Rick Bailey's Blog: Stuff happens, then you write about it

Sam Hedenberg’s “You Can’t Stay Here” pulls back the curtain on bartender work, and it is hilarious. We commonly think of bartenders as psychologists, shrewd observers of human kind. Hedenberg is all that and more. He muses at the outset of this engaging collection, When you ask a kid what they want to be when…More

That summer, shortly after the French family moved into the house across the street, we decided it would be fun to give Pierre and Yvette a real American experience. We took them to a baseball game. This would have been in the early 1990’s. Old Tiger stadium, that cathedral of memory downtown, was still standing.…More

“It smells like worms out here,” my wife says. It’s the beginning of November. We’re coming out of a small grocery store in a light rain one morning. We are not loaded with bags. We’ve bought just one item. Reaching the car, we pull open the doors. She’s on her side, I’m on mine. The…More

It wasn’t much of a proposal. Really, it wasn’t a proposal at all. It was a consensus decision. Well, yeah, I guess we ought to get married.  It was 1977.  We were driving south on I-75, coming home from a ski trip. It was a Sunday night. There was a lot of traffic. We’d spent…More

Ask a kid, he’ll tell you. I’m no good at that, I’m no good at math, he will say. Or I don’t get grammar, I’m bad at music, at dance, at sports. I don’t understand science, I don’t like to read. Early on, with a little luck, maybe you’ll also learn what you’re good at.…More

Cows, I learned recently, can’t walk down stairs.  The problem is weight distribution and the way their knees bend. So you can invite them up, but you may be asking for trouble. I’ve been thinking a lot about cows and milk ever since the holistic doctor I see told me to cut milk from my…More

The chemo regimen lasted six weeks. After the first week, my mother-in-law started losing her beautiful silver hair. When she woke in the morning, it was on her pillow. It came out in her brush. We noticed it on her shoulders. As much as the nausea and lassitude, hair loss was an agony for her.…More

The clinical term for it is presbycusis (from the Greek presby “old” + akousis “hearing”).  Do a little digging, the acronym you will encounter is ARHL (age-related hearing loss). There’s an online journal called Hear Me Out that’s dedicated to ARHL-related terms and their origins.  Thirty figures of speech for those who, like me, say…More

“How about a squeeze burger?” I ask Tizi. It’s 11:30 a.m. We’ve just landed in Sacramento. Behind us is a four-hour flight from Detroit; ahead of us a three-hour drive south, in the direction of Yosemite. We’re going to Mariposa to be with kids and grandchildren. It will take a few days to adjust to…More

I am scum. The chief executive of the United States recently said so.  Yes, I lean left. I believe that DEI addresses injurious discrimination and injustice ignored for decades, that “inclusion” is not such a bad thing, that it’s wrong (and unnecessary) for children to go to bed and to wake up hungry, that healthcare…More