The catalogs of November clog the mailbox. Who needs another sweater in quarantine? I feel fleeced already. Yet occasionally a catalog does wander in that really does offer unique merchandise and the aroma of genuine value. I read and re-read the Garrett Wade catalog last night and then presented it to Risa, who also got into it for a half hour before bed. It has no gadgets, no apparel, just interesting stuff that you could imagine holding onto for decades or giving to a grandchild who would probably think you were nuts. But then they start to use the item…
Author: Lloyd Graff
The election is over and still the country is divided. No. Not Trump vs. Biden. I’m talking about getting together for Thanksgiving. COVID-19 has messed up holiday planning. My wife Risa and I have not physically been with our California family for almost a year. We see each other on Zoom frequently and talk over the phone several times a week. We send lots of photos, do game nights, and even have an occasional party, but there is no popcorn via the Internet. We long for the hugs, the breakfast coffee together, the kids walking into our bedroom to schmooze…
I was buying bagels for my lunch, and on my ride to the deli I started listening to an NPR interview of Terry Gross speaking with writer Jerald Walker, who Gross described incessantly as having grown up on Chicago’s Southside. Well, so did I, so I was drawn into Walker’s recollections of moving into a White neighborhood which quickly changed to all Black in the 1960s. It might well have been very close to where I grew up a few years earlier on Euclid Avenue. Michelle Obama grew up on Euclid also, 15 to 20 years after me. Walker showed…
The Los Angeles Dodgers’ nearly over-the-hill starter Clayton Kershaw makes more money in a year than the entire Tampa Bay Rays team that battled them in the World Series. So does their star outfielder Mookie Betts. It isn’t fair, but neither is life. Tampa Bay’s unknown star Randy Arozarena, who arrived in Tampa in August from the St Louis Cardinals’ minor league system, makes approximately 1% of what Betts makes, but he outplayed him in the series and set records in the preceding playoffs. Prior to October, the highlight of Randy’s life had been jumping off his fake boat along…
One of life’s mysteries for me has been the scarcity of great t-shirts. I am not a clothes hound. My dad liked clothes. He had his suits tailor made by unintelligible Italian tailors who held pins in their mouths while they were talking. Once, he took my brother Jim and I to pick out suit fabric. We inspected bolts of luxurious fabric for our own future custom suits. I remember picking a ridiculous brown plaid. I rarely wore the suit. It never really suited me because it had padded shoulders like my father favored, to make his slender frame look…
My high school class has a Yahoo group to connect with classmates from yesteryear. It is usually dormant except for an occasional obituary notice. Yahoo recently announced that it is abolishing such groups, perhaps because Facebook has made them an anachronism. The notice has awakened our group. An old friend of mine volunteered to rejuvenate the internet group on Google, which has brought out thank-yous from around the country. As each person pops up on the Web, I feel a sense of relief that they are still alive and lucid. Sometimes it is a spouse or friend who joins the…
This was a good year for applesauce. My farmers market guy, Mr. Hardin from near Kalamazoo, selected a bushel of apples, Honeycrisp, Mac, Fuji, Cortland, Jonagold, Gala, and a few Golden Delicious. Risa and Noah’s wife Stephanie peeled them, Noah and I sliced them up, and then we boiled them into the applesauce which will never last until next October. Applesauce is a ritual for us every year. It’s a punctuation mark for the end of summer. College football is a mess, back to school is back to chaos, but for apples in the Midwest it has been a wonderful…
September 30, 2020. End of third-quarter. First presidential debate. Baseball playoffs beginning. NBA finals start. For Jews, it’s the beginning of a new year. Today feels pivotal. Sometimes you can sense things are changing. The weather has abruptly shifted in Chicago. It went from summer to decidedly fall overnight. The real apple cider has come in. The sweet corn is all but gone. I plan to buy my two bushels of 10 varieties of apples this Sunday at the farmers market from Hardin Orchards near Kalamazoo. It is my yearly ritual. My wife, Risa, peels them, I slice them. We…
Sleep and lack of it has long been one of life’s biggest mysteries to me. Some days it feels so easy and comfortable, an effortless, pleasant activity, and the next night it is an elusive phantom that I mentally grab for and continually miss. I used to find it much easier. Wash up. Light stretch. Hug my wife. Casually discuss the next day’s plans. Turn over, and sleep would easily take me. Not so anymore. For years, after being told I had sleep apnea disorder, I struggled with an annoying breathing apparatus that was supposed to provide me with a…
I talk to a lot of folks in the machining trade every day, and the clear sense I am getting is that business is improving. The automotive segment is definitely firming. Auto related work has bounced back from the April, May, June, July doldrums. Demand has picked up, and car showrooms are extremely short of hot inventory. European and Japanese companies were also shut down, and the supply chains are strained. Guns and the medical sector are strengthening. We are seeing an uptick in the used machinery business. The auctioneers are surprised at how strong their sale prices are holding…