I seem to be on a ghost tangent lately. And as a side note, Mrs. Surratt requested that I spell her name correctly as opposed to the French-ified way I spelled it in this piece originally. I think I’ve corrected all mentions of her, if not, tell her I’m sorry.
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When I was 11 years old we lived in Chicago. Upstairs in our house, my father had turned one room into what he called his bar. The liquor was kept there on shelves behind a rectangular bar, a chair for reading, an easel usually with an in-progress painting on it, and a noose hanging from the light fixture in the middle of the room. The room sat at the end of a large upstairs area that was the TV room. My brave sister’s bedroom was also up there to the left if facing the “bar.” That noose, tied perfectly, a joke to my dad, scared me to death. During that period Life Magazine had done a photo spread of the Lincoln assassination conspirators’ hanging.… Continue reading →

I have always had vivid dreams. My mom remembers me regaling her with them over breakfast. Her usual response was a smile, a shake of the head and the comment, “You have some real weirdies, honey.” I still do.

I woke up this morning after having had a dream about the St. Roch Market. First I need to tell you that I have never been there, not seen it as a seafood and Chinese food place prior to the storm. I have stood staring at it many times since and the building itself has a presence, a personality, one that reaches out wanting to be useful and vibrant. It misses people and voices and laughter. At least that's what it seems to tell me.

For those of you who read my last experimental post, and apparently many of you did despite its length if SiteMeter is right (I rarely check it but did for this one), I applaud your patience and curiousity.

I had posted a rather long, albeit edited speech and challenged readers to tell me who they thought had written those words. Interestingly, there were only two actual guesses in the comments section. Most guesses came via email or text message. Not sure why that was the case.

The guesses were good, with one really great joke guess thrown in: Kennedy (both John and Robert were represented), Jimmy Carter, FDR (evidently someone missed a reference to 1947 which would put old Franklin out of the running), Lyndon Johnson (a really good guess actually) and Martin Luther King. Good guesses all. The great joke guess was Ann Coulter which came in as I was writing this.

The answer: Dwight Eisenhower, from a speech called the Peace Speech delivered in the Spring of 1953 before I was born. Eisenhower:… Continue reading →

. . .What would you think? Who would you expect to have written it?

Without resorting to Google, Yahoo, or your search engine of choice, read the following, then please post in the comments section who you think said this.

In the interest of transparency, anything you see in has either been changed or removed. In some instances entire paragraphs have been removed. If you see in a sentence, fill in that blank with your choice of what makes sense to you within that sentence. If you see the same bracket/dot/bracket between paragraphs it means some paragraphs have been removed. (I will explain in two days why I did that, although some of you will probably figure it out. In some cases the bracket will look different i.e.{ or } since I just figured out that the other interferes with the html cuz I’m an html idiot.)

I’m curious what response this this will get. Please read it in its entirety before resorting to compliments or insults in the comments section, either here or on… Continue reading →