It was last week, on the three-and-a-half-year anniversary of my father’s passing, that I learned a whole lot more about the guy than I’d known before. During the summer after he died, in 2016, I’d gone through the house that he and my mother had retired to back at the turn of the century. They’d brought with them all of the stuff they’d accumulated in thirty-plus years together: multiple households’ worth of furniture, books, kitchen items, clothes and just plain…
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.” — Mark Twain (And unlike a lot of famous quotes attributed to Mark Twain, this one he actually said.) As has often been the case in my life, travel prompts big and broad thoughts in my noggin. Sure, I contemplate short-term and in-your-face notions on what I’m seeing and doing, the people I’m meeting, and how much fun I’m having. But…
In early August, I returned to Annapolis from Massachusetts after my two-day trip to get my car inspected in the Bay State turned into a 12-day trip to deal with a sibling in crisis. I got back to Naptown and spent four days packing up a carload of crap — surfboards, kiteboarding gear, kitchen stuff, books, clothes, clothes, more clothes, etc. — and heading back north to Mass, where I would remain for the rest of August and all of…