Rising Up

I come late to the Joe Tait (WTAM radio-1100 AM) fan club, but he called a tremendous game last night. If you don't know what game I'm talking about, then you aren't from around here, or you have vowed to delete sports from your life (I know many who have).

Maybe I'll change my thesis project title to "In The Paint" or "Shot Clock" or "Witness."

In college I took a course called "The Psychology of Sports." It was an 8 am class, and a guaranteed "A" if you had perfect attendance. I might have been the only person who read the textbook. None of it made sense to me until 20 years later.

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Friends are getting published: Jim Garrett has a poetry chapbook coming out from Finishing Line Press; Erin O'Brien has a story in the forthcoming Black Arrow anthology "Santi: Lives of Modern Saints"--which has the coolest trailer on YouTube.

And friends are publishing: check out the new publication Barn Owl Review, created/co-edited by Mary Biddinger and Dawson Steeber.

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Rain makes happy garden. Basil plants flexing their muscles. Salad greens waving their arms. Tomato plants digging in for the long haul. Bronze fennel shooting up in all the wrong places.

First garden accident yesterday: Ben stepped on my father's old hoe, the double-pointed end, and did a headlong dive into the boxwood hedge. I had to pull the hoe out of his foot and shoe. Not pretty. Generated a lot of jokes, though....

Later, my 14-year-old south side street dog Chloe almost went over the cliff. Nearly blind and very crippled, she forgot she wasn't a puppy and decided to roll in some choice grass.

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My hat's off to Moondog! And Joe Tait! And the kid they call "Boobie"! And that other guy, he who does not need to be named!