The bottom drawer
hides our old treasure map

revealing broken lines 
& fading arrows

wrinkled, creased 
& falling apart

much like my condition
upon your final wave 

the accessory in your hand
a grip long released from mine

turning yourself away
as I quietly trotted past

our grins definitely forced 
our options fully depleted

except for some lost coordinates
uncovered in a retreating purge

inside that grandiose steel desk
the kind which might offer shelter

in a cyclone or a moment
of sentimental searching

like the night we ran out of fuel
but not our patience & jokes

the emergency flashing
rescued by a Canadian couple

after a reception out east
before another one out west

when our compass spun wildly
in magnetic fields of fortune

our topography 
our sapphire, our gold

once free for the taking 
begging to be found.

Frankfort Beach, Lake Michigan, July, 2026.

Photo by the author

Leave a comment

“Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.”—George Orwell

Oh no, the start of another school year!

What are we doing today?

This week?

Will this be on the test?? . . .

Class, please listen up. We need to take 10-15 minutes for our prior knowledge questionnaire.1

FOR SURVEY PURPOSES ONLY. No grade; everyone completing Pretest passes for credit. (Multiple choice; #1-19, circle the best letter answer right on the paper. 1 point each, except 10 points for #20). Please also answer the bonus question. Sorry, AI or any other related technological assistance is strictly prohibited (including cell phones and Apple watches).

1. Another word for systemic is

a) lethal

b) problematic

c) institutional

d) rationalized

2. The 13^th Amendment to the US Constitution banned slavery everywhere EXCEPT

a) Alabama

b) Mississippi

c) school

d) prison

3. The Compromise of 1877 ended the Reconstruction Era mainly from

a) nationwide railroad strikes requiring federal troops to subdue them

b) achievement of full racial equality in most States after the Civil War

c) the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln

d) KKK defeating State militias in a series of armed battles. . . .2

20. Identify who fought in the American Civil War (1861-65) by

a) naming each side (who vs. whom):

b) stating the war’s main cause:

c) summarizing the three resulting Constitutional amendments with three basic freedoms achieved in this nation’s bloodiest conflict. (10 pts.)

21. Please answer this final question with a complete sentence:

What do you hope to learn about more in this class? Why?

Admittedly, the pretest is not intended to be easy exam.

While it vaguely suggests a direction for what the course will try to encompass, it also gives me an idea of the student’s prior knowledge (and maybe their impulse control on the temptation to fly through questions as fast as possible).

If they do score really well, the scholar may end up placing out of the course, to an honors or AP offering (not always an annual option within my former administrative-centered catalogue).

Not surprisingly, for 27 years, my roster of urban public school students would invariably get almost all the pretest questions wrong.

Most disturbingly, absolutely nothing about the Civil War. Usually a zero out of ten points on #20.

A majority would leave the question blank, with an IDK, while several would make a wild-guess-stab at the US fighting some perceived foreign foe, often Russia, China or Great Britain.

Annually, only a rough average of 2-3 out of 100 teenagers would write the war was fought to end slavery.

Well, ah, um, that’s only 2-3%.

From a state perspective, the 147-page K-12 Standards (in) Social Studies (2010) claims this vital curriculum would have been thoroughly covered in the eighth grade, a year or two previously.3

From my perspective, showing no comprehension of the worst, most violent conflict in our nation’s history remains profoundly troubling.

So what happened? Can the mass amnesia be blamed solely on Middle School?

Every discipline within their respective departments may have conversations, if not heated debates, on what essentials students should know upon completing the courses.

Social studies seems particularly vulnerable to not reaching a consensus.

When the Department of Education insists on much of the material — and the methodology — there’s still a lack of agreement whether history should ultimately be taught from a hegemonic-great-leader perspective, or a more democratic, grass-roots-ground-up approach to transformative change.

Yet what if incoming students draw a blank on such a common social studies baseline as the American Civil War?

While each state in the union outlines some general Social Studies or History requirements, often with specific requisites, adequately covering all the stated crucial material tends to be implausible within the allotted school year.

Take an introductory, well-meaning sample from page 86, on “Dimension 2”:4

The four disciplines within social studies provide the intellectual context for studying how humans have interacted with each other and with the environment over time. Each of these disciplines — civics, economics, geography, and history — offers a unique way of thinking and organizing knowledge as well as systems for verifying knowledge.

According to the state-sponsored curriculum, high school US history is supposed to leap forward from the Reconstruction Era and somehow wind up in the current times. Realistically, this means leap-frogging through many decades and major events to carve out some narrative for further research and discussion — including how it relates to current events — within roughly a 175 school-day calendar.

Does the War Between the States remain a topic simply too controversial for many teachers (and admin) to handle in depth 160 years later, when the nation seems more divided than at any time since 1865?

Do we dare encourage more discussions and investigations on such relevancy to our shared modern lives?

Or will administrations simply demand convoluted teacher accountability to more arbitrary, high-stakes standardized testing?

How can we cultivate intellectual curiosity over obligatory drudgery?

Creative, critical thinking over top-down tedium?

Perhaps we can tentatively launch some answers with the final question (#21 above), which may begin to unlock the door to the inevitably vital question:

“Why are we doing this?”

In the first few days of school, as we begin to get to know each other, most students actually seem quite interested in finding out why. . . .

TBC

“Antietam Sunrise,” 2019 Honorable Mention, 55th Annual MEA Art Exhibit.

Photo by author

Popular Meme, oddly posted last week on social media by a Michigan MAGA disciple. Some devotees became quite annoyed with my response requiring white America to do a deeper dive into American slavery and the history of John Brown at Harpers Ferry.

Leave a comment

• No longer do I have to sleepwalk into that stuffy building that first morning back, to humbly greet friends and colleagues, minutes or an hour before obligatory, often patronizing Professional Development.

• No more phony, teary-eyed superintendent welcome back stories lifted from the internet or the latest AI.

• No more sidestepping of how staff might (sort of) be supported this year, at least with newly printed, unfinished procedures, protocols — and performative pretension.

• No more administrative lectures on how we’re not going to rely on lecturing students.

• No more foreboding forecasts on assessing teachers.

• No more vague appeals confusing respect with conformity.

• No more proclamations of lesson plans as the only indicators to lesson planning.

• No more tedious recommendations becoming required tedium.

• No more power point presentations on faked empowerment.

• No more early realizations of administrators not backing a cell phone ban.

• No more idiotic insistence on posted learning targets.

• No more references to education as a business.

• No more icy ice-breakers. . . .

Please.

Forgive.

My.

Gloating.

“We are preparing a generation of robots. Kids are learning exclusively through rote. We have children who are given no conceptual framework. They do not learn to think, because their teachers are straitjacketed by tests that measure only isolated skills. As a result, they can be given no electives, nothing wonderful or fanciful or beautiful, nothing that touches the spirit or the soul.” ―Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools, 1991.

“Our ability to identify a longer-term goal and delay gratification so that we can achieve that goal requires the prefrontal cortex. So adolescents and children in general are going to be less able to do that, and it’s possible that these algorithms in social media are overwhelming that developing system.” —Eric Schumacher, 2025.

Ok. You might detect some lingering cynicism as I embrace my ascending liberty.

I will truly miss my hallway neighbors, and some of my friends relocated to other wings.

I will still yearn for those brief yet vital sanity checks with a trusted co-worker in the middle of another confounding day.1

I will also miss the rare luxury of being able to dissect current events, even so-called controversial ones, often exploding in real time.

Most of all, I will miss the students (ha, most, if not all).

I still crave the periodic “ecstasy of education,” to quote an old influential book by George Leonard (1968/1987); that often sometimes spontaneous igniting of a fire to learn, those teachable moments, springing up seemingly out of nowhere, the usually student-centered discussions, the digressions, the debates into the next day. . . and maybe beyond. . . .

My favorite classes showcasing the potential power of high school theater will surely haunt some of my waking hours as I transition to this world outside my old building.

And of course, I will simply miss the teenage laughter, commencing on the first day of greeting my new rosters, where we begin to unpack how we will try to listen and talk to each other — always an evolving year-long project.

This includes the students slow reactions to my basic biographical work information on the promethean board, as I wait quietly for some initial questions.

Mr. William (Bill) Boyer’s Paid Occupational History:

Dishwasher, bus boy, short-order cook, lawncare specialist, camp counselor, telephone book distributor, gas station attendant (“petroleum transfer agent”), stock boy, cashier, bedspread and linen sales, parking lot attendant, dog/cat/house sitter, driver/chauffeur, mover, delivery man, movie theater tabulator, door security, house painter, bartender, janitor, building caretaker, certified lifeguard, stage actor, movie extra, theater director, theater producer, musician (solo & four bands), percussion and piano teacher, live sound mixer, paralegal clerk, process server, basketball coach, baseball coach, substitute teacher, journalist, songwriter, playwright, film script reader, umpire, referee, union representative, social studies, drama, debate & ELA teacher.

And yes, I will miss my short educational comedy routines, such as combining permissible slang and word origins with certain select props, including my small garden hoe.

MR. BOYER: “So class, look, here’s my little hoe.”

(much student laughter ensues, for some reason).

SMILING STUDENT: “Mr. Boyer, do you have a bigger hoe at home?”

MR. BOYER: “Why yes, in my garage. I have a much larger hoe. Why do you ask?”

SMILING STUDENT: Just wondering.

And so on. . . .

So Best Wishes, to all my known and unknown educators and students.

I hope to still be an occasional voice in the wilderness. For example, dealing with unsupportive administrators, how NOT to teach to the tests, and where to find that elusive life-work balance (before you lose all mental and physical health), all while trying to be careful not to flaunt my retired status too much, including those now remarkably relaxing Sunday nights. . . .

Good Luck, my dedicated educators, in 2026-27. (!)

WRB

Bittersweet career close-out, pack-up, and move with plastic sword, Friday, June 12, 2026. Note 30-year-old framed Great Escape movie poster in upper right corner.

If you look closely, you may see the outline of a small garden hoe in the corner as well.

Photos by Henry E. Boyer

Leave a comment

“As the Liberty lads o'er the sea
Bought their freedom, and cheaply, with blood
So we, boys, we
Will die fighting, or live free,
And down with all kings but King Ludd”2
―Lord Byron

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Normally, despite my occasionally outspoken nature, I would rarely call out any friends, acquaintances or admired artists who seemed to have taken a significant turn for the worse, at least in any public forum.

Except that we no longer live in normal times.

While the older, still performing folksinger DSR may unsubscribe, denounce or verbally shoot the messenger (perhaps in AI mode?), the following ditty (written in his typical, prolific style) is intended as a trigger for more meaningful discussion on the timely writer, musician and artists’ role(s) in resisting all the temptations of ever-advancing, autocratic AI.

Hits, Likes & Selling Out to AI


We cheered united, at rallies & on tour
fascist killing machine, the inspiring show
exposing billionaires in the sewer
decades before the pull of the undertow

Risking cancelation, persecution & worse
he marched on with rugged determination
glowing protest images in every verse
strumming a raspy nasal-toned exclamation

(Chorus): 
Hits, likes & selling out
let the tracks & other shoe just drop
hits, likes & selling out
here's to the artful artificial slop

Until an algorithm asked him to dance
with promises of a much wider following
maybe opportunities for new romance
as long as the machine did most of the swallowing

"My army of robots" he sort of half-joked
without a trace of irony he abruptly urged
take a listen to the bear getting poked
never mind how integrity can be so easily purged

(Chorus)

The woman's voice, a composite sampling
mixed with an exotic fake instrument or two
when a track can cover over the trampling
surely digital control's not an issue  

"You must love the new sound" he insisted
made without musicians so hard to control
even if questions about hypocrisy persisted
there's a new global audience to click & scroll

(Chorus)

Embracing the dark side just means delivery by drone
in exchange for such amazing intrusions 
the revenue stream will offer a monetary bone
so what could go wrong with such florid delusions

Yet now, can we call him back to the campfire
while the bombings and bloodbaths still rage
not to sing to the oligarchy choir 
but as comrades, sharing life & perhaps a printed page. . . .

(Chorus)

Friday, August 14, 2026.

Matthew Smith, multi-instrumentalist, formerly of famed Detroit indie band Outrageous Cherry, singing, strumming & during “My Funny Valentine,” playing trumpet, without any AI assistance in the DIA.

A weekly concert series, free to Detroit residents, seems to compliment rather than compete for attention under Diego Rivera’s rather noticeable frescoes (1932-33).

Will AI artwork soon overtake both audio and visual masterpieces?

Photo by author

Leave a comment

“But we refuse to fall
Standing firm and thick of skull
Knocking harder headed pricks
Up against the bricks
Of the playground wall”

—Robert Pollard, “We Outlast Them All,” Guided by Voices1

My twenty-one-year old son and I shuffle into one of Detroit’s countless extant enigmas.

We are a bit late, both as in hours — and in terms of a few decades.

I want to tell him how this modest exploration resembles my own 1980s & 1990s aesthetic adventures, yet it’s better if he just takes it in without the annoying dad commentary.

A couple of exiting strangers pass by us. They turn to compliment my son’s rare MC5 White Panther t-shirt.

We all share a chuckle. His casually obscure fashion sense fits in well with this landscape of historical deterioration.

I am quietly hoping to run into the 68-year-old Robert Pollard, the front man, guitarist and miraculously prolific songwriter (over 3,000 BMI registered tunes) of the famously Dayton-based indie band, Guided by Voices — oh, and a sometime collage artist.

Pollard might have already left this closing day-long show exhibiting his original framed artwork, so I try to quicken our pace.

Technically, we’re in Highland Park, a landlocked urban shell of a former auto-manufacturing neighborhood.

My father grew up several streets over, spending almost a quarter of his 97 years here. He and his family would join the massive post-Second World War White Flight out to the northern suburbs, partially triggered by the panicked reaction to the lesser known brutal Detroit race riots of 1943.

The new Interstate Highway System in 1956 would further spur such a mass exodus.

Mostly Black neighborhoods were bulldozed for the cemented convenience of so many car-carrying white folk.

Mom and dad simply claimed they moved out for better schools, where the potentially sensitive discussion usually would then awkwardly end.

They, my siblings, and almost all my relatives never really understood why I would reverse the migration some 30 years after the early 1950s evacuation.

My next door neighbor until I turned 18, a rich trust-fund descendant of the long defunct Wilson’s Dairy, would smile nervously whenever I mentioned how I drove past his grandfather’s decaying HQ in Highland Park.

Only my artistic and music-heavy friends got why anyone would want to resettle “down there.”

My son and I had just driven past a desolate short side street named after Henry Ford, not to be confused with the expansive Ford Freeway or Ford Road or Ford Field, home of Martha Ford’s Detroit Lions.

Its tiny street name appears oddly lethargic, as if the monumentally honored icon required one more compliant acknowledgement of his ubiquitous industrialism, originally centered at Highland Park’s once thriving Model T factory a century ago.

Gingerly, we approach an unusually remote art gallery and studio, the Annex.

Founded in 2014 by New Zealand sculptor Robert Onnes, coincidentally with the aid of another Birmingham ex-patriate Detroit artist, Bob Sestok, it rests like an exceptional urban oddity.

A refuge of refuse, both haunting and whimsical, within the browning grass and rusting offerings, greets us informally.

“Would you ever want your band to play at such an out-of-the-way venue like this?” I ask my wandering DNA.

“Yeah, probably. Sure.”

A local band, The Needmores! energetically play some songs from the 2,000+ GBV catalog, while a woman at the merch table mentions how we just missed Mr. Pollard.

“He may return before everything shuts down,” she adds, unconvincingly.

We temporarily separate, drifting about the upstairs and main floor art exhibit. I count 44 attendees, wondering why it’s not at least double that.

Such is life in hidden Detroit, er, Highland Park.

I wonder how in 2026, can anyone be inspired to venture off the safe paths to more adventurous art?

What makes a few of us fascinated with such (a)live deviations, while so many others seem to just desire a scroll and a shrug.

My imagined conversation with Mr. Pollard, also a former elementary school teacher for 14 years, clumsily plays in my head.

“Hey, Mr. Pollard, hello, excuse me, I just retired from teaching high school social studies and drama after 40 years, I used to be a baseball pitcher and coach, too, who wrote and performed songs for three different bands during the 80s and 90s, I’m still writing— and I, ah, um, I just wanted to thank you belatedly for the added inspiration.”

Pollard does not return. Heck, he’s older than me and hasn’t toured since 2024. He’s probably getting ready for bed.

I eventually buy the new GBV “Crawlspace of the Pantheon” CD, to match the new CD adapter just installed in my Ford Fusion.

Am I now just a hopeless sentimentalist?

My son and I sit outside the open entrance in rickety wooden lawn chairs. He takes a keen interest in the lyric sheet as the sun sets behind him.

I rhetorically ask, “How can any artist or band get more people to come down here for anything in person these days, how does that happen now?—”

I note how improved WDET-FM (101.9) programming had urged the listening audience to come to Pollard’s special art closing that Sunday.

In the 80s, such rare hype would have likely motivated at least a few dozen more to cross over into this ghost town oasis.

Not so much anymore.

My DNA says nothing.

After I finish my lager, we shuffle out the way we came, still curious and contemplative, approximating the Pollard lyrics from his most popular song, over two dozen years ago:

“Every street is dark and folding
Out mysteriously
Where lies the chance we take
To be always working, reaching out for
A hand that we can't see
Everybody's gotta hold on hope
It's the last thing that's holding me”2

The Annex Gallery in Highland Park remains a puzzling space outside and inside, as if the apocalypse happened years ago and a few artists still created anyway.

A fittingly constructed primate head greets visitors at the Annex, Highland Park.

“Gasoline” collage by Robert Pollard, especially appropriate to the Motor City setting.

At the August 9 art closing, The Needmores! truly deserve and need more of a bigger audience.

Photos by the author

Leave a comment

“We’re starving. So the hyenas better get out of the way.”—Dan Campbell1

Review of Honolulu Blues: How Loving a Losing Team Created a Winning Man. By Joel Walkowski, Matt Holt Books, Dallas, TX, 2026.

The year 1970 contains some awful holiday memories for a devoted nine-year-old Michigan football fan.

New Year’s Day began with the treasured University of Michigan losing to USC in the Rose Bowl, then 11 months and two days after Thanksgiving, falling to bitter rival Ohio State. Lastly, on the day after Christmas, a beloved Detroit Lions team loses their divisional playoff game to the smug Dallas Cowboys, by the unusually bizarre score of 5-0.

Over 50 years later, my inner child still tries to recover from such disappointments. . . .

Joel Walkowski,2 the 40-year-old Dearborn native, NYC comedian and author of the new Honolulu Blues, shares a similar foundation in presenting, ostensibly, an annual journal about the Lions, the worst professional sports team (record-wise) in all of America.3

Yet regardless of one’s interest in any athletic activity, this often darkly hilarious memoir dares to throw deep on decades of personal defenses around disturbing reoccurrences.

These overlapping (p)layers involve a dysfunctional father-and-son relationship, clumsily concealed chemical addictions, an urban history of horrible mismanagement (focus on the Ford Family), some flawed yet worthy role-models (notably, Barry Sanders, Calvin Johnson, Matthew Stafford, Amon-Ra St. Brown and Dan Campbell) in an unexpected redemption arc through an unlikely source: the mostly abysmal Detroit Lions.

Amazingly, it’s not just another sports book.

“I need to know what shaped my father in order to figure out what shaped me. We lose because events occurring decades earlier still stubbornly define everything,” Walkowski begins by introducing us to his comically erratic father, a.k.a. “Banjo Bob.”

Although he describes his trauma-shaped dad hoarding whoopee cushions, switch-blade knifes, Happy Meal toys and 17 banjos, Honolulu Blues does not manipulate a troubled family narrative in the service of punchlines or self-pity. He’s on a mission to gradually set up some critical emotional dispensation:

Bobby Layne's Time magazine cover is tacked above Bob's ratty bed. My father's bedroom today looks like a six-year-old's bedroom in 1958 Detroit. He's in his seventies on a technicality. He might have senior citizen's bald head and medication-laden bloodstream but projects a child's wondrous aura.

Wolkowski’s rollicking prose extends familiar faux pas with what Detroiters will quickly recognize as home.

Behind every joke, stands a comic courageously offering painfully poignant anecdotes.

These rust-belt stories include a detailed analysis on how the Henry Ford family developed and later despoiled much of the local auto-based economy, including exacerbating white flight to the suburbs, before replicating such destruction on a highly profitable football organization much more concerned with company loyalty from within than fan-based dedication from its blue-collar base.

Wolkowski’s memoir thankfully contrasts the detachment of some Detroit-based autobiographies, such as Paul Clemens with Made in Detroit (2006) or Harvey Ovshinsky’s Scratching the Surface (2021).

Honolulu Blues does not stumble around its uncomfortable memories, avoiding both clichés of woe-is-me self-absorption or safe listings of name-dropping gratitude.

He unflinchingly reviews how his family’s constant financial hardships did not prevent him from occasionally attending a game with his father, even if it meant parking far away from the stadium to avoid any fees — and bringing large plastic bags to fill with discarded 10-cent returnables long after the contest ended.

Of course, recounted addiction histories are cautionary tales by definition.

The best ones manage to be psychologically relatable, even to non-addicts.

Walkowski carefully traces his first dependence to Adderall, initially (over)prescribed for a restless seven-year-old, superficially labeled as ADD by a typically ineffective school system.

A much delayed self-awareness periodically describes his wayward chemical descents, including his very first numbing experience with alcohol and immediate drunkenness. Walkowski predictably discovers the common drug abuse cocktail of alcohol and amphetamines which would eventually lead to undignified blackouts and ER room blood transfusions.

The up-and-mostly-down Detroit Lions persistently shadow Joel’s struggles, with their annually failed expectations and promises of a better next year. His omnipresent team serves as a combination of guardian angel Clarence Odbody in It’s A Wonderful Life and the loveable loser of Charlie Brown from Charles M. Schultz’s Peanuts.4

Still, the lowly Lions remain far from just a convenient metaphor.

Significantly, he also outlines how his NYC Self-Management And Recovery Training (SMART) led him to becoming a leader in that recovery network. Based on cognitive (secular) therapy urging truthful self-inventories, usually in a like-minded group setting, the author comes back around to meeting his slowly dying father on mutually sober terms.

Fittingly, their final connections stretch over three Sunday playoff games where the Lions almost find a way to make it to the 2024 Super Bowl, an achievement never attained in their almost 60-year odyssey (Spoiler Alert: they do not).

In a concluding moment, the author squeezes in some goal line profundity:

I had to find wins where there weren’t any. That process became my worldview. He didn’t parent me but I got kindness, humor, and far too many switchblades. Blazing a path always led me back to him, bringing a bit more of the world each time.

Scoop up and read this welcome missing link between fragile families, their sometimes overwhelming disruptions — and their possible reconciliations.

You may not like football nor any professional sport, yet you may find yourself chuckling, even cheering, without shame, for the more improbable achievements in your own life.

Look closely at Frankie’s neck. Yes, he’s wearing a Detroit Lions collar.

An animated Joel Walkowski at a July reading from a chapter about legendary Barry Sanders at Book Suey, Hamtramck, MI.

Photos by author

she held court, amusing 
the seafarers, docked one afternoon 

stepping past a machine unplugged
& a shadow of a payphone shell 

roaming the musty room, lover lingering
as she playfully charmed the clientele

a draw bridge down for laughter & lager
the mastheads stop in comical convention

her lover barely able to hide his restraint 
in the nourishment of her vibration 

so he formulated a fresh narrative
divergent from the previous three

or was it 30, he silently reflected
in almost clever self-mockery

for the two defined a perfect fit in flesh
just slightly off in certain sensibilities

surely resolvable by taking her hand
to seek further forbidden intimacies

from the sadness of an out-of-tune upright
& in one corner, an enraptured old friend

slowly drinking himself into a fatal slip-and-fall
long after everyone quit naming what to transcend 

abruptly, she decided to return to her prior dominion 
sans lover, compass or beacon from the shore 

numbingly, he artlessly accepted his demotion 
as inevitable as any tavern worn folklore.

A jigsaw sampling of Michigan craft beers. The poet plunked out the above poem during a rather awful migraine.

Sigh.

Photo by author

Leave a comment

PART ONE

October 1, 1979. Typical University Monday.

In the once all-male 3A Armstrong Hall, a.k.a. “Chickenpits,” within the enormous six-building residence Brody Complex, Michigan State University, the rise-and-shine shuffle to the common bathroom (which all had to use), included mumbling hellos with a ragtag assortment of undergraduate characters.

An informal community long before many embraced any faint idea of a possible career.

Long before skyrocketing investment costs would make post-secondary education so less affordable.

Long before hand-held screen addictions would shrink more authentic interactions between human beings. . . .

A morning encounter sampling might include “Buzz” (known for weed consumption before class), “Smoke Detector Abbott” (who once nodded off with a burning hotplate), “Paint King” (who had drunkenly spilled a gallon of latex on his dorm room carpet) and “Born Again Ben” (for his quietly consistent displays of religious piety).

One of the most intriguing dorm mates would be the self-assured sophomores Frankie and Freddie.

At night, these local rock ‘n’ roll gods would frequently entertain their wacky wing with gruff vocals over a well-strummed guitar (Frank) and a well-plucked electric (Fred).

Their impromptu jams easily upstaged anything happening in the stuffy study lounge across the hallway. In the largest room on the floor, in a rare housing privilege reserved annually for two elderly returning sophomores, their half-opened door offered entry into a magical world of extended adolescence, if not an exciting alternative profession.

Frankie and Freddie also comprised 40% of Brody’s best frat-rock cover band, the Fender Clones, which featured lively doses of Chuck Berry, the Beatles, Rolling Stones and James Brown.

Essentially, “Louie, Louie” for the swelling Animal House crowd.

Two neighboring freshmen in particular, Woody and Wild Bill, whose anarchistic antics included smash-your-most-hated-vinyl-LP-flying-frisbee battles in the hallway1, would soon be taking mental notes for their own possible detour into this never-neverland of Rock ‘n’ Roll.

Even if the Fender Clones seemed like a fleeting hobby on the treadmill to graduation, the alluring possibilities seemed, well, at least viable.

Back then, live acts were easy to book on campus, including weekly open mikes at the MSU Union, monthly dormitory talent shows and the big annual outdoor Brodyfest in the spring.

No one could envision a post-Covid East Lansing, where now ZERO live venues exist, where the University seemingly decided long ago to promote only intramural sports and carefully designed nature trails, certainly not any amateur live music.

Yet in early 1980, the two freshmen started to fantasize about forming their own band with formerly elusive benefits, such as self-esteem, enjoyable summer gigs and perhaps an eventual girlfriend.

Maybe even a group that also featured original music, despite not having written any songs yet. . . .

A year later, Woody’s two guitars and Wild Bill’s drum set would take over the coveted deluxe Chickenpits dorm room, mimicking Frankie and Freddie, now relocated juniors still playing as the Fender Clones, yet mildly curious about their heir apparent.

By 1981, Freddie, probably the Fender Clone’s most talented musician, would leave them for a more promising rhythm and blues band, the Nightcrawlers.

Meanwhile, Woody became a defiant college drop-out by the fall of 1981 and Wild Bill by August of 1982, and together they would move eagerly to the more inviting Detroit alternative music scene.

Their newly formed band called the Blanks, originally as a running Chickenpits joke, decided to get serious. They started writing and performing original songs with some enthusiastic bandmates — under the approving gaze of their new girlfriends — before booking shows in the loose Detroit-Ann Arbor-East Lansing triangle.

As early inspirations Frankie and Freddie seemed to fade into the post-graduation sunset of more adult-like pursuits, there were numerous new distractions on the rocky rocking road to fame and misfortune.

While Woody would get married, procreate and return to a more sensible academic journey by 1987, Bill would continue to spend about 20 years of his adult life pursuing a truly quixotic delusion before retiring musically in 2000.

The delusion that once believed rock ‘n’ roll, with meaningful lyrics and maybe the right agent, could ultimately reform the world.

Yet that self-deception slowly transformed into a more realistically attainable dive into teaching, coaching and yes, reliable health insurance.

And for about 40 years, Fred and Bill lived colorful but non-intersecting lives.

At least until social media and the post-Covid world of tentative digital reconnections.

Fred Drachus, “retiring” in style with an ever-persistent return to his musical roots, with a long lost fan at the Crystal Mountain Resort, Level4 Lounge, in idyllic northern Michigan, just as the smoke from the wildfires finally began subsiding.

PART TWO

For better and mostly worse, Covid-19 produced a sizeable increase in internet voyeurism, or at least expanded curiosities over old friends, lost lovers (digital stalking, anyone?) and maybe a few unexpected reconnections, however temporal.

Wiser minds miraculously avoided the addictive emptiness of social media, including some former bandmates like Woody and a few of my ex’s.

Most electronic reunions would run their course, with usually well-meaning gestures about getting together in person, just as our lives became too busy again, just as we mutually realized we might be better off as distant keyboard pals.

Yet the reemergence of Fred Drachus seemed especially intriguing.

Through casual comments, we couldn’t help but notice we shared not only similar political views (and disgust) but we both loved northern Michigan, along with sons attending MSU.

Brody, of course.

And then, just as I secured my retirement documents, Fred posted his 2026 summer tour schedule.

29 shows, from June to September 6, including a half dozen full band gigs with M22 and the Flexible Flyers, but over 20 solo gigs, almost all in northern Michigan, in the ever growing exquisite wine country of the Leelanau peninsula.

29 gigs? I thought he retired. . . .

After 45 years since I last dropped in on his Nightcrawler gig in East Lansing, my encouraging spouse made our reservations, both family dogs included, to see him live, solo. I messaged Fred I would be there Saturday night.

No non-committal maybes.

Not even a wildfire apocalypse could thwart this almost half-century delay.

This meant arriving 30 minutes early, just to trade some introductory stories, including how I accidentally ran into Buzz at my first family reunion on my mother-in-law’s side.

Fred laughed, “Yes, Buzz, the one dedicated to getting stoned before class and not after, like, ah, me.”

Two gigs and three sets later, my head still swirled with Fred’s remarkable guitar playing, his seasoned vocals and slyly fitting song selections, as well as his friendly invitation to join him at the microphone on Warren Zevon’s “Lawyers, Guns and Money.”

He also graciously dedicated two rather obscure Who songs — “The Seeker” and “Substitute” — before ending a set to continue his summary bar seat narrative.

“So, Fred what did you do, where the hell did you go, post-MSU for 45 years?”

“Stock broker for a while, New York City, music on the side in various bands, live and in the studio, then in California, working in restaurants, with an original band centered in Park City, Utah in the 1990s called Juniors Farm (suggesting his lifelong strong Dylan connection), two marriages and two divorces, a cool son and a current girlfriend of eight years, oh, and around Covid, a Neil Young tribute band Rusty Horse here in Michigan—”

“Wow. Your extensive Neil catalogue is rather astonishing (cue lesser known tracks like “Cowgirl in the Sand” and “Everybody Knows This is Nowhere”). But wait, aren’t you retired—?”

“With a pension, two years ago, from a decade of driving a big rig.”

“Ah ha. That’s why you snuck in some odes to truckers (like Little Feat’s “Willin’”).

“All songs without an actual drummer.”

Fred snickered how the drum machine never lost time or showed up late and drunk, yet I had to complain about the lack of fills and cymbal use.

The iPad on the music stand (usually an iGigBook) may create a massive catalogue of songs, yet it takes a gifted musician to instantly make the tune his own, to cleverly bring his background music into foreground entertainment.

Did I mention how he also played the Clash’s “London Calling” on his late Sunday set? He never tried it before and I never heard a solo version, although I almost leaped up just to do the monotone backing vocals.

I also made a promise to write him more, to sort all this out and catch him a third time live on stage this summer, with a small army of relatives, on his final solo gig before Labor Day.

Just before leaving into the night, I mentioned how I hope to meet up with Woody in Philly, then Frank in New York around the 25th anniversary of 9/11.

Fred abruptly started telling me all about Frank’s famous multi-media installation at the One World Trade Center, oddly making me more dizzy and appreciative at the same time.

POSTSCRIPT

Unlike my less secure ego, Fred retains a skillful ability to accept being background music for the average chateau crowd, to then subtly win over the majority over-age-55 audience, mostly with the soundtrack of their teenage and college years, while mixing in a timely protest anthem now and then, like Nick Lowe’s “What So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding.”

Fred confessed he’d rather be the guitarist for a good band than a solo performer, yet such a yearning is undetectable as soon as he starts a song from our college years. His contagious smile still seems quite genuine after 45 years.

Simply put: Fred Drachus made it easy for my wife and I to thank him again for such a splendid outing.

Meanwhile, I still struggle with moping about my hidden career failures, in not reaching more students effectively, and going back further, in not sustaining a welcome musical foreground as both a performer and songwriter.

Wild Bill as wildly erratic?

Admittedly, some seemingly minor artistic differences frequently haunt me. Where talents like Fred seem to acceptingly enjoy this long strange trip, I remain restless, a now former high school teacher returning to writing full-time, fueled in part by an ingrained uneasiness at not having my art, my literary craft, be as remotely profound or impactful as it could be— yet.

TBC

A sterile upgrade of once vibrant community living, where expressions of meaningful interaction have now retreated to the solitude of the screens. Our old MSU Armstrong Hall corner now resembles doctor examination rooms.

Photo by the author

Ahem. So, my 17-year-old will soon magically disappear for two weeks.

Into the western horizon he will vanish.

To sonically chase the setting sun.

Part Two of a rare urban public high school student exchange (obviously, such available programs should be much more widespread in all public schools, even as travel fare and related costs keep rising).

Amazingly, he will board a Charter Bus, then a noticeably much larger Airbus, with about two dozen other students from Cass Tech and Renaissance High Schools, for a 13.5 hour flight to Tokyo.

Several months of planning, fund-raising, then poof. Into the air.

To another island. To another hemisphere. To Nihon, to Nippon.

To the third largest city in the world (Tokyo, 13.5 million), then board a train to the nation’s second largest city, Yokohama (a mere 3.7 million).

Wavering parents will be waving blithely.

Sorry. Awkward line.

Destination Yokohama.

Apprehension, no, no mama!

Sorry. Bad pun—

Look, I’m not that nervous.

It’s only his first solo trip from home, his first time really visiting another country, one as safe as Canada and Austria (according to international crime metrics1), and as a third-year Japanese language student, I just, well, ah—

What if he gets separated from his host family?

Can’t he get sick from, say, campylobacter? (sounds like a bad comedy troupe)

What about typhoons? Tsunamis?? Earthquakes???

OMG, what if his cell phone stops working?—

(Father exhales. Then slowly inhales.)

Ok, I will get it together. I will gather myself. I will definetely calm down.

Soon.

The two-week adventure, shared with one of his good friends and baseball teammate from the D, will include daily immersion into host Yamate High School (Yokohama), some planned field trips, including the Asakusa tourist and Buddhist district of Tokyo, the Tokyo DisneySea theme park, and of course, a professional baseball game, with either the Yokohama BayStars or the Yomiuri Giants. (!)

Any questions?

Like, did you pack your toothbrush, baseball glove and passport?

The parents and older brother will be all right.

Ian, even more so.

(Father exhales again.)

As we would say in both countries:

Play ball!

(TBC)

One hour practice flight in June a bit less than the expected 13+ hours this July.

Photo by Ian

Although the completely renovated Michigan Central Station has become a major tourist attraction, Ian will surely discover how Japanese transit reveals a much more efficient system.

Photo by author

Two new friends, Atsuki and Hinata, and more now anxiously await Ian’s arrival in Yokohama.

Photo by Braylon

Leave a comment

—Charles Bukowski

27 years of selectively saved art 
& adolescent artifacts
or are they art fictions
struggling to find meaning
when surely deemed worthless 
by all but the most avid
archivists.

So much remains missing
besides the seemingly harmless
fragment grenades
of lingering looseleaf 
the kind of terse confessions
that should never get anyone killed
especially alienated youth.

Yet here, my scan slumps
sifting through a funerary
of haphazard moments
of hazards unforeseen
the papered pause
in an almost forgotten folder,
an unlabeled Book of the Dead.

From this slim volume
of those who will never graduate
secondary or tertiary ed
a much-too-belated muffled cry 
for assistance
for conversation
for a meaningful ally.

When asked what's most difficult
the bright only-child replies 
"growing up without a father,"
before bursting uncomfortably with 
"I've seen some shootings,"
as a presage of his own
unsolved permanent silence.

And now the retiring revisionist
can only redact or redirect
the extinguished energy, 
of the everlastingly truant,
the lost connections
long severed, except perhaps,
for this parchment
now packed carefully away.

Author and little sis, ready to hit the streets of the subdivision, back when the suburban delusion included what seemed like an eternally safe and secure environment, circa autumn of 1972. We remained fortunate, yet the suburbs for many others would not remain free from tragedy.

Educational institutions understandably struggle with how to honor young student fatalities. Amid the athletic fields at Michigan State University, a small tree and plaque quietly recognizes some Covid-19 deaths.

Photo by the author

Leave a comment

Independence Day Summary by Fran Shor

Sally Hemings, enslaved by Jefferson after “inheriting her” from his late father-in-law, was roughly three-years-old at the time of the Declaration. According to the National Parks Service website, “DNA evidence has proved with some finality that Jefferson indeed fathered at least one of Sally Hemings' sons,” after Jefferson and Hemings returned from France to Monticello in 1789.1

“Weather forecast for tonight: dark.” 
—George Carlin

“If you saw a heat wave, would you wave back?” —Steven Wright

My teenager recently stopped me for a minute with a classic recollection question:

“Dad, so, what’s one of your earliest memories?”

(Pausing, with predictable head scratch)

“Hmmm. I would say an unusually hot day, must have been in the summer of 1965. Scorching, like it is now.”

“How old were you? What were you doing?”

“Four. Home with my mom and two-year-old sister. The grandma you never met kept saying it’s 100 degrees outside. I wasn’t sure what that meant. She kept repeating how that is really hot.”

“You remember that?”

“Growing up, we had a thermometer connected to the outside mounted on my parent’s bedroom wall, tucked behind a window curtain. On that day, I can recall my mother guiding me into their room, to have me climb up on an arm chair, to explain how to read the mysterious, glass-encased red line from 0 to 120. The red band curiously hovered at 100.

She then marched me and my little sister outside, briefly, just to feel what 100 feels like; an impromptu home ed science moment I never forgot, not even 60 years later. Why do you ask?”

“Just wondering.”

“We also had no air conditioning back then.”

“Oh.”

“Just a giant overhead fan mounted in the attic, with ceiling vents—”

“So your first memory was about the weather?’

“Well, ah, yeah.”

Understandably, my son may have been rather skeptical about the veracity of my long-term retention.

The frequency of misplaced keys, lost sunglasses and that one missing, vitally important piece of paper suggest I should be required to back up certain personal historical claims.

For example, a few years ago, he asked if I remembered my first Detroit Tiger game in person. I replied confidently about witnessing the home team as a seven-year-old, how we slaughtered the Cleveland Indians, 13-1, in 1968, a World Series Championship year.

My strained credibility compelled me to document the precise game info through Retrosheet, a research source designed for such century-old sport obsessions.1

Surprise. Score and opponent completely accurate. Win one for my long-term recall. (!)

But what about the weather? Could I verify my earliest memory?

Turns out I could.2

I’m not trying to gloat, yet, sure enough, my research confirmed: on August 15, 1965, the high temperature reached 99 degrees in Detroit. My mother would claim the bedroom wall reading may have been a degree or two higher, due to its proximity to the warm house, yet—

My memory checks out!

Now, shall I begin to review specifics about, say, my personal romantic history? Perhaps there’s some kind of government surveillance index where I can look up—

Ha.

Let’s just say we should all enjoy retreating to wherever we can remain cool.

Right kids?

Much-preferred big sweltering day decision: white or red wine in Michigan’s Leelenau peninsula.

Photo by author

Toddler on tricycle, greeting the suburban sun, circa summer of 1964. Apparently, a smaller cap was not available for the future author at that time.

Leave a comment

Read more

The names have been changed to protect the innocent and the guilty.

Curiously, although counselor and social workers are mentioned, they never appear, as the case in many of these types of stalled supports.

Cast:

DR. AUTUMN POMPOSITY — building principal, 50s

MR. MALCOM TENT — teacher, 50s

A. PATHEE — student, 16

Setting: school hallway, just outside a classroom door.

DR. AUTUMN POMPOSITY is hovering in the hallway, perched on an upright wheeled laptop cart. A. PATHEE stands uncomfortably next to the principal. Muffled sounds of a typical teenage classroom are audible.

                                 DR. POMPOSITY
Can you tell me why you are out in the hall?

				A. PATHEE
Huh?
				DR. POMPOSITY
Why are you out here?

				A. PATHEE
I don’t know.

				DR. POMPOSITY		
You cannot tell me?

				A. PATHEE
No.

				DR. POMPOSITY
You don’t know why you’re out here, instead of in there?

                                 A. PATHEE
Nope.

The student tries to walk away.

				DR. POMPOSITY
Don’t walk away. 

				A. PATHEE
I’m not.

				DR. POMPOSITY
Stay right here.

She goes to knock on the door just as MR. MALCOM TENT steps outside to greet his administrator.

			   DR. POPMPOSITY
Mr. Tent, I have been trying to talk to this student. Could you tell me why he is not in class?
		
			   MR. TENT
Hello, Dr. Pomposity. Hey, A. P. He was late without a pass and refused to give up both his cell and headphones. 

			    DR. POMPOSITY
Young man, you know we have a classroom cell phone policy.

			    A. PATHEE
I wasn’t even on it.

			    MR. TENT			
I really cannot have him keep disrupting every day—

			    A. PATHEE
—The phones weren’t even on.

			    DR. POMPOSITY
Have you tried contacting a parent yet?

			    MR. TENT
Yes, remember last semester, last November, I did get ahold of Ms. Pathee. She told me she was unaware of everything, including his grades—

A. Pathee tries to slip away.

			    DR. POMPOSITY
Young man, you need to stay here and listen.

			   A. PATHEE
I can get a late pass.

			    MR. TENT
I really have to get back in the room—

			    DR. POMPOSITY
Make sure you document this latest incident. 

Dr. Pomposity’s attention is more focused on the mounted laptop screen in front of her as she tries to multitask.

			    MR. TENT
Ok, but it’s already been reported before, in detail—

			    DR. POMPOSITY
Can you share your concerns about him now?

			    MR. TENT
About A. P., yes, well, I did in the referral emails last semester, maybe later at lunch—

			   DR.POMPOSITY
Refresh my memory, please. I see how he’s had multiple write-ups for truancy and electronics.

			    A. PATHEE
I can get a late pass.

                            DR. POMPOSITY
Multiple warnings.

                            MR. TENT
A. P., are you all right?

			   A. PATHEE
What do you mean?

			    MR. TENT
Maybe you can tell our principal why you went from passing last year to failing all your classes? Something seems really wrong—

			    A. PATHEE
Nothing’s wrong.

			   DR. POMPOSITY
Except gym, where you have a ‘D.’

			    MR. TENT
A. P. Wish I had time to talk. You’re not telling me anything, but you’re showing me a lot.

			    A. PATHEE
What?

			    DR. POMPOSITY
You’ve displayed a pattern of poor choices.

			    MR. TENT
My class is waiting for me—

			    DR. POMPOSITY
I think we should put Mr. Pathee on a Tier Two Intervention.

			   MR. TENT
Don’t you think both a counselor and social worker should be involved by now? My class—

			    A. PATHEE
—There’s nothing wrong.

			    DR. POMPOSITY
Document everything. We need the data.

			   MR. TENT
Like a lot of students, he also has two cell phones. I have to return to teaching now—

			    DR. POMPOSITY
The more we can document, the more we can be informed.

			    MR. TENT
It should be obvious it’s more than just the electronics or not attempting any assignment—

			    DR. POMPOSITY
So, he’s not entering your class today.

			    MR. TENT
I need more support here. So does he.

			   DR. POMPOSITY
I will look for your follow-up on all this.

			    A. PATHEE
Should I get a pass?

Mr. Tent abruptly exits back into the classroom while the principal continues clicking away on her laptop.

			    DR. POMPOSITY
Ah, no. You need to follow me down to your counselor’s office. We need to find a more constructive pursuit than skipping class.

			    A. PATHEE
I wasn’t skipping.

			   DR. POMPOSITY
Or being late every day, or—

			    A. PATHEE
—I wasn’t that late. I was going to get a pass.

			    DR. POMPOSITY
Wait. Your counselor is not available right now. She’s not in her office.

			    A. PATHEE
You still want one?

			    DR. POMPOSITY
A what? 

			    A. PATHEE
A pass.

			    DR. POMPOSITY
I’ll try our school social worker. She could at least set up an appointment.

Dr. Pomposity alternates between texting on her phone and sending emails on her mounted laptop.

			   A. PATHEE
I don’t want one.

He starts to drift away, now openly texting on his cell phone.

			    DR. POMPOSITY
Well, it looks like she’s not available, either. Not today or tomorrow. I’ll make sure she reviews the data. And gets back to you. She could help. I will make a note of it, so you know who the social worker is. That’s vital documentation. Almost as important as your GPA, your test scores and perhaps, household income.

                              A. PATHEE
I don’t care.

                              DR. POMPOSITY
We do need to acknowledge social emotional learning. SEL is built into the curriculum, after all, with additional professional development and performance-based assessments provided by our central administration. Ultimately, we must make certain this district, with all our stakeholders, remains data-driven.
Data-driven.
Data-driven!

Five loud bells ring overhead. 

Mr. Tent shuffles back out into the hallway, where all three characters, looking dazed and detached, proceed to bounce off each other, mimicking a life-sized pinball machine.

Bell rings and buzzers common to vintage pinball are heard each time one of the three bump into each other. Eventually, A. Pathee exits in the darkness upstage, followed by Mr. Tent, to corresponding pinball sound effects.

Dr. Pomposity is then alone, slowing down to  simply spin around in a circle, as the lights gradually fade.

CURTAIN.

Leave a comment

Final school day in June, 2025. Unlike some teachers, I still enjoy the medium of chalk, including its easy access for student free speech expressions.

Photo by author

With the seizures
came the restrictions
a diet of short walks
off a long peering 
into nothing yet revealed
as if waiting for just the 
rightly worded inquiry 
to unlock but not unbutton
the cloaks of our 
unattended trauma
where we could continue
the summary appraisal
of our near-misses
nearer still to thee.
 
Finally,
I had to ask faintly,
after sinking into a red sunset 
after yet another rising regret
Even if history
remains irreversibly gone,
can we still turn around
to face each other gently
hands up 
palms touching
as if playing catch
as if stopping
our goodbye wave
before it can ever happen again.

Alma College, Alma, Michigan, June 2024.

Photo by author

Leave a comment

Look closely. This 40-year-old houseplant is still alive.

Originally identified as a type of pothos.

Pothos?

After all these years, it might be misidentified.

A strange parting gift from my first real girlfriend, it now oddly coincides with my 40-year span in education.

Allow me to digress.

We met at Michigan State University, autumn 1981.

Caroline1, the only female percussionist in the MSU Concert Band, with thick glasses and an even bigger grin; I, the animated interloper sporting wrinkled Springsteen and Who t-shirts, living off-campus in a two-story corner shack with one jazz and two rock musicians.

We both had auditioned for our accepted musical placements.

She quietly conceded first chair to my assertive snare drum and tympani prowess, despite her unrecognized edge on melodic percussion like the xylophone.

At least I could reproduce the Stones marimba riff on “Under My Thumb,” wink included, before the stern conductor arrived and waved silent the usual warm-up blares of the band room.

Subtle?

Two years younger, yet more classically trained, Caroline would inadvertently begin a romantic pattern within my little orbit, where some would find not just my comical antics, but my dynamic delusions rather alluring.

Animal magnetism without a major.

Carefree confidence without a career.

Meet me in the piano practice room tomorrow.

After all, immersed into the third largest concentration of 18-22-year-olds in the nation, those omnipresent campus questions naturally persisted: what should we do, what should we pursue, who might we hook up with?

Or more privately, why remain a lascivious bi-curious virgin?

At a baseline level, most of the university’s throbbing young energy did not seem too eager for the inevitable imitation of their parent’s narrative, of suburban lawns, trimmed hedges and vibrant houseplants.

Some even toyed with alternatives, including alternative music.

Despite the classical academic setting, Caroline and I both shared a vast and mighty interest in rock ‘n roll, the shunned genre in almost all higher ed institutions across the country (at least still in the early 1980s).

Bastardized marching band medleys of pop music at halftime do not count.

After class, she eagerly joined me sneaking subversive vinyl into the stuffy listening room of the MSU Music Building, which housed a few rows of turntables in individual cubicles. I would slip on my smuggled disc (unavailable in the stifling adjacent library), then our headphones, volume cranked, the underground sounds and our glee barely concealed.

We earned a few annoyed stares, only leaving if some authority figure wandered into the room.

Roll over Beethoven, tell Tchaikovsky the Clash. . . .

My other big college relationship involved Mike, a lead singer and a slightly more bashful yet authentic genius2 with a remarkable voice and dexterity on guitar, who had already dropped out of MSU for possible musical glory.

After a few rough starts, we had formed our fledgling group of 60s covers and emerging protest punk with Tom, another bass player (immensely proficient) from the music department, mischievously calling ourselves The Blanks.

Mike and I moved closer to campus, into a second tiny band house, but now with a basement for added loudness potential.

We both discovered our first literal loves that same spring.

Picture two intemerate males excitedly sampling our latest musical discoveries, before simultaneously retreating to our respective bedrooms, the final LP selection muffling certain sounds, as if we had methodically practiced the exotic dual pairing arrangement for years.

Original Blanks band house, 642 South Francis, Lansing, Michigan, awaiting demolition in 2025. No flag pole when we lived there for eight months in 1982. MSU and East Lansing expanded student housing in the last decade, leading to a significantly reduced need for rentals in neighboring Lansing, west, on the wrong side on the freeway tracks.

Photo by the author

Early incarnation of The Blanks in our Lansing squat basement, summer of 1982.

Photographer unknown

By the end of August, three of us packed up to permanently regroup back home.

Only Caroline would hang on for another three years in East Lansing, to securely graduate with a music therapy degree, with hints of marriage as her preferred sense of stability.

I dropped out as a junior, to seek rock star fantasies in the Forbidden City of Detroit.

No longer could I postpone the surging audio-visual river of punk rock flooding the fabled Cass Corridor.

Back then, most underground Detroit bands enjoyed small yet loyal followings. At a minimum on, say, a desolate Sunday night, groups would still play for each other, soaking up each other’s sweat and songs as perpetual influences.

Bigger followings would lead to Wednesday, then Thursday nights, then weekend gigs opening up for other bands. An urban street-level School of Rock in real time(s).

One particular best friend from my middle school days would devotedly make it to every show for a couple of years, after barely getting out of the Marine Corps alive.

He grew deeply attached to everyone in the band, to our songs, to “our mission,” and also to Caroline, who sometimes swayed in the shadows of the dance floor. While our bohemian life offered much fun and a vague future, alcohol and related addictions would eventually lead him to taking his own life in July of 1984.3

The tragedy would be a demarcation I never fully recovered from, its devastating impact repressed for years.

Caroline and I did find new life on stage when she later joined the band for a year, a sweet angelic voice to counter the raw edges of a desperately driving beat and message. Yet she would become collateral damage in my hidden grief.

Unlike Mike, still content in his original courtship, I turned to elaborate escapist fare, uncovering a decade-long cycle of euphoria through a casual (ok, questionable) subculture of non-monogamy.

Caroline tried to help put my life back together after three bandmates (including Mike) had quit. She even lived at my parent’s house for five months to complete her music therapy internship, as if to also embrace anticipated in-laws.

I slinked deeper into my rock ‘n roll fantasy, writing roughly two-three songs a week from an attic hideaway and multiple band rooms in a former funeral home, remade into the Art Center Music School right on Cass, across the street from the famous yet defunct Freezer Theater and the upstart Old Miami Bar.

By day, I taught mostly underprivileged kids the joys of making organized noise on a big drum set.

At night, four fellow musicians tried learning what I played and sang for them on piano, unlike most other original groups creating their music via guitar.

When Caroline moved to the Corridor, temporarily living in another musician’s flat, she hoped I would finally become some kind of wise investment.

Predictably, I remained determined to personify the rock ‘n roll model for anyone more interested in sensuality than safety, in hedonism over pragmatism.

She finally realized I could not be steered back to a slightly more domesticated road map. My buried sorrow insisted on some kind of dramatic change, no matter how unappealing or unfair to her.

So in the summer of 1986, we both found new and improved loves, although Caroline would assuredly exit the music scene for marital bliss after we recorded and released our debut album the following year.

Her pothos houseplant gift seemed frozen into a three-dimensional goodbye wave.

She presented the present after announcing her engagement.

Also, after turning over the last of her music students to my Saturday roster of young aspiring percussionists.

Did the goodbye house plant signify life goes on as long as you nourish it?

It wasn’t clear, even with the forced smile from her fiancée standing nearby.

The little greenery would keep following me around.

Like a sleeping puppy just needing a fresh dose of water now and then.

My own little green thumb limited itself to occasional vegetable gardens, with few crops actually making it to the dinner table, yet this mostly neglected single plant would live on and on and on.

After a series of other calamities, spiraling in the unexpected loss of my mother, partly due to medical malpractice,4 the band broke up.

My cavalier existence seemed empty, almost voiceless.

My creativity reflexively shifted to the theater and to poetry.

The plant and I moved out of the deteriorating Music School (eventually closing and boarding up in 2003), along with the declining remnants of the once subversive Corridor scene.

The “Midtown” gentrification would coincide with my retirement from making music, but not from writing plays.

So in 1996, the lingering green gift moved to various windows in a two-story Boston-Edison bungalow of Juan, a good friend and now housemate. The plant and I almost changed residences again, just before my first engagement failed three years later.

With long delayed inspiration, I decided upon a more attainable career, with health insurance, including psychiatric.

In other words, become a full-time public school teacher.

My exuberant return to the credit chase at Wayne State University included dual political science and social studies bachelor degrees and an English minor, with full teaching certification finally earned by the fall of 1999.

Proof that a gap decade in college could still work.

Allen, an old friend and former law firm employer offered me a reasonable rental by the freeway. The adaptable houseplant and I moved into my one and only true bachelor pad, just after starting my secondary teaching career in Oak Park, one mile north of Detroit.

That disrespected gift would later endure two week-long trips to Germany, where I resumed an intensely complicated two-year love affair while twice forgetting to tell my neighbor to water it.

In 2002, my newlywed (Engagement #2) reluctantly accepted the still-thriving decor, just as long as we added many more flowers and ferns.

When she later gave the world two beautiful boys, four years apart, we paid even less attention to the persevering green fixture.

My two boys are quite perceptive, yet the potted gift still goes largely unnoticed in our modest condo of almost two dozen years, even when its sprawling growth suggests a few leaves have to be trimmed.

The resilient plant also spent three years in two different therapist offices, before returning to my possession not long after the Covid quarantine faded, as if to mark some kind of shared settlement with my complicated past.

It now perches resolutely at the basement bathroom window, above the weight-lifting set on hold for my two month rotator cuff heal, still patiently waiting its weekly waterings and wonderings.

As I convalesce after all the well wishes on my retirement, why not start with an odd gift from 40 years ago, when my humbling teacher journey commenced?

Could the pothos symbolize my Third Act, from pathos to promontory?

To echo the MSU cheer, Go Green, Go White?

Or more supremely, will this mysterious perennial live long enough to hear me read some lines out loud from a long-delayed screenplay?

Perhaps even the closing paragraph of an eventual shared autobiography?

Pothos. Weird genus, weird name.

Excuse me.

Time to go add some new topsoil before filling another pitcher of water. . . .

Leave a comment

“The trouble with retirement is that you never get a day off.” —Abe Lemons

Voilà.

Yikes.

Wow. . . .

After 40 years of teaching, 27 in the same school district, I’m officially retired.

In a healthier educational environment, I would have surely stayed on for at least a couple of more years. Nonetheless, most of my relatives, colleagues, friends and enemies (that small number of higher-ups) figured my farewell quite overdue.

Admittedly, it’s no country for old men.

With apologies to Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross,1 I believe I’ve rapidly entered the Bargaining phase after much Denial and Anger, so why not use the popularized DABDA model to review my initial emotions, and why I finally left my post.

Final chalkboard graffiti. Humorous and haunting.

Photo by author

Here are my ongoing FIVE STAGES of RELIEF:

• DENIAL about my slowly ebbing senior citizen energy against the commonplace (hourly) collisions with cell phones, iPads, ever-intrusive AI and even handheld gaming devices. The battles tended to bring out my inner cop instead of my inner pedagogue. Instead of diving into, say, relevant storytelling and discussion-based learning, my final two years of frequent frustrations made me rely more and more on researched in-class videos and related investigative handouts, followed by the exhaustion, those naps after school (and less time for assessing assignments) when my typical six hours of often restless sleep proved less sustainable than the past two decades. Caffeine can only carry me so far. . . .

• ANGER around mostly tepid administrative supports of not only cell phone and attendance problems (the perfunctory reaction, “Have you contacted a parent yet?”), but also the top-down plague of more clerical coverage paired with excessive standardized testing obsessions. Innovative educators (including those more theater, arts or project-based) have been fighting these dictates since the bombastic No Child Left Behind launched a war of attrition on the profession. The obvious ties to the corporatized textbook and assessment industry (Cengage Learning, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw-Hill Education, Pearson Education, Scholastic) have essentially turned education into a failing, administrative-centered nightmare.

• BARGAINING with several friends and colleagues. How about a rendezvous at the bar to verbally ponder my achievements, failures and this newly discovered retirement status? What do you mean you have other plans? Local subscribers anyone? Lager and red wine optional.

• DEPRESSION. Likely to set in after my planned rotator cuff surgery on Monday plunges me into a temporarily sullen state. I’ll be spending many hours on a creaky recliner, alternating between throbbing shoulder pain, opioid dreams and catching up on missed films since Covid. Will I be able to avoid noxious nostalgia and obnoxious self-pity? Is it ok to wallow just a bit on how some educational dreams did not achieve a more tangible shared magnitude? Substack, rescue me?

• ACCEPTANCE. If I’m no longer a teacher, can I still be an educator? Not just here, in running commentaries and conversations, but in this loose community of resistance I call home. I should be able to accept the loss of the daily classroom feedback loop (smiles, laughter, groans, shouts of rage or glazed-over eyes). Can I still find a new center of diverse, yet like-minded activists, some retired yet some still teaching and making subversive art?

The loyal colleague line-up at the fittingly named Dog and Pony Show Brewing, Oak Park, Michigan. Quite a crew, to be sorely missed.

My last class, sixth hour Drama, Little Theatre. In my favorite home away from home. Post-final exams, only three students attended, including Jah’nya and Da’Lon.

Photo by Malik

Let’s hope I can avoid too many gatherings of grumpy old men.

Unless the inevitable jokes are actually hilarious.

Fortunately, I am truly blessed to have so many friends send their well-wishes, with two informal retirement parties, and also an unexpected financial gift from my talented and dedicated colleagues.2

For 27 years, many of them (especially my closest hallway neighbors) became my much-valued sanity check amid much anxiety and chaos, often more administrative than student-induced.

And for 27 years, since each day my students were greeted with a song (on a ghetto blaster cassette (!) the first few years), usually loosely correlated to the initial assignment or discussion, I had to play two cuts on my last day.

Both artists with Detroit connections, it seemed rather appropriate after belatedly mumbling to my students about this being my last day as a full-time teacher.

As they tilted their heads, Big Sean’s “One Man Could Can Change the World” boomed over the ceiling speaker:

I hope you learn to make it on your own
And if you love yourself, 
just know you'll never be alone

I answered a few student inquiries, yet I had to rush forward to the June classic I played every year since it came out in late May of 1972, when my 11-year-old self first raced home on his Sting-Ray bike to play the newly purchased 45 rpm single (75 cents, tax included) by Alice Cooper.

Played loudly.

School's out forever
School's out for summer
School's out with fever
School's out completely

Voilà. Yikes. Wow.

Relief.

Number Six has resigned.3

I am officially retired.

PLEASE STAY TUNED. . . .

Newburyport
or Frankfort
a miracle overture explained
softly, with requisites 
adroitly unrestrained
like sand within strolling distance
the mornings alive 
as playful resistance
or some afternoon 
masterpiece
sketched as an epiphany
for an improvisational scene.

Split-wood symmetry 
rests assuredly in the fireplace, 
a second-story balcony
for sunsets we choose to face, 
a knitted blanket
once a child's crawl space
we step down to the edge 
of fortitude & forlorn
with crowns never worn
until tomorrow
trembling, fiery,
yet somehow serene. 

Lake Michigan, 2024.

Photo by author

Leave a comment

"What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured. Young people should also identify and encourage beliefs about life on which sane human beings almost everywhere can believe." —Kurt Vonnegut

"The road to success is always under construction." —Lily Tomlin

I did not mention my imminent takeoff to any of my current students.

Not at least until the closing graduation line this Sunday morning, against the quiet rippling backdrop of the Detroit river, in the open auditorium shade of the Aretha Franklin Amphitheatre.

Daydreaming and thinking of you.

To a couple of students in particular, I would add a quick remark to my congratulations.

“Like my cap and gown? Look, I’m finally graduating, too!”

“Ha. Funny, Mr. B.”

Yes, I’m finally graduating high school, once again.

Way back in early June of 1979, with several hundred crammed into the sweltering suburban school gymnasium, my senior high commencement resolutely implied I would never attend another, except maybe a duplicate institutional farewell with my younger sister.

I just wanted to shake hands with my two favorite teachers, get at least a perfunctory embrace from my two closet crushes (if I could find them) and then get the hell out of there.

After all, college in the fall promised to be much different. Exotic and likely more relevant, even if a mostly elevated version of a still sheltered prominence.

No more parental curfews, many more appealing electives and lastly, maybe an actual girlfriend.

In 1979, I also never would have guessed returning to any public high school 20 years later, certainly not to teach full-time for another 27 years (even after 13 years part-time), with almost the entire journey in an urban setting, leading to a nice round number of 40 years for my retirement.

No, not much has changed with the latest class of departing teenagers.

Little besides the pervasiveness of the handheld electronic tethers, although curiously, only about half of the students seemed to be reflexively clutching or scrolling their cells as the ceremony proceeded.

The future does seem more precarious, with fewer safeguarded freedoms, while the proceedings seemed a bit more serious than usual.

Or was that just me brooding with watery eyes?

One of the 2026 commencement salutatorians made a poignant plea: “Do not force yourselves to be smaller just to make others feel more comfortable.”1

And so I go forward, with two weeks left of high school for the rest of my life, which will include one final field trip to the local courthouse next week, to get a brief glimpse of our fragile Constitutional rights (including the fifth and sixth amendments) in action.

As I discreetly removed my cap and gown and hopped on my bike, I made one final sweeping turn, yelling “26! 26!” to the exiting teenage celebrants before slowly pedaling back towards the river, on the three-mile ride back to my Motor City condo.

At the risk of annoying grandiosity, I vow to continue to try causing more good trouble, at home or on the road, not long after a brief bittersweet celebration with a few colleagues and friends.

Of all whom, like you, have directly or indirectly supported me on this strange odyssey.

So, as Aretha once sang so smoothly, “Look at my heart floating away.”2

I’ll surely be writing more about all this soon.

I hope you’ll be reading it on your way to your own inspiration.

Peace & Love,

Mr. B

The commencement stage before the final commencement. Note fishing troller in the Detroit River background (upper left), a much more likely and welcome post-grad destination than the super yacht hovering upper right.

On the bike ride home, a Detroit River fisherman hopefully foreshadowing part of my promising future, where every day feels like Sunday.

Photos by author

Leave a comment

Our late May classroom
mimics a hub airport
a smattering of travelers
enervated yet anxious

annual final departure delayed
due to maintenance issues
long after the graduate boarding calls

left the uncomfortable 
one-size-fits-all cluster

the graffiti now scrubbed

no doodles of desire
no scribbles of who's a freak
or Gone to Croatan
& that one student never there

64 absences recorded
in a one semester term
not even an awkward final exam 

materialization
just before take-off

the narrative & child unknown

at this regional terminal
where cancellations are common
with some academic airlines
closing permanently

where numbers are disconnected
or voice-mail not yet set up
& related digital ghosts 

you may still remember a face
the cameras might have missed

on one of three days she showed up

her name remains on the manifest
she simply missed her flight
somehow the teacher gets blamed
for not inspiring better attendance

for not raising her test scores
for her missing existence 
& needless assessments left behind

the lead administrator
smugly tells everyone to remain calm

after all some disasters take years to unfold.

Flying over Austin, Texas, October 2019.

Photo by author

Leave a comment

Her handrail name
& handheld electricity
a bright shake 
strolling the urban blight
foraging for spirits
their poetics formidable
the small talk impermissible
except during thunderstorms
when viable options
navigated heels 
on broken glass 
warehouse decay
strobe light snow
& for some,
the euphoria of free love.

A few years in, 
a few more out
lost to the inevitable 
vicissitude
of relocations crosstown
or was it cross-country
does the distance even matter
when hesitation overwhelms 
like a broken railroad crossing
flashing in the darkness 
their transitory attraction 
suggesting a canvas stretched
between jobs
between lovers
between yearnings.

Inexplicably,
they kissed only once
a marginally drunken moment
behind the swinging saloon doors
an after-work, after-hour 
consumption mixing
a confession too rushed
the lust 
impurely platonic
later affirmed by
halting insecurities 
bare-legged
bare-chested 
holding her 
fast asleep
in flushed puzzlement.

Provisionally,
she identified 
as an obscure occultist
while he remained obscured
by the fog of her flight
mildly flirtatious 
even in fading audio
their last conversation
the conjecture swirling 
around an actual tornado F2 
(floating phenomena)
& his new fiancée F1 
the unwavering resignation 
of their separate ways,
the finality, 
an alley, a streetlight,
a stoop,
an approach
never again traversed.

Detroit, Woodbridge alleyway, May, 2026.

Photo by author

Leave a comment