Tag: books

Howard Phillips Lovecraft-H.P. Lovecraft,

Born August 20th, 1890, Howard Phillips Lovecraft-H.P. Lovecraft,

It’s the birthday of H.P. Lovecraft, born Howard Phillips Lovecraft in Providence, Rhode Island, back in 1890 — a man who somehow turned the quiet corners of New England into a map of cosmic dread. Funny how a place like Providence, with its brick houses and sleepy streets, could produce someone who spent his life staring into the abyss and then reporting back on what stared right back at him.

Lovecraft wasn’t writing about monsters, not really. He was writing about that feeling you get at three in the morning when the world tilts just a little, and you realize you’re smaller than you ever imagined. He gave that feeling names — Cthulhu, Yog‑Sothoth, the whole tentacled family reunion — but the real terror was always the same: the universe doesn’t care. And he wrote that truth with the intensity of a man who felt it in his bones.

He lived most of his life broke, anxious, and tucked away in rented rooms, scribbling stories that wouldn’t become famous until long after he was gone. There’s something almost New England about that — the stubbornness, the quiet grind, the belief that the work matters even if nobody’s listening yet. Providence shaped him, and in return he reshaped Providence into a place where shadows have weight and old houses whisper at night.

On his birthday, I think about how strange it is that a man who rarely traveled farther than the Northeast managed to chart entire galaxies of fear. And how his stories, written in the margins of his own troubled life, still echo through books, movies, games, and the imaginations of anyone who’s ever felt the cold breath of the unknown on the back of their neck.

Lovecraft didn’t give us hope. He gave us honesty — the kind that crawls under your skin and stays there. And maybe that’s why he endures. Because sometimes the world really does feel bigger, darker, and stranger than we can handle. And he was the one who said, “Yes. It is. And here’s what that looks like.”

And when you look at the end of his life, it fits the man: a quiet death in 1937, only 46, worn down by illness and poverty, leaving behind stories that outlived him by decades. Today his grave in Swan Point Cemetery has become its own kind of pilgrimage site. The headstone now famously reads “I AM PROVIDENCE.” Visitors leave coins, stones, shells, little figurines, handwritten notes — small offerings to a man who spent his life writing about the vast, uncaring universe.

And lately, there’s this odd little tradition that’s grown legs: bottles of vodka left at the grave. Lovecraft hated alcohol, wouldn’t touch the stuff, so maybe it’s a joke, maybe it’s a dare, maybe it’s just fans being weird in the way fans get weird. But the strange part is how the offerings sometimes move. A bottle set neatly at the base of the stone ends up a few feet away the next morning. Stones rearrange themselves. Notes shift. Cemetery staff say it’s wind or animals or teenagers, and maybe it is. But standing there, looking at that grave with its quiet declaration — I AM PROVIDENCE — you can’t help feeling that the man who wrote about the thin places in the world might still have one around him. A little ripple. A little nudge. A little reminder that mystery doesn’t always need monsters.

Just a grave, a name, a bottle of vodka that won’t stay put, and the sense that even now, something old and curious is paying attention.

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Born Today: August 14th 1943, Mitch Snyder

I met Mitch in prison, and later we shared a home at CCNV in D.C. That’s where I saw the man behind the headlines—the fire, the flaws, the stubborn heart, and the relentless drive to stand with people the system would rather forget. Anyone who has read my book knows the depth of our friendship.

Born August 14, 1943, Mitch Snyder was a prominent American advocate for people experiencing homelessness. His life was as complicated as it was impactful, a long arc from troubled youth to fierce activist, from a kid abandoned in Brooklyn to a national voice demanding dignity for the unhoused.

Snyder’s early life was marked by hardship and rebellion. Growing up in Brooklyn, he faced his father’s abandonment and drifted into criminal activity that eventually landed him in prison. But prison was also where Mitch began to change. Influenced by fellow inmates and by his reading — including the Bible — he joined hunger strikes and work stoppages over prisoners’ rights. He found purpose in resistance.

During his time at Danbury Correctional, Mitch met two men who shaped the rest of his life: Daniel and Philip Berrigan. Both were anti‑war priests serving time for destroying draft records in protest of the Vietnam War. Their commitment to justice and nonviolent resistance struck Mitch hard. They showed him activism wasn’t just anger — it was discipline, courage, and sacrifice. Mitch joined them in hunger strikes and work stoppages, learning firsthand how fasting could force attention onto issues the powerful preferred to ignore. He carried that lesson with him for the rest of his life.

After his release, Mitch moved to Washington, D.C. and joined the Community for Creative Non‑Violence (CCNV). The group had roots in anti‑war activism but evolved into one of the most forceful voices for people experiencing homelessness. Mitch’s leadership brought national attention to the crisis. He staged public funerals for people who died on the streets, occupied abandoned buildings, and used hunger strikes to pressure the government into action.

One of his most famous actions was occupying an abandoned federal building. After intense pressure on the Reagan administration, the building was leased to CCNV for $1 a year to serve as a shelter. It was a symbolic victory — a reminder that the government had responsibilities it couldn’t simply shrug off.

Mitch’s life wasn’t without controversy. His sacrifices — including leaving his family — and the toll activism took on him were debated publicly. But his commitment never wavered. He gave everything he had to the cause, and the weight of that struggle eventually became too much. In 1990, overwhelmed by the ongoing crisis and the lack of meaningful governmental response, Mitch took his own life.

His story was later told in the biopic Samaritan: The Mitch Snyder Story, with Martin Sheen portraying him. But for those of us who knew him, Mitch wasn’t a symbol or a headline. He was a complicated, brilliant, stubborn man who refused to look away from suffering — and demanded the same from the rest of us.

Mitch Snyder’s legacy is a testament to the power of individual activism and the impact one person can have on society. His life reminds us that homelessness is not a statistic — it’s a human crisis demanding compassion, courage, and relentless advocacy. His work continues to inspire those who believe in giving voice to the voiceless and standing with people the system would rather erase.

And for me, he remains the man I met in prison, the man I later lived with at CCNV, the man who gave me a home and a safe place when I once again found myself running for my life and helped me begin a new life. And always he will remain flaws and all the man I call my friend.

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Rating: 1 out of 5.

Hunter S. Thompson

Today is the birthday of Hunter S. Thompson, born in Louisville, Kentucky, 1937 — and I wake up feeling like the sky’s got a little extra static in it. Like the day itself is leaning forward, waiting for somebody to do something reckless and honest.

There’s a certain charge in the air when you think about Thompson. Not the Hollywood cartoon of him — the real man, the one who wrote like he had a live wire jammed straight into his spine. The one who understood that America wasn’t a postcard, it was a fever dream, and the only way to tell the truth about it was to dive in headfirst and come up swinging.

I think about him the way I think about a storm rolling over the harbor — that low, electric rumble, the kind that makes you stand a little straighter because you know something’s about to break loose. He wasn’t tidy. He wasn’t polite. He didn’t sand down the edges. He was the edge.

Louisville boy. Southern heat in his blood. A kid who saw early that the “official version” of anything was usually the biggest lie in the room. So he made his own version — louder, stranger, funnier, truer. He wrote like someone who refused to pretend the country wasn’t half‑mad already.

And maybe that’s why he still hits me so hard.
Because he reminds me that the world doesn’t need more polite little sentences. It needs people willing to say what they actually see. It needs voices that don’t flinch.

On his birthday, I picture him barreling down some Kentucky back road in a beat‑up convertible, sunglasses on, hair flying, muttering about Nixon or the Derby or whatever fresh American absurdity had caught his attention. And he’s laughing — that cracked, dangerous laugh — because he knew the joke was always on the people who thought they were in charge.

Maybe that’s the lesson today.
Live a little louder.
Tell the truth even when it’s ugly.
Write the thing that scares you.
Don’t sand down your voice to make anybody comfortable.

Hunter S. Thompson didn’t just write about America — he wrestled it, bit it, spit it out, and handed us the bones.

Happy birthday, Hunter.
The harbor feels rowdier today, and I’m not fighting it.

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The Man Who Refused to Live on Autopilot Henry David Thoreau

It’s the birthday of Henry David Thoreau, born July 12, 1817, in Concord, Massachusetts—a man who treated conscience the way some people treat religion. He didn’t just write about living deliberately; he practiced it like a stubborn art form. Poet, philosopher, abolitionist, tax resister, transcendentalist—Thoreau collected titles the way other people collect parking tickets.

And here’s the thing: every time I read about Thoreau refusing to pay taxes that supported slavery, I think about my own little rebellion a century later. When the phone tax went up to help bankroll the Vietnam War, I looked at that bill and said, “Nope.” Ten percent, gone. I refused to pay it, wrote it right on the check. It wasn’t Walden Pond, but it was my own small patch of moral ground, and I stood on it.

Thoreau would’ve understood. He believed a person’s duty wasn’t to obey, but to stay awake. To look at the world and decide what you can live with—and what you absolutely cannot.

I’ve walked around Walden Pond more times than I can count. Not in some tourist way, but in the way you walk a place that’s part of your own story. I’ve stood inside the space where he built that cabin, imagining him shaping those boards, thinking those thoughts, refusing to let the world flatten him out. There’s something electric about standing where a stubborn soul once stood. You feel the charge in your feet.

Thoreau didn’t ask permission to live the way he believed. He just lived it. And maybe that’s why his birthday still matters. It’s a reminder that resistance isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s a quiet walk around a pond. Sometimes it’s a tax you refuse to pay. Sometimes it’s simply deciding your life is yours, and you’re going to live it with your eyes open.

On July 12, I think about Thoreau’s stubbornness, and I think about mine. Different wars, different taxes, different centuries—but the same old human urge to stand where your conscience tells you to stand.

And to keep walking.

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1976 — The Year I Came Home to a Place I’d Never Been Before

Boston — and the whole country — is celebrating 250 years of existence, and at the same time I’m celebrating 50 years since I first came to the place that has always felt like home. Half a century ago I walked into Boston for the first time, not knowing a damn thing about the city except that something in it pulled at me. Now, as the nation marks its big anniversary, I’m marking mine — fifty years in a place I had never been that somehow felt like I had never left.

Some time in the late days of ’75 or the early days of ’76, I crawled out of a produce dumpster in Baltimore. Yes, really. I was living at Jonah House then, part of the Community for Creative Non‑Violence, and my Sunday duties — along with my friend Phil Berrigan — were to head down to the produce terminal and gather all the discarded fruits and vegetables. The terminal had this rule: if anything hit the ground, it had to be thrown out. Didn’t matter if it was a perfect apple or a bruised banana. Somehow it never occurred to them to wash it and give it to folks who needed it.

So Sundays were our scavenger days. The terminal was closed, the gates quiet, and Phil and I could climb in and out of dumpsters at will. This wasn’t just picking things off the ground — though there was some of that — it was literal dumpster diving, hoping the bananas hadn’t liquefied and the tomatoes hadn’t turned into soup. We’d haul home whatever we could carry, wash it all, keep what Jonah House needed, then walk the neighborhood leaving bags of good food on doorsteps. We lived in one of the poorest sections of Baltimore, and this was one small way to push back against the madness.

Anyway, one day I heaved myself up out of that dumpster, and before I knew it, I was heaving myself out of another kind of dumpster — a dump called the Hillbilly Ranch, a country bar in Boston. I had decided to leave Jonah House, take my stepson Jimmy — the courts had given me custody — and make a new life in the town of the original revolutionaries.

The Hillbilly Ranch sat right on the edge of the Combat Zone, Boston’s old adult‑entertainment district — a few crooked blocks of strip joints, peep shows, porn theaters, massage parlors, and bars that didn’t pretend to be anything other than what they were. The Zone was neon and noise, hustlers and lost souls, cops who looked the other way, and a steady hum of trouble that never quite boiled over but never went cold either. It was the kind of place where the sidewalk felt alive under your feet, where you could smell beer, sweat, perfume, and desperation all mixing together in the humid night air. A carnival of the city’s underbelly, running full tilt just a stone’s throw from the Common.

And right there, tucked into that chaos, was the Hillbilly Ranch — the first place I walked into in Boston. A country‑western honky‑tonk with wagon wheels nailed to the walls, neon beer signs, wood paneling, and a floor that stuck to your boots. The crowd looked like someone shook the whole city and let whoever fell out land inside: cowboys who weren’t cowboys, bikers, hippies, sailors, Southie hard‑cases, and tourists who had no idea what they’d wandered into.

It occurs to me now that the movie Road House shows a few scenes that feel like cousins to what the Hillbilly Ranch really was — the neon, the noise, the rough crowd, the band trying to hold the room together while trouble simmered in the corners. But Road House was Hollywood danger, stuntmen and sugar glass, a fantasy of barroom violence dressed up with muscles and movie lighting. The Hillbilly Ranch was all that and more — no stuntmen, no retakes, no Patrick Swayze walking in to clean up the place. Just a real Boston honky‑tonk sitting on the edge of the Combat Zone, fed nightly by the Zone’s parade of characters.

The bathroom was a trough urinal — no stalls, no sinks, no privacy, no mercy. You went in, did your business, and hoped you didn’t slip.

But the real heartbeat of the Ranch was the music. Boston had a surprisingly strong country‑western undercurrent back then — not the polished Nashville stuff, but barroom country, Telecasters through cheap amps, fiddles that could cut glass. The Ranch was home base for the local pickers, the guys who played five nights a week and drank six. You’d get bluegrass pickers who’d show up with banjos and mandolins and turn the place into a barn dance, and honky‑tonk trios with drummers who looked like they’d slept in the van.

Touring road bands came through too — southern and midwestern groups grinding their way up the East Coast. Tight rhythm sections, steel guitar players who could make you cry, singers who’d lived every word they sang. They’d roll in, plug in, and blow the doors off the place.

And then there were the almost‑famous ones — former sidemen from bigger acts, songwriters who’d had one regional hit, guitar players who’d toured with someone you’d heard of. They’d show up, play their hearts out, and disappear into the night.

The crowd was part of the show. They leaned right up to the stage — bikers, sailors, hippies, Southie hard‑cases, and lost souls who’d wandered in from the Zone. If the band was good, the room lit up. If the band was bad, the room let them know. It was a working‑class music bar, and the musicians respected that.

It was loud, sweaty, raw — no fancy lighting, no sound engineer, just a stage, a few amps, and a band trying to win over a room full of characters. It was the kind of place where a fiddle solo could stop a fight, or start one.

And funny enough, for all the grit and neon and honky‑tonk chaos of the Hillbilly Ranch, my first Fourth of July in Boston was the exact opposite — standing out on the Esplanade at the Hatch Shell, watching Arthur Fiedler conduct what turned out to be his last performance at the Hatch Shell.

Arthur Fiedler wasn’t just a conductor — he was Boston’s heartbeat in a white jacket. He’d led the Pops for half a century, dragging classical music out of the velvet‑rope concert halls and putting it right in the hands of regular people. He made the Pops a Boston institution, a family tradition, a summer ritual. He believed music belonged to everyone — the dockworkers, the office clerks, the kids running around on the grass — and he played like he was giving the whole city a gift. When Fiedler stepped onto that Hatch Shell stage, Boston showed up. He was as much a part of the city as the Charles River itself.

One night I’m in a bar where a fiddle solo might start a fight, and a few months later I’m listening to the Boston Pops under the summer sky, the river breathing behind us, the whole city gathered like a family. Boston could swing from rough to beautiful without warning, and I was learning that fast.

And standing there that night, I knew I had found my new home — a place I had never been that somehow felt like I had never left.

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    June 16th Bloomsday

     A day when the literary faithful raise a glass — or several — to James Joyce, that beautiful madman who turned one ordinary day in Dublin into a whole universe of wandering, worrying, loving, lusting, loafing humanity.

    It’s funny, isn’t it, how a single date can become a pilgrimage. Most people wake up on June 16th thinking about coffee, bills, maybe the Red Line running late again. But Joyce fans? They wake up ready to walk the city like Leopold Bloom, ready to trace the steps of a man who spent most of his day just trying to get through it without losing his mind or his lunch.

    Joyce picked June 16th, 1904, because it was the day he first walked out with Nora Barnacle — the woman who’d become his anchor, his storm, his everything. Leave it to a writer to turn a first date into a literary holy day. The rest of us just hope we don’t spill something on our shirt.

    And yet here we are, more than a century later, with people all over the world reading Ulysses out loud, page by page, like some great communal chant. Dublin fills up with folks in straw hats and period clothes, reenacting scenes that half the world still pretends to understand. And the other half? They’re like me — they love the idea of Joyce, the music of the language, the wildness of it, even if they occasionally get lost somewhere between Sandymount Strand and the inside of Stephen Dedalus’s skull.

    But that’s the thing about Bloomsday. It’s not about “getting” Joyce. It’s about celebrating the messy, wandering, ordinary miracle of being alive for one more day. A day of errands and temptations and memories and small kindnesses. A day where you try to make sense of the world and mostly fail, but you keep walking anyway.

    And maybe that’s why Bloomsday hits me a little harder this year. Because most of life isn’t the big moments — it’s the walking around. The thinking too much. The bumping into people you didn’t expect to see. The quiet ache of remembering someone who’s gone. The sudden joy of a warm breeze off the water. The way a single day can hold a whole lifetime if you pay attention.

    So here’s to Joyce. Here’s to Bloom. Here’s to June 16th, 1904 — and every June 16th since.

    And here’s to all of us, still wandering our own cities, still trying to make sense of the map, still hoping for a little grace along the way.

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    White Hall Station

    Sometimes a chapter needs another walk around the block, and this one did. I went back, rewrote it, and finally gave a little mouse named Archibald MacLeash the explanation he deserved. If you’ve read the book, this fills in the cracks. If you haven’t, well—welcome to the neighborhood.

    The night before my induction, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, looking for answers. My heart pounded like I’d just run the 40‑yard dash. A drumbeat I wasn’t sure I could march to — too fast, too loud, too soft, and definitely its own rhythm. But I knew exactly where I did not want to march.

    I tried everything: counting breaths, replaying old football games, thinking of my girlfriend, even astral projection — maybe I could end up on some tropical island, safe and away. I wanted to be anywhere but, in that room, in that bed, wondering where I might be tomorrow night. But dread snuck in under the door and settled in my brain. I wasn’t afraid of dying. I was afraid of disappearing — of becoming a number, a uniform, a cog in a machine I didn’t believe in.

    The draft lottery — America’s twisted game show of fate — wouldn’t begin until 1969. But in 1964, the draft was still run by local boards, deferments reviewed by hand. At eighteen, I burned my college deferment card, thinking I was making a statement. I wrote letters to President Johnson and to my Staten Island draft board, asking to be reclassified 1‑A. You can’t refuse what you haven’t been offered. And I was tired of hiding behind loopholes, even if I hadn’t meant to hide in the first place.

    By ’69, they granted my wish. I was 1‑A — fit for service, next in line to toe the line, or not. Five years of business schools and seminaries had led me here. From the gridiron to leg irons.

    And then the morning came.

    I was up by 6 a.m. — not that I’d slept. I left a note for my mother saying I’d gone to visit friends. I wondered how long I’d really be gone. I took the bus to the Staten Island Ferry, crossed the Hudson, and walked the two longest blocks of my life to Whitehall Station. Even writing about it now, I can feel that god‑awful sickness in my stomach. I can’t do this.

    Fight or flight? Mine was freeze and sit. No exit. Just a heart pounding like a drumline on speed. I was about to jump off a cliff and couldn’t see the bottom. Compared to this, the Coney Island Parachute Jump was a kiddie ride.

    Whitehall Station sat in lower Manhattan like a bureaucratic bunker — the place where boys became soldiers or tried not to. It shut down in 1972, two days before my birthday, while I was in Danbury Federal Correctional Institution. I’d wanted it torn down. I’d done my best to see that happen.

    As I climbed the steps, I saw Mr. Harold Jones waiting outside. My eighth‑grade science teacher — but more than that. Over the years, he’d become my confidant, the one adult who understood what I was feeling. He made science feel like storytelling, helped along by a fictional mouse named Archibald MacLeish who lived in his coat closet. I never saw him, but I saw him. Still do.

    Mr. Jones said he named the mouse Archibald MacLeish after the poet — “because even a mouse can carry big ideas,” he told me once, tapping his temple like he was winding up a thought. MacLeish wrote about truth, about standing your ground when the world tries to bend you, about the kind of dissent that isn’t loud or showy but stubborn and necessary. He believed democracy wasn’t something you admired from a distance — it was something you practiced, even when it cost you. Jones figured a mouse could teach eighth‑graders more about courage and conscience than any textbook. The beret, the cane, the red bandana — that was all me. That’s how I pictured him: a tiny philosopher with a rebel’s wardrobe, the kind of creature who’d whisper, Don’t let them turn you into something you’re not. Archibald showed up whenever I needed him — not as a hallucination, not as a joke, but as a reminder that dissent can be quiet, steady, and small, and still shake the world.

    Mr. Jones didn’t say much that morning. He didn’t have to. He told me to stay who I was. Said it was something to be proud of.

    Inside, the induction ceremony began. The room smelled of sweat. The air was thick with the breath of boys pretending not to shake. The recruiter’s voice was flat, rehearsed, like he’d stopped listening years ago.

    “Please repeat after me…”

    “I do solemnly swear…”

    Repeat. Repeat? Hell, I could barely breathe.

    “…that I will bear true faith…”

    And suddenly I wasn’t in Whitehall anymore. I was back on the football field, hearing my coach yell, “Go in hell‑bent for leather, Little Sandy!” My dad was Big Sandy. The coach used that nickname to rile me up. Hell‑bent for leather — without fear.

    My heart picked up the chant until it drowned out everything else.

    Then came the words: Step forward.

    I sat down.

    The recruiter blinked, confused. Thought I was sick. I stood, breathed, sat again.

    “I’m not moving,” I said, though I wasn’t sure I could even if I wanted to.

    The sergeant’s face turned fire‑engine red. My heart was a jackhammer. I was frozen in defiance — or fear. Maybe both. I prayed he wouldn’t hit me. If he did, I wasn’t sure I could stop myself from hitting back. I may be a peacenik, but I know myself. Anger lives in me too. If I struck him, I wouldn’t be going to jail for trying to end a war, but for starting one.

    Two MPs grabbed me like a sack of potatoes and hauled me to a holding cell. I expected that part. I was prepared. No blows were thrown. An Army lawyer came in to make sure I knew what I was doing. I asked if he knew what he was doing — and what he was part of. He accepted my yes and left.

    Then came the police car, the ride to Staten Island, and my first night in jail. Five miles from the gridiron. A lifetime away.

    As they carried me out of Whitehall, I refused to walk — part of my plan for total non‑cooperation. Mr. Jones stood on the grimy sidewalk. He smiled. Gave me a thumbs‑up. I flashed him a peace sign from between a cop’s holster and his arm.

    And behind him — I swear — I saw Archibald MacLeish strutting down the sidewalk, beret tilted, cane tapping a rhythm only I could hear. He paused near the induction center door, tipped his hat, and whispered, “Courage isn’t loud. It’s the quiet refusal.” Then he vanished into the crowd.

    Mr. Jones arranged to bail me out, though I was released on my own recognizance. I spent the rest of the day at his home — resting, recovering, trying to make sense of what had just happened. And what would happen next. To my mother, I was simply visiting Mr. Jones. I was old enough to say, “Don’t call my parents,” and the authorities obliged.

    A trial date was set for April. The weeks leading up to it blurred into paperwork, legal advice, friends’ advice, and panic. I walked Manhattan like I always had, but now I memorized the cracks in the sidewalk, the rhythm of subway trains, the smell of roasted peanuts from corner carts — anything to anchor me.

    Oddly, I’d always found the Financial District peaceful on a Sunday morning. Wall Street’s insanity gave way to silence. I walked it a few times in those last days. And Times Square — the lights of Broadway weren’t going to shine on me, but they still shine inside my memory. So do the beaches of Staten Island.

    I didn’t know what I was looking for. Only that it wasn’t in New York anymore.

    And so the city’s noise faded behind me. The cracks in the sidewalks, the drumbeat of the subway, even Broadway’s lights became part of a memory I carried but could no longer live inside.

    What I needed was silence. Steadiness. A place where the ground didn’t demand allegiance.

    Somewhere in the back of my mind, I could still hear Archibald’s cane tapping — that quiet rhythm he kept for me when I couldn’t keep one for myself. He’d been at Whitehall, and he’d be on the mountain too. Courage travels light.

    Emily’s mountain was waiting. Quiet, immovable, patient — just like she was — offering refuge without question.

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    Archibald the Mystical Mouse

    I’ve been thinking since March 5th of 2026, when I published my book, that I should rewrite it — not because I expect sales to suddenly skyrocket, but because I left out some things, explanations that would have mattered. Like the fact that I have this mystical mouse named Archibald MacLeish who shows up in the beginning. I just assumed everyone would sort of get it, and then it started occurring to me, over and over again, that no, not everyone does get it. What’s the big deal about the mouse?

    So let me say it plainly.

    In my book, I talk about this make‑believe mouse named Archibald MacLeish. He’s a small, mystical presence who slips in and out of the story, but the name itself comes from something real in my life. Back in school, my science teacher kept a classroom mouse, and he named that little creature Archibald MacLeish. At the time, I didn’t know much about the man behind the name, but my teacher did — and he believed in giving things names that meant something.

    Later, I learned who the real Archibald MacLeish was — an American poet who wrote about democracy as something you do, not something you admire from a distance. He believed in dissent, in thinking for yourself, in the dignity of choosing your own path.

    So the mouse in my book is that mouse — the one supporting my dissent. Not just the classroom mouse, and not just the poet, but the whole chain of belief behind it: a teacher who saw something in me, a poet who stood for freedom of thought, and a reminder that even the smallest presence can carry a big idea.

    That’s the namesake. That’s the reason. That’s why the mouse is Archibald MacLeish. That’s why he shows up at the induction center.

    And I should have explained that as an introduction to the little guy — why he’s there and given him the honor and the dues he deserved. I think folks would have felt the depth of his presence.

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    A Rambling Harbor Note for Allen Ginsberg’s Born today May 3rd, 1926

    There are mornings in Rambling Harbor when the gulls sound like they’re arguing about poetry — loud, insistent, half‑mad, and absolutely convinced they’ve got the line that’ll crack open the universe. And on a day like this, with the tide dragging its feet and the coffee tasting like it’s been through a few revolutions of its own, I find myself thinking about Allen Ginsberg, born in 1926, long before “flower power” became a bumper sticker or a punchline.

    Ginsberg didn’t invent the sixties, but he sure as hell lit the pilot light. The man could walk into a room and suddenly everyone was talking louder, thinking stranger, feeling braver. He had that way of seeing the world — cracked, luminous, holy in its brokenness — and he didn’t apologize for any of it. Why would he. The whole point was to not apologize.

    I imagine him wandering into Rambling Harbor, beard catching the sea breeze, eyes scanning the horizon like he expected a revelation to come rolling in on the next wave. And maybe it would. This place has a habit of handing you truths you didn’t ask for. Sometimes they’re gentle. Sometimes they hit like a wet rope across the knuckles.

    He’d probably stand on the seawall, muttering lines to himself, something about angels and madness and the way America keeps trying to outrun its own shadow. And the old-timers down by the bait shop would look up, squint, and say, “Who’s the guy talking to the ocean?” And someone else would shrug and say, “Poet, probably,” and that would be enough.

    Because around here, we know a thing or two about people who talk to things that don’t talk back.

    Ginsberg coined “flower power,” but he also carried the weight of the world in his chest. He saw the beauty and the rot, the promise and the poison, and he wrote it all down like he was afraid the country might forget itself if he didn’t keep reminding it. And maybe he was right. Maybe we still need reminding.

    So on his birthday, I raise a mug — chipped, stained, honest — to the man who howled at the machinery and dared it to howl back. To the poet who believed the world could be better if we just cracked our hearts open wide enough. To the stubborn, wild, inconvenient hope of it all.

    And here in Rambling Harbor, where the wind never quite settles and the stories never quite end, that feels like something worth celebrating.

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    Dan Sanders — Born May 20

    I write about people’s birthdays, so I figured I’d give this guy a try.

    Dan Sanders was born on May 20 in Knoxville, Tennessee, and before he knew much of anything he was hauled into the strange hum of Oak Ridge — the Atomic City, where the sidewalks were clean, the secrets were thick, and the grown‑ups talked in half‑sentences. He spent his first ten years there, learning early that the world doesn’t always tell you the truth straight on.

    Then came the moves, one after another, the kind of drifting that teaches a kid to keep his eyes open and his back to the wall. Eventually he landed in New York City with his parents, a place loud enough to either swallow you whole or teach you how to stand your ground. He chose standing.

    When the Vietnam War came calling, he not only didn’t answer — he sent a resounding NO echoing through the induction center, loud enough that the walls probably still remember it. And the country made him pay for that honesty. He spent time in federal prison for refusing the war, learning a different kind of geography: steel bars, long nights, and the strange brotherhood of men who wouldn’t bend. It didn’t break him. It sharpened him.

    He made his way from New York to Boston, where he built a quieter life without ever losing the grit of where he came from. Over the years he became a broadcaster, a writer, a guy who pays attention to the small moments most people walk right past. His work — whether memoir, poetry, or the stories he tells out loud — carries that mix of blunt honesty and dry wit that only comes from a life actually lived, not imagined.

    Born on this day, May 20, Dan Sanders grew up between the secrets of Oak Ridge, the chaos of New York, the hard lessons of prison, and the hard‑earned calm of Boston — carrying all of it in the way he writes, remembers, and tells the truth as he sees it.

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    Self-Promotion

    Fifty‑five of you have hit that “subscribe” button, and I’m grateful for every one of you. Maybe you’re here for the stories, maybe for the memories, maybe because something I wrote once made you stop and think. Whatever brought you here, I’m glad you’re still with me.

    Lately I’ve been thinking about how strange it is to promote yourself. It feels like standing on a street corner with a cardboard sign that says, “I wrote a thing, would you mind reading it?” And yet here I am again, doing exactly that.

    I’ve spent a lifetime telling stories — on the air, on the page, in the quiet corners of my mind — and somehow they keep spilling out. Some of them turn into poems. Some turn into books. Some just sit with me until they decide what they want to be. But every time I share one, I feel a little less alone in the world, and maybe you do too.

    So this is me, waving from the dock, saying thank you for sticking around. Thank you for reading, for listening, for letting me ramble. If something I write makes you think, or laugh, or remember something you thought you’d forgotten, then this whole strange exercise in self‑promotion is worth it.

    And just so there’s no confusion: the link below goes to my memoir — ten years of my life, the most dramatic ones — gathered into a book I’m proud of.

    I’ll keep walking through my mind. You keep stopping by when you can. Seems like a fair deal.

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    Wavy Gravy Was Born Today

    Some people arrive in this world like a whisper. Wavy Gravy showed up like a marching band that took a wrong turn and decided to stay.

    Born on this day in 1936, back when the world was still in black‑and‑white, he somehow grew into one of the most colorful human beings to ever wander through the American story. Hugh Romney was the name on the paperwork, but the universe had other plans. It needed a jester. A peacekeeper. A clown with a conscience. A man who could talk down a crowd of 400,000 hungry, muddy, half‑mad festival‑goers at Woodstock with nothing but a microphone and a grin.

    He fed people. He calmed people. He made them laugh when they were ready to break. He turned compassion into a kind of performance art, and he never stopped believing that humor could be a tool for survival. The Hog Farm, the Seva Foundation, the endless parade of red noses and tie‑dye — it was all part of the same mission: make the world a little lighter, a little kinder, a little more human.

    Wavy Gravy reminds us that you can take the work seriously without taking yourself seriously. That mischief can be mercy. That joy can be a form of resistance. And that sometimes the best way to keep the peace is to show up dressed like a psychedelic Santa Claus and tell everyone it’s going to be okay.

    On the day he was born, the universe clearly decided it needed more color. And all these years later, we’re still living in the glow.

    From Rambling Harbor, where the tide rolls in with its own kind of cosmic joke, I tip my hat to the man who proved you can change the world with a laugh and a ladle.

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