More than simple nostalgia, my first alumni reunion was an emotional puree. I arrived Thursday afternoon to spend the day in peaceful reconnoitering of a campus I’d been away from for quite some time. Passing beneath maple, oak, and the shadow of the Hesburgh, I felt I could very nearly displace myself to twenty years ago and feel it all again: the pleasant joy of the springtime campus’s beauty being lifted from winter; the excitement of possibilities – any major, every class, a world of knowledge to unlock; the flash image of my family milling about in Farley Hall before graduation, taking snapshots of them as they got ready for the big events. I remembered using Stepan Hall as a shortcut through the cold, giving a classmate grief outside the Snite Art Museum over his unbelievable story of his improbable girlfriend (now wife), grabbing snacks out of Decio Hall, being a malcontent. I remembered walking toward LaFortune at school year’s beginning, with Candlebox’s “Gone Away” playing on a loudspeaker just outside the fountain – a reminder then of high school and my high school friends; much later exiting LaFortune into a curtain of slowly drifting thick snow with Evanescence’s “Bring Me to Life” playing on my headphones. I remember thinking how impeccably the snow and sound went together. It would take a gust of wind to slap the reunion lanyard against me, name and class, to shunt me back to the present – a rude reminder to acknowledge the stark reality of middle age in this environment, the very present contrast of being at the nexus where so many potential future paths were once open, epitomized by the very buildings around me, now sealed shut with no meaningful way to at least lock time, never mind rewind it. A sullenness started to take, not at all helped by the thought that I arrived alone. Passing between the Hesburgh Library toward North Quad, I decided to focus again on the thought of halting time (a pastime, really), and I mused again its impossibility; enthalpy prevents any meaningful stifling. Thinking Man can’t exist in a world without time, heat must flow. That reminded me of the theorized heat death of the universe; then I saw a dead bird beneath the tree to my right. I paused my walk, then decided to rapidly turn my back to coincidence. Life seems simpler that way.

As I further wandered campus, throttling the flow of memories into a sensible stream of thought, I realized this place is more an emotional locus now to me than it ever was, or could have been, when I was younger. I was never “present”, though I had been here. I used to revel in a foolishly disguised anti-establishmentarianism, preventing myself from just enjoying the University for what it is. My now changed perspective would have been impossible without Life giving these memories meaning in the context of growing older and embracing mounting personal and professional responsibilities.

Nothing like strolling memory lane to get the blood moving.

I sat at Legends, of which I was once a frequent patron, however had never been to solo. My last memory was from the summer of 2004, grabbing lunch with the remaining fellow ex-students whom I’d known from a previous summer at UNDERC.  We talked about many things, including what we thought we would be up to post-graduation. Communal, engaging, laughter, friendship, goodbye – echograms I assign now to that memory. Friday nights in the back booth eating burger and fries and drinking pint after pint disrupted by slapping tables, raucous laughter, and everyone taking their shots at each other, a pack of miscreants ready to be the world’s future leaders. “Strange”, is the only word that came to mind at the changed dynamics.

Of my cadre of early ‘00’s cohorts, I was the only one who could make it (re: mounting responsibilities). The emotional mixture that I could only describe as sublimely splendid soft sorrow did not last long – because it is the University of Notre Dame. No other college or university so successfully creates and sustains its own family. Frankly, I struggle to think of a better word than family. Everyone on campus that reunion weekend was family, and in my wanderings, I met many great people willing to strike up a warm conversation, distant relatives meeting for the first time. Since I did not think to ask permission to use full names in vain, I will say it was a pleasure to meet fellow submariner Edward and his wife; share drinks with Mike, Richard, and Larry and hear how campus and culture changed from the ‘60’s until today; meet and thereafter sporadically run into Brian of 1969 (to differentiate); and, well, unfortunately I forget the gentleman’s name, but I shared breakfast one morning with an alum, his wife, and grandchildren who traveled to visit. To Mary, from the North Dining Hall, and Dana, from the Hesburgh Library, thank you for indulging my questions.

Separately, it was impressive to see how the campus has changed, to really see how University investments are being put to work to continually work towards being a world-class academic leader. The new facilities are amazing, with more ground being broken to pave the way for future scholars to be provided what will undoubtedly the best facilities for leading edge research and study. Just a few observations: 1) Duncan Student Center’s fitness center is fantastic, though part of me wanted to hit the track at Rolf’s again. 2) Jordan Hall of Science is stunning, and the “All Creation Gives Praise” viewing was a wonderful journey through the organizing strata of creation. Well done. 3) Not Least: The dark room on the first floor of the Hesburgh Library is open for anyone to tour, rotates what is on display, and has yearbooks from 1927 onward. I was one of four people in a span of one hour to say some rendition of “I always thought this area was off limits.” It’s not, and they really enjoy having people.

Leaving campus, I was left to suppose all this is the purpose of reunion weekend. One-part sabbatical, one-part spiritual journey, a dash of reinvigoration. Being back on campus is renewing, but enjoying the weekend with the alumni community, sharing our collective memories, the things that made us laugh, the things that got us in trouble, the places we’ve been and lives we’ve lived so far, that is what made the weekend truly memorable. Call it what you will, I’m settling for the spirit of Notre Dame for now: the palpable connection drawing together each and every Domer, where none are strangers, all are welcome. One can arrive alone on alumni weekend and never be alone. Thank you to the University staff, our Alumni Association, and those student volunteers who made it an absolute treasure of a weekend. But to end with one new shenanigan imprinted to memory: There I am, in the refreshment tent’s full and merry evening crowd, trying to wade through to an open spot when Edward (who I met that day at the North Dining Hall) says, “Watch out!”, as I was backing away with drink in hand. Then I swear I hear “And the priest behind you!”. Me, I’m thinking “Yeah, it’s busy, but we missed the rabbi,” – then ran into a priest behind me!

Thank you, Father, for being understanding.

However, if there is one thing that I regret from the whole weekend, one moment I wish I could take back and turn around, one ringing thought that failed to quiet down – we lost Larry.

Larry, if you’re reading this, I don’t know how we lost track of you on the way to the All Class Mass, but I hope you had a blessed rest of the weekend.  

Cheers all and see you in five years.

I don’t know why, but probably after a late night internet binge (when the real weirdos come out), I had the image in my head of a “lizard person” and a vampire having a meal in a 1920’s Italian restaurant.  Not sure how well it came out, with a lot less “shmoopsie” than I originally wanted, but here it is: “For Old Time’s Sake”.

Imagine a future where mankind takes to the stars before finding any means of faster-than-light travel. What would that feasibly look like? “Tertius Terrae” explores one take on that, set again in the Blueprint universe, where the needs to cater the human body over decades and decades of travel are avoided by transcription of the mind from man to machine. What would it like to be “alive”? What would it mean to “die”?  “Tertius Terrae” is available for purchase in the May edition of Mobius Boulevard, available on Amazon.

2023 has been a blur of a year. I have been on shift work for nearly half of it, devoting half of each shift day to work, to the splitting of atoms, to the grasping adherence of exacting standards. I have pushed people to hold to discipline and to hardship because terrible technologies do not forgive the erring ways of humanity. I have spent very little time writing and very little time looking at this site, and despite my time away, nothing has changed. Each and every time I looked at this undisturbed digital pond, it had no ripples. I have written to the ether, to the silence. This work reaches no audience. 

Language is a meaningless amalgamation of symbols and throaty undulations when it fails to reach a receiver capable of understanding what those symbols and sounds do mean. Without another person to hear and see, the sayings and writings of any person are without meaning.

I write in spite of myself, and I hold this website solely as an inventory of those stories I have written. It holds meaning so long as I alone live, but not one day longer.

I write to myself and to silence. Simply the way it has always been.

I’ll be honest – I have zero memory of what inspired/prompted/fed into the idea for the newest short story posted here. I don’t. I can say it was influenced by an episode of Ash vs the Evil Dead, a blurred mental mosaic of middle-aged detective stereotypes from the 80’s, and probably having a hard time falling asleep. From some seed of sleeplessness came this fiasco, or, shall I say, fandango? So what’s it about? Flying, irrational beings and two to three parts murder. I had fun writing it, so I hope you have fun reading it. If you don’t – hey, at least it was free. 

“There Is No Reasoning With Fairies”, link to the right, or link to it right here. 

[Fun fact: Titles always come last with me. Stumped with this one, eventually I landed on “Killer Fairies From Inner Space” and thought, man, that’s a slick, slick title. Took a few weeks before I realized why it sounded sorta familiar. And so, not to impose on the classic Killer Clowns From Outer Space, I changed it, because I can’t afford to screw stuff like that up.]

Unity is a superficially simple concept, that I would define as something like an agreement among individuals, or individual parties, to maintain alignment on a specific cause, philosophy, or purpose.  For example, a group of friends can find unity among their individualities to defend each other against some other group of friends, who have likewise found a unity.  Those in group A may practice varying adherence to the same or different religions, come from families of no common lineage, or all be transplants from different states.  But in their one purpose, defense, they find a unity. 

But unity is also a relative concept which has its magnitude defined by the number of participating individuals and the number of overlapping differences that are smoothed over to accommodate a common front.  A recent example I came across was a video celebrating western culture, full of Christian religious symbolism and references to both artwork and figures of the European Renaissance and Enlightenment.  I am assuming the motivation behind this video was a longing for the traditional values of a homogenized western culture and sorrow toward its apparent erosion.  Now, this is no attempt to opine on the validity of that longing or to imply any form of judgement on that video.  Simply, I saw it as a showcase of smoothing over all the historical, cultural, and linguistic differences among the western European nations and peoples, blending together thousands of years of different histories to propel a writ-large statement.  I must emphasize the idea of it blending together and effectively glossing over all historical and cultural differences between, say, the Greeks and Austrians, the English and Italians, in order to make an artistic point.  But through the shared sense of a perceived loss of identity, some found unity under the perceived collective culture being lost.  In other words, unity was found through differences. 

Unity is a pillar of American identity erected in the aftermath of the Civil War.  After its conclusion, the American mindset shifted from that of being state-centric, i.e. “I am a Virginian,”, to that of nationalistic, i.e. “I am an American”.  Unity, from sea to shining sea, across a landmass the extent of Europe, where people living under fifty different sets of laws were still connected by a common sense that they were Americans.  This sense of a common identity was strengthened by external, international dangers that threatened all living in the United States, requiring a need for all to act as one.  Unity was maintained as long as the common threads of the blanket of freedom were acknowledged, accepted, understood, propagated, and held in reverence.  Americans recognized each other as Americans, and so long as all held to a common concept, a common respect for each other as Americans, unity was maintained.  With that could come purpose, a driving goal, an answer for every challenge thrown at the American people, where the American spirit and ingenuity thrived. 

But if unity is the tamping down of differences to find agreement toward a common cause, philosophy, or purpose, then two complications arise.  The first is understanding how wide commonality may be stretched before the magnitude of differences (as a function of the number of differentiating factors and their importance to people) overwhelms it.  Consider categories of differences as the conceptual divisions that define individuals from each other.  These can be very wide and blatant (ex. Immigrants and non-immigrants) to much more refined (students same town but rival high schools).  So the question becomes, how many people or how many categories of difference can be held together by a common purpose?  For example, it may be easy for Catholic Christians and Methodist Christians and Seventh Day Adventist Christians to find unity under Christianity to find purpose in, for example, supporting an education bill.  But can that unity toward a purpose also be extended to religious non-Christians or non-religious people to align on and make the desired outcome?  Likely that would depend on the how well bill itself provides a non-religious common thread to pull the groups together.  The other complication stems from the first, which is the presence of separatist agitators who would prefer to see the magnitude of unity collapse to fit smaller categories of differences.  There was never a time in American history where it was difficult to find separatist agitators, but in the 21^st century, their reach, the number of outlets available to them, and their volume has reached an accumulation not seen previously in our history. 

This is a problem, and it is a self-exacerbating problem.  With a growing United States, in the number of its citizens, in the ever-increasing complexity of its cultures, which births more categories of differences, the apparent common threads appear to be growing tauter, while the volume of agitators grows.  Unity itself is in danger of being drowned by the need of the agitators to embrace the weight of our differences.  Without unity, we find ourselves without the willpower or purpose to resolve any of the major issues facing our nation.  To be clear, we the people have become focused on the arguments and not the solutions.  To listen closely to the major parties, for example, one finds they offer no solutions, spend time casting stones, and play at government standstills while toying with trillions of taxpayer dollars.

Unity of a people, any people, is a mainstay of society, and is an evolution from family to tribe to city to the nation.  The growth and majesty of any civilization was never found by euphorically relishing in the differences but in understanding and owning those differences while understanding that the neighbor is not the enemy and working toward a common objective benefiting all.  We cannot afford to focus on separatism any further as we proceed through the 21^st century.  We must regain unity. 

Alternate titles: “A Treatise on the Dissolution of Relation with the Competitive Spirit Demonstrated During Tournament Events”, or “I Should’ve At Least Looked This Up”

In any case, Notre Dame Magazine online published another essay of mine:

https://magazine.nd.edu/stories/the-first-saturday-in-ordinary-time/

Last week, I came across diversity initiatives in the news, at work, and even a cynical jab at it on TV where the protagonists on screen were effectively lamenting their employers’ for-show-only diversity program. I have opinions on it, like many people do, and I am fortunate that Notre Dame Magazine published my thoughts on it on their website. Please find the essay, “Skin Deep”, available at the following website: https://magazine.nd.edu/stories/skin-deep/

Just to give myself a clean entry, whatever you see on here until I say it’s done, will be a story that I’m updating on the fly. I’m writing it in Word and copying/pasting to FaceBook (to prevent another fiasco like yesterday) as well as this website for those who are on the look-out. The idea is just iterative installments on a periodic basis whenever I see fit. This way, I can give my brain a release instead of trying not to get overwhelmed at writing larger pieces.

I’m not re-reading these things, not trying to edit them, they’re coming out as they originally are. Hope you enjoy, and I guess we’ll all find out how the story ends right about the same time!