Category Archives: Postcards

Postcards

Following footsteps …

About a month ago I signed me and my daughter up for the Woodruff 5K in Connellsville.

Had never run it before.

Signed us up for a gajillion reasons … most having to do with the race’s roots.

The run/walk honors the legacy of Connellsville native John Woodruff, who won a gold medal in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the games where Jesse Owens famously won four golds.  

I grew up in Uniontown, which neighbors Connellsville in Fayette County. After college I worked a couple years in the sports department of the local newspaper. My colleague, Jim, was a lifelong Connellsville resident and former history teacher who loved all things track and field. I remember he always made sure the Woodruff results ran in their entirety in the sports section. I appreciated how he always referred to the race’s namesake as “Mr. Woodruff.”

I didn’t take up running until later in life. I can’t remember when or even why I started. 

I’ve come to appreciate running for the same reasons that I write … for the medicine of it. I’m not fast in either endeavor, caring less about finish lines than what I might notice along the way.

Since I had never run the Woodruff, I thought it’d be a cool hometown-y experience, a neat way to honor the legacy of one Connellsville’s favorite sons … and an even cooler summertime thing to share with my daughter, who recently picked up running. 

While we were both looking forward to the race, we also acknowledged that a mid-week race at 7:30 p.m., an hour’s drive from where we live, in the dead of summer … might present some logistical challenges. 

The day before last week’s race, peeking at the mid-80’s, high-humidity forecast, Emma exercised discretion and opted out (wisely for her). 

I was leaning towards doing the same. I can easily talk myself out of things when I’m by myself. 

Fortunately, my son volunteered to step in for his sister.

I was both glad and grateful he did.

So last Wednesday after work we made the hour’s drive to Connellsville, parking near Falcon Stadium, where we picked up our bibs. I asked the ladies at the race tables if Peter could sub in for his pre-registered sister. No problem, they said, and didn’t even bother switching their names in the system. “If you win a medal, it’ll be as Emma,” one of the ladies told him with a smile. 

We stretched ourselves out after our long drive before walking the couple blocks up the road to the starting point. 

Since it was my first time participating, I had messaged my friend Jamie earlier in the week. Jamie and I met way back in elementary school. She lives in Connellsville and has both run and walked the Woodruff a bunch of times (in addition to running double-digit marathons). 

Jamie let me know that the course was a bit hilly, but that it finished with a lap around the track at Falcon Field. 

Aside from that, I didn’t bother looking up the race route.

Figured I’d just follow behind the fast people.

Kinda’ glad I didn’t look up the course map, as it might have convinced me to follow in Emma’s footsteps and opt out. 

The first half of the race is a lot of uphill through neighborhoods around town.

So I was grateful when I found my pacer just a few minutes after starting. 

She was locked in. 

Professional race drip. 

Ear buds bluetoothed to her watch, at which she stole occasional glances, checking her pace … which was reasonable enough. 

It was my friend Jamie.

Though we trade messages sometimes, we haven’t seen each other in person in probably 15 years. 

I didn’t go out of my way to say hello when I saw her. 

Didn’t quite seem like the time or place to reminisce about, you know, Mrs. Schiffbauer’s second-grade glass. 

Plus I needed all my breath for the frickin’ hills. 

Also, she ran ahead of me pretty much the whole time. 

The only times we changed places was when she geared down into her practiced race-walker stride. 

Which I deduced was an intentional part of her race strategy. 

I didn’t have a strategy … aside from praying the goddamn hills would eventually start sloping the other way.

The heat and the hills can sure humble a person’s stride.  

But there are gifts in the humbling. 

Being in no great hurry gave me a chance to truly appreciate the course’s hometown-y-ness. 

Owing to the high temps and heavy humidity, there weren’t a lot of spectators out.

But a few residents stood in their yards with garden hoses … showering anyone interested in swinging wide to catch some spray. 

Growing up in Uniontown we ran under a lot of summer hoses. 

It was a blessing to be reminded what that feels like.

Eventually, (read: mercifully) the hills did relent, and Falcon Field came into view in front of me. 

I started to pick up speed when I hit the downhill leading to the old stadium, by which I mean I succumbed to physics and gravity. 

However, as my stride got longer and bouncier, it jostled might rear ear bud loose, causing it to tumble to the ground right before I reached the stadium’s gate. 

Since there were no, um, Olympic medals on the line, I decided I’d rather lose a few seconds than an ear bud … so I turned around retrieved it, and turned back around to enter Falcon Field. 

I have to say … it’s a pretty cool thing slow jogging into a stadium, especially after all the hills and heat … and asking your body for whatever it has left. 

Which wasn’t much in my case, but still. 

After crossing the finish line, I sought out my son on the midfield. He asked me if I’d had a popsicle yet, pointing to the concession stand. 

Whereupon the part of my heart that’s still young was reminded how good a grape popsicle tastes in summer. 

After catching my breath, I went looking for the only other two participants I knew: Jamie and Jim. 

Incidentally, they are friends with each other, having coincidentally met years ago, of all places, at the Woodruff’s finish line. 

I learned that Jamie had already gone back home to change. I texted her congratulations. 

“We ran with the hearts of (Areford) Colts,” I wrote, a nod to our old elementary school mascot.  

I spied Jim after he finished the walker’s portion of the race. 

I confessed to him that he was among the reasons I signed up … as I wanted to congratulate him in person on his retirement from the paper a year or so ago. In his farewell column, he actually mentioned me by name, thanking me for training him when he joined. 

Which says as much about him as it does me.

I’ve always said that the sports department should build a statue to Jim. 

Jim loved covering high school track and field. 

Volunteered for every assignment. 

Which made him the MVP of the sports department as far as I was concerned. 

For me covering high school track and field meant standing around for several hours and then flailing in vain trying to make “she ran fast,” and “he threw far” sound interesting across 15 inches of copy.

Jim had a heart for it, which made him great at it. 

I introduced Jim to my son, Peter, mentioning how it was his first Woodruff, too, and how he had written a report on its namesake way back in elementary school. 

“Oh, did you see the tree?” 

“Oh my gosh!” I said out loud. 

I’d forgotten all about The Tree. 

Which coaxed a fresh history lesson on Mr. Woodruff from my former sportswriting colleague.  

Jim recounted how the gold medalists from the Berlin Olympics in 1936 were each gifted an oak tree seedling. 

And how Mr. Woodruff brought his home to Connellsville. How it was originally planted at the high school’s former site. The story goes that one of the teachers at the high school was afraid the site might be too confining for the tree to flourish, and so it was re-planted at a Carnegie Library a block away. 

It was eventually moved to the north end of Falcon stadium, where it currently stands strong, 90 years after Berlin. 

If I ever knew about the tree’s full backstory, I’d forgotten it.

Just like I’d forgotten the backstory of Mr. Woodruff’s gold medal. 

I had to look it up to remind myself that he won gold in the 800 meters.

Whereupon I learned that Mr. Woodruff was one of 18 African American athletes representing the United States in Berlin in 1936. 

And that half of the 18 won gold medals, disproving Hitler’s theory regarding Aryan supremacy.  

In fact, Mr. Woodruff was the first African American to win gold at the 1936 games. 

And he did so in a performance that is still celebrated today as one of the greatest comebacks in track and field history. 

Which I made myself look up.  

In the backstretch of the first lap, he found himself boxed in on all sides, owing to the leader’s somewhat sluggish pace. As he hugged the inside lane, there were runners in front of him, to his side, and behind him.

I read a couple accounts that mentioned that Mr. Woodruff was very mindful of not accidentally bumping any of the other runners.

There was a great deal of controversy at the time about the black athletes’ participation in the games, and it’s been written that Mr. Woodruff did not wish to give the judges any excuse for disqualifying him for incidental contact with other runners. 

So he did the most extraordinary thing an Olympic sprinter running the 800 could do. 

He stopped. 

Actually slowed down to let others pass him … so he could swing to an outside lane. 

So that, with nothing but open ground in front of him, he could hit his legendary stride. 

Legendary.

Standing a bit north of 6’3” he possessed a stride nine feet in length, which earned him the nickname, “Long John Woodruff.”

He zoomed to the front of the field and held on for the gold.  

If I ever knew any of the above, I’d forgotten it. 

Like the oak that bears his name, his performance is still an extraordinary thing to behold 90 years later.

While looking it up (you should too) I also learned that, at the time of the Olympics, Mr. Woodruff was a freshman at the University of Pittsburgh, which did not allow black students to live on campus at the time. So he lived at the local YMCA. That he had to run a greater distance — taking the outside lane — than his Olympic competition seems even more poignant in that light. 

After the Olympics he returned home to both a hero’s welcome — celebrated by a parade of over 10,000 — and a still-segregated United States. Before graduating from Pitt, he won NCAA titles in 1937, 1938 and 1939 in the 880-yard run. After graduating he went on to a distinguished military career.

Having grown up in Fayette County, I’m embarrassed that I did not know all of that. 

But like I said, I appreciate running for the same reasons that I write. 

I’m more concerned with what I might notice along the way rather than how long it takes me to finish. 

There are gifts in the humbling.

__

At Jim’s post-race suggestion, my son and I walked over to The Tree. 

There’s a poetry to the tree’s story, especially how it moved from its original location when it was discovered it didn’t have enough room to flourish. 

Just like how Mr. Woodruff won his gold medal.

Standing in the shade of a 90-year-old oak tree grown from soil that Nazis once called home, I couldn’t help but think about … roots. 

About getting to trace roads once run by an Olympic athlete who grew up not far from where I did, but had to travel greater distances for everything he accomplished in life.

About getting to follow in the footsteps of an old friend from elementary school who knows where the local hills are and what to do with them.

About getting to share new old roads with my son while remembering how good grape popsicles taste in the summertime. 

I thought about all the things I have yet to learn about the few things I know. 

By the time we left the stadium and returned to the car, I knew this, though. 

If I get to do it all over again next year, I know what my race strategy will be. 

When I see neighbors in their yards spraying garden hoses into the street …

… I will slow down. 

And let others pass me before I swing to the other side of the road. 

And as I take my time under the cool spray,  I will remember Mr. Woodruff … and remind the piece of my heart that is still young to be proud of where it comes from. 

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Postcards

Standing in the Shadow …

I wanted to be outside this morning, before things got too hot.

Chose the cemetery for a couple reasons.

Shade, for one. Lots of trees.

I like the ups and downs, too. Lets you choose your own adventure, depending on whatever ambitions you bring with you.

I’ve also found that it’s just a good space for reflection … remembering … reminding oneself.

I park in a small pull over that can fit three or four cars, depending. Was still stretching out when someone pulled in next to me. I saw it was an older fella. I was going to wish him a Happy Fourth, but he was taking his time getting out of his car, so I just set off.

The route I usually choose starts with a downhill (I like to be kind to myself), and then a short climb under a canopy of pines, from where it drops a little before flattening out to a roundabout, where I will just do some loops for some easy distance, before hitting a straightaway that takes me past where I parked.

Midway through my first loop, I saw the gentleman who had parked next to me. I’m bad at guessing ages, but based on his silver hair, I’d put him a bit north of 70. He’s shorter in stature, but solid.

He walks with two walking poles.

Not fast, but persistent.

I waved as we passed.

“It’s good to be outside on the Fourth of July isn’t it?” I said.

“Yes it is,” he said.

And then I did this thing that I do sometimes, when I’m out for a run and encounter elders doing their outdoor things.

It might be a by-product of the endocannabinoids that get released in my brain when I’m moving. I’ve noticed that they like to take over my broadcast system sometimes.

I turned back around and said, “I just have to say … you inspire me.”

He looked up at me and smiled, surprised.

“I just have walking sticks,” he said, somewhat sheepishly.

And I said the true thing that I say sometimes.

In so many words, that there is no such thing as ‘just.’

“Well, I hope to live as long and be as wise as you someday, and get to enjoy being outside on the Fourth of July.”

“Well, I am enjoying it,” he confessed.

Then, for good measure, my endocannabinoids bid him adieu with a, “God bless ya’ sir.”

And we went on our respective ways.

Continuing past where I parked, there’s a straightaway that passes in front of the cemetery’s crematorium — or what my daughter affectionately termed the “Easy-Bake” during our Covid walks — and up a hill where I like to take a right and descend to another small roundabout that overlooks the veterans’ cemetery.

In the lead-up to Memorial Day, they put flags on all the markers and gravestones, and leave them up through the summer. The flags catch the natural breezes of the hill, and are always fluttering, which I always find moving as I am moving.

Among the things I appreciate about the fluttering flags is how they invite your attention.

“Looky here,” they say.

Which reminds me that the flags’ stars and stripes aren’t meant to be the stars.

What’s sacred is the ground beneath them.

This past Memorial Day I remember pausing at the roundabout. For some reason I felt compelled to slowly scan from right to left across the field to try and register each one of the flags on each one of the headstones.

Felt like a respectful thing to do.

I’m not sure how many veterans are buried there … a couple hundred at least.

As I scanned, it occurred to me how the graves spanned across many generations, commemorating service personnel from different places, backgrounds and homes. Who all answered and honored the same call, each for their own reasons, if they had a choice. Whose lives were probably all changed in different and complicated and meaningful ways — some ended — by their experiences in uniform.

The flags always catch me the way the breeze catches them.

Passing by them this morning, I felt compelled to capture the scene … for posterity.

Felt like a respectful thing to do.

I was barely a couple seconds into filming when the sun peeked from behind a cloud and cast the large flag behind me that anchors the overlook.

And all of a sudden I was standing in the big flag’s shadow …

… overlooking a Veterans’ cemetery …

… in a small town named for the man who once referred to the country’s then-new government as “the last great experiment, for promoting human happiness,” …

… on the Fourth of July of that experiment’s 250th birthday.

Standing still in the shadow of all of that, I found myself deeply moved.

And so I did my best to reflect … to remember … to remind myself.

My hunch — and this might have been the endocannabinoids talking — was that not many of the souls buried in front of me spent a great deal of time patting themselves on the back. That, when their service was done, they likely appreciated that what they came back to — country-wise and life-wise — was still very much a work-in-progress. With just as much work to do as had been done.

I’m hoping that each one of ‘em at least took a measure of pride in having done their small part in keeping it going and giving the whole experiment a chance.

After taking a moment to pay my respects … I picked up my stride again … just grateful to all those who came before me for the gift of being outside on the Fourth of July before it gets too hot.

And I said the true thing that I say sometimes.

In so many words, that there is no such thing as ‘just.’

May this experiment live long enough to get to be as wise as our small town’s namesake and country’s first president.

May we re-commit to the goal of promoting human happiness for all and co-create a world that promises no more and no less than what a good cemetery does — all the ups and downs you want, but letting you choose your own adventure, depending on whatever ambitions you bring with you.

May we close the gap between the truths and unalienable rights that Jefferson knew were self-evident to our creator, but still very much work-in-progress to those of us standing in our creator’s shadow.

And even if we don’t live long enough to see its fullest manifestation, may we at least persist long and far enough to inspire younger striders with our walking sticks.

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People / Places, Postcards

Moving Mountains …

Been making a humble Thursday morning practice of popping in the coffee shop down the road before work.

Just to stand in line for a cortado and sit for a few minutes.

In between the standing and sitting, I always seem to find something to fill my cup. 

This past Thursday there wasn’t much of a line, so I stepped to the front, ordered, and skooched to the left to wait. 

The waiting area’s directly in front of where the barista prepares the orders. 

I’m careful not to stare.

But I do try to catch a glimpse when they’re doing the pouring. 

I find all artful pourers mesmerizing. 

The person working Thursday is new-ish. 

Been there maybe a couple months. 

Didn’t know her name. 

Just her smile.  

She began with the requisite two shots of espresso. 

Then moved to the milk.

I’m always curious to see if a barista trusts in gravity and surface tension to do their jobs … and fills the cup beyond its edge.

It’s always magic to me to bear witness to how the molecules grab on to one another, and keep each other from flowing away and spilling.

I find a hope in that.

Like nature’s just waiting for us to learn from its example.   

I’ve noticed that some baristas favor the control of holding the cup in one hand to bring the spout closer … while others place the cup on the counter to keep a steady target. 

The delicacy of the draw gets me every time.

The mere idea of painting with a brush that only ever gets so close to its canvas. 

Seems prayerful to me. 

Any distance between source and vessel requires a measure of faith.

I’ve learned that the precise amount required has little to do with how great or small the distance.   

Hers was one fluid motion into the countered cup. 

But then, she did this thing. 

Post-pour, she reached for a spoon. 

I watched as she used it to gently skooch some of the foam where she wanted it to go. 

My immediate thought was that maybe things initially didn’t turn out the way she wanted.

As she skimmed the surface, she cupped her empty left hand parallel to her right … as if protecting a flickering match from the wind.

Her left hand had no practical purpose, other than maybe just to let the right know it was rooting for it. 

By which I mean it may have had the most important job of all. 

Satisfied, she put the spoon down and ushered my cup forward to let me know it was ready.

“I’ve never seen anyone do that … with the spoon,” I confessed. 

“I do it all the time,” she said. “That’s my move.”

So, she had made no mistake. 

She just wasn’t done moving mountains. 

I asked her her name. 

“Jaye,” she said.

“We’ll call it the ‘Jaye,’” I said. 

“Aww, thank you,” she smiled, also a signature move.

It was only then that I looked down … to see that she had used the spoon to crack a tiny heart open. 

By which I mean she used the spoon to crack my tiny heart open.

 

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Postcards, Righteous riffs

The Sauce Boss ….

Whenever I am asked to meet with a new employee, I always start with the most important question. 

I mean THE most important question. 

I preface it by letting the person know that I’m about to ask them the most important question that they will be asked that day. 

Possibly, the most important question they will be asked all week. 

I let them know in advance that the question is cosmic in its scope.

Then I hit ’em with it.

“What is the greatest pizza of all time?” 

I then take a minute to make sure they fully understand the question’s magnitude. 

“In your expert opinion, across the hundreds of assemblages of crust, sauce and toppings you have experienced in the entirety of your illustrious, pizza-eating career … what is the GOAT?”

As they deliberate, I invite them to give thought to why. 

What is it about it that makes it the greatest of all time? 

The ingredients? 

Where or how the ingredients are sourced? Is it the style? The type of crust? The manner in which it’s prepared? Is it the individuals who make it? The ambience in which they experience it? Where it’s located? Is it the company they experience it with? Perhaps it’s the time in their life that they first encountered it?

Over the years, I’ve asked the question at least a hundred times.

Everyone answers differently, but they all have one thing in common. 

The way their face lights up when they tell me. 

You should see how such love lives on their faces. 

__

So, I’m waiting out a Sunday late-morning flight delay at the Kansas City airport yesterday. 

Young fella sitting next to me sees me holding a small print of a cat in a cowboy costume that some friends (who know me well) gave me that morning. 

Asks me about it. 

I tell him. 

Then he asks me where I’m going. 

I answer and, out of politeness, ask him the same.  

He tells me he’s going to Paris for 82 days, to intern for a ‘church-planting’ organization … scattering seeds in France. 

Couple minutes later, he’s asking me if I know Jesus, and whether I’ve accepted him as the only way to salvation. 

In so many words. 

I mean, soooo many words.

Meanwhile, the voice in my head starts audibly exhaling in discomfort, “Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…” while rubbing the bridge of its metaphorical nose.  

I’m just a guy admiring a print of a cat in a cowboy costume here.

Meanwhile my concerned neighbor is talking all about sin and eternity … with much conviction.

Which I respect both the act and substance of. 

He’s going to make a great intern. 

Says that our days are not guaranteed. Anything can happen. 

“This might be the last flight we ever take,” he says, gesturing to the door to the jetway. 

I don’t disagree. 

He mentions that Jesus is coming back.

Soon.

I suppress the urge to mention that history is littered with a lot of humans who over-estimated their gifts for guesstimating that particular arrival time.

He starts peppering me with a bunch of questions. 

And keeps pressing me for a verbal … like a flight attendant prompting an exit row passenger. 

Meanwhile, all I can hear is Paul whispering in my ear “… with gentleness and respect.”

I genuinely don’t want to be disrespectful. 

For all I know, God might be eavesdropping on his intern.  

I also don’t want to get deep … meaning the granularity of it. 

But I do want to get deep … meaning the heart of it. 

And I know that if I choose the latter, he’s just going to want to further litigate the former. 

But I couldn’t help myself.

So I answered him … by saying that I have a wise friend who knows more chapter and verse than I ever will. 

And that the wisest thing I have ever heard him utter isn’t a Bible verse.

When someone asked him a question he didn’t have an answer for, my wise friend said that he wasn’t sure.

And added, “I’m OK with God knowing more than I do.” 

Which pretty much sums up my faith right now.

It’s taken me a while to get to this cruising altitude. 

I can’t tell you exactly how close I am to any destination.

There are lots of clouds when I look up.

I’m not even sure how accurate my heading is … as I tend to overestimate the scale of things. 

I’m just trying to hold things steady enough to eventually give me a better vantage point.  

Which is no small accomplishment, given my fear of heights and poor sense of direction. 

But I do have some people in my life right now who are generous in sharing their coordinates with me. More experienced navigators who have logged a lot more miles, spent more time with the map, and seen a lot more of the world than I have. Best of all, they are generous in sharing the detours and emergency landings they’ve made … in hopes that I either avoid, or at the very least, take different ones. 

God bless bound-for-Paris Josoo (“rhymes with ‘tofu’” as he introduced himself), but I don’t think I gave him the exit row answer he and his pilot were hoping for. 

But his soon-to-be-summer employer should know that it wasn’t for a lack of intention on his part. 

After a few minutes, I needed to detangle, so I got up to stand where the boarding lines were about to form.

I confess to you that I hoped that neither God nor United Airlines sat us next to each other on the plane. 

But sitting and sifting here, though … I kinda’ regret praying for that. 

Because I just thought of something I wished I would’ve asked Josoo. 

I would have asked him to talk to me about love. 

About love that rejoices in truth. 

A love that always protects. 

Always trusts. 

A love that in spite of everything … still hopes and perseveres. 

I’d ask him to talk to me about love so Great.

Love that never fails … even when all other prophecies cease, all tongues still, and all other knowledge passes away. 

A love whose planes never run late. 

___

By which I mean … I would have liked to ask him The Most Important Question.

At least the most important one anyone would ask him that day, if not over the next 82. 

I would’ve asked him about the greatest pizza of all time. 

I’d take a good minute to make sure he fully understood the question. 

So I could learn what, in his expert, pizza-eating opinion makes it the greatest … out of all the hundreds of combinations that he’s experienced in his illustrious, pizza-eating career.  

Just so I could see how love lives on his face, and feel how it lives in his heart.

Trust me … I would rejoice in learning of his personal relationship with pizza.

Which would expand my humble understanding of how crust, sauce and toppings can go together. 

And all I know for certain is that he would answer the same question differently than anyone else I’ve ever asked.

And that, by the end, I would likely be hungry to experience pizza the way he experiences pizza.  

And if the Spirit was really moving within me, I might even ask him his perspective when it comes to anchovies.

Not to convince him, mind you.  

Just to see if we had any common ground there. 

All of which to say … I’m no theologian. 

I’m content knowing that if there is a God … she probably looks at me the same way I look at prints of cats in cowboy costumes.

But it’s hard for me to imagine that she cares all that much that I don’t like crust. 

My wife Karry doesn’t mind. 

I let her have mine.

Heck, maybe it makes God happier to see us sharing. 

And I would never deign to speak for her, but I imagine that if God made us in her image, then she probably autonomically smiles when she sees how our faces light up when talking about the greatest pizza of all-time. 

Heck, she’s probably just waiting for us to ask her The Important Question.

So she can reply, in so many words, “Have you ever tried it with the Jesus sauce?” 

So that we can see how a love that hopes all things … lives on her face.

So that we might truly know the GOAT.  

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Fathers and Sons, Postcards, Righteous riffs

Fast Forward …

After driving the six hours home from Philly last Sunday, I went over to the high school track … just to give my legs a stretch. 

My son got there a few minutes before me, fresh from running some errands. 

When we are at the track together, we run separately.

He’s much faster. Keeps track of his times and such. 

Me … I just go for the medicine of it. 

The track was empty when we arrived, but after a bit I spied a couple walking down the hill. From a distance I recognized a retired teacher from the middle school. I see her walking at the cemetery sometimes too, always with a spring in her step, a smile and a kind word.

All of which she possessed when she taught. Both of our kids had her for reading. 

Whenever I see Mrs. Labella my memory goes back to our son’s first year of middle school … when Karry and I signed up for parent teacher conferences. 

That was … what? A dozen years ago now? Thirteen?

I say this lovingly, but Peter was a bit of a handful back then … at least from our side of the equation. 

Whatever internal motor was responsible for his initiative … revved very low. 

Most of his homework got done with Karry’s foot in close proximity to his keister. 

His default with most things was to expend the least amount of effort required. He had dual gifts for pushing buttons and refusing to admit any wrongdoings. We often said he would make a great lawyer someday. 

He also exercised great agency over his energy and attention, which was often at odds with where the world wished he would direct them.

He was never in any great hurry.

His internal clock just kept time differently.

When we met his middle school teachers for the first time, we expected to come back with homework on what we could do better at home to help him succeed in class. 

I’m not sure, but I think Mrs. Labella was first. 

Peter wasn’t much of a reader then … or now. 

Didn’t inherit my English major genes, though he does have a genuine love for language. He just has always preferred working with his hands. Loves making and fixing things.

Reading and writing? Not so much. 

I remember Karry and I bracing for impact when we first walked into Mrs. Labella’s meticulously curated classroom. 

We were indeed stunned by what we heard. 

She said how wonderful it was having Peter in class. 

How well-behaved he was. 

How much she appreciated his participation.

We were like, “Um, our son?”

He didn’t even like to read.

We were kind of speechless. 

I don’t remember Mrs. Labella’s specific words, just that she saw a light in him … that we were too close to see for ourselves … and reflected it back to us.

I now know that those were the days when we — or at least I — spent way too much time squeezing the parenting handlebars way too tightly. 

As Mrs. Labella chatted with us, I remember appreciating being in the presence of a person who’d spent years in the company of 12- and 13-year-olds, who deeply understood the assignment, and who loved the important and sometimes hard thing she got to do … with exactly who she got to do it with. 

Someone who commanded respect, took no b.s. … and was comfortable enough in her own skin to give Grace where and when needed. 

In other words, someone who was born to be a teacher.

By contrast, I realized that Karry and I were as new to being parents of a middle schooler as Peter was being a middle schooler.

Maybe we were all doing a little better than we gave ourselves credit for, even if we were a little fidgety in our respective chairs.  

The rest of his teachers pretty much said the same thing. 

Walking out of the school that night, Karry and I joked that maybe we had a budding actor on our hands. Had ‘em all fooled, he did.

We both knew that wasn’t at all true. 

The truer thing was that maybe we were in too much of a hurry with our expectations. 

That maybe our parenting motors were in need of revving a little slower.

___ 

So … fast forward … to last Sunday at the track. 

I waved to Mrs. Labella and her husband when I caught up to them. 

As I jogged by, she said she appreciated a piece I’d recently written. 

For the record, I’m not sure higher praise exists for a writer than to get a gold star from a middle school reading teacher. 

I told her it’s a blessing to have such good things to write about.

I ran on ahead a bit … then felt moved to double-back. 

“In the spirit of not assuming,” I said. “That’s my son over there,” pointing Peter out on the other side of the track. “If he didn’t say hello, make sure you say hi when he passes by.”

“I’ll trip him if he doesn’t,” she said … still not an ounce of b.s. in her voice. 

I was about three-quarters of the way through my next lap when, up ahead of me, I saw this.

My 25-year-old son and his middle school reading teacher. 

It filled my heart full to see that he broke from his pace to walk with them.

Turns out, his internal clock has always understood time just fine. 

They took a good full lap together.

I don’t know what they talked about. 

Only that they each had a smile and a kind word for the other. 

I imagine he told her what he’s doing now. 

I imagine that she told him she’s not surprised one bit. 

I found myself slowing my pace behind them … careful not to get in the way. 

Just grateful for the medicine of it … in no great hurry myself anymore.

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Postcards

Small Things ….

Paused for a coffee on my way to a morning medical appointment. 

Got in line behind a guy in the middle of picking out a bunch of stuff. 

“Gimme a couple of those, and one of those,” he said, pointing at the pile of yesterday’s pepperoni rolls they keep on the counter, and the breakfast burritos warming in a case next to the register. 

Looked to me like he was being spontaneously thoughtful. Like it had just occurred to him to pick up some goodies to surprise whoever his peeps were.

I’m a sucker for spontaneous thoughtfulness. 

After confirming that he meant ‘two’ for ‘a couple,’ the young person behind the counter reached for the pepperoni rolls.

After she picked one up, I heard her say softly to herself, “Oh, that one’s small,” then watched as she put the pepperoni roll she had in her hand back … and pull another out from the bottom of the pile.

The guy didn’t see her do it. 

Had already skooched to the side to wait for his stuff.

Struck me as both the smallest thing and the biggest thing.  

When it was my turn in line, I told her I appreciated how she put the small one back. 

She smiled. 

“Yeah, I can’t help it,” she said. “I always think about what I’d want, you know?”

I wanted so much to say, “Me too!” 

Because that’s how I think about things … though I don’t sell yesterday’s pepperoni rolls for a living.  

“Even when I pick something out of the case, I try and look for the ‘good’ ones,” she added.

What I loved about how she put it is that I knew exactly what she meant, without having any idea exactly what she meant.

Just that it had nothing to do with whether anybody else noticed.

I don’t know why something so small that wasn’t meant to be seen moved me so much. 

I mean … if they keep sellin’ like yesterday’s hot cakes, somebody might eventually get the pepperoni runt, … so does it even matter? 

I dunno. 

Maybe because it’s been my experience that how you do the small things is how you do the big things. 

Or maybe I just need reminded sometimes that there are others out there trying to look for the good ones, too. 

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Thinking of Timothy ….

Ran into a friend at the coffee shop a couple weeks ago. 

At the end of our brief chat, he invited me to a men’s Bible study he leads on Sunday mornings. 

Said they’d be starting Second Timothy first of the month.

Even though it’s been awhile since I stepped foot in church, I said yes. 

My friend is good light.

So, this morning I found myself gathered around a table with seven other guys. 

My friend began by giving some context around Paul’s second letter to his friend Timothy.

Asked if we had any questions before diving us deeper. 

I had one. 

I asked if it was known whether Paul had any specific expectation, when writing to his friend, that Timothy might share the letter? 

Or, did Paul intended his letter ‘only’ for Timothy? 

My friend said he didn’t really know. Asked the rest of the group. 

They weren’t sure, either. 

Wow, I said out loud. 

Suddenly found myself deeply moved. 

By the humble act of a person who knew they didn’t have much time left, writing a letter of encouragement — from prison, no less — to someone he loved dearly.

No expectations of shares or likes.

Pretty remarkable when you think about it, I said aloud. 

Which part, specifically? A voice at the table asked.  

I mean … the fact of us reading a letter from almost two thousand years ago … written halfway across the world from the church basement where we were gathering … that was aimed at encouraging a single person. 

Just, you know, the miracle of that. 

Prompted the person to my right to mention that recently he helped get a car started over at the local college for a student who had broken down. Said that afterwards, she sent him just the most wonderful letter. How it moved him so much that he took a photo of the card to share it with some folks he knew. 

He quoted a couple lines from it that were still on his heart, so that it could be on our hearts, too.

I told him that he made me grateful I asked the question … for the gift of him sharing the story of his letter.

Ten minutes into a Bible study about a book we hadn’t even cracked open yet … and already a sermon on the power of encouraging one another in trying times.

Anemochory. 

That’s what nature calls it. 

The dispersal of seeds by the wind.

“For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God.” 

That’s what Paul calls it. 

“We can’t change anything, but we can influence everything.”

That’s what the social scientist Robert Cialdini calls it. 

Paul could not change the circumstances of his imprisonment. Of his impending death. 

But he could send a letter encouraging his friend.

Regardless of our circumstances, we have agency over how we respond. 

Of the energy we put into the world. 

Paul’s letter to Timothy encourages us — to remember that encouragement is always an option.

Sitting around a table in a church basement grateful for asking questions, I am reminded that by encouraging one, others might be encouraged, too. 

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Postcards

Ink-stained elegy ….

Disclaiming that I’m operating sans coffee this morning (boil water advisory in Washington County, which is so on-brand for a week and a world that could use some disinfecting), so please forgive any typos and dissents into incoherent, rambling despair ….

Broke my broken heart this week to read that Bezos eliminated the sports department at the Washington Post.

Poof.

As a former second-rate sports writer who knew enough to know what good sports writing looked like, knew enough to know his Murrays from his Boswells from his Angells from his Alboms from his Colliers from his Jenkins, knew enough to know that fields of play give professionals and teenagers the same Shakespearean stage to live out most of life’s tragedies and comedies, sometimes fairly, sometimes unfairly, but always truly, and that in the hands of the right deadline saint, the record could show as much, who knew enough to clip, underline, asterisk, and scribble down golden turns of phrases like collecting seashells for keeping hoping some of it might rub off, who knew enough to know that when he read Roger Kahn’s Boys of Summer that one summer that good sports writers were just good writers who happened to write sports, who knew enough to know that the local versions of those deadline saints who I got to watch and read up close were (and are) just as great, and even greater for shining and reflecting their good light without big spotlights, who knew enough to inhale the scent of a new edition like bread come midnight fresh off the the press before proofing it for the later editions, who knew enough to know that the smudge on your fingertips after reading was what made for a sacred act, who knew enough to know that tomorrow those pages would be lucky to line bird cages before being tossed in the trash so don’t get too full of yourself, who knew enough to know that it was one thing to hit it out of the print park once, but could you do it again tomorrow? And what about the next day? Who knew enough to know that love and commitment are proven only in the act of showing up again and again and playing hurt to stare down a blank page and a deadline, who knew enough to know that to love something with your whole heart is to miss it with whatever’s left of your whole heart when it’s gone, who knew enough to know that when his mid-50s self stumbled into that Waynesburg coffee shop last summer and saw they had a take-one-leave-one book shelf, he reached for the cover-stained, out-of-print edition of Sports illustrated Great Baseball Writing like he was rescuing it from a burning building …

… which he was.

Who knows enough to know that it would be hypocritical this morning to ask if he knows anyone who subscribes to the Atlantic and would they mind sending him a PDF of Sally (who did it as well as any ever did) Jenkins’ elegy, “You Can’t Kill Swagger” published a couple days ago … and that, in the asking lies the blood, like ink stains on my hands for not wanting to scale the paywall for a whole damn subscription.

– 30 –

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People / Places, Postcards

An Incomplete List of Things That Got Me Through the Last Week of F*cking January, 2026

While scrolling my Monday in-box last week, I was gifted language for something I have felt but never had words for. 

When I stumble across such treasure, I try and make a point to write the word down in my journal.

I think of it like picking up seashells along a beach. 

The word came courtesy of Creative Mornings, whose January theme came courtesy of their Tehran chapter. 

I’ve copied their explanation here. Don’t think they’d mind. 

کورسو or Koorsoo (pronounced Koor·Soo) is a Farsi word meaning a glimmer of hope.

“In our darkest hours, when everything seems to have dimmed, sometimes a light remains—not bright, not certain, but real. That is Koorsoo—a faint glimmer of hope that dares to survive. Koorsoo is not about triumph or clarity; it is about the fragile yet unwavering light that keeps us going. A glance, a memory, a word—small things that prevent collapse. It represents the quiet resilience of those who continue in spite of the weight, who believe without guarantee. In a world that often normalizes despair, Koorsoo is a rebellion—soft, but profound. It reminds us: even the smallest spark matters.” 

My Monday morning — by which I mean my January — needed that reminder …  

… almost but not quite as much as I needed caffeine driving up Main Street Thursday morning before work. 

Anymore, I find my days need some back-up … which is among the reasons I collect seashells … metaphorically keep them in my pockets … so I can run my hands over their contour to remember, to remind myself.

Sometimes when I get to the small coffee shop when it opens, the sun’s still low enough in the sky to bathe the interior bright. 

After giving my eyes a couple seconds to adjust, I noticed their humble logo reflected on an interior wall, crisp as a projection.

A fragile yet unwavering light.  

I asked Fiona if they knew when they built the place that the sun would reflect like that, or if that was just a happy accident. 

She wasn’t sure, but said it’s her favorite thing. 

If we only knew how our light reflects sometimes.

After paying for my double cortado to go, I handed her a little extra cash for a pay-it-forward.

Spoke aloud the names aloud of a handful of humans who had recently reserved some kind thoughts in their day for me.  

If we only knew how our light reflects sometimes.

Sitting here with my Sunday morning … a new month turned over … still needing reminders … still collecting sea shells … still remembering the importance of sharing our koorsoo with the world around us. 

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Postcards

29 years, 149 days ….

Was pulling laundry from the dryer yesterday, under strict guidelines from Karry. 

Which she made me repeat out loud before she left.

Which didn’t upset me at all. 

We both know my track record.  

Set myself a timer for 10 minutes for the two pairs of leggings (black and gray) that needed pulled out early. 

At eight minutes, I still remembered black and gray, but texted her to triple confirm that both were pants.

After the rest of the load finished, I neatly (for me) folded and hung everything else. 

Even remembered to check the lint screen.

“She’d appreciate that,” was an actual thought in my head. 

It was covered from the full load.

The lint was the brightest purple.

From the big Eeyore sweatshirt she got at that Disney discount store in Orlando. 

Probably why it was on discount. 

Made me smile … not sure why.

Maybe because I was the only person in the universe who knew that something she loved made the world purple. 

Took me a few seconds to roll it off the screen and into a ball.

Thought about saving it for her.

Nah, she’d think it was weird.    

Took a picture of it before I tossed it in the garbage, though.

So I’d remember.  

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