn't too long ago that writers got to spend their time writing. They didn't have to tweet and post and pretend it was writing, too. A book is an art. A blog is a craft. A tweet is a trick. It's not that I don't enjoy social …
It was the bottom of the sixth inning on a Tuesday afternoon, and Johnny Shelburn stepped to the plate with the bases empty and two men out. Sacks, his teammates called him. He played first base. He took a strike. A little high for his taste. The Larranega Heights pitcher was a lefty. He …
"Remember that time we almost lost to Hugheyville?" "Yeah," Dan Dimmelmeier replied. "Us playing against a school so small that they barely had enough boys in the student body to field a team." "Went into the seventh inning trailing by a run," his best friend, Brandin Porcher, recalled. "Then we tied it on a single …
