Author: abendelow
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Music: Daytrippin’ in the Kali Yuga (2025)
Life is wondrous, even–especially– when we aren’t in control of and accept what arises.
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Music: Primal Tribal time (2025)
Here’s my first use of an instrument I’m only beginning to learn: the violin. The lyrics reflect an apprehension about growing uncertainty and diminishing safeguards going forward. The images of the beautiful “primitive” people of Papua New Guinea, responsibly sourced from Wikimedia Commons, are meant to symbolize basic aggressive energies that all humans share.
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Memoir: A summer job (1981)
So much great culture was happening for me in 1981. My high points: But my memoir prompt–to describe a summer job in 500-ish words–limits me. So as I was enjoying the culture above referenced, here’s my chapter: I was 20 years old the summer of 1981, living rent-free with dad in his two-bedroom apartment off…
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Reflection: Oh, no. Not again (2025)
In desperation and anger, people were willing to try something new–like Mussolini’s Blackshirts, who marched into Rome in October of that year.
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Reflection: Moving on
“Everybody’s moving, if they’re not already there. Everybody’s got to move somewhere.” –Bob Dylan The leaves are leaving. The army of leaves that have fed the tree all summer now deserts, one by one, floating down in their dried uniforms to the ground. Soon whole regiments will be abandoning their posts, borne away by late…
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Memoir: One day in 1975
When South Oak Park’s David Bowie passes us on the school playground, my friends smile and shake their heads in judgment. “Would you get a look at that fag? He’s wearing his mom’s makeup!”
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Memoir: Goodbye, old friend (1982-98)
Dear Mes, I wasn’t at your side in 1998 when you crossed the “rainbow bridge” to your afterlife, which I suppose holds endless green meadows teeming with flocks of pliant sheep that you direct and protect for eternity. You had your father’s shepherd heart, and you shepherded me and my growing family through my young…
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Memoir: first experiences with Punk (1976)
Last Saturday, as authoritarians in charge continued steering society over the guardrails and into the ditch of savagery and greed, the 20th annual Riotfest took place in Douglass Park, Chicago. The three-day festival features musical acts inspired by and spawned during the Punk rock era, when I was a youngster. It celebrates an attitude of…
The Wikiness 