So it goes...

Yesterday marked three weeks until the release of The Portland House: a 70's memoir . On January 23rd, it becomes available on the eLectio Publishing website as well as Amazon, Barnes and Noble online and iTunes. As a prelude, over the next few blog posts, I'd like to introduce you to a few random characters in the book. Some will be more significant characters than others, but all played a part in my childhood, whatever their role. Today I'd like to introduce my grade school friend Pat S. I have three friends named Pat in the book as well as my sister Pat, so I try and use last names in the book to keep them straight. Pat (Red), Me (Yellow) This Pat was one of my better friends through the grade school and middle school years. He lived almost exactly one block away, on the 1200 block of Portland. As I allude to in the book, I met him more out of a sense of curiosity than anything. He had a crew cut haircut, and would occasionally stop his bike across the street ...

This past weekend I had to make the trip up to Minnesota to pick up my daughter from the University of Minnesota. I went up alone because Donna had to work. I sort of like these trips alone to get her for a couple of reasons. First, I get five hours of time alone to think, listen to music and ponder life. The other benefit is that it provides me with quality one-on-one time with Sarah both during the packing and on the drive back home. I miss having her around, so this is a great way to get us back on the same page after months apart. But there were a couple of other benefits this time. The first one was taking a side trip into downtown to drop off a copy of Dirty Shirt: A Boundary Waters Memoir  at   Subtext Books . They not only purchased a copy, but the owner mentioned that if it sold, she would order more copies through Ingram, a large distributor. Furthermore, it turns out she lived in Milwaukee for a time, so we had a bit in common outside of books. She told me she mig...

Christmas was always loud and brash and full of laughter and joy at the house on Portland. This year like so many before it, Mom picked out the long needled Norway Pine and decorated it with ornaments old, new, gaudy and beautiful. She was careful to put the breakable ones up high, away from our cat. Tonto occasionally took to his lumberjack skills and climbed the trunk and gave a good shake, or, worse, toppled it altogether. To be sure, we tied it up with fishing line to give it a fighting chance against the cat's deft tree killing skills. The relatives start arriving about 5:00. Along with my brother Paul, I am a student at the University of Minnesota. My brother Rob is home from Rochester, New York where he is attending NTID. Tom, Pat and Jane are all moved out and raising families of their own. They arrive with kids and spouses in tow for the annual Christmas gathering at mom's. Everyone is in high spirits, exhausted from all the preparation, yet finally ready to let do...

April is National Poetry Month. I'm featuring local Southeastern Wisconsin poets on my blog in an attempt to give them exposure and just because it's kind of fun. I remember my first real exposure to poetry from a critiquing or analytical perspective as clear as if it was yesterday. I was in 8th grade literature class and we were all asked to pick a poem and give a critique of it. On that day, one friend chose Elton John's song, Funeral for a Friend / Love Lies Bleeding which we played on the monoaural phonograph and was then critiqued. It was as edgy as we got in a Catholic grade school in the 70's; as close to Room 222  or the Dead Poet's Society  as you can get, I think. I forget the poem I chose, some willowy poem about ocean waves and a cave cut into the rocks or some such thing. I do remember reading it and thinking "What the heck?". It was only after re-reading it a second, third and fourth time that I really started to understand the deeper me...