Thursday 8/27/26 I've spent the last few hours working more on "Hero of Mine." Hopefully I'm finally done. Going to step back for a while and tend to some other things, after I run some stairs first, then I'll revisit the story later today or tomorrow. I work on things as long as I do because I know how good they are and I don't want that to be diminished the tiniest amount. Their quality obligates me to do my absolute best by them. This is the first page plus a little bit mo

Wednesday 8/26/26 I need to crank some nonfiction pieces. Film, music, op-eds. I've spent most of today working on "Hero of Mine" for The Penguin Didn't Have Any Hot Chocolate: Anytime Bedtime Stories. There is no one who can come anywhere close to the level of this prose. To reach that height in what is at least in part a children's book--and the wisest book for adults--is otherwise unbelievable. Shouldn't be possible. It's taken all my ability and all these decades of const

Wednesday 8/26/26 One should read more Zola. "But I don't read any Zola!" you cry. Well, this is all the easier then. The Masterpiece (1886) would work. Van Gogh liked it and so can you. Blind Willie McTell's cut his last session in September 1956 and it happened almost accidentally on his part. McTell was playing for quarters on the street in Atlanta. Record store manager Edward Rhodes invited McTell into his shop to record some songs. McTell asked Rhodes not to release the

Wednesday 8/26/26 It is so comfortable outside yesterday in Boston. I don’t want to be lulled into a false sense of security that summer and its weather are over, wary of their sticking power as I am, but I have renewed hope as a detester of both. The dew point was in the 50s for what feels like the first time in months and maybe is. I shall send a prayer the Great Pumpkin’s way. Wasn't necessarily going to be a stair day, but I'd been working for a while and had become restl

Tuesday 8/25/26 I read an article about what happens if you stop working out. It was sobering. What's troubling is how fast a person can undo what they've spent so long building up. The article discussed how one's mental state worsens, anxiety deepens, stress increases and doesn't dissipate, and self-image falters, as well as the physical side of the equation. Your body composition changes two weeks after you stop working out. Obviously this means more depending on where you'

Tuesday 8/25/26 Red Sox ground out another win. Nothing pretty, not that it matters. Get ‘em any way you can here in the fleeting days of summer. Ranger Suarez wasn’t sharp again. 4 walks in 5 innings. Didn’t matter last night, but will in October. Also surrendered 4 hits and hit 2 guys. That's a ton of traffic on the base paths. Somehow the Marlins only scored the one run against him. The Sox weren't any better, going 1-for-14 with runners in scoring position. Ugly number. S

Monday 8/24/26 I was wrong about the Red Sox fans applauding Rafael Devers, which is what I thought they'd do during his first at-bat of the weekend series. That's often how it works if it wasn't some beloved player or just a fan favorite, and Devers was neither. You get cheered your first time at the dish, then maybe you get booed or at least vocally rooted against. But they booed him from the first. Quite a nice weekend for the Red Sox, finishing off the sweep of the Giants

Monday 8/24/26 I wasn't as productive as I should have been work-wise over the weekend (there are no weekends here as others think of them) but a few important matters (in terms of what the art actually is) were taken care of. Meanwhile, on the stair front, which is both its separate thing and something that plays a part in keeping me here and strong enough to endure and create the art, I did a pretty good job over the two days. On Saturday, I walked to Charlestown and ran te

Sunday 8/23/26 The Giants are a bad ball club, but I still thought that was a great win (which meant their second series win in a row) for the Red Sox last night, coming back from 2-0 in the bottom of the ninth and walking it off, especially after what could have been a really demoralizing eighth inning when they had the bases loaded with nobody out and failed to score. That showed resiliency. Was also nice that the Sox did this against the knuckle-dragging Giants pitcher who

Saturday 8/22/26 I'm on cramp watch. Been hydrating like mad. Got some pickles in case I have need of the juice. After Monument-based activities finally wrapped up today I went down to the Starbucks and had a double espresso. All things being equal, this is my favorite coffee drink and perhaps my favorite drink of all. The older kids returned home to Illinois from Rhode Island. I sent my sister a text saying to welcome them back for me, and also to say hello to Amelia who, up

Saturday 8/22/26 I was sitting outside the Starbucks reading yesterday. An attractive woman was walking down the street so that it was like she was coming in front of me because of how I was facing and would then pass me by. I was looking around and she looked right in my eyes and smiles at me. There was a pillar, and she passed from one side to the other, and when she emerged she looked at me again, continuing to smile. And I looked down, as if I were shy. I don't know why I

Friday 8/21/26 There isn't an audience for intelligence. There's an audience for mediocrity. For stupidity. For crassness. For childishness. For shrillness. For unoriginality. For done-to-death. But there isn't an audience for intelligence. People see that word "intelligence" and they associate it with "hard to understand" and "That will require effort" and "That thing is necessarily boring." But whether a thing is stupid or intelligent, they don't understand anyway. People d

Thursday 8/20/26 My freshman year of college at BC, there was this kid in my hall named Francois. He wasn't French in any obvious way. He was just some kid with a very French sounding name from New York I believe it was. Anyway, he was a big drinker. Right from the start, before the other freshmen had figured out how that all worked on campus and its environs. He knew where to get alcohol from the moment he arrived. During that first weekend, he popped off to another kid who

Thursday 8/20/26 There's no such movie rating as PG-ANAL I said to my younger self. Maybe there should be. Films and TV shows rely heavily now on cell phones to advance the plot and for exposition. You come away thinking they couldn't tell a story without them. Which is to say that they can't tell a story. Moving the camera in a circle around two people talking is annoying. What do you think this achieves dramatically? It's just something that's done because directors think i

Wednesday 8/19/26 I saw a post on Reddit the other day that someone had made pertaining to a woman who works security at the Leader Bank Pavilion in the Seaport. The person who made the post said that this security worker was rude to them, and now they were trying to get them harassed, fired, canceled. They didn't say that last part, but that is the intention. We live in a world where you can't say that something doesn't need saying, because people are that stupid and deplora

Wednesday 8/19/26 The Red Sox got a much-needed series win last night against the Diamondbacks. Something is off with that Arizona team. You see the lack of focus. Unfortunately for the Red Sox, Ranger Suarez wasn't good again. He got the win, but that was because the offense put up runs. With that win, he's 5-4. How was this guy an All-Star? Oh, I know--it's because people don't the know the game, and they just fixate on a given rate stat of the dashboard. He was okay for a

Tuesday 8/18/26 Dear best pal of mine Lilah, How is my favorite non-tyrant of a niece? I hope you had a wonderful summer. I receive many updates about you from your Grammie. And of course I ask about you often because I like you so very much. You likely won’t remember this, because it was from so long ago, but I had promised to send you a story, which I knew was going to be the story in this envelope. But sometimes, it can take a while to get something the best th

Tuesday 8/18/26 The Red Sox had a much-needed one-sided win last night in which just about everyone in the line-up had a robust, get-healthy evening. The team scored in six straight innings. Solo homer for Contreras, couple RBI for Abreu, three hits for Rafaela and Durbin (who's raised his average to .257). And most remarkably--these days especially: no Red Sox batters struck out. Anecdotally, and perhaps factually, or at least borderline factually, that's rarer than a perfec

Monday 8/17/26 Wasn't that long ago that the Red Sox seemed like they couldn't lose a game. Now it seems like they can't win one unless they get a dominant start from one of their clear-cut best two pitchers. They lost again to the Pirates yesterday for their third straight series loss in a row, all against sub-.500 teams, and concluded their road trip with a 2-5 record. They're 3-7 in their last 10 games. They can't score. They look an awful lot like the team they were befor

Monday 8/17/26 As I wrote earlier, I've been trying to run stairs every day without a break on account of feeling like I'm not doing as well with the stairs, whether that's because of me or the heat or both. It has been hard to get a gauge on where I'm at. My sense is that I have struggled more than in past times and that I shouldn't be struggling like I am, but it's also been an extremely humid summer, one of the most humid of my life, if not the most humid. We are scorching

Sunday 8/16/26 Often by this time in August there'll be some moment--and it's usually this flicker of a moment--where you get a taste, a twinge, a drop, a flash of autumn. A cold patch in some bit of shade you walk through on a sunny day with just a slight fringe of "brrr...."; a passing tang to the air. A pinch of that smoky aroma. Haven't had that yet in this soupy August. But it's coming up on three in the morning here in Boston and the temperature is 61 degrees and may di

Saturday 8/15/26 Sometimes when we say, "You're lying" to someone, we're doing so in the hopes that they'll prove us wrong. Mount an airtight defense. Beat back the assertion with this commanding shove of truth. But we already know. It really becomes a question of whether we want to lie to ourselves. The panegyrics so many people pen to themselves, day in, day out. Self-eulogizing post and/or statement after self-eulogizing post and/or statement and for having done nothing. "

Thursday 8/13/26 With last night's loss to the Blue Jays, the Red Sox have now dropped five in a row. It seems like the Red Sox are going to do what they can to piss away the lead the built up with their six-week spurt and not make the playoffs. The team currently in the last Wild Card position in the American League is the Texas Rangers, who are a game below .500. It's hard not to feel here in the earliest hours of August 13 that the Red Sox aren't going to give the teams cu

Thursday 8/13/26 When you understand people all too well, it makes sense to say, "I don't understand people." The above remark requires thinking through. That means practically no one could ever understand it because no one can think. If you post an intelligent comment on social media, the replies will prove that your comment wasn't understood in the slightest. Your comment could have been very direct. A remark of pith. You're limited anyway in how long it could have been if