Category: story teller

The Diamond Sutra.

The Diamond Sutra is set up as a conversation between the Buddha and an elderly disciple named Subhuti. Two voices, one asking, one answering, both circling around the same old questions we still ask today: What matters? What lasts? How do we see the world without getting lost in it?

Some dates slip past us without a sound, and some carry a little echo if you stop long enough to listen. This one goes all the way back to 868 A.D., when somebody — a monk, a printer, a pair of hands we’ll never know — pressed inked wood against paper and created what we now call the oldest printed book with a publication date. The Diamond Sutra. Sixteen feet of teachings, questions, answers, and the quiet persistence of human curiosity.

The word sutra comes from Sanskrit and means “teaching,” but it’s more than that. It’s a thread, a line connecting one mind to another across centuries. The Diamond Sutra is set up as a conversation between the Buddha and an elderly disciple named Subhuti. Two voices, one asking, one answering, both circling around the same old questions we still ask today: What matters? What lasts? How do we see the world without getting lost in it?

The physical book itself was printed from carved wooden blocks onto seven long strips of paper. Each page had its own block, carved by hand, reversed like a mirror, every line a small act of faith that someone in the future would want to read it. Those seven sheets were pasted together into a scroll about sixteen feet long — a book before books were bound the way we know them now. Imagine unrolling that thing, the slow reveal of words that had already traveled further than most people of that time ever would.

And then, like so many things, it vanished.

For more than a thousand years the scroll sat hidden away in Turkestan, sealed up with hundreds of other manuscripts in one of the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas. A whole library walled off, maybe to protect it, maybe to forget it, maybe because someone thought the world was ending and wanted to save what they could. We’ll never know. What we do know is that in 1900, a caretaker sweeping out a cave stumbled onto a doorway that hadn’t been opened in centuries. Behind it: bundles of manuscripts, paintings, scrolls, and among them, this sixteen‑foot conversation between a teacher and a disciple.

I like stories like this. They remind me that the things we make — the words we write, the thoughts we try to pin down — have a way of outliving us. They get lost, they get found, they get read by someone a thousand years later who has no idea who we were but still feels the spark of recognition. A voice calling across time saying, “I was here. I wondered about the same things you do.”

Maybe that’s why I keep writing. Maybe that’s why any of us do.

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Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day didn’t start with flowers, cards, or brunch. Its earliest roots in the United States came from women who were trying to hold their communities together in the face of disease, war, and political division.

Ann Reeves Jarvis, a West Virginia woman who lived through the mid‑1800s, spent her life organizing “Mothers’ Work Clubs” to fight outbreaks of measles, typhoid, and diphtheria in Appalachian towns. These clubs inspected milk, taught sanitation, and even quarantined homes when needed. During the Civil War, she insisted her groups care for both Union and Confederate soldiers, and after the war she organized a Mother’s Friendship Day in 1868 to help reunite divided families.

Around the same time, Julia Ward Howe — abolitionist, suffragist, and author of The Battle Hymn of the Republic — issued her 1870 Mother’s Day Proclamation, calling for women to gather in the name of peace after witnessing the devastation of the Civil War and the Franco‑Prussian War. She envisioned an international congress of women dedicated to preventing war. A few communities observed her proposed “Mother’s Day for Peace,” but it didn’t take hold nationally.

The holiday as we know it today came from Anna Jarvis, Ann Jarvis’s daughter. After her mother’s death, she campaigned for a day to honor the sacrifices and quiet labor of mothers. In 1908, she held the first official Mother’s Day service at her mother’s church in Grafton, West Virginia. Within five years, nearly every state observed it, and in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson declared Mother’s Day a national holiday, celebrated on the second Sunday in May.

Ironically, Anna Jarvis spent the rest of her life fighting the commercialization of the holiday she created — protesting florists, card companies, and anyone who turned her solemn tribute into a business opportunity.

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I’m Nobody! Who are You?

I published my first book on March 5th. It’s called I Was There. I probably should’ve called it Who Am I, because it’s a memoir, and since I can’t hang a famous name on it, no one really cares. If I were a famous musician, actor, or politician, it wouldn’t matter if my entire memoir was just me sitting by a luxury pool all day sipping fancy drinks made by an impeccable butler — or better yet, a Butlerette in a miniskirt — people would be clamoring to buy it.

On Amazon, where my book is available, I’m competing with the likes of Maya Angelou, Malcolm X, and Trevor Noah’s mother, for God’s sake — all of whom have written memoirs. And that’s just naming the lesser-known ones, except maybe Trevor’s mother, though I suspect everyone but me knows who she is. I’ll add, with sincere condolences, that all are deceased, and underline that I am not willing to die for this book.

I have considered changing the name to something like Outlaw, rewriting it just a bit — not changing the facts, just throwing in more drama and sex. I could confabulate. In writing, confabulation is when you unknowingly fill in gaps with invented details because your mind wants the story to feel complete, smooth, or emotionally coherent. It’s not lying. It’s not embellishment on purpose. It’s the brain saying, “Let me tidy this up for you,” and slipping in something that feels true even if it isn’t. Then I could list my book under Autofiction, which could easily be misunderstood as autoerotica — and that should outsell Trevor’s mother.

A few weeks ago, I was talking to a good friend who’s also writing a book. Hers is about murder, and as I said to her, she has a better chance of gaining buyers because everyone knows what murder is. Along with not dying for this book, I’m also not willing to kill for it. And let me quickly add that my friend is not the murderess in her book either. Though I’ll bet she’s a killer in a miniskirt.

I also need to say my book is not boring. The folks who have read it have all been sincerely enthusiastic in their positive reviews. It deals with ten very turbulent times in my life — ten years when this country was an amalgam of ideas, movements, people, music, war, and yes, even sex. I was involved in some amazing moments with some amazing people, some known to history — people who, if they wrote a memoir today, would give Trevor’s mother a run for her money.

But you see, what I did, I did quietly. Not a lot of fanfare or fangirls or fantastic shenanigans. Maybe what I need to do now is go out and do something to call attention to myself. Maybe run for President on the WTF Party — that’s the What The Fuck Party — or maybe the LWRS Party, the Left Wing Radical Scum Party. You may have heard mention of that breed of human; I think they’re currently under investigation by the residents at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

But the truth is, I never meant to make a splash with my book — not even in a luxury backyard pool with fancy drinks being served by a Butlerette in a miniskirt. I just wanted to tell my story to a few friends and family while there was still time. Part of the problem, I think, is that many of my friends thought I was writing a completely different book — probably about my hazy, crazy days in radio, which I barely mention.

If all of a sudden some major publisher caught on to my book, a major studio made it into a major and successful motion picture, and I suddenly had fame and fortune and miniskirt‑clad Butlerettes running around, I know I’d be looking for the nearest exit to the highest mountain I could find.

In short, I think maybe Emily Dickinson was right, and her idea fits my personality better.

Emily Dickinson wrote:

I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you — Nobody — too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d banish us — you know!

How dreary — to be — Somebody!
How public — like a Frog —
To tell your name — the livelong June —
To an admiring Bog!

Maybe that’s the whole point: I never wanted to be Somebody. I just wanted to leave a trail for the other Nobodies to follow home.

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Rating: 1 out of 5.

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Fashion or Conspicuous Consumption on Display

Maybe it’s just me—many times in cases like this it is at least mostly me—and before I go any further, I want to say I did not watch it. Instead, I watched the New York Knicks get some Boston Celtics revenge against the Philadelphia 76ers. But this morning the news is all over the event like bugs on a bumper, and the event I’m referring to is the Met Gala. An evening where individual costumes commonly range from $50,000 to $200,000, the Met Gala is officially known as the Costume Institute Benefit. It exists to financially support the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Unlike other Met departments, the Costume Institute is self‑funded. According to reporting summarized by The New Republic, the Met Gala has raised approximately $166.5 million over the past decade—an average of about $16–17 million per year. What makes this arrangement striking is not simply the sum raised, but the structure behind it: the museum collects the revenue while the immense aesthetic costs are absorbed by designers and luxury brands. The result is an event framed as philanthropy but sustained by a logic that more closely resembles high‑end advertising.

In the end, watching the Met Gala felt less like witnessing fashion and more like staring straight into the neon heart of conspicuous consumption. All that glitter, all that theater, all that money draped over people who can barely walk in it — it hits me like a scream I can’t quite swallow. Maybe it’s just the guy in clean jeans and a sweatshirt talking, but there’s something grounding about clothes meant to be lived in, not displayed like trophies. And standing in the shadow of all that gaudiness, I’m reminded how far spectacle can drift from anything that feels real.

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May Day.

May Day shows up every year like an old friend who never knocks, just walks in and expects you to know why they’re there. It’s a day with more identities than most of us manage in a lifetime — workers’ marches, ancient bonfires, maypoles, the whole spring‑is‑coming‑whether-you’re-ready-or-not business. A strange mix of protest and petals.

Long before it was a date on a union calendar, it was the halfway mark between the equinox and the solstice, a reminder that the world keeps tilting toward the light even when we’re not paying attention. People lit fires to chase off whatever darkness they believed in. Maybe they weren’t wrong. We still carry our own shadows around, and sometimes a little symbolic fire wouldn’t hurt.

In the labor world, May Day is the day people stood up and said enough — enough hours, enough bosses squeezing the last drop out of the last worker. It’s a day built on the idea that ordinary people deserve a life, not just a living. That message hasn’t aged a bit.

And here we are, another May 1st. No bonfires on the beach, no marching bands down the street, just the quiet truth that the year is moving whether we move with it or not. Spring is trying its best. The light hangs around a little longer each night. Even the air feels like it’s leaning forward.

Maybe that’s the real heart of May Day: the nudge. The reminder. The gentle shove from the universe saying, Get on with it. Dan would’ve liked that part.

So here’s to May Day — the ancient, the political, the personal. A day that asks nothing more than that we notice the world turning and decide, in whatever small way we can, to turn with it.

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When April Teaches You How to Feel Warm Again

Some days don’t announce themselves. They don’t kick down the door or roll in with thunder. They just show up quietly, like an old friend who doesn’t need to knock. Today was one of those days.

The official coastal temperature — the one the weather folks love to toss around — sat at a stubborn 47°. Cooler at the coast, they say, as if we haven’t lived long enough to know the ocean keeps its own personality. But then I stepped outside, and the sun hit me in that particular April way, the way that says, Relax. I’ve got this.

And just like that, I felt better already.

MSN Weather, in its polite little digital voice, tried to explain it:
“Dominant factor: humidity.”
Which is really just science’s way of saying the air has softened. The sharp edges have rounded off. Your skin isn’t fighting the cold anymore. The breeze isn’t stealing heat from you like it did all winter. And the sun — well, the sun is finally acting like it remembers what month it is.

Stand in the right spot — out of the sea breeze, tucked against a sun‑warmed wall, maybe near a patch of pavement that’s been soaking up the morning light — and the whole world shifts. The thermometer can cling to its 47°, but your body knows better. Your body says 59°, maybe more. Your body says, Hey, we made it. Look at us now.

That’s the thing about April.
It’s not just a month.
It’s a mood.
It’s the first real exhale after months of bracing yourself. It’s the moment you realize the warmth isn’t a rumor anymore. It’s here. It’s real. And it’s trying its best to meet you halfway.

So yes, the coast may be cooler.
But today?
Today feels warm enough to believe in again.
Warm enough to loosen your shoulders.
Warm enough to remind you that you’re still here, still breathing, still capable of feeling good for no grand reason at all.

And sometimes that’s all a person needs — a little sun, a little shelter from the breeze, and the quiet surprise of feeling warm again.

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Rating: 1 out of 5.

A valuable Lesson Learned

A valuable Lesson Learned Ramble.

Learning is valuable—about love, good people, and, unfortunately, bad ones: people lacking a crucial human quality. Some call it a heart, others a soul. As the Dalai Lama said, “Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.”

I recently learned a hard lesson about self-publishing—not about the publishing itself,the ready-for-print part, the nuts and bolts of it: learning about print, color, page count, the spine the cover  and a weird little item called a widow, which is when a word gets left over at the end of a page and gets pushed to the next page. That was all difficult enough. Publishing, as a good friend who worked in the business put it, “Publishing is not for the weak of heart.”

Writing a book is hard, and writing about yourself is even harder, especially when recounting a story from 50 years ago. Living it nearly killed me; writing it nearly finished the job.

And then I finally got the book on Amazon and wanted to learn more about reviews and promoting my book, so I joined the KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) community for writers. I soon learned that while 50 percent of those members are good and honest folks wanting to help a rookie writer, it is also populated by scumbag con artists who will scream death and destruction, and forever banishment from Amazon if you break the rules.

And while it is true that Amazon did get into some trouble a few years ago by allowing fake reviews, not just of books but on everything, from air fresheners to underwear, and for good reasons, they have tightened their review process. But it is not the death toll of you and your book if you unintentionally seem to cross the line. What Amazon does not want is for me to pay Jack and Jill to write a review that says Dan Sanders is the greatest writer since John Steinbeck or Charles Dickens. Even if it’s true, Jack and Jill need to decide thta on their own.

In the KDP community, while most folks are good and helpful, I ran into a few who responded with alarm, warning me I had made a mistake but offering to help. They never mention a fee upfront; instead, they engage in several emails before finally revealing a line like, “For a small fee, I can help you out.” One clue is that although many different names are involved, the emails all look like they came from the same cookie-cutter template.

I was so concerned that I asked my first reviewer to remove their review because it was from someone I worked with 40 years ago and haven’t seen since. A scammer claimed that if someone knows you, Amazon will suspect collusion, but I learned that while Amazon is strict, it isn’t unreasonable.

The main reason I wanted to write this is not to make a Mea culpa, but to warn others trying or considering self-publishing. I don’t want anyone to go in as I did—a lamb to the slaughterhouse. I believed everything would be good, but like any competitive profession, it can be underhanded and cutthroat.

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Rating: 1 out of 5.

Nixon lies + Trump parallel Morning Ramble,

Every time I look back at Nixon’s Vietnam “we’re winning” routine, I hear an echo.

Here’s the Nixon highlight reel: • “Vietnamization is working.” (It wasn’t.) • “Peace is at hand.” (It wasn’t.) • “The enemy is weakening.” (They weren’t.) • “I have a secret plan.” (He didn’t.) • “We’re withdrawing because we’re winning.” (We weren’t.) • “The bombing is working.” (It didn’t change the terms.)

And now we’ve got a whole new era of leaders who pull the same trick — declare victory, deny reality, and hope nobody notices the smoke pouring out of the engine room.

Boston folks can smell that a mile away, and I hope the United States still can.

History doesn’t repeat, but the sales pitch sure does.

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Rating: 1 out of 5.

My Book Has Been Released

Dan Sanders grew up on Staten Island and learned early how to navigate the edges of things—family, faith, war, and the long road toward becoming himself. He spent years in radio, activism, and community work before settling in the Boston area, where he writes about the moments that refuse to stay quiet. He lives in what he calls Rambling Harbor with his cat, Shianna, and continues to tell the stories that shaped him, one honest line at a time.

The Road to “I Was There”

It didn’t happen all at once. It wasn’t a straight shot. It was a long road — with detours, breakdowns, and a few stretches where I didn’t touch the wheel at all.

This book took years. Not because I was writing every day, but because I wasn’t. I’d circle back, pick up a thread, lose it again. Life got in the way. So did doubt. So did the internet.

But the story never left. It waited. And every time someone asked — “Are you still working on it?” or “When’s the book coming out?” — it reminded me that I was still on the road.

So thank you. To everyone who kept asking. To those who read the early chapters, who saw the fog and the mountains and said, “Keep going.”

The book is out now. It’s called “I Was There”. Because I was. And now, so are you.

And who knows what comes next — maybe that’s the best part. Maybe even another book

follow this link to the Amazon page: https://a.co/d/01jMzMsm

About Me
I’m a dreamer with some rough edges, a word‑slinger, an actor, a picture‑maker, and a guy who hangs onto the stories that don’t always behave. I write from a small harbor shaped by memory, Boston weather, and all the quiet corners where truth sits down and refuses to move.
I Was There is one road I’ve walked. There’ll be others. There always are.

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Rating: 1 out of 5.

Rambling Harbor — Evening Edition Ramble AKA WTF Again

Tonight’s tide brought in a story I wish I didn’t recognize.

Evening settles over the Harbor like a worn jacket, the kind you keep by the door because it knows your shape better than you do. The light goes soft, the gulls quiet down, and the world finally stops shouting long enough for you to hear the small truths rattling around in your own chest. That’s when the news found me tonight — not with a bang, but with that familiar sting that comes when history gets pushed around like furniture someone’s tired of looking at.

Another round of funding carved out of Black museums. A Black heritage sign quietly taken down in Boston, as if memory itself were something optional, something you could tuck away when it makes the wrong people uneasy. It didn’t surprise me, but it sure as hell set something off — not a blaze, just that low, steady rumble from a place that’s been paying attention for too many years.

And this isn’t the first time I’ve felt that rumble. A few years back, I resigned from an organization I’d given time and heart to. Not because I heard the man say anything — I never did. This was all online, all at a distance. But then I read he was running for political office in Texas, and one of his proud public stances was opposition to what was then being called “critical race theory.” That was enough. I didn’t need a speech or a meeting or a debate. I just knew I wasn’t going to stay in a place led by someone who wanted to shut down the teaching of systemic racism and the harder truths of American history. If the truth makes you uncomfortable, maybe the problem isn’t the truth. So I walked. Quietly. Cleanly. And I didn’t look back.

And now here we are again, only the stage is bigger, and the stakes are heavier. Grants pulled from the Massachusetts Museum of African American History because the work doesn’t “align with priorities.” Heritage markers taken down like they were never there. Museums and cultural programs frozen out because they dare to tell the story straight. And the language is always the same — “divisive concepts,” “ideological concerns,” “restoring sanity.” Whenever politicians start talking about restoring sanity, you can bet they’re about to erase something.

It’s the same old dance: erase, rename, sanitize, repeat. Pretend it’s about budgets. Pretend it’s about neutrality. Pretend it’s anything except what it is — a slow tightening of the blindfold. And the people doing the tightening always swear they’re the ones protecting us from indoctrination. Meanwhile, the museums they’re defunding are the ones holding the receipts, the records, the stories this country has spent centuries trying to bury.

And what really gets me is the déjà vu of it all. I’ve seen this movie before. I’ve walked out of rooms — and online spaces — over it. And now it’s happening on a national scale, with institutions and memory and public truth on the line. Every time someone says “critical race theory,” what they really mean is “stop telling the parts of the story we don’t like.” Every time a sign comes down, or a grant disappears, they’re hoping the story goes with it.

So here I am, evening deepening over Rambling Harbor, the tide pulling at the edges of the day, and I’m thinking about how fragile memory becomes when people in power decide it’s optional. I’m thinking about how many times we’ve had to fight just to keep the truth in the daylight. And I’m thinking about how history isn’t fragile at all — but apparently some people are.

That’s the ramble tonight. The Harbor’s quiet, but the headlines aren’t. And somewhere out there, the truth is still trying to speak, even if someone keeps reaching for the dimmer switch.

From Rambling Harbor, I ask again: what do we do now?

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Rating: 1 out of 5.

One of the Unrecorded

I was just doing some research on this book, and as I’ve said, I’m horrible with dates. I always have been, as they drift into ancient history, they become a lost, whirling maze of amazement and often befuddled amusement. Just now, I was looking for someone from my CCNV days, and after a multitude of different search sources and avenues, including AI, it came back.

 “You’re trying to find someone who lived in a world that didn’t preserve itself well — CCNV, Catholic Worker, Berrigan circles, early women clergy. Those people didn’t leave digital trails.”

 I laughed aloud and said in my best Robert Deniro Taxi voice, “You talkin’ to me?” I know. I’m one of them, lost to time, memory, but maybe not to history.

About a year ago, I spent several weeks with on-and-off communication with various federal agencies trying to get copies of my arrest and prison records. I started with the bureau of prisons The Bureau of Prisons stated that they do not retain records beyond ten years,  They gave me a link to the FOIA ( Freedom of Information Act) the freedom of information act said that because of my type of cases any records would most likely be held by the National Archives they may have retained documentation related to this type of case. I wrote to the National Archives, but have not heard back. I am willing to bet no one has ever tried so hard to prove they are a criminal. Even though the law I broke needed to be broken, and I still would love to see my whole records including as Arlo Guthrie put it in the song “Alice’s Restaurant”, a black and white 8 by 10 glossy.

So yeah, I did and still do live in a world that doesn’t preserve itself well.

Part of me hopes we’re not all lost to history. And part of me thinks maybe that’s the way it was always meant to go.

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Rating: 1 out of 5.

Super Bowl halftime show.

“6 US states plan on boycotting Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show.”

The second I saw the headline, I already knew the roster of usual suspects: Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Utah, and West Virginia. Of course, it’s them. A few months back, Hall of Fame running back Eric Dick— er—son popped off about the NFL picking Bad Bunny for halftime. These reactions all orbit the same tired idea about who “belongs” in American traditions.

Dick -er-son said in October, “If he don’t like the US, don’t come here to perform.”

Genius stuff from Dick, truly. Puerto Rico became part of the United States in 1898 under the Treaty of Paris. You’d think a man who made a living reading defenses could read a history book, too.

And this whole “if you criticize the country, leave it” routine? I heard that garbage when I opposed the Vietnam War. Loving your country means telling it when it’s wrong and sticking around to help fix it. Mark Twain nailed it: “Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.”

So to Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Utah, and West Virginia: I won’t miss you. The halftime show won’t miss you. The ratings won’t miss you. But your own citizens will miss out on a couple of hours to breathe, laugh, and forget the world’s nonsense.

And if the alternative is listening to Kid Crock belt out,

“Some say that’s statutory, but I say it’s mandatory,”

then boycotting Bad Bunny is a hell of a way to show your love for America.

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