In the basement of a house on Memory Lane in Kalamazoo, Michigan somewhere between 1987 and 1989 I wrote a nonsense poem called “Blogger Old Potatoes.” In my hands, “blogger” was the improvised swear word of a two-year old girl. But according to Wikipedia, the word “blogger” was first coined round about April or May [...]

. A blogumn by Jeff Rogers It’s all the same holiday. Look around. We’ve got festivals of lights breaking out all over. With menorahs and candles and colorful glowing bulbs and roaring Yule logs we celebrate the continuance of light through the darkest nights of the year. Call it Hannukah, call it Christmas, call it [...]

. A blogumn by Jeff Rogers Second day back on land and the earth still sways under me like the deck of a ship. I teeter when I stand and stagger when I walk and I’m queasier than I was on the boat. I understand now why Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow is always swaying. [...]

. A blogumn by Jeff Rogers My birthday this past Friday has me in a reflective mood. I’m forty-six. The gray has gained a foothold in my beard; and a few spindly long gray hairs wend their way among my brown locks. “Cut that hair, hippie!” a young friend of mine at work said to [...]

. A blogumn by Jeff Rogers Every dysfunctional family is dysfunctional in its own way (as Tolstoy might say if he did “Oprah”). If you believe movies like Four Christmases dysfunctional families are at their worst during the holidays when all their simmering resentments come to a furious boil. Not so for the Holman Tribe [...]

. A blogumn by Jeff Rogers “Out here we grow amunds. ‘Almonds’ are what we sell.” Lou’s giving me the tour. “This year the birds got ‘em all. Wasn’t worth knockin’ one tree.” Past the almond groves their acreage ends at the edge of a tree-filled canyon. Successive ridges of oak-dotted yellow hills climb to [...]

. A blogumn by Jeff Rogers Folding chairs in rows in a high school gym in Kalamazoo, Michigan in about 1968. I would have been about five. A portable movie screen on rickety legs, one of my first experiences seeing a movie out in the world, and it was a black and white documentary. My [...]

. A blogumn by Jeff Rogers The screen door clatters under my knock. I stand at the side door under a drapery of morning glories and read the walk sheet: 74 Female. The white woman with silver hair who appears out of the dimness in her flower-print blouse with built-in scarf, her smile bright and [...]