Category Archives: Life

July 6, 2026 · 7:54 pm

5 Albums I Can’t Live Without: Album 1

Spin magazine does a cool “5 Albums I Can’t Live Without” series. And for my faithful readers you know I love writing music based blog posts. I will be honest, I have been thinking about my 5 albums for almost a month now. Trying to figure out if I should include soundtracks, greatest hit collections, and what makes a great album for me. Also, do I only choose one album per artist? (Yeah, I could pick a number of Prince albums.)

So, here are my guidelines for the 5 albums I can’t live without. One album per artist. No soundtracks with various artists. No greatest hits collections. And I have to like the whole album, meaning no song would ever be skipped. So here we go… and in no particular order.

Album number one is Blind to Reason by Grayson Hugh.

The song “Talk it Over” was on heavy rotation for VH1 in 1988.  But his second release from the album, “Bring It All Back” hooked me and I traveled to Casper to buy the CD and I have been listening to his music ever since. 

The first song on the album, “Romantic Heart” is easy to sing along too, but the lyrics hit with just the right mix of positivity and dreamer ideology. Perfect for my heart.

“Bring It All Back” is a great love song. Grayson’s song writing is fused with some great descriptions, many times with nature at the center. The second verse in this song is a perfect example of his skills, 

When the falling leaves are filled with rain

Oh, you heart it calls to me

Say when will I see you again

And the wind will answer me

But not all his songs are centered on romantic relationships. “Finally Found a Friend” is a hidden gem on this album. Grayson hits a deep nerve of our loneliness that can only be tempered by friendship. And by the end of the song, your soul is singing and reeling in thoughts of people you love.

The final song, “Empty As the Wind,” is on my writing playlist. This song highlights Grayson’s depth of subject and use of nature to highlight the theme of the song. I turn to this song at times when I am feeling blue.

Grayson Hugh’s Blind to Reason is a wonderful journey musically and lyrically. Even when he is singing about the troubles of love or life, my soul is lifted by his songs.

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July 5, 2026 · 7:49 pm

A Thousand Blueberry Muffins

I am only a few months away from turning 55. 

I have 21 years left if I live to the national age of death.

That means I have 1,092 batches of blueberry muffins left.

Time can be measured in so many different ways. Our lives are filled with milestones, beginnings and endings. At times our lives seem so routine, while at other times it feels like chaos rules. We feel anger. We laugh. There is pain and discovery. There is life.

But time moves forward. In two years I will have only one child left living at home, and less than a thousand batches of blueberry muffins to make. 

Honestly, as I consider these upcoming milestones, I am sad, reflective, and grateful that I have built a tradition that my life, my children’s life, could anchor to in good and troubled times. No matter what time has in store for me, for my family, we have at least 1,092 batches of blueberry muffins to enjoy.

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June 6, 2026 · 11:42 am

What of a Front Door?

I took my daily walk pretty early this morning. The air still held the smell and coolness of the rain storm last night. The streets in my neighborhood were empty except for a lawn care crew I would pass later in my walk.

As it happens on my walks I started to think about things, I was running through the appointments I needed to make on Monday. I then thought I should see when my dad was free this summer so I could coordinate a visit. That took me to thoughts of my mom (who passed away June 9, 2023). I happened to look at the house on my left. There was a wood door hanger with a summer design. I smiled as I thought my mom would have liked the front door.

In the past, when my parents would visit us, we would always take a walk together. They would comment on the front doors (and the trees, but that is for another post). My parents enjoyed looking at the designs and decorations of front doors.  My mom especially liked front doors that were bold in color. 

So, in her honor I paid attention to the front doors on my walk. There were doors with cool etched glass, front doors with no sidelights, one sidelight, and matching sidelights. There was a house with a lime green front door. My mom would have liked that. Other doors had summer wreaths, or had accent decorations like wooden planks with ‘Welcome’ painted on it leaning against the wall. We have a flower wooden hanger, even.

There were no two doors alike in my neighborhood. Paying attention to the doors was fun, and brought back memories of my parents. Of the walks we would take after Thanksgiving dinners, or the first time they visited a new home when we moved. 

But what of a front door? 

My wife has a wooden hanger for each season that we place on our front door (and take off during storms because it knocks against the door). Our front doors are a small message to the world about who we are. If we are welcoming, if we are simple or grand in our approach. Bold colors, glass etchings, other accent decorations reveal at least a little something about our home, about us to the world outside.

This morning, I paid attention to the front doors of my neighbors, and I think, understood my parents a little more. Of course looking back it is easier to see things, but they were always welcoming to people, and one of them was me. I know I was blessed to have them open their front door to a lost and troubled 16 year-old.

What of a front door? It is the way home.

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May 30, 2026 · 6:44 pm

Good Fences and Good Neighbors

I would grab a cup of coffee or tea, this blog post is going to take a little time and try to connect some interesting dots… no, go ahead, I’ll wait…

OK, so the dots I am going to connect range from poetry, real life fact, and AI / technology.

First, Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall”. This is one of his most ironic poems. The depth of what is written and what is meant, or at least what a reader might even believe, is extraordinary. And that ambiguity hits the reader in classic Frost style with the ending.

If you’ve never read the poem, follow the link before reading further… really, I’ll wait.

I could (and maybe I should) write an analysis post about this poem, but I want to get to the heart of this dot I want to connect to other moments and the theme of this post. The plot of the poem is simple: Robert Frost and his neighbor meet to repair the stone fence that separates their land. This is a yearly event. One of the major themes is emphasized at the end of the poem, “He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’”

Dot two: My neighbor is building a fence.

Back to the poem and what the line “Good fences make good neighbors” might mean. The word choice is important, ‘Good fences’ and ‘good neighbors’. An important point to remember is that they are working together to mend the stone fence (also described as a wall in the poem). It is important because it highlights the balance of them living their separate lives, yet maintaining a neighborly relationship. In fact in the poem it states that Robert Frost contacts his neighbor about the day to repair the wall. 

It is clear from reading the poem that they are not friends, but they are respectful, even if Robert Frost fails at getting to a deeper conversation with his neighbor. (I understand that, “Let’s Not Talk about the Weather.”) They are at least ‘good neighbors’.

Back to dot two. Our neighbors have been in the house less than a year. Most of our backyards meet. The fence will separate their yard from ours. I have never spoken to them. We have acknowledged each other while mowing or out gardening with a smile or a head nod. I do not know why they are building the fence. 

Is it a good fence? Not sure.

I do recognize that I am not a good neighbor in the classical sense.

Which brings us to dot three.

Technology / AI and its effect on the idea of a good neighbor.

Part of the draw of technology, of social media, of even AI, is that it was supposed to break down the physical and personal walls of our lives. We could find community anywhere in the world. We could share ideas, our art, our hobbies, share ourselves to the world. And it can do that. I have people on X (the app formally known as Twitter) that would be good friends in real life. But I’ve never met them in person.

The ironic aspect is that the idea was no barriers, no walls, no fences… but that is not how the internet works. We have different fences, and I’m not sure they are ‘good’. We can live behind fictional handles / accounts. Now with AI, we can automate our very existence. Let it write or respond to email, let AI post on Instagram as us, or to a fictional account we create.

Sadly we are fencing ourselves in by not being ourselves, by letting ChatGPT think for us, by removing any of the work it takes to discover our talents. Even what we are not good at is an important step in becoming who we are. Technology is not a good fence. Being a good neighbor is about understanding who we are through our successes and struggles. Learning what is valuable to our souls. To understand that our neighbors are people who are trying their best to live their lives.

I do wonder why my neighbor is building a fence. Robert Frost’s poem delves into deeper themes (that I might just write more about) of this life. And I am using technology now with this blog post, but my goal is be a good neighbor for you reader, as you work on living on your side of this fence.

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April 11, 2026 · 10:13 pm

My Poetic Philosophy

I love April. Even though life is busy with teaching, coaching, and just general dadlife, the challenge of writing a poem every day brings a welcomed level of stress. My students know I am a poet, and have asked to hear some of the poetry. I have also had the opportunity to just talk about poetry and creativity with them.

Today, I wrote a poem that was inspired by my walk. I had already composed and shared my poem for the prompt today (which was ‘home’ – you can read it on my X feed). As I reworked a section of the poem, I felt like the poem represented my basic philosophy of poetry. Now, I have written all kinds of poetry, have written in over 100 different forms, but since I have shared my creative process a number of times in the last year, I thought it would be fun to share this poem and explain how it fits my general philosophy of poetry.

Some background first. Some info from the poets I admire.

Robert Frost, states in the preface “The Figure a Poem Makes” that a poem should start in delight but end in wisdom. Later he expands on the point, highlighting how the wisdom is not always grand but the simple depth of living, that a poem “ends in a clarification of life.” If you are a faithful reader of my poems (and even my blog posts) you can see this revelation at the end of many of my works.

Langston Hughes is my favorite poet, and most people don’t know that early in his career he was criticized for what makes his work loved now, the reality of life. Lifting up the working class and street people of Harlem. And bringing them into the discussion of the social issues of our nation. But he also threaded a spiritual aspect into his work. Langston once said that poetry was “the human soul, squeezed like a lemon…” I do not write a lot about social issues, but I do try to squeeze my soul until it forms a poem on the page.

I am also a fan of the Romantic Poets, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelly and the likes. Nature and the common life were driving forces for their poetry, and mine. Which brings me to today. After my walk I sat down on my front step and jotted down the first draft of the following poem (which is presented in its final version).

“April 11, 2026”

The battle between seasons

is taking place on lawns,

yellow brown grass fights for ground

against lush green blades 

that are backed up

by bright yellow dandelions.

The air smells of a rain waiting,

a tint of mildew,

heavy and sweet.

While the wind blows 

its war horn

from the north,

cold and biting. 

Warning that freezing storms

are still possible.

The sky a grey blanket

with no seems to be seen.

—

And I am walking through

the middle of it all.

My heart holds on to winter,

while my mind yearns

for the thaw of spring.

A war between seasons

for the right to call

this day theirs.

This poem, I think, represents my voice well. The first stanza is a picture of the day during my walk. Revealing the tension of the weather during the days between the seasons. There is beauty in nature, a power that touches our souls, no matter what the weather is.

Then in the second stanza I squeezed my soul. Revealed a spiritual tension that I hope connects with the reader. A wisdom that they can read and then say, “I understand that feeling, too.” And with that inspiration to highlight the richness of our everydayness, I used the date.

The one aspect of the poem that is missing from my style is the use of a poetic form. Which I played with the idea, but the poem felt truer as a free verse based poem. And I am learning to trust my poetic instincts.

I hope you enjoyed the new poem and getting to know me a little more as a poet as I shared my poetic philosophy. Here is to a great rest of April and all the poems I will write.

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April 8, 2026 · 1:53 pm

The Backstory to an April Poem

April is National Poetry Month, and many poets write a poem everyday. I am one of those poets. I use the prompt provided on the Writer’s Digest site. I read the prompt in the morning. Let it sit for a while and then find time to write the poem. During that time I also consider different poetic forms to use. I have written three poems so far in forms I’ve never used before. I like using this month to work on my skill set and to experiment a little.

I wrote a poem yesterday (April 7) that I really like. And writing the poem has backstory that highlights the creative process.

The prompt for April 7 was a Two for Tuesday situation: Dawn or/and Dusk. Robert Lee Brewer is the editor for the poetry section for Writer’s Digest. He is the one that provides the prompts, and Tuesdays have always been a double sided prompt.

My first reaction was actually lackluster. Nothing really jumped out at me while I had my morning coffee. I also knew that I would be helping monitor a room for the ACT yesterday. Our school administers the ACT for our juniors every year. My only job is to walk around and make sure ovals are filled in correctly, handle any questions. I don’t even say anything regarding instructions. 

As the testing got started I was not thinking about the prompt, instead I had this idea in my mind from a book I recently read, Birds Art Life: A Year of Observation by Kyo Maclear. She ends a chapter with a line about how there is never a day without birds.

As I walked around the room (I walked over 10,000 steps during the ACT) a poem started to take root. During the break I grabbed a piece of paper and got the ideas down. During instructions and the small break I made notes or added lines.

Because I felt like I had different ideas that still connected, I made the poem into a four part work. I was excited to sit down after track practice to write it and share to the community of poets on the Writer’s Digest site (and other social media).

After dinner I announced I would be writing my poem. The family is used to these kind of announcements, it is just our fun way of letting me have time to write. I grabbed my computer, my headphones, and no poem. I searched my computer bag again. I swore I placed the rough draft in my bag. Nothing.

I almost drove back out to school to get it, but I decided to trust my memory and write the next draft. When I got to school this morning, I checked the final draft to the rough draft, it was almost the same poem. There was a line or two that I changed or added but I would have done that anyway. Second (third, fourth…) drafts always have a change, that is the fun part of writing. Trying to bridge the muse with the audience.

Maybe because the poem took extra work, had extra stress, I like this poem. And with that, here is my dawn / dusk poem:

“Days”

Part I

There are days without snow,

and rain.

Days without sun, friends, and

even clouds.

But there is never a day without birds,

their songs perched on limbs and wires.

Part II

Dawn and dusk

are perfectly imperfect examples

of the way our lives revolve.

Like children

running on grass and blacktops

in a never ending game of tag.

Dusk’s speed of foot gives us

more time to star gaze,

other days Dawn’s endurance

allows us to play

under the sun longer.

Neither of them seem

to care to win the game.

Part III

We are children, too.

Playing tag with our days.

Running toward hopes

and aspirations.

Running from heartache

or doubt.

But we stumble,

scrape our knees on the concrete,

get tagged by despair,

cringing as it yells,

“You’re it!”

With lungs burning

we find ourselves running, again.

Tears warping our vision.

Part IV

But there is always the birds

with their songs

strumming our heartstrings 

reminding us what these days

are really for.

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March 30, 2026 · 2:50 pm

Walk in My Shoes

On Aug 17, 2025, I got a new pair of shoes for walking.

I had an idea to wear them only for walking and to record my steps after each walk. I was going to try to make it a year, but due to different circumstances, I made it to the end of this month, 8 months total. 

I walked a total of 549051 steps… 245 miles.

We all know the idiom, “Walk a mile in their / my shoes” as a reference to understanding someone. I took notes sometimes after a walk. During these last 8 months, I had a colleague lose two of their grandchildren in a car accident. My oldest son got married. I walked on Halloween but didn’t get to walk with my youngest daughter on her last trick-or-treat trip, she was at a friend’s house. 

I walked through hundreds of grasshoppers in August. I walked in the school on nights when my daughter had musical practice. I walked on a 65 degree day in February. I took notes for poems, some that are still notes. I walked on Christmas day, reflecting on family and how time was moving so fast.

The miles simply represent my life, as they would for you.

As I totaled the steps, I noticed something interesting. No matter what the day, or the route I took (I have a couple of routes I walk in the neighborhood), no day ever had the same number of steps. Ever.

So no matter how many times I took my ‘medium route’ in the neighborhood, the step count was different.

I understand there are a number of reasons for the differences, but that proves the point that even in the routine of our life, each day is different. Has a different step count because of the smallest changes to how we walked through the day. How we lived that day.

Maybe to understand ourselves better we should pay attention to how we walk in our own shoes.

And so my idea for this blog post comes to an end as I transfer the shoes to work shoes.

But, I did get a new pair of walking shoes… 

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March 26, 2026 · 11:41 am

Did You Notice?

Let’s see if I can express myself well in this blog post. I know as I sit down to write this that I will be challenged in my ability to express this abstract experience with this page and the words I choose to express myself with.

Let’s start with the idea of connecting dots. Faithful readers know I use this idea a lot. But it helps make connections to ideas or moments, even when they seem random.

Dot One

Did you notice? 

Did you notice I was not there on social media, especially X? It is OK if you didn’t. I’m not sure anyone really did. My screen time is averaging 2 hours and 50 minutes a day for the last couple of weeks (at the end of this week it should be about 2 hours and 40 minutes).

At the moment, X is my 8th used app. It is even behind my Clock app. I did not disappear, I reposted, shared some info, but I didn’t really engage with people or share original content. And X went on without me.

Dot Two

Why I reduced my interaction with my phone and social media.

This is one of the tricky parts I alluded to in the introduction. I was hurt because of poetry. Rejection emails, poetry battles, and the loss of community hit my spirit hard. Every creative person goes through rough spots, the last three weeks have been brutal for me, in so many different ways. Emotionally it was like standing in the middle of a downpour as a blizzard swept in while an earthquake happened.

Dot Three

What did I gain from the last two weeks?

New Poetry. Ironic isn’t it. 

I also gained an appreciation for my voice, for my style. It sounds funny to say this at this stage of my writing career, but I am always reminded of something Ray Radbury said in an interview late in his career. He said it took him 10 years to finally write a short story that he felt reflected his authentic voice.

I may not be popular, but no one writes like I do. 

And I will keep trying to share my work, knowing that my email folder will be filled with rejection responses because that’s what we do, we create and share with the world.

Dot Four

What I really gained from the last two weeks…

The depth and quality of our life is found in how engaged we are in our own lives.

I read the article “The Lonely Death of George Bell” from the New York Times in 2015. (It is behind a paywall now.) It haunts me to this day. The quick summary of the article is that George dies in his apartment alone, and it took weeks before anyone noticed enough to investigate. Even his drinking buddies, whom he saw only at the bar, did not do anything when he stopped showing up. 

We all get 24 hours in a day. And we, for the most part, get to decide what we do with that time. I’ve talked about this idea in different blog posts for years and connected to different topics. The small shift in understanding from the last two weeks is that how we engage with that time matters.

I didn’t stop living just because I was not on X. Dadlife has been in full swing, daughters are in tennis, and my third daughter was also in the school musical. I took my walks. I wrote poetry.

Twenty-four hours can go by without us doing anything, even if we are on a screen or not. Being aware, but even more importantly, choosing what and who to engage with builds the textures of our life. Gives us the colors, the heartache, and the words to live a life we can call art.

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February 22, 2026 · 4:56 pm

Blueberry Muffins and Nothing to Do

At the moment my daughters are performing karaoke with a friend. My wife is listening to a podcast and I am writing this blog post (I did just spend 30 minutes reading a book). For the first time in a long time we have nothing to do.

This morning we had blueberry muffins. We attended church. Ran to get my wife her coffee drink (if you know, you know). Bought some yarn for my youngest daughter who has fallen in love with crocheting. For Christmas we got her a Wooble. She has completed at least 7 of those sets and is now making projects on her own. The latest being two dragons. 

It’s funny how busy you can be with nothing to do. 

It’s funny how full a day feels when you have nothing to do.

It’s funny how much we miss when we pack our days, or weekends, with things to do.

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January 22, 2026 · 10:01 am

Falling in Love with Vinyl

My stereo system, from 1991, finally just stopped working about a year ago. I had a dual deck cassette player, CD player, receiver, and six speaker set-up that was in my corner library. I did not have a record player. In fact, I have never owned a record player. Until this Christmas.

As a Christmas gift my wife gave me a Victrola 6-in-1 Bluetooth Record Player & Multimedia Center. I can listen to my CDs, tapes, and now, for the first time, listen to records. 

During Christmas break I visited our new used record store downtown to buy a LP. I was hoping for a Prince record, but they didn’t have anything at that time. I ended up buying Poco’s Legend album, which has one of my all-time favorite songs, “Heart of the Night”.

When I got home, I immediately put the record on (Side two though because that side started with “Heart of the Night”). I’ll be honest, I was excited. I dropped the needle down, heard that hollow crinkling sound and smiled. Then the first notes of “Heart of the Night” started to play… and I was hooked. 

My record collection is at five albums, and yes one is Prince’s “Around the World in a Day”. Many of the times I am just chilling on the bed when I listen to any of the albums. Those moments remind me of doing the same in my teenage years. Most of the time with my best friend at his house listening to cassettes. I remember the trips to Casper to buy music. 

The other day as I was flipping over an album to the other side, I thought about the change in our culture around music. 

Like many kids, my children listen to music as they do homework, headphones on, YouTube or Spotify playing their playlists. All my children have CD players in their room. Their music collection isn’t vast, but they ask for music as gifts. We definitely listen to music in the car, I mean we spend a lot of time traveling and we have some fun playlist we listen to.

But, what is missing in their life is the personal cost of time and care it took when I was a teenager, and now revealed in what it takes to listen to an album. 

Here is what I mean, to listen to an album I must take it out of the sleeve. Place it on the player, physically move the needle and when the side is done, I have to flip the record over. To listen to a record I know I have to invest time and care even to enjoy the music.

There is so much missing from the musical experience today. It was hard to find hard facts, but for streaming revenue a song only has to be played between 30 and 50 percent of the length. Another stat I came across was that listeners only complete 50% to 80% of a song when it is on a playlist. Completion rates were higher for album plays (GEARNEWS).

Music doesn’t mean the same to my children that it does for me. And part of the reason is that they have not invested anything in listening to music. Like anything in life, when we invest our time, our energy, our hearts, it means more to us. 

Every physical form of music, LP, CD, cassette, and even 8-track cartridge, has a physical, emotional, and time cost associated with it. Each form is unique in those costs; fastforward / rewind for tapes, dropping the needle down, switching tracks if we want to hear a certain song. 

But I think the most interesting factor is the commitment to listening. Every form can be background music, every form can be heard while just chilling in the room, but the physical forms will have a stopping cue, a moment that you have to physically change the format. Even CDs will end. But the deeper aspect is the anticipation of that favorite song coming on, even if we are using the music as a backdrop, we know that a particular song will be next, so we may choose to stop washing dishes to dance or sing along with the song.

The full experience of listening to music in physical form adds a depth to the moment that digital music usually misses or fails to create for us. And in that depth, we can remember other moments, feel a range of emotions, and share, like best friends chilling on the floor waiting for THAT song to play, a rich and wonderful time with someone.

I like digital music. Again, we have travel playlists we listen to in the car, but we don’t skip songs. We sing and, yes, dance to our favorite songs. But, my new Victrola has Bluetooth capabilities that I have not used. I would rather put a record on…

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