From the archives (2003): There Was Already Something a Little Off…

Posted on September 11, 2026 by sheila

about that morning.

I was running late. Normally I am on the bus, on my way into Manhattan from Hoboken, at 8:45, 9 am. But that morning, I was 20 minutes behind schedule. Because I was late, I decided to walk two blocks north, and pick up the bus at 9th and Washington as opposed to 7th and Washington. Washington is the main drag in Hoboken. Washington is 3 blocks west of the Hudson, but the brownstones lining the street block any view of Manhattan. We were completely unaware, as we gathered at the busstop, that an enormous jet had plowed its way into the WTC.

As has been described ad nauseum, it was a stunning day. A real fall day. Saying “not a cloud in the sky” is not a euphemism or an exaggeration. It is the truth. The buildings of Washington cast long shadows in the morning, long chilly shadows, but the day was bright and blindingly sunny.

I am such a creature of habit in the mornings. I am also barely awake in the mornings. But I had taken an unfamiliar route, I had veered off course, I had chosen 9th instead of 7th, so I felt a bit more aware of my surroundings than I would have otherwise. I could walk down 7th Street in Hoboken with my eyes closed and never ever trip on the buckling sidewalk. Not so on 9th.

I was 3/4 of the way through Catch-22, a book I had never read before, much to the chagrin of … THE WHOLE DAMN WORLD. I come from a long line of Catch-22 worshippers, so I finally picked it up.

I mention this only because this is a post about what I remember on that morning. And it’s weird what you remember. Or what grows in significance later, when you look back on it. I remember that I had my nose in Catch-22, standing in the long chilly shadows on Washington Street, at 8:35 in the morning, 8:40, 8:45 … wondering, in the back of my mind: Where the hell is the bus?

I do not wear a watch, so I can put together the timing of the events on my side of the river only through a series of guesses. I left my house at 8:30, late for me. I arrived at the bus stop, at 8:45 or thereabouts.

I began to read. Standing on the curb.

Busses during rush-hour, in Hoboken, come one after the other after the other. If you wait 3 or 4 minutes for a bus, it feels like a long time. And if 6 or 7 minutes go by, then you know something is up.

So 6 or 7 minutes went by.

Desultory conversations broke out between my fellow commuters. “I wonder where the bus is.” “I should call work … I’m gonna be late.” People stepping off the curb, peering down to the left, squinting for busses. “Maybe there was an accident in the Tunnel,” I heard. Then someone arrived at the bus-stop, and I heard her inform a couple of people, “I guess a plane hit the World Trade Center.” This was second-hand news. She was not hysterical, just reporting a possible reason for the slow-down of busses.

This was, even though we had no idea of the scope or the magnitude, disturbing to hear. In the same way that anything bad is disturbing news, if you have a heart beating in your chest. A massive earthquake in Turkey or South America. You take a moment to think, “Oh God. How awful.” Fellow human feeling. Some kid shoots up his school across the country. You take a moment: “Oh my God, how terrible … ” Hearing about the plane generated a response on that level, for the most part. Perhaps it was a bit more intensified because it was just across the river, and also: we couldn’t SEE anything yet. We, as human beings, have a need to SEE. I know that the first thing I did when I finally was let off the bus 40 or so minutes later, still in Hoboken, the first thing I did was run, as fast as I could, down to the water, so that I could see what was happening. I HAD TO SEE.

Not being able to see what was going on just across the river was disturbing and everybody got thrown off. People dropped their change. Strangers broke out into conversation.

I assumed, as many people assumed, that this was probably a “JFK Jr. Situation” (as I called it in my mind). An inexperienced pilot, a small plane … an accident.

If I had actually contemplated it, and tried to be logical, then I would have soon come to the conclusion that that guess made no sense whatsoever. JFK Jr. was flying over the ocean, on a foggy black night, with no instrument training. He tried to see where he was going (a huge mistake for a pilot), and couldn’t because he was looking at a wall of black. But how in the world could someone MISS the World Trade Center on a bright morning? When they are the tallest things on the landscape, dwarfing all else, and visible from miles away? My “JFK Jr.” guess made no sense.

But again: I wasn’t sitting there trying desperately to figure it out. I had a moment of: “Oh God. I hope nobody was hurt! That is terrible!” and then went back to Catch-22.

It sounds so callous. But we had no information, and no visuals, even though it was happening just across the river.

I did notice, (again, in a desultory casual way) that every person had a cell phone to their ear. And I also noticed that nobody was actually speaking into the cell phone. I didn’t make anything of it. It was only later when I realized that that was the beginning of the being-unable-to-use-our-phones phenomenon. Everybody knows somebody who worked in those buildings. Everybody was trying to get through to them, and say, “What happened? Are you okay?” And already, at that early time, before the second plane, people’s phones had stopped working.

It must be said that the rest of the country (and the world) had a better view of what was going on in Manhattan than the majority of us actually here did. They were watching on television. They saw what was going on. We were a mile away and we couldn’t see shit.

Finally, a bus came. We all piled on, gratefully. At last! We’re off to work!

In my memory, the bus lumbered down Washington very very slowly. It seems like we were in slo-mo, but that could just be retrospect coloring the memory. I am not sure what was true, what was not, but I felt like we were chugging along at a horse-and-buggy pace. Why?

Maybe we were actually going slow, because the driver, in contact with the officials at Port Authority, knew something that we, the riders, didn’t. Of course, I didn’t think this at the time. I was too busy reading Catch-22, and trying not to think about the horrible-ness of a plane crashing into a skyscraper.

A woman sitting behind me had miraculously gotten through to her boyfriend on the phone, who was home, watching CNN, and trying to tell her what was going on. The second plane had not hit yet.

She hadn’t yet transformed into the correspondent for the entire bus, as she would do, moments later. She was speaking quietly, privately, trying to figure out, with her boyfriend what was going on. “So … what kind of plane was it? Is anyone hurt? Yeah, well, there’s a ton of traffic on the causeway … we’re completely stopped.”

Others were engrossed in trying to dial their cell phones. Some people were zoned out as though nothing was out of the ordinary.

As the bus chug-chug-chugged along Washington, towards 14th Street (and the edge of Hoboken), where it would then take a left, and then a right … to head onto the causeway leading into the Lincoln Tunnel, I dealt with my own sense of “Something’s not quite right about this morning” by reading my book.

I remember the whole Catch-22 part of this morning so vividly because that would be the last pleasure-reading that I would do for well over a year to come.

I came to a certain paragraph in Chapter 36, read it through, and it was then that the bus filled up with screams. I looked up, wildly, just in time to witness the explosion that filled the air behind us. The second plane. May I live a million years and never see such a sight again.

Screams. Hysteria. The girl, already on an open phone line with her boyfriend, stood up and started shouting out to all of us what her boyfriend was saying, her boyfriend watching CNN:

“That was a second plane — a second plane — My boyfriend said a second plane just flew into the other tower.”

This is when, for the first time, I thought of my sister. Who worked a block away from the towers, which were now both on fire. Black smoke filled the air. Screams through the bus. Panic. People were jumping up and down, plastered against the windows on the Manhattan side of the bus. Crying. Screaming with frustration at how their phones would not work. “GodDAMMIT, why can’t I get a signal?”

It seemed 5 million years ago since I had categorized the unknown magnitude in my mind as “a JFK Jr. Situation”. America was under attack.

But all the other stuff, all the stuff I live with on a daily basis now (the rage, the rage, the rage at them and what they did) – none of that stuff was going through my mind. I was just trying to call my sister. My parents. My brother.

And praying.

Dialing.

I started praying outloud … I was not alone … many people were praying … as we all feverishly kept trying to use our cell phones. My prayer was all one word:

hailmaryfullofgracethelordiswiththeeblessedartthouamong
womenandblessedisthefruitofthywombjesusholymary
motherofgodprayforoursinsnowandatthehourofourdeathamen
hailmaryfullofgracethelordiswiththeeblessedartthouamong
womenandblessedisthefruitofthywombjesusholymary
motherofgodprayforoursinsnowandatthehourofourdeath
amenhailmaryfullofgracethelordiswiththeeblessedart
thouamongwomenandblessedisthefruitofthywombjesusholy
marymotherofgodprayforoursinsnowandatthehourofourdeath
amen…

Dial, hang up, dial, hang up, dial, hang up …. hailmaryfullofgrace….
Underneath the established prayer was another prayer.

let siobhan be okay let siobhan be okay let siobhan be okay let siobhan be okay let siobhan be okay let siobhan be okay let siobhan be okay let siobhan be okay let siobhan be okay

It would be hours before Siobhan contacted my parents. She fled from the collapsing buildings, with her sweatshirt over her head, running from the careening wall of dust and debris. She then walked 80 blocks to my cousin Liam’s, and was finally able to email Mum and Dad that she was okay. Until then, we waited. No one’s cell phones worked. The bus ended up turning around (the tunnel closed) and we all disembarked as quickly as we could, running home, running down to the water, running. I stood with my friend Jen at the water’s edge and watched the buildings collapse. Screams filling the air, Jen and I holding onto each other, as tight as we could. A man beside me in a grey suit fell to his knees, howling with grief.

But there I will stop. That morning is still too much with me, late and soon. It is hard to write about it honestly.

I want to get back to Catch-22.

When I finally felt that I could read again (I mean, read a book for pleasure) – it was months later, maybe a year. Fiction seemed irrelevant for a long long time. But, tentatively, I thought maybe I could get into it again, maybe it was time to start living again. I remembered that the last fiction I had been reading was Catch-22, and so I picked it up again. First thing I did was try to figure out where I had left off on that blindingly blue morning. It was painful for me. Even just flipping through the pages made me remember being trapped in that bus on the causeway, with fire filling the air across the water.

Catch-22 has always had a mythical glow around it, for me, because of my father’s love of it, my uncles’ love of it, it is an O’Malley favorite … but now … I picked it up again, and all I could see was the morning of September 11, before we knew what was happening, what was going to happen, that the world, as we knew it, was about to die.

I went to go pick up where I had left off in the book, feeling odd. Almost callous. “Where I had left off in the book” meant to me: Where people started screaming and we saw a pillar of flame in the sky …

I hadn’t remembered where I left off, so I figured it out through reasoning along these lines: “Okay, so I remember the episode described in THIS chapter, so I clearly read THIS …” (flip ahead) “Okay, I KNOW I didn’t read THIS episode, none of it looks familiar, so I must have stopped before THIS …” (flip back) And in this way I finally narrowed it down to the exact sentence where I put the book down. (I’m freaky like this.)

And, without any unnecessary commentary from me, let me just say: when I saw the last paragraph I had read in Catch-22 on the morning of September 11, I put the book down again thinking, “Nope. Nope. Not ready.”

I also was astonished at what I had been reading on that bus, having no idea what was coming towards us through the blindingly blue sky.Catch-22 seemed to know.

Chapter 36 The Cellar
Nately’s death almost killed the chaplain. Chaplain Shipman was seated in his tent, laboring over his paperwork in his reading spectacles, when his phone rang and news of the mid-air collision was given to him from the field. His insides turned at once to dry clay. His hand was trembling as he put the phone down. His other hand began trembling. The disaster was too immense to contemplate. Twelve men killed — how ghastly, how very, very awful! His feeling of terror grew. He prayed instinctively that Yossarian, Nately, Hungry Joe and his other friends would not be listed among the victims, then berated himself repentantly, for to pray for their safety was to pray for the death of other young men he did not even know. It was too late to pray; yet that was all he knew how to do. His heart was pounding with a noise that seemed to be coming from somewhere outside, and he knew he would never sit in a dentist’s chair again, never glance at a surgical tool, never witness an automobile accident or hear a voice shout at night, without experiencing the same violent thumping in his chest and dreading that he was going to die. He would never watch another fist fight without fearing he was going to faint and crack his skull open on the pavement or suffer a fatal heart attack or cerebral hemorrhage. He wondered if he would ever see his wife again or his three small children. He wondered if he ever should see his wife again, now that Captain Black had planted in his mind such strong doubts about the fidelity and character of all women. There were so many other men, he felt, who could prove more satisfying to her sexually. When he thought of death now, he always thought of his wife, and when he thought of his wife he always thought of losing her.

2026 thoughts: I wrote this in 2003, not even a year in to starting this site. I barely had any readers. In New York, there was still a hole of rubble downtown and, worse, there was a hole in the sky. I don’t often talk about this but I involuntarily flinch when I see pictures of those explosions, because I watched the second plane hit with my own eyes. I can tell I’m dealing with these triggers in this original post. I was trembling as I wrote it. This post is invaluable to me because of its sole comment. I don’t even know what else to say. Please be kind to each other, for God’s sake.

Posted in Personal | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

September 11, 2001: In Memory of Michael J. Pascuma, Jr.

Posted on September 11, 2026 by sheila

The 2,996 project is an ongoing collective tribute to the victims of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. I signed up during its first year in 2006. You were assigned a name, at random, of one of the people murdered on September 11, 2001.

I was assigned Michael Pascuma, Jr.

With everything else to mourn and grieve and remember on this day, I know that not a September 11th will go by without me thinking, specifically, of him and his family.

As long as the lights are on at my site, I will post this tribute #OTD.


Michael Pascuma, Jr., center, with his family on a recent vacation. Left to right are his son Michael, wife Linda, daughter Melissa, and son Christopher.

Newsday article:
Michael J. Pascuma
Broker didn’t sweat ‘the small things’
April 19, 2002

Every Tuesday morning, Michael J. Pascuma Jr. of Massapequa Park would take a short stroll from the American Stock Exchange to meet colleagues for a breakfast conference at Windows on the World atop the World Trade Center.

“They would conduct business and maybe later tell a few jokes,” recalled his daughter, Melissa Pascuma, a fourth-grade teacher at the Shaw Avenue Elementary School in Valley Stream.

Pascuma, 50, worked as an independent stock trader with his father at their firm, MJP Securities. Both held seats on the exchange. The senior Pascuma, 93, still works as a trader at the exchange. Shortly before the terrorist attack. MJP merged with another firm and is now called Harvey, Young & Yurman.

Pascuma’s daughter said that immediately after the first plane struck the north tower, her brother, Michael, reached their father by cell phone. “I have to get out of here. There’s a fire,” were the last words he said to his family. The trendy restaurant was located on the 107th floor of Tower One. Pascuma’s remains were discovered shortly after the disaster, and a memorial service was held at St. Rose of Lima Church in Massapequa.

“My father had the most amazing sense of humor,” said Melissa Pascuma. “He thoroughly loved telling jokes to the family and his friends. He was constantly generous with everyone around him, and he enjoyed every single day of his life.”

She said her father was fond of chatting online with friends and was an avid golfer. “He never worried about the small things. He knew what mattered,” she said.

Pascuma’s wife, Linda, said, “My husband was a wonderful family man who was very much loved and appreciated by everyone.”

The couple would have been married 27 years on Sept. 21. Linda Pascuma called the entire family “Disney-O-Philes.” “For the past seven years at Easter time, we’d all go to Disney World for 10 days,” she said. A friend served as travel agent and also went along on the trips. The annual event also included her sister’s family, bringing the fun-seeking entourage up to about a dozen members, recalled Linda Pascuma.

“Sometimes when my husband got a little bored with things, he’d go off to play golf while we went on the rides and things,” she said. “But it always was a trip we’d talk about all year.”

Pascuma, who grew up in Richmond Hill, never attended college but as a young man learned the ins and outs of stock trading from his father, still a well-known figure in financial circles who remembers the stock market crash of 1929.

Besides his wife and daughter, both of Massapequa Park, Pascuma is survived by his sons, Michael, a college student at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn.; Christopher, a Massapequa High School student; and his parents, Michael and Ada, of Richmond Hill.

–Bill Kaufman (Newsday)

I went to the memorial sites where people who knew the victims could leave tributes and I came across the following message:

You will be missed. Thank you for all of your kindness. I will miss being your customer. Anne Boudreaux (New Orleans, LA )

There were many messages I found from family members, childhood friends, but this one in particular really struck me: “I will miss being your customer.” How many businessmen can say that there will be those left behind who will say, “I will miss being your customer“?

Other people from Mr. Pascuma’s life left tributes on various victims’ sites – and here are some personal memories of him.

Childhood friend Al Husni:

“I will always remember growing up with Michael. Playing ball, hanging out at PS66 with Michael, Chris, Latz, and the rest of the gang. His sense of humor, his gentleness, will never be forgotten by myself or those who knew him.”

Michael’s cousin Susan wrote, in 2006:

It’s sad to think about all of this even five years later. You are a grandfather now and you are not with your family. Life seems so unfair. Not a day goes by that you or your family are not thought about. May God Bless you and your family always. You all are always in our prayers.

Childhood friend Robert A. Maltempo:

“I grew up across the street from Michael, moving away from Richmond Hill at the age of twelve. I will always remember the good times we had and what a wonderful father Michael had (he treated me like his son). I remember playing ring-a-leevio until dark, seemingly every evening, at P.S. 66. I remember Billy Speckman and also another friend of mine and Mikes, named Michael (I’m butchering his last name) Krachunis) who lived next door to Michael. Had many, many wonderful times growing up with Michael…his basement that was full of miniature/toy construction equipment, the NY ranger games his family took us to, a row boat trip with Michael’s father singing “Michael Row the Boat to Shore” while Mike and I struggled with the oars.

George Moeser tells some really beautiful and funny stories about Michael Pascuma:

I met Michael Pascuma through my sister Jean Barone back in the 1980’s when my (now) ex-wife and I visited her and her (now) ex husband Tommy Barone during a Christmas holiday. We attended a party hosted by the family that owned the Mermaid Restaurant. Of all the people we met at that party in Massapequa Park, Michael was the standout. He was and still remains one of the nicest most genuine people I have met in this life. His warmth, demure and canny sense of humor along with that winning smile of his were a true reflection of great soul, something that can not be faked, learned or acquired.

He and his wife opened his home to us as if he had known us all his life. I met his father and talked about his horses. His wife Linda and Bianca became friends. Later that week we met him for a visit to the exchange where he worked, but I didn’t know there was the dress code and said he could take Bianca inside and I would wait. Michael thought for a moment then said, “Come on in with me, it will does these guys good to shake them up a little bit.” As we went on to the floor, all three of us were pelted with spit-balls and hoots laughter from the men and women working there, all in good natured fun. One of the keenest impressions I got about Michael was that you could sense the friendship and admiration his coworkers felt for him. He later told me, to his knowledge I was the only person in the history of NYSE to walk the floor in a cowboy hat and blue jeans.

The irony for me in learning of his tragic and untimely death was that he took Bianca and I to the Windows on the World Restaurant for lunch that day. I still have the photo Bicana and myself with the Manhattan backdrop taken by Michael. I have another of him and I on the train with him pretending to pick my pocket in an exaggerated pose, this great smile stealing the scene. Later in the week he met us for lunch again, this time to the Carnegie Deli. He didn’t want us to miss what he called the best corn beef sandwich on the planet – It was.

When we returned to Tucson, he would sometimes call the Boss Shears, the hair salon Bianca and I owned. Pretending to be a first time customer, he would ask if we took late appointments, saying he would have to fly in from New York. The receptionist would ask Bianca and I if we wanted a late appointment. And one or the other of us would ask what time. Then Michael would ask to speak to one of us, and I would recognize his voice instantly. He would laugh and say he might be able to catch the red-eye, get his haircut and fly back in time for work, but would bring two corn beef sandwiches from Carnegie as a tip for staying late.

Over the years we would fly back to New York on the holidays or a family function. Each time Michael and I saw each other again, it wasn’t as if years had past but only days since our last laugh, shared antidote or exchange of impressions.

Years later I was divorce, my sister was also divorced, and had moved to Brooklyn. She and I became estranged and I lost contact with her friends from Massapequa Park. My ex wife kept in touch with my sister Jean and Bianca continued to exchange Christmas card with the Pascuma family, but I lost touch. It was years later when I asked how he was doing that I learned he had died in the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers. That he died at the very same place where he and I had shared laughter over a meal was deeply moving to me. My eyes filled with tears and I prayed the Lord to bless him and keep him in all his ways. I still do.

Charlie Manos wrote:

You walked into my crowd on the floor of the Amex, and there it was a grin from ear to ear – always happy. I am blessed to have worked with you. I miss you guys. God bless.

Debbie Lenge wrote, in 2007:

With each day that passes you are missed more and more. “Nealon” events are just not the same without you. You would be amazed to see how the gang has grown. I often think about our commute–in the early days you made my trek into BBDO so enjoyable! Every morning was a comedy show. Few people can make me laugh as much and as hard as you did. Your granddaughter is absolutely beautiful. She looks just like her mommy. Melissa is a wonderful mom–you would be so proud of her. And Michael, I have to say from the bottom of my heart that you and Linda could not have raised better children. All three of your children are beautiful on the inside and out. They are truly class acts. If my children turn out half as good as yours did, I will feel like a success. I miss your jokes. I miss your stories. I miss you calling me an idiot. I miss the disapproving looks you gave me. I miss you shaking your head at me. But most of all I miss smashing pie in your face! You will never be forgotten. You are in our hearts forever!

On April 22, 2005, Michael Pascuma’s daughter Melissa had a baby girl whom they named Madison Michael. It would have been Michael Pascuma’s first grandchild.

Melissa wrote to her father on Sept. 12, 2005:

Daddy,
I miss you more and more each day, month and year. I would do anything to get a tight hug from you, hear your laugh, or hear one of your jokes. There are very few children in this world that have an amazingly exceptional father. I am so thankful I happen to be one of them. You held our family together and were the kindest, most generous human being that lived. You did not deserve this. You are a grandpa now. She carries the name of a hero, Madison Michael. Love you endlessly, Your princess

Michael Pascuma’s son Michael wrote:

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and will be Madison’s first. You should be here sharing this with us in more than just spirit. I wish there was something I could do because I would in a second! There is so much that we never got to do or say and I would do anything for 1 more minute. I was in Miami this past weekend and saw more Ferraris than ever before and I didn’t have you to call. For a split second I thought call Dad and then realied that can never happen again. I will never forget all the times we did share and will cheerish those forever. I miss all the things we used to do together and wish we could play one more round of golf. I would even take just being able to hear one more joke and hear your laugh. I miss and love you so much and I’m getting to upset to continue writing.

The NY Times Portraits of Grief piece on Michael J. Pascuma says:

Golf was Michael J. Pascuma Jr.’s consuming passion. He played every Saturday with a group of friends from work, at courses all over Long Island. He watched golf endlessly on television.

Michael, 50, immersed himself in everything, whether it was golf, his family in Massapequa Park or his work as a stockbroker on the American Stock Exchange. Work and family were entwined: he and his 92- year-old father, Michael J. Pascuma Sr., possibly the oldest broker in the United States, had their own firm, M.J.P. Securities, which recently merged with Harvey, Young & Yurman.

“You would think it was a stressful job, but he was never stressed,” said his 23-year- old daughter, Melissa Pascuma, whom he called his little princess. He also had two sons, ages 20 and 17. “As soon as he came home, he detached from it and his family was No. 1.”

Michael’s wife Linda:

My husband, Michael J. Pascuma, Jr., was an only child. Michael worked with his father on the American Stock Exchange. His father is still employed there at 93 years old. His mother is 89.

He was very well liked and a very respected Stockbroker. He was a very fair and honest person. He had a great sense of humor. He loved telling jokes or playing pranks at work.

He also loved playing golf. He played every Saturday with friends. He had started to travel a little to play on different courses.

Most importantly, Michael was a great father. He had three children, a daughter and two sons. His children loved him. He never fought or got mad at them. He would do anything for them. His sons enjoyed playing golf with him. He never worried about the small things. He loved life and appreciated everything he had. He knew what was important. If they made a mistake or if there was a problem he would always say it didn’t matter as long as everyone was healthy.

We struggle every day without him and he is truly missed by his family, friends and co-workers.

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(photo taken by me, at the Tiles for America display, corner of 7th Avenue South and 11th Street)

The purpose of the 2,996 project was tribute, memory, and personalization of the almost 3,000 human beings killed that day. Names, histories, loved ones, not just a statistic. Billy Collins, former poet laureate of the United States, wrote a poem about 9/11 called “Names” that is well worth posting today.

The Names
by Billy Collins

Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.
A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze,
And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows,
I started with A, with Ackerman, as it happened,
Then Baxter and Calabro,
Davis and Eberling, names falling into place
As droplets fell through the dark.
Names printed on the ceiling of the night.
Names slipping around a watery bend.
Twenty-six willows on the banks of a stream.
In the morning, I walked out barefoot
Among thousands of flowers
Heavy with dew like the eyes of tears,
And each had a name —
Fiori inscribed on a yellow petal
Then Gonzalez and Han, Ishikawa and Jenkins.
Names written in the air
And stitched into the cloth of the day.
A name under a photograph taped to a mailbox.
Monogram on a torn shirt,
I see you spelled out on storefront windows
And on the bright unfurled awnings of this city.
I say the syllables as I turn a corner —
Kelly and Lee,
Medina, Nardella, and O’Connor.
When I peer into the woods,
I see a thick tangle where letters are hidden
As in a puzzle concocted for children.
Parker and Quigley in the twigs of an ash,
Rizzo, Schubert, Torres, and Upton,
Secrets in the boughs of an ancient maple.
Names written in the pale sky.
Names rising in the updraft amid buildings.
Names silent in stone
Or cried out behind a door.
Names blown over the earth and out to sea.
In the evening — weakening light, the last swallows.
A boy on a lake lifts his oars.
A woman by a window puts a match to a candle,
And the names are outlined on the rose clouds —
Vanacore and Wallace,
(let X stand, if it can, for the ones unfound)
Then Young and Ziminsky, the final jolt of Z.
Names etched on the head of a pin.
One name spanning a bridge, another undergoing a tunnel.
A blue name needled into the skin.
Names of citizens, workers, mothers and fathers,
The bright-eyed daughter, the quick son.
Alphabet of names in a green field.
Names in the small tracks of birds.
Names lifted from a hat
Or balanced on the tip of the tongue.
Names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory.
So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart.

Posted in On This Day, RIP | 39 Comments

Seasonal change shuffle

Posted on September 6, 2026 by sheila

It’s been a while. I used to find putting together these shuffle posts soothing. I’m “writing”, kind of, but I’m not trying to sound a certain way, and the pressure’s off, because the subject matter isn’t up to me. The shuffle format forces me to go with the flow. 2026, y’all. You have no idea.

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R.I.P. Chicken Shop Date

Posted on September 6, 2026 by sheila

I gasped “No!” out loud when Amelia Dimoldenberg announced she was going to retire her web series, Chicken Shop Date, which she started ten years ago as a way to meet new people, go on “dates”, but also to highlight up-and-coming hip hop artists she loved. Her whole story is interesting. The show has since risen and risen … and she does it all: the booking, the editing, the set-up. She always wanted to star in a rom com and, like a smart woman, she created this thing so she could basically step into a rom com.

I’ve felt for a bit she might be slowly shutting down. I mean, her red carpet interviews at Hollywood events – which often went viral (can you say Andrew Garfield? And Ethan Hawke?). Last year, she moved Chicken Shop Date into more elite territory, where she interviewed all of the Oscar nominees. She’s an incredible interviewer … she’s also bringing back fun flirting and banter, almost single-handedly. We don’t see this kind of energy anymore.

I love so many of her episodes, but my #1 is her “date” with American rapper Jack Harlow. His charisma is off the chain. He should be studied by a team of professionals.

Amelia: “What’s your best chat-up line?”
Jack: “Hi.”
Amelia: “Is that it?”
Jack: “Undefeated.”

I believe you, Jack. Hell, you had me at hello. Jesus Christ.

One of the reasons why the pairing works so well is he is totally charmed by her. They’re both showing up for each other, the way two people do – or should – on a real date. Show your stuff. Be charming, be nice, don’t be a pushover though: teasing is also flirting. Don’t “neg”, you dummies. This is what Amelia creates somehow: Two attractive people being funny for each other as a form of flirting … but wrapped up in a nice bow as a celebrity interview. We need more! It’s why Amelia D. crushes the competition on the red carpet circuit. Others – including influencers – can’t hold a candle to what she does.

Just like David Letterman back in the day, Johnny Carson back further … what she does, what she seeks, is chemistry with her guest. She, too, is undefeated.

I’ll miss the show. Chicken Shop Date was one of the many things that helped get me through 2020. I know she will be on to bigger and better things. She should be very proud.

Posted in Actors, Music, RIP | Leave a comment

Dynamic Duo #50

Posted on September 4, 2026 by sheila

Payton Tolle and Dominic Canzone

Posted in Miscellania | Tagged , , | 9 Comments

From the archives (2010): “Go Ask Sheila.”

Posted on September 2, 2026 by sheila

The only time I ever did drugs started with a letter from my ex-boyfriend.

We broke up a year before, and it was one hell of a separation, leaving us battered, but unwilling to sever the connection.

The ex-boyfriend was in San Francisco, a lawyer in a corporate law firm, and I was there for two months, and in L.A., before I moved to Chicago to start a new life as an actress. Chicago was a hubbub of theatre and I flourished immediately upon arrival. It was a youthful energetic environment. I began to work right away. Chicago was the right choice.

Historically, I was never a date-r, or a fooler-around-er. So let’s not soft-pedal the situation. I went insane those first months in Chicago. I made out with guys I never saw again. I gyrated at dance clubs, sandwiched in between two Lebanese cousins vying for my attention. I went to raves in abandoned warehouses where you needed a password to get in. No regrets. Loved it all. My main Chicago flame coalesced fairly early. He was a grumpy black-haired guy who wasn’t inclined to get serious, which suited me just fine. (I have written about him ad nauseum.) In retrospect, he was a really important person in my life, but at the time he was an escape into no-strings adventure and also an outlet for the, ahem, feral quality of my sex drive – all new experiences, which is why I ran towards him at lightning speed, and why he was happy to basically do whatever I wanted. You don’t find a proper playmate every day. When I was with ex-boyfriend, I was on the pill, which muffled my libido. The second we broke up, I went off the pill, and suddenly I was a wild animal and M. was the beneficiary. “I’m barely keeping up with this,” he said once. lol We stayed up all night, ordering takeout at 4 a.m., watching movies in the middle of the night, wrestling, knocking over furniture, laughing hysterically, wild sounds echoing through the apartment, irritating his long-suffering roommate who had an early audition the next day. Sometimes M. would then drive me directly to work, where I was answering phones in some corporate office or whatever, and so I’d show up to my corporate temp job having had zero sleep and … wearing the same clothes I wore the day before. So disreputable. But so fun.

All of this activity was interrupted by bouts of lying in bed sobbing, because I missed my old boyfriend. He was my first boyfriend. We got together when I was a senior in college. He was 8 years older, and courted me with gentleness and humor, blah blah, whatever. I was a virgin, and neurotic about my freckled plump lack of beauty. Blah blah. We connected on an emotional and comedic level. But it was not RIGHT, we did not CLICK the way you need to click. Even though I cried about him, never once did I think we should have stayed together. There was something not right in our dynamic, something insurmountable. We stayed in touch through letters and phone conversations. I would see a movie and have to talk about it with him, because he was the one I still wanted to talk to. He would have a question about an author or a book he just read, and the only person he wanted to ask was me.

He was ready to settle down, but trying to get me to settle down was like wrestling a typhoon.

Unfortunately, I did not have enough of a sense of self at the time to say to him, “I’m too young for all of this settling down business. I just got out of college. I am not ready to pick out silverware.” Instead, I internalized his displeasure and impatience, and let myself be overwhelmed by how wrong I was. To be truthful, I still grapple with the anxiety left by that relationship. Something is wrong with me, was the message.

The whole “wrong-ness” thing has to do with the story of the day I did drugs.

Every time I do anything, I do it wrong first. This is true of big things (relationships, career choices) and also little things. For example, when I go to make my bed, I always end up with the sheets upside down and backwards first, with the tag up. I have to go and turn them over. This is also true of driving somewhere for the first time. I always drive by the street I am searching for, and then have to backtrack, sometimes two or three times. Perhaps it is because I am impulsive and impatient, starting something without setting myself up properly. This is okay when it’s just a new printer I am trying to install but disastrous when it comes to my personal life. When I’m in a self-pitying mood, it feels like the universe is slapping my hand, saying, “No, no, no, you don’t get to do this right. Other people do, but not you.”

At that point in Chicago, I had a bunch of new friends, and I was living with Mitchell, an old dear friend from college. Our new friends were a lot of fun, and they had “x” parties where people gathered at an apartment to do ecstasy. Mitchell and I were curious about it so we decided to join them one night. Why not? We gave the dealer the money for a couple of pills for the following week.

A word about drugs. I have never been a “why not?” person about illegal substances. I guess I was always afraid of losing control. There was also the Go Ask Alice factor to consider, which cannot be overstated. I read that book when I was eleven and it scarred me for life. (I know now that it was propaganda, but at the time, I took it as gospel. It was HIGHLY EFFECTIVE propaganda.) I smoked some pot in college, everyone did, but I never liked it. It didn’t do for me what it did for others. It didn’t mellow me out. On the contrary, it made me feel like I was a hollow nonentity whom everybody secretly hated and scorned. In retrospect, it’s probably a good thing I never tried cocaine, because I feel like cocaine and me would have gotten along GREAT. Cocaine could, potentially, be the answer to my problems. Heroin terrified, way too unrecreational. I never did any of the hallucinogenics either, mushrooms, LSD, because I watched one too many movies-of-the-week and ABC Afterschool Specials in my childhood, and I knew, in my heart, I would be one of those morons who would leap through a plate glass window 80 stories up because “the sky looked so pretty”, or I would try to stab my best friend because I suddenly saw Beelzebub gleaming redly out of her eyes.

I felt safe with these new friends, however, and Mitchell would be there.

One thing I think might have been a factor in my “wrong” reaction to ecstasy later that night was I was flirting with anorexia at the time. Not full-blown but definitely a serious eating disorder. I was addicted to how thin I was. I couldn’t believe it! I was running five miles a day, devoted, even when it was freezing cold or raining, out I went, pounding down the Lake Shore. I lived on a diet of sunflower seeds and Snapple. Sometimes I would have Lipton’s Cup-a-soup to shake things up. My body fat dissolved, as I was simultaneously getting hard contours due to all the running.

And then there was the letter from my ex-boyfriend.

It arrived the day of the party. He informed me he was moving in with a new girlfriend, and our correspondence/phone calls would have to stop, and I probably would have to stop sending books and newspaper clippings to him. He was not callous. In fact, he was thoughtful in giving me the heads up, but it killed him. He didn’t think we should have broken up in the first place, we should have fought it out, and come out on the other side, still together. But he did what he needed to do, and found someone else.

I guess I knew it was coming. I knew he was dating someone. By that point, too, I had moved on in a significant way. I was in shows, I had new friends, a guy I was shmecking on a regular basis, and some wild card adventures to make sure all was light and frivolous. My life had a structure. I hadn’t slipped off the rails without him. I flourished! I remember reading the letter in our kitchen, Mitchell standing nearby. I put the letter down, saying to Mitchell, “Wow. It’s really over.” I felt nothing. No sadness came up, no familiar grief. I was calm and cool and quiet. I felt grateful for the letter, and amazed that I came so far. When I was in the breakup’s maelstrom, it seemed like it would never end and I would always be the tragic-eyed girl. But of course, time moved on and I healed. I got better. The letter was evidence. Look at me. I am finally okay.

We set out for the party. It was a hot summer evening. Chicago swelter. We waited for the cross-town bus. I had no idea what I was walking into, and I was excited, I felt shimmery and light. I said to my two friends as we stood at the bus stop, “You know what? I am fine about that letter! Can you believe it? I am fine! I cannot believe how fine I feel about that letter!” [Denial is the strongest drug of all.]

An ecstasy party is a friendly and compassionate environment, even as the collective spinal fluid is compromised drop by drop. Jellyfish was playing when we walked in. There was pizza. Our friends greeted us rapturously. Most people were out on the wooden back porch, so typical of Chicago apartments. There was booze in the kitchen, but not too many people were drinking. They were listening to music, dancing, and watching I Love Lucy, reciting the lines in unison. Never saw a party like that in Go Ask Alice, did you? Not a hippie gang-bang in sight.

We downed our pills in the kitchen, and waited to see what would happen next. I had a beer. I felt a little buzzed, but that was probably because I only ate ten sunflower seeds in the last 10 hours.

The three of us ended up on the back porch. The music was soft, and people were chatting. Everything was lovely.

Until suddenly I started to feel very “off”.

First came a dizzying sense of vertigo so strong I hung onto the railings of the porch steps. The moment my hands gripped the bars, the porch detached itself from the house and began to fly around in a circle, leaving me holding on for dear life. It was like that last scene in Hitchcock’s Strangers On a Train where there is no way to step gently off the runaway merry-go-round. I closed my eyes, trying to breathe through it. Obviously, the fact that I was clutching a stationary porch railing, huddled down against a hurtling imaginary wind, called attention to itself and someone said, hesitantly, “Sheila?” Which was my cue to lean over the side of the stairwell, and vomit up my sunflower seeds.

I have an almost pathological embarrassment about vomiting in public (one of the reasons why drinking to excess is such a rare occurrence. I can count on one hand). Vomiting in public makes me feel like I will not be forgiven for my transgression. I am wrong, and wrong for good. This will be a mark against me for all time.

I was paralyzed with horror on the porch. My friends, high on ecstasy, were full of love and support for me and my vomiting. They hunched over me, rubbing my back, getting me water. Dammit, why did the porch keep flying around? Couldn’t it stay still? I threw up again. And again. (My starvation diet was obviously a huge culprit in what was going on.) I started crying at some point, and my friends helped me stagger up the steps and took me into the bathroom.

I was “that girl” you see at parties: weeping uncontrollably, a sloppy mess. I have lived my life trying to avoid being “that girl”.

We stayed in the bathroom for probably an hour. The vomiting finally ceased, which was a blessing, seeing as how my non-diet didn’t leave much to come up, but once the crying started I could not stop. One friend sat on the closed toilet seat, Mitchell perched on the edge of the tub, as I paced around in my cut-off shorts sobbing about my ex-boyfriend, how much I loved him, how sad I was, how my life was over, how I would never love again, how angry I was at him, and how tragic it was that I would have my great and only love at such a young age. It was a monologue of Aeschylus-ean proportions. I went through two rolls of toilet paper, mopping the tears off my face as I ranted.

Now let me talk about the nature of my tears, because I haven’t cried like that before or since. At first, yes, I was sobbing, but eventually the tears became like any other bodily function: sweat, a sneeze, the flu; they happened whether I did anything about it or not, whether I FELT sad or not, the tears could not be stopped. Once the first hour of hysterics had passed, I could carry on conversations about things other than my lost love moving in with his new girlfriend. I could talk about I Love Lucy, music, food, but the tears kept falling. They fell and fell and fell. I was like Alice in Wonderland, drowning in a pool of her own tears. The tears were unconnected to me, somehow. I didn’t feel convulsive sadness. Inside, I felt 100% normal.

I finally removed myself from the party’s action. I didn’t feel like people were embarrassed by me. As a matter of fact, an entire cottage industry of Sheila-Nurturing activities had cropped up, people racing to get me food, or water, or a cold cloth. Remember: this was an X party. I needed to go lie down. I went into the empty front room. There were windows on three sides, long curtains touching the floor. There was privacy, but I could hear the party going on down the hall. I piled couch pillows on the floor, lay on my back in the darkness, and let the tears flow. I cried years of tears in that dark living room. I cried more tears than I ever would have allowed myself to if I had been in my right mind. I got four months of potential grief out in one short evening. I didn’t writhe with psychic pain. No. I was quiet, my breathing was calm and deep. I stared up at the shadowy ceiling, hearing Jellyfish blasting from down the hall, and let the tears fall. I stopped judging the tears or trying to hold them back. Out they poured.

Occasionally large groups of people would come sit around me, carrying on their conversations from the kitchen, letting me feel included. Nobody tried to pull me out of it or cheer me up. Nobody expected me to participate. Their voices flowed above my head, soft, giving, benign, and it was considered completely normal that they would all be chatting about Ghostbusters while a girl lay on pillows below them, tears rolling down her face like the flooded Yangtze.

If only every wounded person could be surrounded by such a crowd.

I had now been crying for three hours.

People came and went. They hung around, standing over me, then meandered back to the kitchen, drifting in and out.

The guy whose party it was came into the front room. Nobody else was there. I lay alone in the dark. I didn’t know him all that well. He sat down cross-legged behind me, gently picked my head up and put it in his lap. I was completely passive. A limp rag of tears. We didn’t speak. No words passed between us. He was dating my good friend. This was not a sexual thing, he wasn’t making a pass. He was taking care of me. I lay there with my head in his lap, eyes closed, and as the tears fell – and they came slowly (but persistently) – one by one – he would brush them away. A tear fell. Gentle hand brushing it away. Another tear fell. Gentle brushing it away.

This went on for an hour.

We never spoke. He never asked me to explain myself. It was just accepted that I was on drugs, and sometimes when you’re on drugs, shit like this goes down, and you need to take care of a person like that. His hands, soft like wings, on my cheek, brushing my tears away. For an hour.

I will never forget him for that.

Years later, our paths crossed again. He’s now an Emmy nominee many – many – times over. Randomly, we ended up working at 30 Rock at the same time, on the same floor no less, and I ran into him regularly. So strange. We never mentioned the ecstasy night … but our time in the dark living room, his wing-like hands on my face, was there between us. Because I know that that tenderness and care is in him. It’s not in everyone, make no mistake. Not everyone would choose to sit quietly for an hour like some Franciscan monk, and wipe the tears off the face of a girl you don’t even know (let alone not turn it into some sexual thing, taking advantage of the situation, which would have been highly unethical, and yet so common as to be almost boring. He didn’t go there. I was safe and cared for).

A crowd of anxious hovering people came in to see how I was doing. My friend K. stood in the doorway, saying in a tremulous chorus: “Sheila … how are you???”

I pulled my head up, squinted at them through swollen eyes, and said softly, “I am having such a good time.”

And I fucking meant it. Everyone burst into laughter.

Finally, it was time to go. Mitchell helped me get up and walk to the door.

Then there is a jump cut, and it is now the next morning. I have no memory of getting home, of going to sleep. I was at the party, and then suddenly it was the next morning. K. slept over on the couch. We woke up, still high. The tears were over. I woke up fresh in the bright day. The four-hour crying jag was something I experienced, but that morning it felt like it hadn’t left a trace. I woke up ravenous. I didn’t want to dole out sunflower seeds anymore; I wanted to eat a steak. K. and I bumped around the apartment together until deciding to walk to the diner down the street and get some breakfast. As we walked to the diner, K. said to me, “I feel so skinny right now.” One of the blessed side effects of ecstasy, especially for a borderline anorexic: you feel lithe and skinny, you flow through space without leaving a ripple. I said, “Me too.” K. said, “I feel like a prancing gazelle.” I was swimming in my clothes, my hipbones sharp picture hooks keeping up my jeans. We were gazelles leaping across the savannah of Ashland Street.

K. and I sat down at the table, drooling and ready for breakfast. We ordered everything on the menu. Eggs, bacon, home fries, bagels, lox, fruit cup, coffee, juice, Frosted Flakes, bring it all! The stacks of food arrived. Ohhh, we were so excited. But then … we could not eat a thing. We tried, but we choked on the crumbs, pushing our eggs around, washing it down with sips of burnt coffee. Mortified, we asked for the check. We slunk away, embarrassed gazelles.

It took us the rest of the day to get back to normal.

We started talking about my “wrong” response to the drug. Why did everyone else get to be so happy and loving, while I went on a world-ending crying jag? What happened? Was it my anorexia? Was it the letter from the ex? Was it something in me different (read: “wrong”) than others? I am sick of not having the regular experiences. I didn’t “get” to have the experiences other people had. I have to be careful. Everyone else can let loose, but I clearly cannot. Instead, I had to make an absolute spectacle of myself. K. and Mitchell’s ecstasy experience was by-the-book, a golden-lit feeling of warmth and love towards everyone they saw. I got to cry for four hours in a dark room.

Mitchell said, “I don’t think ‘ecstasy’ the word actually means ‘ happy’. It’s not just about being ‘happy’, Sheila. I don’t think it’s that literal.”

Naturally I dragged out my dictionary.

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, “ecstasy” is defined as follows:

A state of exalted delight in which normal understanding is felt to be surpassed: allay thy ecstasy: “In measure rein they joy” (Shakespeare)
A state of any emotion so intense that rational thought and self-control are obliterated: an ecstasy of anger
The trance, frenzy, or rapture associated with mystic or prophetic exaltation (Mid-English extasie, from Old French, from Late Latin exstasis, ecstasies, from Greek ekstasis, from existanai, to displace, drive out of one’s senses).

The first definition was what I expected, the traditional response, but #2 and #3 come close to actually expressing my experience, #2 especially with its “emotion so intense that rational thought and self-control are obliterated“.

I was the only one crying for four hours, it is true, but the surrounding warmth, the feather-light-brushing-off of my tears from that kind guy, helped me to feel that whatever I was going through was part of their experience as well. I was not an anomaly. I was not wrong. My tears, although excessive, were indeed an event where “normal understanding is felt to be surpassed.”

I never did ecstasy again. There is only so much “frenzy and rapture” one person can take.

I never cried that intensely again, either, about my ex-boyfriend, not even when he went ahead and married that new girlfriend the following year. My crying jag was a condensed and necessary catharsis, leaving me totally purged of the leftover ghosts.

So.

If you want to know who I am, you can just ask. I’d probably answer something like:

I am the type of person who does ecstasy, and afterwards looks up the word in the dictionary in order to verify the etymological roots of my experience.

2026 COMMENTARY
I had to bite my tongue multiple times re-reading this, wanting to inject present me into this. I’ll save that for end-notes. The majority of my personal posts (well, everything I write is personal, but I mean story-time posts like this one) were written pre-2013-diagnosis, a life-changing and life-saving event. And so I was pouring out these stories without a crucial piece of the puzzle, and the missing piece explains so much (in retrospect). I chalked up my ecstasy response to basically starving myself for a year, while also running multiple miles every day … and of course this was part of it. I assign my exploding libido to going off the pill, and of course that was part of it … but all of these things probably have to do with what I now believe was a year long – truly glorious, honestly – manic “episode”, after a year of in-and-out dissociation and anguish … I busted out of what I considered to be the chains of a monogamous relationship, my first, and the freedom launched me up, up, up. Anyway, this is one thing that comes to mind when I read this piece, and so many others. Like, I have no idea what I’m actually going through. At the time I wrote the piece in 2010, I just knew I had periodic “bad times” (my name for them since I was in high school – the first “bad time” was 7th grade), and I knew I just had to make it through the “bad time” (they usually lasted 3 months). I didn’t make the connection in 2010 and neither did my lazy-ass therapist. So re-reading this, I can see what I was actually struggling with in the past and I feel sad for my oblivious younger self. Hard hard times are ahead. You can’t believe how hard it’s going to get, younger Sheila. Sorry about that.

Last summer, I reconnected with the ex-boyfriend who wrote the break-up letter as described here. We had an epic 6-hour meetup at a local seafood place where we had had multiple dates back in the day. I hadn’t seen him since 2011 when our mutual friend Brett died. He reached out in 2025, wanting to get together. After all these years, I hesitated but then was like “fuck it” and so glad I said “fuck it”. A process of reclamation and post-mortem discussions has been going on, and we are fully back in touch, I’ve been to his house for dinner, we met up halfway between our abodes and had drinks, like it’s been totally unexpected and surprisingly great. I realized: Well, there’s a reason we put each other through so much torture back then. We really loved each other as friends. We were saying goodbye to a friend. And so I forgive my younger self. I wasn’t stupid or overly attached. He was a good friend and I was going to miss him. Valid. ANYWAY, during our 6-hour slightly soused conversation, in the sun, overlooking the beach, I told him the X story, and the role his letter played in it.

And we DIED laughing. Me saying, “Wow, I feel NOTHING when I read the letter, I am FINE”. Cut to me clutching the porch railing and crying for four hours, high as fuck. It struck us as absolutely hysterical. Oh, and he told me HIS story of the first time he did x and, of course, he had a by-the-book golden-lit-warmth experience. Typical.

I could never have predicted the full-circle moment of it all when I wrote this piece in 2010.

And finally: I still love Jellyfish. I wish they were still around. Every song is great, and every song launches me back into this very specific sliver of time, when I was free as a bird careening around in space, living exactly as I wanted to live, with nothing tying me down. Where having fun was priority #1. At last. Jellyfish was the soundtrack. Resurrecting this post inspired me to listen to Spilt Milk again, start to finish. It holds up.

Posted in Personal | 16 Comments

Jackson State choir pays tribute to Dolly

Posted on August 29, 2026 by sheila

I’ve spent the last three days watching choirs from around the world pay tribute to Dolly. I’ve loved hearing all the different arrangements. Yesterday I tripped over a clip on Instagram, the Jackson State University choir singing “Light of a Clear Blue Morning”. I went to find the clip on YouTube so I could embed, and failed – but I did find a clip of the choir singing the song at their spring concert.

The arrangement is absolutely breath-taking. Those bass-line boys: “clear blue morning clear blue morning” … the arrangement completely deconstructs the song, without sacrificing the message and the meaning. In fact, the deconstruction intensifies the “meaning”, and the feeling.

Dolly wrote a number of songs that sound like they were made in heaven. Her voice was heavenly. “Touched”, as they say.

There’s a reason “Light of a Clear Blue Morning” is a fan favorite, and has been in heavy rotation in all the tributes. Because it consoles and soothes, it strengthens and heals. This, though … what Jackson State has done is different: the arrangement is so technical, with all these little separate parts, but together they are divine. The clear blue day filled with the sound.

Posted in Music, RIP | Tagged | Leave a comment

Everything’s gonna be all right, it’s gonna be okay

Posted on August 26, 2026 by sheila

Hannah Dasher, a new country artist I adore, whose aesthetic is clearly inspired by Dolly, posted a pic of Dolly on her Instagram with the following note: “now y’all quit blowing up my phone and check on your gays.” Which is how I feel too. I spent yesterday afternoon checking in on my gays, crying with them.

The loss is big and it’s hard to talk about. We knew this day was coming but you can’t be prepared for the reality. It’s like a light turned off somewhere.

Which makes me think of the final stanza of Auden’s difficult poem “The More Loving One”:

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

We just need a little time to get used to this. To a world without Dolly.

We need to be there for each other, check in with each other, help each other. Dolly would want us to. She showed us how.

Posted in Music, RIP | Tagged , | 10 Comments

From the archives (2011): How We Talked

Posted on August 25, 2026 by sheila

1.
Me: [maybe a month in] “I just mentioned that song to you – and now it’s playing on the radio! Isn’t that so weird??”
Him: “Not weird at all. Sheer coincidence.”

2.
Him: [3 or 4 years in] “What’s going on?”
Me: “Nothing.”
Him: “You’re looking around in this insecure way…”
Me: “No I’m not.”
Him: “Yes you are. You should never have that look on your face when you’re with me.”
[I don’t remember what was going on with me but we were in public, at a bar, and – in retrospect – I was dissociating.]
Him: [speaking to me like I was slow, or hard of hearing:] “I don’t have another you, you know.”

^^ He really did have his moments.

3.
Me: [5 or 6 months in] “How was your Thanksgiving?”
Him: “It was all right.”
Me: “Not good, huh.”
Him: “Well – clearly I have issues.”
[Backstory: I overused the word “issues” at the time, usually in combination with the word “clearly”, and this drove him crazy, and he would make fun of me when I would talk about how “clearly” I had “issues”. So when he said this, totally naturally, showing he had absorbed my phrasing, I burst into laughter.]
Him: “What did I just say?” [Then he got it:] “No! I don’t have ISSUES. I have PROBLEMS.”

4.
Me: [3 years in, maybe, 3 a.m. or something, sobbing hysterically for 15 minutes, or, half an hour, I don’t know, it was a big crying jag. This happened a lot. He was on the front lines – and neither of us had any idea what was going on.]
Him: [totally calm, not freaked out, smoking a cigarette, arm around me] “Come on now. Stop that.”

5.
Me: [2 years in, walking into the bar with a new and radically different hair cut and color]
Him: [taking in the change] “Are you breaking up with me?”
Me: “What??”
Him: “A girl changes her hair and I know I’m toast.”
Me: “That’s stupid.”

6.
Me [11 years in. I mean, this is insane]: “You went like this: ‘Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.'”
Him: “WHAT?”
Me: “Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.”
Him: “WHAT?”
Me: “Yeah. You ‘Tsk Tsk’-ed me on my answering machine.”
Him: “What a fucking ASSHOLE.”
Me: “No! It was amazing. I felt like you were telling me to get my head straight.”
Long long pause.
Him: “That is the most generous interpretation possible for me being a hungover dick.”
Me: “But I was right, though, wasn’t I.”
…….
Him: “Yeah. You were.”
(This whole exchange deserves its own post some day.)

UPDATE 8/12/2026: I finally got it done. It only took 15 years – and a pandemic – for me to finally create the space to write about the “tsk tsk tsk”.

7.
Him [on our third date]: “I like what you’re about.”
Me: “You do?”
Him: “I keep waiting for you to have problems with me.”
Me: “Wait, what?”
Him: “I don’t know. Everyone has problems with me. Women especially.”
Me: “Why?”
Him: “I’m not saying everyone’s wrong. People have problems with me for all kinds of valid reasons. But you don’t have any problems with me.” [with a look of wonder and confusion on his face].
Me: “I don’t have any problems with you.”
Him: “I know. Why not?”
Me: “I’m sick of this conversation.”

Intellectually I know why people “had problems” with him, even though he didn’t really elaborate. We’d only been out a couple times. I understand now what was going on. But … people “had problems” with me, too. Men especially. And I’d say for similar reasons, even though this is evident to me only in retrospect. We were both too wild for prime time. People were drawn to the Wild in us, and then tried to get us to tone it down, blaming us when we couldn’t do it. Anyone who tried to date either of us in a conventional way was asking for trouble. I’d just gone through something like that when I met M. And … we were so young but we somehow didn’t put that trip on each other. At least this is my assessment now. I think about this moment a lot: him clocking the “me” part of the equation this early on, only three dates in. He looked at me with this weird wince, like, “is this a trap?” He couldn’t believe I was just … “okay” with him as he was. (And honestly, I felt the same way. It was this weird little miracle in the middle of what was supposed to be a hook-up.) And he said this shit out loud, whereas I never would have.

8.
Him: [3 years in] “Want to see my imitation of a circus horse?”
Me: “Of course.”
He transforms, and prances around me, a circus horse, and I am weeping with laughter.
Him: [as circus horse] “The key is to not make your arms the front legs, but to just use your legs. The problem with my circus horse, though, is that it sometimes looks like a velociraptor.”
Me: [suddenly seeing the velociraptor] “Yeah, I see what you mean.”

9.
Me: [3 years in] “I got a tattoo!”
Him: “While you’re sick? That’s so stupid.” [I had a fever of 103. “Burning up” was an understatement. I was in an altered state and had no health insurance.]
Me: “Peel off the bandage so you can see it.”
Him: [pulling down the bandage on my back. Long silent contemplation of my phoenix tattoo. I FELT the disapproval emanating through my back.]
Me: [in tears, randomly, I blame the fever] “Don’t be mad at me.”
Him: “Your skin is hot. Come here. I had an idea.”
[He led me to the bathroom where he basically had prepared a cold plunge for me in the tub with bags of ice from the liquor store downstairs. He helped me take my clothes off and put me in the tub. I shivered and protested, twisting around so my tattoo wouldn’t go under. I kept saying, “Don’t get my tattoo wet” and he’d say some cranky thing like, “This is why people shouldn’t get tattoos.” His roommate – a very nice funny guy who eventually ended up on a hit TV show – was in his room the whole time and was probably like, “What are those two idiots doing NOW.” I got out of the tub, a shivering wreck, and he put me into one of his T-shirts, tucked me in, and I slept the sleep of the peaceful and the blessed. I wrote a piece about this night.]

10.
Me: “Give me the keys to your car. NOW.”
Him: “There are traction issues you can’t understand.”

11.
Him: [3 years in? He briefly and almost off-handedly filled me in on the awful thing that happened to him in high school, which – unfortunately – I already knew, through gossip in the close-knit improv scene – someone saying, “you know what happened to him, right?” But before this was passed on to me, I saw the scars on his legs and hips, I am sorry to say, the first time we got naked – and I asked him about them and he said, “It’s nothing” when it obviously was not nothing. Even after the gossip-train filled me in, I of course didn’t push him to tell me. I mean, never would I ever. If he wanted to tell me, great. But it was his story to tell. Suddenly he told me the whole thing and I pretended I didn’t know, and just listened. Something soft/concerned must have been on my face because he said, forbiddingly:]
Him: “You are never allowed to feel sorry for me.”
Me: “Okay I won’t.”

And I didn’t.

12.
Him: [a couple months in] “I had some gumbo once. It was really good. You remind me of that. You are some really good gumbo.”

13.
Me: [9 or 10 years in] “What’s the first thing you think of when you think of me?” [Pause.] “It’s fine if you can’t think of anything.”
Him: “I mean, I know what it is.”
Me: “What?”
Him: “… It’s really bad.”
Me: “Bad??” [suddenly filled with terror]
Him: [really hesitating. He never hesitated. I didn’t know what was going on. He started a defensive monologue:] “I know that you are a three-dimensional person. You are more than this. You are a full human woman person.”
Me: “What is going on.”
Him: “It’s really bad that this is the first thing I think of when you come into my head.”
Me: “Tell me right now.” [thinking: what the hell did I do? what could it be?]
Him: [he tells me. He’s actually legitimately embarrassed, which surprises me. Like he thinks I’m going to be insulted that the first thing that comes into his head is a sex moment from 8 years before. Meanwhile, this former teenage wallflower was stunned and thrilled at living in his head rent-free as some sex-bomb. It’s the best answer! He’s never embarrassed but he seems embarrassed when he tells me.] “I know. It’s really bad.”
Me: “Are you kidding me? This is the best moment of my life.”
Him: “That’s not how I think of you, or all I think of you. But you asked.”

And glad I did. Because I never would have assumed.

14.
Him [3 years in]: “I know sign language.”
Me: “Why am I just learning this now?”

15.
Me: [4 years in, these words flew out of my mouth without planning] “I love you.”
We freeze in place.
Me: [quickly] “Don’t worry.”
Him: “I’m not.”
Me: “Okay.”
Him: “I love you too.”
Me: “Let’s remain calm.”

^^ lol.

16.
Him: [maybe 6 months in?] “I had an audition today.”
Me: “For what?”
Him: “Some commercial. They needed someone who could do a Mick Jagger imitation and someone saw me ‘do’ Mick at an IO show and recommended me. It’s not like I’m some serious mimic though. I was just fucking around. I go in there and there are all these guys dressed up as Mick Jagger–”
Me: “And you’re wearing …”
Him: “What I’m wearing now.” [white t-shirt, jeans, blue bandana on head]
Me: “Okay. So what happened.”
Him: “I go into the casting room and they’re filming and I start doing my imitation …” [I am already laughing because I am seeing it in my head.] “I’m dancing around and they’re filming me …” [I am in tears.] “And at one point, the casting director – this chubby older woman wearing glasses – shouts at me, [loud raspy voice] ‘WIGGLE YOUR ASS!'”
Me: “She did not.”
Him: “I didn’t want to do it, Sheila.”
Me: “Of course you didn’t!”
Him: “But I turned around and wiggled my ass at her.”
Me: “Oh no.”
Him: “And as I was doing it, I suddenly had this huge feeling of … shame.”
Me: “NO!!”
Him: “I was Coco from Fame.”

17.
Him: “Your armpit should win a beauty contest.”

18.
Him: [2 years in] “Can I ask you something?”
[with a wince, the wince I was very familiar with: the testing-the-waters should-I-tell-her-this vulnerable wince.]
Me: “Of course.”
[gearing up for something terrible since I am a catastrophist, and I assumed it was going to be some horrible revelation. In other words I assumed it was going to be about me.]
Him: “I got a new coffee maker and I read somewhere that you’re supposed to clean it with vinegar so I did that but I think I used too much because my coffee still tastes like vinegar.”
Me: “……”
Him: “Is that normal, do you think? Should I run water through it now? Did I do something wrong?”

19.
Him: [2nd or 3rd date. Early.] “So. What do you want to do tonight?”
Me: [involuntarily twisting up like a pretzel, teeny voice] “I don’t know, what do you want to do?”
Him: [imitating me, little baby voice] “What do you want to do?”
Me: [horrified, infuriated, feeling so exposed, it was a maelstrom and I lashed out, lightly shoving his hand] “That was mean!”
Him: “No. That was even-handed.”
Me: “……”
[I had no reply. I just sat in the mess. I hated my twisted-pretzel response to a simple question about what I wanted to do. I hated being in my own skin. Having a brand new man basically mock me – and imitate my HORRIFIC baby voice – which I didn’t even mean to do – should have made the night unrecoverable. When he said “even-handed”, I felt for a second like he didn’t like me, or – worse – he had contempt for me. As awful as the moment was to endure – I somehow let in what he said. No lies were told. He WASN’T being mean. He handed back to me exactly what I gave him. And it didn’t feel good, Sheila, did it? This moment changed everything for me, I am not even exaggerating. The light dawned from above. What DO you want, Sheila? Just say it, because he’ll fucking do it. (You don’t know it yet, Sheila, but you’ve hit the jackpot. You’ll understand soon. This is a person who wants to know what you want. And it’s up to YOU to express what you want.) After I absorbed the full awfulness of the moment, I started laughing – with a giddy exhilaration I still remember. Which I think surprised him. I said something like, “Wow. You are RIGHT.” And I was so delighted by the whole thing he seemed a little confused, but also maybe relieved? I don’t know. We literally did not know each other at all. But I knew what I wanted even though I involuntarily became a pretzel when confronted with the question. Even-handedness was fair-ness and I needed fair-ness. Fair-ness meant space, somehow. Elbow room. If all of this seems like way “too much”, welcome to the world of my early 20s and what it was like to be a traumatized 24-year-old trying to go on a simple date. Whatever this thing with M. was, even on a “what are we doing tonight” level, it would be a co-creation. This was the start of me being totally free and totally unambiguous when saying what I wanted. He wanted to know what I wanted. There were no wrong answers. This was freedom. I shed a skin with this “even-handed” exchange. The experience was NOT pleasant but it had to happen.]

20.
Him [4 years in]: “You’re funny.”
Me: “You’re just realizing this now?”
Him: “No, I mean, you’re really funny.”

21.
Setting the scene: a crowded improv bar, maybe a month in: I am sitting with him, surrounded by all of his friends. I was a new factor for all of them, and they were all very curious about me, since none of them knew me or even knew of my existence probably. One of his best friends – who, I can’t help it, now has an Academy Award, for Best Director no less, was watching our dynamic like a hawk. Future Oscar winner said, ““Do you guys want to … talk to each other? ….. Or anything … like that …?” He was making a bit out of how we were sitting next to each other but not interacting – at least not to the naked eye.
Him and me, simultaneously: “Oh, we’re fine.”
Him: “That’s not what we’re about.”
Me: “We don’t really talk.”
Him: [taken aback, maybe even embarrassed] “What do you mean? We talk.”
Me: “Yeah, but it’s not like we’re all ‘getting to know you’. That’s what I meant.” [That … doesn’t make it better, lol]
Him: “Well – I think we exist more in the present.”
Me: “Right. I love it.”
Him: “You’re lying.”
Me: “No.”
Him: [Suddenly yelling:] “So don’t give me that We Don’t Talk crap!” [He leaned over and took my entire nose in his mouth.]
This dynamic did nothing to clear up his friends’ confusion. They were all improv guys and comedy writers. They noticed everything. I literally wrote this whole conversation out as a script in my journal the day after it happened so … so I trust the in-real-time reportage.

22.
Him: “What the hell are you wearing.”
Me: “A dress.”
Him: “The skirt is so short I can practically see your Si Señor.”

23.
Me: [A year in, regaling him with a story I thought was funny: a bunch of guys on the L followed me off the train and told me they were going to rape me at the bottom of the stairs. I was stuck up on the platform and scared to leave so I went to the pay phone and called my drag queen friend who lived nearby, telling her the situation, and she flew out the door and came roaring to the rescue. Because nobody – literally nobody – is tougher than a drag queen. I should never have told him this story but I thought – wrongly – he would get a kick out of it, at least the drag queen part. He reacted very very badly to the story.]
Him: “What the fuck were you doing on the L train in the middle of the night wearing fishnets?”
Me: [totally thrown off by his humorless intensity] “I wasn’t thinking.”
Him: “No shit you weren’t thinking. Why didn’t you call me?”
Me: “I …” [thinking: never in a million years would I have called you from that L platform.]
Him: [not amused, not charmed, unshakably pissed]: “If I ever find out that you’re almost raped on some fucking L platform and you don’t call me to come get you, I’ll never speak to you again.”
Me: “I’m sorry.”
Him: “It’s bullshit.”
Me: “Okay, I’m sorry.”
[Flailing pause, things are not okay.]
Me: [meek] “I thought it was funny.”
Him: “It’s not funny.”
Me: “Okay, okay.” [the realization dawned: “oh my God he actually cares about me.” Flood of warm fuzzy feelings. lol We’ve had a year of shmexy shenanigans but it took him yelling at me for me to realize “oh my God, he likes me.” This is the truest anecdote I can share. If you’re confused, I can’t help you.]

24.
Him [10 years in]: “Sheila, you could write a novel about the last 5 minutes.”

25.
Him, [3 years in, writing in my notebook]: “Trust is more important than true love. I don’t trust anyone. But I trust you.”

26.
Him [2 years in, 4 a.m.]: “I feel like there’s not a word evolved enough for what we are.”

Thoughts: This relationship is a very important part of the narrative of my life but we never called it a relationship and writing down “how we talked” is a little startling. Just seeing it in black and white. We sometimes went 2 or 3 months without seeing each other. To be honest, if we spent more than 3 days in a row with each other, the bickering got to be so constant we had to retreat to our corners. Less was WAY more for us. We had a huge fight maybe 2 years in and I stormed off through the icy winter night and we didn’t talk for months. For the last couple of years we lived 3,000 miles apart, engineering meet-ups whenever we could. We weren’t monogamous. We didn’t label it. None of that mattered. There are things about me that only he knows. To this day. And, not to sound like some Dickensian orphan or anything, but I have not been treated well by men. I’ve been treated with a LACK of care, let’s say. I don’t write about this a lot, it’s not the narrative I have chosen to tell – to others OR to myself – and this post really isn’t about that, ultimately. I can take care of myself now but back then I was constantly getting re-traumatized because I was only 24 when we met and I didn’t know how to take care of myself yet. He wasn’t a trauma counselor, lol. He also wasn’t overtly “sensitive”. He was rough, he was taciturn (really the perfect word), he was a tough guy with a muscle car. I’d describe his whole attitude as “cranky old geezer in a young man’s body”. He never lied. Which sounds great, but it can be pretty rough, being around that unfiltered bluntness. On the flip side, the no lying meant no mind games. And he also had his own trauma. Neither of us were sharing our traumas off the bat. It took years. But he paid attention, he noticed everything. I’d blink a millisecond slower than normal, and he’d be like, “You good?” (This was not always welcome. I’d be like, “Oh my GOD I’m GOOD STOP.”) It took me years to really understand how much care M. took with me – to make sure I was okay, make sure I was present – and just how much of a difference this has made in my life. I honestly didn’t understand at the time. I mean, look at what we were doing. It’s obvious to me NOW. It took me years to realize it was obvious to him back then.

2026 Update: I was looking for something in my archives and tripped over this piece. I don’t remember writing it. 2011 was a wild year. I might have written 200,000 words in that year alone. And it was before Ebert, before anything. 2011 was the start of the Elvis Thing. And in the middle of it was this. I might start resurrecting some things from my archives on occasion, since there’s so much there.

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I have watched this 20 times

Posted on August 25, 2026 by sheila

Tripped over this thrilling performance on Instagram the other day and sought it out on YouTube. This is the RB Dance Company. Song: “Human”, by Rag’n’Bone Man.

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