Twelve years ago I was living in St. Louis working for the St. Louis Post Dispatch. I was single with two dogs and a parrot, and spent my free time going to bars and listening to music and watching sporting events with family and friends. I hadn’t even met Chris at that point. Now, 12 years later I work for […]

Spreadin’ the Eclectagospel… If you are in the Macomb County area, Anne and I will be speaking to the North Macomb County Democratic Club this evening. During the talk, we’ll be showing a 30-minute slideshow of Anne’s amazing photos and she’ll have her historic Obama photomosaic posters on sale, as well. The event starts at 7:00 p.m. at the UAW […]

“Two North” is a story about one Christmas when my mom was spending time on the psychiatric ward of our town’s hospital after trying to commit suicide to escape a physically-abusive husband. I was thirteen. It was a cataclysmic event in our lives but it brought us together into a two-person tribe like no other event ever has in my life.

My wife’s cousin, an editor (e.g. “Flags of Our Fathers”), has convinced me to use it as the launching pad for a book about life with my mom. I have yet to find the time to do this but that book is still inside me and waiting to get out. It’ll happen.

I offer this story to my friends here at Eclectablog on Christmas as a tribute to my mother, a woman who went from a pregnant sixteen-year old to an executive for the Chrysler Corporation in the short span of twenty years.

Much of who I am today is because of her and the lessons she taught me.

Read it after the jump.

We lost our little guy today. Rudy was a Senegal Parrot and was 19 years old. He was probably the smartest animal in our house. He rolled over, asked for peanuts, and knew tons of words and phrases like “What the…?” and “Would you like a beer?”

And “Peek-a-boo”. Video proof after the jump.

A tornado hit the village of Dexter, MI a mere six miles from my house. My wife Anne C. Savage shot this video of some of the damage. Dexter village is completely shut down. There is a major gas leak that is in risk of exploding. A Huron Valley Hospital mobile unit went by our house just a short time […]

Tonight’s haul, our first harvest: 145 pounds of organically-grown heirloom tomatoes. And there ate LOTS more on the vine. I’m skeert.

Thanks for your patience while I enjoyed some time off from blogging to enjoy The Most Beautiful Place in America with my most beautiful wife. If you you checked in at Eclectablog through last Tuesday, you probably saw some photos from our trip to the Sleeping Bear Dunes and the Leelanau Peninsula in “the pinky” of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. I’ll […]

This is our home, smack dab in the middle of The Most Beautiful Place in America for the next five days. Bliss: found and followed.

Remember my post about the 12-inch wide, 10-inch tall mushroom in my backyard? It had babies: This is known as a fairy ring. The original shroom threw out a bunch of spores around itself. It’s long gone but the spores have taken off. Too bad we’ll be gone for a few days while they are at their peak. Our housesitter […]

This is more funny than you realize. My niece-in-law is the only kid I know that could pull off that look better. And she totally would.

So, last Thursday, I went out into my backyard and found this handsome specimen. Hey, big fella. Come here often? The next day, it had gotten even bigger but we left for the weekend around lunchtime and didn’t get to see what would happen. When we got home Sunday evening, we found this: 11½ inches across! 10 inches high! Day-um… […]