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Today is the first day of African-American History Month. It’s also the day the world learned that Don Cornelius, the creator and most famous host of Soul Train, committed suicide. I hadn’t thought about Cornelius in ages, but Soul Train was huge for us kids of the ’70s and ’80s. I’m about as Caucasian as [...]
Does the body rule the mind Or does the mind rule the body ? I dunno… – The Smiths One summer during my middle school years, I had to mow the lawn at my dad’s house. My father was a big believer in kids starting on regular household chores as young as possible, and he [...]
On the eve of 2012, I’m naturally looking back on the past year and looking forward to the next. (Truthfully, I’m frequently looking backwards while also looking forward. But today seems like a good time to write about it.) I started 2011 with the intention of writing more and being more creative. I did that, [...]
I’ve got one day left of my “365 Days of Neff” project, my daily self-portrait thingamajig. After thinking about it and asking for input, I’ve decided that for 2012, I’m going to write a poem a day, at least one page in length. I’ll be handwriting them in a notebook (I hate writing prose by [...]
Nothing dies. Nothing ever dies. – Ian McCulloch, “Start Again” My Grandma Mary died 23 years ago. It was Election Day, 1988. I was a freshman in college and excited to be voting in my first Presidential election. Just before I left my dorm room to go vote, my dad called to tell me my [...]
My father had major surgery on Wednesday. There were some concerns with this. My father has COPD, and surgeons really don’t like to put COPD patients under with general anesthesia. My father needed to have this surgery done, and his heart was strong enough to clear him for the surgery, but there was still a [...]
It was 20 years ago today, but I can remember so much of it crisply, like it only just happened. It was the day after Hallowe’en, and it was snowing. It seemed way too early in the year for snow, even for Iowa. I was working at the checkout desk at the south entrance of [...]
Today is one of my favorite holidays, the time when the walls between what-we-know and what-we-dream are particularly thin, a time of masks and costumes and candy, a celebration of the spooky, the mysterious, the surreal. Sadly, I’ve been far too distracted and disorganized this year to come up with a costume. I don’t even [...]
I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t interested in the strange, the uncanny, the mysterious, the wondrous, the supernatural. But when I was in 1st grade, I became somewhat obsessed with ghosts and haunted houses, UFO sightings, legends of vampires and werewolves, and cryptozoology. This went on for years. I checked out as many [...]
GLAAD has declared today, October 20, as Spirit Day, a day for people of all sexual orientations to show support for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender youth and to show support against bullying. I’m heterosexual, but I have many people in my life of various orientations who I love dearly. And know people who have [...]
