J. K. Rowling

Why do you continue to write?



"Because I love it, and I need it."



How would you like to be remembered?



"As someone who did the best she could, with the talent she had."



These are the words of J. K. Rowling during her recent interview which aired last Friday. I was moved and inspired by her resilience, her perseverence, and her ability to take her imagination and write the words that transport us to a place that over time became so real in our own minds we never wanted to leave there. Thank you Ms. Rowling...we grew up with your Harry, and we will miss him, perhaps more than even you will.

1987

You will go

And I will sigh

The sun will continue

The moon moving by

It will touch you

And it will touch me

A touch I may wish

Simultaneously

Time Flies

When did he learn to roller blade like that?

Curly haired boy, with a smile that flies past,

Fleeting moment, it is getting dark out, but I still see his

Bright white teeth, eyelashes batting in the wind,

Faster, better put some elbow and knee pads on,

Protect that boy, that little sweet boy,

From all of the things that moms protect their boys from,

"Ready to go in now, Mom?"

"I was fast wasn't I?"

"You were fast...so fast I almost missed the whole thing."

The Man In the Mirror

What is it about when someone significant dies that we all change our minds about him? I am just as much of a culprit as anyone else. I punished him and judged him, laughed and jeered at him, but now I feel significantly remorseful. Why do we as a society go back to the Salem Witch Trials every time a significant figure falls? We watch as they bleed...and relish in their demise. Why? Maybe it makes us feel better about our own lives. Now that Michael is dead I see him as more of a human than I ever did when he was alive. I remember going to the Thriller concert in the early 80's with my brother Jerry. We somehow landed the Jackson's parents tickets through a friend of my fathers and watched the amazing superstar from just a few rows away. He was astounding. His performance mesmerised us. We watched him moonwalk across the stage, and I remember the emotions I felt at the thought that I was witnessing history.
Michael Jackson was a part of history that most of us managed to witness from start to finish. He was the greatest child singer, an amazing young artist, a genius in his time, and a has been for all intents and purposes, one of the greatest entertainers of the modern age. What happened to him? I have a newly found compassion for this guy now that he is gone and frankly it troubles me. He was so misunderstood like so many of us are. Every person is misunderstood at one time or another. But for most of us it is merely an instance; some messed up period in our lives that we make a mistake and our peers relish in our demise. For Michael it was a lifetime. No one could imagine that anyone could be that naive. No one could imagine that anyone could be that childlike, and really be who he claimed to be. No one understood why he constantly was trying to change his outward appearance to be someone else.
Perhaps he stopped growing up, this Peter Pan from Neverland, the moment that he became famous. From the age of 6 years old he was different from the rest of us. His family life was abusive by all reports no doubt, but society, all of us, played a huge part in creating this boy who never loved himself for who he was. He was our puppet and he was never good enough for any of us. When he was at his peak we wanted more, when he was changing his appearance we thought he was a weirdo.
The whole pedophile thing was what really threw me. I could not imagine any grown man having little boys staying in their bedroom for any good reason. It was beyond my scope to think that this was anything less than sickening. But perhaps, if I was to understand him a bit better, taking into account that he was found innocent by our court system, I could see this too from his child like perspective. Children were the only ones he could trust. He too was a child with the social mentality of about an 8 or 9 year old. So when he invited them over he never even dreamed of the sick things that our society was conjuring up that he was doing. Then when the families of the children he was inviting realized that they were not going to get any real monetary reward from him playing with their kids, perhaps they became predators themselves.

Michael Jackson was in a lot of pain his entire life because society could never really find the right box to put him in. All of the boxes that we choose were just ideas. He was an artist with a tragic ending, like so many artists before him. Like Vincent VanGogh, Michael Jackson will live on in the hearts and minds of all people throughout the world as one of our greatest artists, misunderstood in life and cherished in death.

A Mo Fourth

4th of July in 1973 was a great time at the Fine house. Mo's brother Buddy looked forward to the parade route that ran on the subdivided street in front of their West Bloomfield home. The planning began with a big brothers vision of his sweet little sister proudly displaying the decorated bike on the parade route that glorious day on the 4th of July. Buddy planned the day with brilliant detail and creativity. His vision for her day on the bike include beautifully adorned spokes with patriotic crepe paper that glistened as they spun, with the wind in her hair and a wide smile as she rode down the street and waved at the crowd. He carefully wrapped the paper around the handlebars while Mo watched in awe of him as he created the best decorated bike in the neighborhood just for her. Buddy thought about the greatness of Evil Knievel and how he would decorate his own bike for such an important day. What would Evil do? He thought as he carefully embarked on manipulating the fragile crepe paper around each spoke with Knievel like precision, driving the colors to perfection as he spangled the stars and stripes and sparkled the seat and hand grips with sparkle tape that he found at the K Mart earlier that week when he planned out the bikes' glory for his baby sister Mo.

Buddy did this every year for Mo. Each year with the same outcome. The most amazing bike in the parade, undoubtedly the most thought and creativity put into it, the same happy face riding it with pride on the route to the end. Mo and her brother waited each year as the judges pinned the categories as follows: Most Creative Bike, Most Patriotic Bike, Biggest Bike, Smallest Bike, Prettiest Bike, Coolest Bike, and of course the coveted Best Bike. Each year they left with no prize. No ribbon to reward the amazing work of art that Buddy created for his little sister. They never minded though because they understood that they were not being judged on the bike at all. Mo and Buddy understood the American way early on. The world of American politics was fast at work right in their very own neighborhood but the prize never mattered to them, the outcome was never their goal. Instead, it was for them the time they spent together as big brother and little sister that would be fondly remembered so many years later. The two of them were never prouder than they were each year on the 4th of July.

I have Stories

Welcome to my story blog. Oh the places we will go... I guess someone else beat me to this title. But we will definately go places. I am a story teller. I like to tell stories about people that I have met for a moment or a lifetime who have helped to shape my life and the lives of the people around them. My annual tradition is to write one short story per year and send it out in a Christmas card. It only takes me a little while to write it and people enjoy these stories so much that I think I should take my story writing a bit more seriously. Therefore, I have created this blog as an outlet for my story writing with the hopes that I will continue to write and create stories more than once a year. So here is my forum. I hope that you enjoy my creative outlet as the sole purpose for writing is for me to entertain people and to give people perspective on life through the examples that others have given me. Enjoy!