Sunday 7/5/26 The people who say, "Does anyone know any book similar to this [great work]," and "Does anyone know any music like this [great album]," and so forth, are really missing the point, or one of them, anyway. A great Poverty Row horror or noir film is similar to a rough-and-tumble audience recording of some band's remarkable gig you wouldn't have heard otherwise. You have this sense of discovery and feeling of good fortune that the thing managed to exist (and got hel

Saturday 7/4/26 Fourth of July as a kid, so this was when I was seven, eight, nine-years-old. My tradition as such. Go out and play with friends in a front yard we imagined was some big league ball park. We'd hang a clothesline and drape a tarp or drop cloth over it for a wall. The Green Monster of a field covered in acorns, with trees for bases, and baselines of markedly different lengths. Then swim in someone's pool. Then I'd go home to read Ben Franklin's autobiography. Di

Saturday 7/4/26 Walked six miles yesterday and did 100 push-ups and that was it and today could well be a fat zero on the fitness front. I've had enough. I need this heat to break. It's boxed in here. The air conditioner barely works anyway. But once the heat settles in, it's there to stay. Like you don't get it out again for a while, even when the temperature drops. It has this residual staying power. The Man Who Came to Dinner. Except it's heat. I'm going to bed late, getti

Thursday 7/2/26 It was even worse running stairs at City Hall today. I only did 2000, and for each of the last ten times up--2000 stairs being twenty times up and down--I was bent over at the top with my hands on my knees. Brutal, brutal, brutal. But it was a notable day for the stair-running resume in its kind of way, just not as flashy as a twenty-circuit day in the Bunker Hill Monument. It is all for my work. Everything is for my work. To be able to keep going. To somehow

Thursday 7/2/26 People will make any excuse for someone twisted as they are twisted. Sick as they are sick. Immoral as they are Immoral. Evil as they are evil. For example, Joshua Boger with David Sedaris. It's unbelievable to me--it shouldn't be, but, again, one feels like it must be said--how people use t-a-r-d, as in "retard." They'll casually, conversationally stick it at the ends of words. How can you not know how disgusting this is? How can you be that bad of a human? Y

Thursday 7/2/26 The heat is miserable. You can't do anything in it. It's like you can't live in it. Today is supposed to be hotter. Do the people who go on about summer and how they wish it was time and again throughout the rest of the year like this? This is fun to them? Preferable? You can't walk a block without sweating. That feels nice? Something to look forward to? The ironic thing about summer is there can be more days that people have to stay indoors than there are in

Wednesday 7/1/26 People aren't going to defend intelligence and effort. They're going to vehemently oppose them and those who exhibit those traits or who extol the importance of learning/knowing and trying hard. (This vehemence can be unexpressed, but it will have total internal sway with how they regard these traits in others and dictate treatment/behavior on whatever relevant/available level.) People will wish to shout them down. They are going to defend ignorance and lazin

Wednesday 7/1/26 I got my hair cut yesterday after a few months. The back of my neck was quite scraggly. Not that I have anyone or anything to look good for. I went with the .5 razor setting on the sides and back and the 1 on the rest of it, so I don't have a lot of hair now. I realized, though, that my head is two colors, which is a ridiculous look, on account of wearing my Celtics headband when I'm out and about for longer stretches for my walks that get lumped into my fitn

Wednesday 7/1/26 Was at the barber shop yesterday and talk centered on Jaylen Brown and the Celtics and how the Celtics "blew it" by not moving him after getting as close as they did. I don't partake in these discussions because I don't fit into them. The language is mangled, there's a lot of ass talking--as in, people saying things straight from their ass. Real common man stuff, with "g's" left off the ends of words, etc. It isn't a space for me, like all spaces, with who I

Tuesday 6/30/26 Red Sox fans are funny. But given that virtually no one in our world is actually funny, I don't mean funny that way but in the ridiculous sense. After sweeping the Yankees (who are without Aaron Judge) in a four game series at Fenway, the Sox turned around and beat the Nationals at the old ball yard last night to improve their season-best winning streak to five games. They've gone from 14 games under .500 to 9 games under. Consequently, Red Sox fans are now st

Friday 6/26/26 I have bad dreams most nights. I don't like being asleep. Of course, I don't like being awake either. The dreams are often about Molly. Even at this late date. They take various forms. Sometimes we are together happy somewhere. That's a strange kind of bad dream that produces a bad wake up as well. The bad dreams involve people who hurt or betrayed me. People I counted on who told me I could trust them. They can be bad dreams by dint of comparison, you could sa

Wednesday 6/24/26 A letter in response to someone who wrote me asking for a blurb which I include here as I think it says what needs to be said about blurbs and writers and which no one else would say. Dear (), This is from early last month, and I apologize for the delay in just getting back to you on this late June Saturday morning. I'm afraid I don't check this inbox that often and have been dealing with various matters and writing and really not much else. First of a

Wednesday 6/24/26 I thought Buster Posey would excel in his role of running the San Francisco Giants, but he's not the person for that job. You have these knuckle-dragging athletes refusing to wear a piece of clothing for a Pride night, which is bad enough. It's rare that athletes aren't total morons. Basically illiterate. Clueless about the world. Many of them are going to claim to be "Christians." They'll say it's wrong to be gay, but they'll bang everything that moves on t

Wednesday 6/24/26 I've not done a good job with fitness lately. I'm displeased with where I'm at and disappointed in myself. My legs should be stronger and not feel like they're wearing out in the muscles around the knees when I get to a certain point of stairs in the Bunker Hill Monument, and my breathing ought to be much better than it has been. It's been frustrating and disappointing and I haven't done enough about it. I feel like the last time I was at all closer to where

Tuesday 6/23/26 A Sunday morning music recommendation: the Nat King Cole Trio's The Complete Capitol Transcription Sessions. These were cut, usually in a single take, between 1946 and 1950 for distribution to radio stations for airplay. They're loose/aerated in the best way--not sloppy, but with that in-the-moment feel. People tend to think Cole was "only" a singer (albeit one of the finest), but his trio was an outstanding jazz outfit. If someone asked me--especially someone

Monday 6/22/26 Something I sent to some fathers I know late yesterday afternoon. Happy Father's Day. Ordinarily I'd say something more here, reach out individually, or send something more substantial--like a finished work--but lately I've been a candle without a wick, and a nub of a candle at that. I feel like a flame gone out; or going out. It has been hard. But I'll share this as...well, not a gift, but, you know. This is an ugly world getting uglier. There has b

Saturday 6/20/26 Yesterday was the latest in a series of days it was hard to survive. I don't know how else to put it. I think that's the best way of saying it. Like being chased by death and you run, and run, and run, find a spot to hide in until it's technically tomorrow. I have nothing to live for. It's not going to get better. There can be nothing good for me in this world. I haven't gone outside in three days. I hadn't showered in nearly that long until I made myself do

Friday 6/19/26 The Boston Red Sox and the Colorado Rockies are the only teams in the league with less than 30 wins. After yesterday's loss at Fenway to Toronto, the Red Sox are now 29-43. Your record looks uglier when you're 20-something and 40-something rather than 30-something and 40-something. When the numbers skip like that. But now we're talking the aesthetics of sub-.500 records. This is now a team you have to actively look away from. You don't want to see and probably

Thursday 6/18/26 There’s never been a hero who thought, “Someone else should be doing this instead of me.” If a hero cries, they dry their tears so that they can see better. A hero knows that the road isn’t the only thing you must keep your eyes on. They may tremble in the lonely darkness for what tomorrow could bring. They can become as afraid as anyone has ever been, but that doesn’t make them weak, because a hero understands that being

Wednesday 6/17/26 The people who make you listen to their music because they’re too rude and entitled to use headphones are never listening to Miles Davis at the Plugged Nickel, are they? Back in the 1990s, I'd share recordings sometimes with people of F. Scott Fitzgerald reading bits of Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale," lines from Shakespeare's "Othello," and John Masefield's "On Growing Old," hosted by a University of South Carolina web page. That page is gone, but the recordi

Tuesday 6/16/26 Sorry, Jimmy J., hate to do this to you again--nothing personal, just making a point. Today is Bloomsday, with June 16 being the date on which the events of James Joyce's novel, Ulysses, take place. We did that earlier prose off pitting the end of Joyce's short story, "The Dead," which is frequently touted as the best prose in the English language, against an excerpt from "Dead Thomas," part of There Is No Doubt: Story Girls, and what a beat down we had there.

Sunday 6/14/26 I got to Charlestown early today because there were some things I wanted to do. During some of that time there I sat on a bench facing the lodge of the Bunker Hill Monument and watched and listened to the house sparrows. They had nests on each side of the entranceway behind the columns. That's all I did for a while. Simply (or not so simply) watched and listened to the birds. Witnessed life. Heard their songs and commentary. Tips. Ministrations. Pacifications.

Sunday 6/14/26 I saw an anecdote that someone had shared about Sky Saxon, lead singer and I suppose you could say lead visionary of the 1960s Los Angeles garage band the Seeds, a group I've been listening to since I was first driving around in high school. Someone they knew--could have been a relative, I don't recall--was hosting Saxon overnight following his gig in the area. After the show and at this person's home, Saxon did all the drugs, wanted to have group sex, and woul

Saturday 6/13/26 Last Saturday, I had an eventful time of it at the Bunker Hill Monument in Charlestown. I went over there looking to do quite a few circuits. Sometimes I'll have a big number in mind. Others factors may mitigate against reaching that goal--like the humidity--but I know when it's time to try and challenge myself. Maybe I've not been doing so great on the stair score in the days leading up to that day, or perhaps I need to try and exhaust myself, just blast as