: lower black pain.

9am. This year, the turkey is going into the oven at 9 am, because I am a responsible adult who can make that happen.

And I’m not beginning the process at 9 - nope, that’s when the actual turkey is going into the oven.

The pre-heated oven. So I’ll turn that on at 8:45. And the turkey will have to be prepared with the twine and the salt and the pepper, so I’ll start that at 8:30.

The second thing to do on Thanksgiving morning is to start slowly simmering onions and celery and sage in olive oil…fill the house with delicious anticipation. (The first thing is coffee, or a hot beverage of any kind.) I’ll get that going at 8, before the chopping and preparing and…

…oh. De-frosting.

I should probably get to that now.

It occurs to me that responsible adults get less sleep than less responsible adults. If my morning schedule keeps creeping backward to meet my night-before schedule (full of pies and rolls and maybe another pie just for fun) then I’ll be getting up before I go to sleep.

But this is my element. So often these days I feel that I’m not part of the algorithm; I don’t know the dances on my phone or the songs being danced to, and I’d never wear that sweater even though Amazon swears they picked it “just for me” - Pinterest is confused by me and Instagram thinks I’m a cat lady living in the UK. Thanksgiving soothes me, it is familiar and navigable; all I have to do is cook and eat and I can do those things.

I used to be in charge of an art department, and every year around this time we would try to do something bonding. One year I thought we could make those pictures of turkeys where you trace around your hand and add feathers and a beak and a waddle; during our morning meeting we all took markers and sheets of paper and collectively doodled while we empowered Corporate America. But one young woman was deeply suspicious, then disgusted, and finally very, very angry about the other 32 people doing this.

“How is it supposed to look??” she asked.

“Like this.” said five of her co-workers, holding up, y’know, basically tracings of the outside of whichever wasn’t their dominant hand.

The woman turned on me with fire in her eyes. “And how will these be judged???” she literally spat at me.

“They WON’T be judged… they’re just for fun, like we did when we were kids!” I found out, later, that she had recently graduated from art school, where vicious peer reviews had scarred her deeply. She eventually stopped glaring at me every time she saw me, and we both even laughed about it… like, seven years later.

My favorite bonding project was a cookbook, where people volunteered either their favorite or least favorite holiday recipes, and in some cases the stories behind these recipes. I still have my copy: there is German potato salad and enchiladas and lutefisk and something involving squirrel, which I was told was a joke in the way that you know that it wasn’t. The favorite and least favorite thing proved that it isn’t necessarily the taste of holiday dishes as much as their familiarity… you can count on looking forward to some foods and look forward to avoiding others.

The only recipe that is never familiar is gravy; it’s more of a… a feeling, really. I like to try to do something new every year, and the gravy is a safe experimentation dish, which can be salvaged (most of the time) if things go sideways. Last year my daughter put herself in charge of it, and it was incredible, and none of us have the slightest recollection as to how it was accomplished.

This year, for various reasons, I am feeling risk averse, and instead have learned a new fact: that the woman who wrote the rhyme “Mary Had A Little Lamb” is responsible for American Thanksgiving, having written impassioned letters to five US Presidents (it was Lincoln who finally took her advice). She wrote books and edited magazines and had five kids and lived ’til 90. And the first audio recording in America by Thomas Edison on his new phonograph machine? “Mary Had A Little Lamb”, by Sarah Josepha Hale, the woman responsible for me getting up at 8 o’clock this Thursday morning.

Maybe 7:30.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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I’ve been thinking a great deal about flatware, which I called “silverware” until about five minutes ago. According to the dictionary, silverware only refers to flatware covered in actual silver, which means that I’ve eaten with “silverware” only a very few times.

On special occasions and holidays, some families still pull out their silverware and a few pieces of the good china, but the effort involved is something most of us agree to only once or twice a year. Early family meals at my grandparents’ house were like that, formal table settings and clothing and manners, but these ended in my early teens and I never had the opportunity to sit at the adult table where all the silverware was. I wasn’t even allowed to touch the plates and fancy glasses because they were a set and I was a fumbly child-person.

Everyday flatware, not coated in semi-precious metal, is something we see so often that we most likely don’t notice it anymore. I was introduced to the idea of it in the crib, when Mom told me that the dish ran away with the spoon.

Really? Where were they heading? What were they running from? The situation was a delicious scandal.

Of course the entire rhyme could have been a metaphor… with the full scene of laughing dogs, feline violinists and astronaut cows, this rhyme could be the loose poetic rendering of a wild laudanum party.

In the 1940’s, the word “dish” was a slang term for an attractive female person, but there isn’t a comparable definition for the word “spoon” as an adventurous lothario, though the words fork, knife, and spoon are both nouns and verbs in American English. The pointy ones are mostly aggressive (“Fork over that money! Don’t make me knife you!”) leaving the spoon to represent comfort, protection, romance. I suppose that’s true in function as well; forks impale, knives separate, but spoons hold and support.

Spoon has quite a few meanings actually. Beyond engaging in the popular sleeping position, it has referred to “making out with a date”,  a definition popularized in the turn of the century song “Shine On Harvest Moon”.  That was my favorite song when I was six years old after I learned it at a Shakey’s Pizza™ from a black and white movie they showed there, an animated short with a bouncing ball over on-screen lyrics, so you could sing along.

My love of the tune confused both friends and passers-by, and it turns out that entire song was indeed about the joys of kissing and so forth outside in autumn, because in the winter it was just too cold – the equivalent of punk rock for 1908. It was amazingly radical, but as there wasn’t any radio back then, I suppose one just played the song on their upright piano and censored themselves as they went along.

Of the three major pieces of flatware, it is the knife that I feel is the most maligned. When asked to think of a spoon or a fork, most of us will also envision a plate, but the word “knife” never leads us directly to the dinner table; more likely a vision of a poorly lit alley and a ne’er-do-well in a dirty pageboy hat attempting to steal our jewels. You can’t soften the word “knife”… little knives are worn strapped to the ankle, big ones are swords, medium ones the favorite of cinema villains. But within American culture there was, once, a kinder knife, not used in anger or conflict, but to enhance the sweetness of life itself.

In 1977, The Pillsbury Company wanted to prove the smoothness of their pre-made canned icing, and someone (who I hope got an incredible bonus that year) came up with the idea of frosting a cake with a paper knife. Where would one obtain such an object, you ask? In the 1970’s paper plates were all the rage: first invented in San Francisco in 1904 when folks were tired of losing good dishes to earthquakes, the modern realities of dual income families had turned them into household essentials. In these commercials, a simple knife shape was cut from the middle of a paper plate (not a fancy rigid one, just the normal flopsy type), and that was used to scoop the frosting from the container, then artistically and evenly decorate a cake.

So smooth.

My mom actually did this once. It was like a science experiment. It worked pretty well, but we never used a full can of frosting all at once, and realized that once refrigerated the substance couldn’t be manipulated by any object less sturdy than a screwdriver.

So as it turns out, I do not own any “silverware”. Our most elegant dining objects, beyond the Williams and Sonoma gravy boat, are my MARVEL™ napkin rings, each of which appears to contain an Infinity Stone™. If, this year, I am allowed to place those on our table (I wouldn’t bet on it) it is my hope that they will become part of our Traditional Holiday Table Setting, an interdimensional addition to our everyday flatware; neither silver nor even probably very good plastic, they will nonetheless sparkle and glisten, somewhat jewel-like, in the celebratory candlelight of the year’s most important meals.

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I’ve never quite understood why people take pictures of their plates of food.  Photography very effectively records events, but display – while delightful – is food’s least useful aspect, and photos do not hold smell, taste, nor significant nutrition.

I do have two photos of me with a birthday cake. In one I’m 13, and the other I’m 49. In one, I am giddy and giggling with delight. In the other, I am 13 years old.

Those were both really good cakes, and I distinctly remember the taste of each cake when I look at those photos, even though I do not remember other details about those days.

In a sense, BIRTHDAYS ARE CAKES, or at least candles in a sweet thing that you end up eating for dessert, or really dessert-and-a-half because you didn’t fill up on dinner in anticipation of the sweet thing with the candles in it that you were going to get an extra piece of because it’s your birthday. 

I mean, we can have cake any other day, but that wouldn’t be birthday cake.

With Halloween, it’s the candy.

I suppose the special part could be that you’re allowed to go door to door and people just give it to you, but it wouldn’t feel the same if we were getting school supplies or tax advice. It’s the candy.

Yes, there is candy at Easter but we have to search for it, and complications regarding the social contracts involved in Valentine’s Day candy weigh it down – sure, it comes straight to you with little effort, but then somebody wants to hold your hand or something. Halloween night it’s just us, a bag, and the six carbon molecule glory of sucrose.  There is no other night like Halloween.

Except that there is. Every other night is just like Halloween. Save solstices and equinoxes, days and nights are pretty much days and nights. Halloween is not a holiday because of the night. It’s the candy.

Somewhere through the forests of fir trees, beyond the fields of pumpkins, behind the shiny shelves of Target™ stores stand The Holidays. Maturity, (which I haven’t yet experienced directly but have waiting in my Amazon cart) brings the wisdom which allows one to define such days on one’s own terms; not measuring against Martha Stewart’s style or Andy William’s glee, but instead challenging us to discover and defend what we believe is Most Important. To me, the Holiday Meal defines everything.

Meals are essential and ephemeral; they briefly exist, are enjoyed, then disappear like sunsets, yet can be quite powerfully anticipated. The most intense demonstration of this principle is of course displayed by the domestic housecat every morning at 4:57 am, but a more measured example comes at the specific days this time of year where we look forward to sitting with our chosen or randomly genetically assigned to us families, eating foods traditional for our house but maybe not anyone else’s.

In my experience, holidays don’t just surround these meals, HOLIDAYS ARE MEALS, the brass tack moments at the center of the entire endeavor. I’ve sat at a kitchen table in an uncomfortable suit surrounded by cousins, on the floor cross legged in a college apartment with a paper plate, at a San Francisco dive bar with absolute strangers and as a guest in a strip mall Chinese restaurant, and none of the food was exactly the same, but ALL of these were absolutely HOLIDAYS. It isn’t even necessarily what you eat, it’s that you’re eating it at that time with those people.

A very, very wise man once said, “Take a picture…it’ll last longer.”, but unlike practically everything else in the modern world, the holiday meal must be experienced LIVE; moments impossible to duplicate or store, temporal check points that are reassuringly analog. Besides, my best holiday memories are the least fancy; laughter and wine in water glasses and not nearly enough napkins. It’s probably pretty lucky we didn’t take those pictures after all.

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The roller coaster of the year:

Clackety clack clack CHUNK clack clack. It’s Spring. Clack chunk clack  It’s Summer.  

And right now, when we start dressing in layers and appreciating cinnamon, is when the ride really starts. We rocket past pumpkins and turkeys, barrel through Black Friday and race through the glow of colored lights and fireworks until the ride suddenly PSSSSSSHSSSHH stops on January 2nd and slowly crawls back to that little dry dock where we all got on.

Before all that happens, let me say thank you for reading this column. I’m taking a quick break in preparation for Holiday Hijinks, but I wanted to begin my season by thanking you, once again, for your time. I know that it marches on and waits for no one and apparently can’t be put on a bottle, but time is not a renewable resource: I deeply appreciate you sharing yours.

I’m a big fan of time.  It’s kooky: inescapable, relative and arbitrary at the same time. I’m surrounded by remnants of my attempts to chronicle it, as if time was a concert and I bought the t shirt (actually, that does explain all the t-shirts). The books on my shelves are the times that I read them, warm and validating memories mapping my journey: conversely my Netflix queue is a unnavigable yawning chasm of time yet to be spent. Time’s a little overwhelming (can something be a little overwhelming? I’m gonna have to look that up…) but when I think about meals, I feel better.

Meals are experiences, and you don’t capture them, even if you take a matchbook from a restaurant or a photo on your phone. A great meal becomes a memory that you wear for a while. During this season we all have at least one meal to look forward to, whether a sumptious spread or that special fancy coffee they only serve around now… it all reminds me of the quote where Auntie Mame says “Life’s a banquet…”

It goes on, but we’ll get to that part later.

Keep warm. Find your gloves. You look great in that hat.

See you next week.

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Welcome, Honored Guest…

to my Halloween special. It’s nothin’ fancy, like a 45, a single with two sides.

(…while maintaining accessibility, I must inform you that a great deal of audio elements are involved: so you may want to listen as well!)

First, I’d like to welcome my special guest, star of stage and screen, Mr. Vincent Price.

I interviewed Vincent Price in college: I worked for the film studies center, and he came to town, and someone arranged an hour for us to interview him, and because I was from Kansas City (his hometown) I convinced my boss that I should be the one to do it.

He was all kinds of charming, and his voice and tone was so warm that I made the classic error of saying,

“I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but I’ve known you all my life as a terrifying figure, but you are (and I’m not kidding) about the nicest person I’ve ever met. How did you get into being scary?”

“Well,” he responded, “I think that everyone in the world, no matter who they are, has a scary side. I just let mine out through acting. It’s the difference between this…”

And here he did exactly what you think he would;He didn’t change the way he was sitting, he didn’t lean forward, he didn’t raise his voice… he just said the words,

“…and this.”

I’d like to find that videotape to see how loud I actually yelped. It was over in just a second, and that nice guy was sitting in front of me again. It was the best acting class I’ve ever taken, and it was free, and like, 4 seconds long.

When I say he’s our guest tonight, IN NO WAY do I mean there’s gonna be some awful AI tech involved (yuck); instead Mr. Price visits us from a record album he made in 1958 titled “CoStar”, one of a series of long-playing records where famous actors performed scenes as characters from classic plays, and YOU were supplied a script inside the album cover to act along with them.

It was marketed as a party game, with a variety of very random actors, but in my personal opinion, the two most amazing editions were Tallulah Bankhead, an actress with a voice so singular that it has not yet and may never be equalled (see Hitchcock’s “Lifeboat”: even her everyday laugh was EPIC) and that of our special guest, Mr. Vincent Price, with whom (on tonight’s accompanying audio) I will reprise a bit of my high school role of Algernon in Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest”.

Now, my costume. I stayed up til 1AM “sewing” it together, even though I’m not wearing it.

This year we lost an American composer who defined what I thought a composer was - his style was unmistakable and his range was vast.

I’m not dressing as the composer, goodness me, no: instead I, inspired by a bootleg online video of his 1968 musical, got all inspired to create a song in his style, something that could be sung in the middle of a Broadway show in the middle of a darkened stage, about a STORY, with CHARACTERS, with a further nod to all the songwriters who create happy songs with sad lyrics or sad songs with happy ones (#robertsmith).

So I came up with a whole plot (that I think would actually work for a new Netflix Christmas movie) and then put together this song. The emotionally jaunty 1960’s way-too-frank lyrics filled with sad optimism would be best sung by Dionne Warwick, but I’ll just have to do.

So, for the Halloween Brave-Of-Heart, I present… this year’s Halloween costume:

Ladies and Gentlemen, Burt Blacharach.

BACHARACH. Sorry! It’s the thematic unity, it gets me every time.

Enjoy your Halloween!

See you soon.

I don’t expect

You to reflect

These feelings.

That’s my burden.

Yet part of me

Craves harmony

The likes of which

aren’t certain.

A world ago

This did not go

The way that I

had hoped for

Yet here we stand

Now, hand in hand

In hopes that

this might be more.

this might be real

this might be new

this could be home

If I could be with you

I’d let you break my heart again

Take the chance faith is stronger than fate

And then

I’d give my love without regret

Forgive and forget

Let you break my heart again

Fair to suggest

i’m not the best

Relationship Advisor

Such sad affairs

Uneven pairs

Is older really wiser?

We crashed and burned

So this new turn’s

Completely unexpected

Are thoughts of we

Pure fantasy

Or errant paths corrected

Now this seems real

This feels so new

This seems like home

If you feel this way too

I’ll let you break my heart again

Take the chance faith is stronger than fate

And then

I’ll give my love without regret

Forgive and forget

Let me take your heart again

Please let me take your heart again

Take the chance faith is stronger than fate

And then

Give me your love without regret

Forgive and forget

Let me take your heart again

©2023 Jd Michaels / CabsEverywhere Productions

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I’ve been working on my Halloween costume. It’s a little bit tricky, because I’m trying something new. I’m not wearing a costume this year as much as stepping into an identity... it’s a little hard to explain, and if I seem overly mysterious it’s because I don’t want to tell you exactly what I’m going to do just yet. I kind of want a “reveal” moment, and I have a little time left to keep working on it. Maybe I’ll have a little Halloween Special this year.

That would be fun. I already know the title of it. A few years ago, the random lady on the street in my neighborhood called me an “elegant monster”.

She is not wrong.

That would be the name of my special. An Elegant Monster.

Oh, well, now I have to do it. It’s got a title and everything.

I’ve worn three pretty classic Halloween costumes.

My most dangerous costume was after college, when I lived in San Francisco and splurged on a full ninja outfit. San Francisco loved Halloween in the early 90’s, it seemed like everyone dressed up, no matter what age they were. There were literally thousands of people on the street wandering about Halloween night.

But I took a shortcut on the wrong side of Guerrero and guys started coming up to me wanting to fight. I’d walked this way before and nobody’d ever stepped to me looking for West Side Story action.

“Hey, ninja, let’s see what you got!” they called out, or “Hey man, you a real ninja?”.

Now, let’s be honest, if I was a real ninja you wouldn’t see me at all. I’d be deadly shadows, an invisible master killer… I certainly wouldn’t be buying a Dr. Pepper at this bodega. But things got tense, there was adventure and some shooting, it became a whole thing.

I’d never had to take responsibility for a costume before. It was like I’d dressed as a doctor and suddenly somebody dragged me in to do surgery.

The costume I wanted most when I was a kid was a full head werewolf mask with hair. Lots of hair. You could put it on and it would be your entire costume, because back then the special effects hadn’t been invented to turn people into actual giant wolves in the movies, just folks in regular clothes (with lots of hair).

My mother didn’t think this was appropriate for an eleven year old, but when I was thirteen she allowed me to buy it with “my own money” from my own job at the bookstore. I did wear it trick or treating (at the mall, not in the neighborhood, saints preserve us, that would be dangerous) and discovered that it was a portable mini-sauna. I kept it on that night until my head felt like it had lost a few pounds, but wore it randomly for years at home, while cleaning my room or reading a book.

[Side note: I was a panel speaker for a national diversity and inclusion event at CNN (not on air) and they asked us each to begin with our name and something about our background and identity.

I said, “My name is Jd Michaels. I’m a werewolf.” then passed the mic. The next speaker cautiously passed it back to me.

“What?” I asked the crowd. “Look, I’m fine now, the full moon’s not for 18 days, but isn’t it interesting that you view me differently? When I walk into a room, it’s assumed that I’m naturally carrying this raw deadly rage, even though I’m smiling and wearing a suit. People don’t even listen to what I’m saying half the time because they’re too preoccupied waiting for the wolf. Because they’re afraid of wolves, and think that this is just a disguise, even though I’ve never done anything angry, violent, or ambivalent. See, it’s not my actions I’m judged by, it’s my percieved potential. But I know we’re all friends here, right? None of you could be called a lycanthropist.” and I passed the mic again.

There was applause, and one lady started crying, and the organizer looked super freaked out. Best Halloween ever, except, y’know, it wasn’t Halloween.]

My best Halloween costume was the one I never got to wear.

When I was eight years old, I was invited to Kenneth Herrera’s birthday / Halloween party. I wanted to dress as “The Human Torch” from Fantastic Four.

To prepare, I -• collected information on fire safety from the library

• called long distance from Kansas City, Kansas to Los Angeles, California to speak with the stunt department at Universal Studios (I told them it was a school assignment; as my voice dropped early, they actually patched me through and answered most of my questions)• completed several levels of test runs on my homemade protection suit design with the bunsen burner from my Gilbert chemistry set; first using my Captain Kirk action figure, and then my index finger.

The plan was to ring the front doorbell, then when Kenneth opened the door yell “Flame on!” at which point my mom would ignite my flame suit, prompting a 7 second full burn after which she would douse me with an extinguisher – not a foam one (because that would get all over their porch) but a CO2 one, which would double as an excellent fog cover for me to zip OUT of the flame suit and protective layering, revealing bright red pajamas (my indoor costume) underneath. My mother taught 5th grade GT. I knew this might be a hard sell.

Sure enough, she refused to let me set myself ablaze, not even “just for a minute”: full stop. She did, however, appreciate the written proposal, extensive research, and mini-demonstration, and as a compromise she taught me to how to use the sewing machine while making me a (non-flammable) Golden Age SHAZAM costume instead.

I had even written a note and signed it, giving her express permission for the whole thing so she wouldn’t get into any trouble, but she pointed out to me later (when I was 27 years old) that a handwritten note from an eight year old would not have stood up in court, and if she had allowed this to happen I would certainly have grown up in another household having been only allowed Sunday and holiday visits with her. Excellent parenting on her part.

She also described, in detail, what the reaction of the Herrera family would have been the sight of a flaming little black kid on their porch. Perversely, I kinda would have liked to have seen that.

Their neighbors would have talked for days.

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60 seems younger than 57. 57 is my Heinz year. It’s one of my three food slogan years.

You get three food slogan years. You know that, right? 11 (herbs and spices), 31 (flavors) and 57 (Heinz).

11 is when you come into your own, become a young adult, begin to navigate the chaos, at the start of the adventure;

at 31, you accept the responsibilities of adulthood, begin to establish stability and reputation;

and at 57, you put it all together, the total of innocence and experience, enthusiasm and perseverance, and enjoy the life you’ve built.

57 was originally the number of pickle varieties offered by Heinz; in actuality they offered more than 60, but 5 was Henry Heinz’s lucky number and 7 was his wife’s. Yes, I too thought they might have aspirationally used “72”, but his deep seated honesty wouldn’t let him. In any case, I’ve been the spring chicken, and tasted life’s sweetness and frigidity, and am now prepared to focus on the spice of life.

It’s my birthday. And yes, I invented the food slogan year thing, but that doesn’t make it any less true, and you are free to incorporate it in any way you wish with no fear of legal reprisal.

I just found out that your nose and ears keep growing your entire life, but they are not really growing as much as stretching, because collagen and cartilage are subject to gravity, moving them a fraction of a millimeter downward every year, like cathedral windows.

We are not made of stone.  There are specific and non-blame oriented reasons that clothes don’t fit anymore.

I’m actually in better shape that I was 26 years ago.

This is less a statement concerning my current condition than a criticism of my former one, and less focused on my overall health than my actual shape, the one someone might outline in charcoal or pencil if I volunteered as a life drawing model.

26 years ago I worked 12 hour days 6 days a week and had yet to discover the effects of gluten or lack of sleep. Before long, I looked as if I was stealing one of those balloons you can twist into animals by hiding it around my waist, inside my shirt, just above my belt.

In my 30’s, someone took a photo of me playing football in the park with my shirt off.

(The red flags are: I have my shirt off outside my house and I’m playing football.)

I don’t know what I was doing, but somebody took a picture of me from the back and it was the kind of thing that motivates one to action. It looked like it could have been handled in a simple way, well, love-handled in a simple way: I just looked kind of wrinkled around the middle, like a sock that had ridden down, so for a few months I tried to stand up taller as if my height was the problem, and not my width.

I eventually discovered my gluten thing, which was very transformational as it included my Guinness thing and my Cinnabon thing.

Getting enough sleep, water, and exercise don’t really read as “wisdom”, but it’s hard to do. And eating right means learning how to cook, because convenience always costs more that we pay. And no matter what, time does seem to catch up with us. I fell on a skateboard (read: plummeted from a skateboard at about 15 mph) over five years ago and still have a crik in my neck that a cloudy day exacerbates: in much the same vein I’m finding that the choices I made during my Kentucky Fried Chicken years (11 to 31) formed the base of situations dealt with during my Baskin Robbins phase (31 to 56) which will no doubt have to be dealt with in my Heinz years.

I couldn’t shake that photograph of me leaping up to catch a ball and the sides of me moving up a bit afterward, so about 20 years ago I dealt with these emotions in song form. Think Tom Waits, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan… the American Storyteller, conveying the spirited life of the Everyman. I mean, think that, while you’re listening, because I’m none of those people, but y’know, #squadgoals.

(I was going to create an EP with several songs on it and call it my “Birthday Suite”, but I settled on this one and tried to make it extra spooky.)

When I was 25 it seemed that I could eat most anythingLike a chocolate twizzler, I was scrawny.

I lived on rice, bread and ramen…whatever came my way, back then(mostly, this was ‘cause I had no money.)

Like most boys in the USA, I would usually start my day at the mirror lookin’ at my muscles.

I’d count off pull-ups - 1 to 10 and do some sit-ups (now and then)Like that Jean-Claude Van Damme who’s from Brussels.

But one mornin’ last year, my jaw hit the floor‘Cause there were lots more “muscles” than beforeThen my gut began to illuminateAnd a mournful sound did eminate.

OoooooOooooo. Oooooooo....

Thus the victim I’ve now beenOf horrors all too easily seenLike some monster writ by Mary Shelly

For all the junk food I did knowAlthough eaten years ago

Now are ghosts inside my Haunted Belly.

I raised my chest and tucked my chin to pull the haunted portion inBut it was getting harder everyday.Good friends never asked my why I began to jellifyThey just smiled and turned their eyes away.

Then me and the fellas, back ‘round last fallWere playing around with an old footballWhen suddenly I heard a gurgly BOOWe had our shirts off in the sun

Which is how I found out every one of their bellies seemed to be haunted too!

Although the past is dead and goneSomething of it lingers onfor now I’m carrying down belowdelicious meals that I ate years ago!

Those chili dogs and pre-sweetened teaKinda just snuck up on meWhile I was flippin’ channels on the tellyWhen the ghosts found space they lackedThey started moving to the backThus expanding out my haunted belly.

Yes, every bite that’s touched my handIs at a party down in TummylandA dear-departed dinner dance that I canbarely squeeze in these suit pants.

OoooooOooooo! Oooooooo!

So now I’m on a fitness spreeto set those little spectres freeso they’ll fly off to some ethereal deli.

And by spring, like a miracle my shape may be less spherical.

And that’s the story of my Haunted Belly.

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My daughter made me a pillow. She makes things.

She got a doll one Christmas when she was seven and spent all of Boxing Day making a very detailed spaceship out of the box it came in, complete with a control panel and a small but elegant closet. Later, dissatisfied with plastic dreamhouses™, other dolls were lucky enough to live in an apartment building that she fashioned from a tall cardboard box, complete with a working elevator made from a smaller box, with furniture made of even smaller boxes and a shower made out of aluminum foil.

Then she started actually making dolls, first with a large dull needle, and very (almost too) soon after that, with a sharp one.

I would like to say she “gets this” from me, that my mad scribbling and singing and fol-de-rol are the root of her interests, but her mother is the truest artist in her heritage, a serious artist who pays attention to things like “detail” and “structure”; it is her mother that stands bravely before the infinite blank canvas of existence, recognizing the yawning, bottomless chasm over which the simple rope bridge of creativity spans, while I dance through life like a chocolate Martha Graham.

So my daughter is born of frolic and fury, chaos and order, madness and duct tape; to arrange, align, and adhere disparate elements, ideas and objects together is a her family legacy, destiny, and heritage. She’s a mad scientist, born of mad scientists.

Anyway. The pillow.

It is pink, but only because that’s the color of the material.

Much more importantly, the pattern of the cloth: a little tiny taxi, a Checker, is repeated over and over facing many different angles – curvy white lines emanate from the vehicles as if showing the direction they are going, except that the lines are tangled together like a skein of yarn after a cat’s played with it. My daughter found this material in a scrap box, her classmates were somewhat confused at her absolute glee having discovered it, but then again the name of their family business wasn’t CabsEverywhere.

At only a foot wide and 9 inches tall, the piece seemed destined for a small pillow.

She sewed it by hand and gave it to me and it’s on my chair, supporting the spot in my back where I keep all my age.

Macaroni necklaces. Did you make one? Maybe a kazoo from a toilet paper tube? A diorama for a book report, or a magic wand from a twig you found outside? A sheet of paper can fly if you make it into an airplane, or transform you into an NBA star if you crumple and toss it. Long before formal training of any kind there was Elmer’s Glue™, a magical substance. I’m old enough to remember mucilage, which I still think was a mean trick to play on children, but got the job done. Some of you had glue sticks (fancy pants); I never really got into that scene… I need that moment when the paper buckles into little waves and you have to press it flat and wipe around the edges… that’s a true bond, that’s not coming off in twenty years, you’ll see that again in the attic or garage when your parents ask you to move those boxes because they’re retiring and need the space for the Peloton and IT WILL STILL BE STUCK TOGETHER, believe me.

As children, most of us didn’t see ourselves as consumers, we were creators, with only the most basic of tools and skill sets. Making things was often characterized as “play”, but seemed like part of our job as kids. Where and when did creation get sidelined to celebrity chefs and home makeover gurus? Oh, and superstar DJs, because I think if any of us had been at class the day they said you could grow up to wear comfortable clothes all the time with a private plane flying around making people dance for a living we would have all signed up for that.

“Adults” often stand outside creation as if it’s not a verb they are heir to; even worse, those deemed creative are placed on society’s edges… the fascinating misfit, the genius outcast. So it takes a brave parent to offer artists as role models for their child, the whole “steady income” and “stable personality” gets thrown out the window in the hopes that this young person grows to be a catalyst of ideas and passion and possibility.

And so, at this special time of year, our family looks to Victor Von Frankenstein as a key figure; a noble dreamer who used his talents in science and quilting to create something… very unique.

Sew, my daughter. Take the lifeless scraps of what the world deems worthless and make something new that’s…ALIVE.

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Make a noise like a vampire.

Chances are (inside your head) you either snarled or said the word “blah” in a technically inaccurate yet authentically dramatic Eastern European accent.

Now, make a noise like a GHOST.

“Boo!” Exactamundo. Ghosts say BOO.

The Compact Oxford English Dictionary (the two volume blue one with the magnifying glass) doesn’t list the word “boo” at all; I had to refer to the app version, which cites a 1639 poem as one of the first formal usages of the word as an exclamation. Which makes sense, y’know, ‘cause ghosts are old.

Another historical usage is a Scottish expression where one describes an extremely timid person as someone who “wouldn’t say boo to a goose”, but geese are terrifying. I found more than one website offering step-by-step instruction as to what to do if a goose attacks. They peck from the ground and then fly at your face.  And don’t take a swing at them; it just makes them more angry. Being scared of a goose? Totally understandable.

In fact, making fun of people because they’re scared of things they should be scared of is weird. I mean, people are scared of a lot of different things for a lot of reasons. I don’t have a pet tarantula [y i k e s], but I don’t hate tarantulas, I hate flies, and they don’t scare me, I’m just admittedly flyist, which puts me square in the middle of Team Tarantula, but I don’t have one.

Do they eat flies? I am not looking that up on the internet.

Most fear is like that, where we are scared of something that isn’t necessarily life threatening. Scared of being embarrassed, or being late, or having all your teeth fall out.

That last one wasn’t in the same category as the first two, was it? Sorry about that… let’s substitute “the unknown” for the teeth thing.

No, that also seems a little bit heavier than embarrassment and tardiness. Hmn.

My point was going to be that cats are afraid of snakes, but scientifically, they’re faster than snakes, and 9 times out of 10 will win a straight-up fight with a snake, but they still jump every time they see a cucumber or belt on the floor, and like cats, I don’t think any of us are scared because of facts, exactly. We’re scared because of threat: – If you don’t hurry up, you’re GOING to be late! – If you don’t brush your teeth, they’ll ALL FALL OUT!

(Ok, the teeth thing works now.)

First encounters with vampires are terribly threatening because anything bad that might happen is only just beginning, but the apex of most ghost interactions peaks at the “Seeing Of The Ghost” after which you are just in a room with an angry entity trapped somewhere it doesn’t want to be, waiting for some important reason it’s not totally in control of. Like a spooky DMV.

The BOO is a jump scare, sudden and aggressive: but to be honest, everything that’s terrified me in the past decade was lumbering, slow-moving, ominous.  Not so much a BOO as a ubiquitous rumble from a far-distant horizon, blazing with fire, forcing forward clouds of murder hornets through billows of orange grey smoke. That’s not BOO. That’s not even a threat, that’s, well, dread. “Nothing to fear but fear itself” is nowhere near as comforting in practice as in oratory.

I say all this in celebration of Spookytime, which is not just Halloween, because if you really think about it Thanksgiving is a part of Spookytime too. That can be a long trip in the car.

But while you’re enjoying your pumpkin spice everything everywhere think about this: Spookytime is not just about us being scared. It’s about us being scary. Looking at the deepest parts of ourselves and wondering what we’re capable of.

And let me just skip to the end: we are all capable of everything.

Look at the news. See all that horrible stuff? Any one of us could’ve done that, because we speak and move around, and all words and actions can create or destroy, every tool is a weapon if you hold it right. And it’s not just the drastic sudden BOO things we didn’t do, we also avoided apathy, malice and contempt. We are actively CHOOSING not to be awful. Every single second.

Good for us. Yay. Time to celebrate.

If “Halloween is every day” then kindness is a costume we can wear all year ‘round. There’s plenty of janky and preposterous stuff out there, but if we’re choosing not to create fear, we can also choose not to consume it.

Although, I do believe in spooks. I do. I do. I do.

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I haven’t been on a school bus in a while: do they still have those super slick seats where you slide all over where the bus makes a turn – unless you’re wearing shorts, and then they stick to your legs like duct tape?  Are they still cold in winter, and hot in summer, and super duper loud? That’s so cool.

I didn’t get to ride them everyday, I either lived too far away or close to school, so my only opportunity to enjoy them was to and from field trips.

Regular schoolwork is exposure and repetition; field trips add “direct experience”. This is a Symphony Hall. This is a Working Farm. This is a French Movie. My favorite was The Rodeo, which wasn’t even a trip for my school, but something my mother took me to: I still remember being given a small square of bright green alfalfa; the smell was absolutely Verdant Green.

My mother’s career in classroom teaching was jet-fueled by a personal manifesto that “there is, always, something to learn”.  So every time we left the house was a field trip. The amusement park was a festival of physics, the grocery store a study in economics, and every person you could know: sociology.

But history has always been tricky.

My picture of the past has always been a bit disjointed, like a Saul Bass title sequence.  In the United States immigrant cultures, native to other geographical locations, thrive, flourish and connect their current lives to centuries of tradition from their ancestral homes.

As an African American, my true home is… here. And my cultural identity? Well, this is just me I’m talking about, but it’s always been more closely aligned with the future and expanding possibilities than the past.

Or so I thought. Before our field trip.

Zoe took the entire family to the African American History Museum last weekend. Three generations of us, 11, 56, and 82.

My reality living as an African American has always been a bit of a scarlet letter situation, where the meaning of my appearance was not at all personally defined (or even tied to a specific place, language, or culture) but instead hijacked by observers, critics and frankly madmen; a razor’s edge where it was difficult not to fall on either the side of victim or threat.

This visit changed that by displaying the through-lines from one event to another, from one action to another, one person to another. The visitor walks a four-century long path from no choice to in charge, literally rising from nothing at all to quite a bit actually, seeing facts that you already knew but learning how they all fit together, a slow motion quest for dignity, for opportunity, every small action feeding another, every short life inspiring another, every step creating that path.

The importance of history is moving time forward, like passing a note in class. You remember how important that was, if the transmission was interrupted you’d never find out if they like you or “like” like you. Experiencing that museum was finally getting the note.

Oh. They don’t like us. No. Not at all.

But that’s not the point. It’s not about them, whoever they are.

I’m not from a piece of land elsewhere on the globe that represents my heritage. Instead, the actions of others constructed my homeland on this soil. It wasn’t always allowed to thrive or flourish; more often than not people tried to just set it on fire, not realizing that you cannot burn a dream, and that is my homeland, a dream of dignity and survival. I’m the descendant of a dream, and my responsibility is keep dreaming, and somehow pass the dream along.

My native tongue is perseverance. Patience. Focus. To be African American is not one single culture, but a rich soil enabling an infinite ecosystem; what we each grow into is unique, but it’s not so much a family tree as a Rainforest.

We also visited the Air and Space Museum, and I saw the original Enterprise model from Star Trek and got a bit weepy about that too. Look, I know who I am, I’m a geek, my heritage is… complicated. But on all fronts, I am very proud to represent it. I don’t know what it’s like to be anything else, but now I do feel a bit more connected to other people who’ve felt this same way.

The struggle isn’t gonna be over. Conflict is ever and everywhen. But dreams last longer than empires.

I do wish Wakanda was a real place, though. Just for the dual citizenship opportunity.

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