“Sean, hi. I just want to ask you if you have any advice on how to show my 14-year-old daughter that I am proud of her. She doesn’t have her father anymore, and she is actually pregnant. I don’t judge her. I know more than anything that she would like to know someone is proud of her, and even though I say it all the time, I don’t know if she knows that. No matter what mistakes she’s made, I am actually very proud of her.”

Don’t ever change. You’re doing it right.

“Dear Sean, my father physically abused me. I had to tell someone. I am 39 years old. He is dead now.”

Hi, friend. I was smacked around by my father sometimes. First time he ever hit me happened almost against his will. It was almost a reflex on his part. It was the way he’d been raised. He reared back and slapped me. I fell off my feet.

Later I found him crying in the back room, and he told

me the story of the first time his father ever smacked him. You should have heard his trembling voice. In that moment, my father had become a little boy just like me.

My father was not a bad man. Neither was yours. They were beautiful men who did dumb things. They did the best they could with the crummy cards they were dealt. You and I are doing the same. Let us hope and pray, friend, that nobody holds our worst mistakes against us.

Otherwise, I am totally screwed.

“Hello, Sean, my wife and I both like the name Shawn. But my problem is, I want to name my newborn boy ‘Shawn’ with a W, and my wife wants to name him ‘Shaun’ with a U. What do you think?”

I think you’re both wrong.

“I am 32 and I still haven’t completed high school. I was…

Lake City isn’t a big town. You’re looking at 12,000 folks. Give or take. It’s one of those old Florida towns.

It’s hard to find Old Florida anymore. You can’t find it in Orlando—too many mouse-ear hats. It’s hard to find in Tallahassee—too many congressmen. You can’t find it in Miami—too much incoming fire.

But you can find it in Lake City.

I’m a native Floridian. I spent my feckless youth near the Alabama line, on the Choctawhatchee Bay. We were poor. I was raised on rusty well-water and homemade tatar sauce. We served cheese grits and oysters at Christmas.

Yesterday, I arrived in Lake City early to perform my one-man spasm at the Levy Performing Arts Center.

At soundcheck, I was accompanied by community musicians and fellow Floridians. There were fiddles, clarinets, upright basses, ukuleles, guitars, and banjos. They play rural music. Porch music.

The group is led by Skip Johns, a lifelong resident of Lake City. Skip is not young. His white hair is tied back in a ponytail, he has lines on his face.

He is one of the many unfortunate souls whose lot in life is to play the banjo.

He plays his instrument upside down because that’s the way he taught himself when he was 11 years old.

“I saw my first calf-skin banjo when I’s a kid,” he says. “Fella that owned it was an old man, and he played a tune. Then he handed it to me and he said, ‘You wanna try this thing?’

“‘No, sir,’ I said. ‘I wanna borrow it.’”

Skip went home and taught himself to play left-handed. He is one of the few players in the world to play upside down. Which is exactly how he played the banjo when he appeared on the Grand Ole Opry in ‘79.

“Never forget when my band stepped foot on the Opry stage,” he says. “I was standing there, with my…

I’m in a hotel lobby. It’s breakfast. We are waiting in line for our gruel. Guests congregate around the coffee urn like puppies at the teat until they drain the urn and leave nothing but dregs for us tired huddled masses.

The dining room is full. There are people everywhere.

A group of businessmen at a table, eating their “eggz.” They are talking with important-sounding voices, the way guys do when they’re en masse. Trying to establish who is alpha by public urination contest.

They’re talking about the eclipse.

“This eclipse is no big deal,” one guy says in a macho tone. “I’ve seen an eclipse before.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve seen dozens,” another guy says.

“Oh, yeah?” a guy adds. “Well, I used to watch eclipses every weekend, back when they used to play for Miami.”

There is a young family nearby. A mom, dad, and a few kids. One kid is wearing his glasses, looking at his mother.

“Mom, look!” he says. “I’m wearing my glasses!”

Mom does not even move. She is staring straight ahead, like maybe it’s been a long road trip.

“Mom, look! Mom, look!

Mom, look!”

The woman takes a sip of coffee, she does not look.

“Momlookmomlookmomlookmom…!”

There is an older couple. They are, evidently, in love. They can’t keep their hands off one another. The older woman is mid-70s, wearing cutoff shorts á la Daisy Duke, cut so high they are showing her her everlasting aspirations. The guy is wearing a tank top and it appears that his upper body hasn’t seen the sun since the early Carter Administration.

They are groping each other. They are kissing passionately while waiting in the serving line.

“They’re definitely not married,” says one elderly lady in line, using a walker.

“How can you tell?” I ask.

“Are you married?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see where he grabbed her?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever been grabbed like that?”

“No.”

Today, a 4.8 magnitude earthquake hit New York City at approximately 10:23 a.m. I got a lot of emails about it. Ron emailed me about it first, only moments after it happened.

He was sitting in a café, after the quake hit, trying to get his heart beating again. “I thought my roof was going to fall in. So I rushed out into the hall and took the elevator down to the street.”

Let it be noted that Ron is a smart professional who attended a good college, holds two degrees, has a good job, and earns a decent median income. And yet he chose to use an elevator during an earthquake evacuation.

“It all happened so fast,” Ron points out.

The earthquake was felt throughout the Tri-State Area, including upstate, and Philadelphia. People felt the impact as far away as Maryland. The U.S. Geological Survey says intense tremors were experienced from Maine to Washington, D.C.

“I was out walking my dog,” said Rita, who lives in Manville, New Jersey. “I felt

things move underneath my feet, and my dog was totally freaking out.”

The first thing Rita did was call her son and ask if he felt it. He lives in Massachusetts. “I could sorta feel it,” he told his mom, “but the stuff on my counters was shaking bad.”

There have been at least four aftershocks since the earthquake hit. None of them serious. There was little damage done. New York got off the hook easy.

But the real story today is about a guy who I'll call Todd.

Todd lives in the Bronx. He’s a construction worker. The Bronx is a borough of New York City that contains the poorest congressional district in the United States. Todd lives in a rundown building with his grandmother.

Todd was with his 72-year-old grandmother when the earthquake hit, feeding her breakfast. She is on oxygen. She has a forest of…

Do this. Get a tomato. Not just any tomato. A Slocomb, Alabama, tomato. Make sure the tomato is firecracker-red and softer than the hindcheeks of a 2-month-old. Find a serrated knife. Cut said tomato into thick slices about the width of the unabridged edition of “Shogun.”

Tomatoes from Geneva County, Alabama, are different from common varieties. They are superior tomatoes.

In fact, top archaeology scholars at Columbia University now believe that the original Garden of Eden was located just north of Highway 52 in Geneva County. And most experts agree that the forbidden fruit consumed by Adam and Eve was originally purchased from the Hendrix Farm Produce tomato stand.

Next, find two slices of Sunbeam bread. In a pinch, you can use Bunny Bread, Wonderbread, or Colonial bread. But stay away from any bread with packaging labels that read something like, “59 whole grains and seeds!” or “3,234 grams of dietary fiber!” This isn’t real bread but an abrasive material meant for sanding boat hulls.

Consequently, if all you have in your

pantry is “gluten-free” or “keto” bread, please stop reading here and go back to California.

Once you have your white, floppy, flaccid, tasteless bread ready, open a jar of Duke’s mayonnaise. Duke’s is the brand with the canary-yellow lid, manufactured and packaged by real evangelical seminary graduates so you know it’s sacred, mostly.

If you don’t have any Duke’s, you’re not totally out of luck. Blue Plate mayonnaise will also work nicely. Bama mayonnaise is also a winner.

Hellmann’s, however, isn’t fit for consumption by a golden retriever. Similarly, Miracle Whip is neither a “miracle,” nor a “whip,” but the brainchild of communists sympathizers who don’t love the Lord. And Kraft mayo is industrial doorknob lubricant.

It bears mentioning, if all you have in your refrigerator is a kind of mayonnaise labeled “light” or “low fat” please forfeit your tomato to someone who will use it correctly and…

Hank got home from work late. His 1969 Buick Riviera—metallic blue—rolled into the carport of a nondescript one-story-one-bath in Suburbia, USA. He stepped out of his car. He stretched his back.

It was nighttime. The moon was out.

He was tall, lean, with salt-and-pepper hair. More salt than pepper. He wore a tan suit and a striped necktie because this was the uniform of the American desk jockey.

In his den, Hank found his son and daughter sitting cross-legged before a glowing television screen, their two noses practically smooshed against the tele-tube glass.

Hank’s wife was perched on the edge of their sofa, smoking Camels, her eyes focused on the RCA console.

“Hi,” said Hank.

“Ssshhh,” his wife said.

She didn’t say “Hello.” Neither did she say, “Hi, honey, how was work?” It was just “Sssshhh.”

“Sorry I’m home late,” he said. “Traffic was just—”

“Sssshhh,” everyone said in unison.

He left the den and entered the vinyl kitchen. He placed his briefcase onto the enamel kitchen table. He retrieved an Old Milwaukee from the Kelvinator refrigerator.

In the oven was

his Swanson TV dinner, baking on low heat, still boiling in its volcanic-lava gravy. He took one bite of his unevenly heated turkey-and-mashed-potatoes and the roof of his mouth was ruined forevermore.

This food reminded him of the C-rations he ate when he was in Italy, fighting Hitler. Except, the field rations tasted better than this flash-frozen slop.

He returned to the den to find his family still rapt before the screen.

He said, “What are you all watchin—”

“SSSHHH!!!”

The voice on the TV sounded like it was coming from a walkie-talkie. The voice said: “This is Houston, Roger. We copy. And we're standing by...”

His family was lost within the black spell of the boob tube. He didn’t understand these people. How had they let technology invade their lives like this? Look at them. They were vegetables.

“I’ve never met a blind dog before,” said the little boy.

He was a foster child, his foster mother was with him. We were all introduced by chance in a public park.

The boy watched my dog, Marigold, walking along, bumping into a nearby fence. We were out for a potty-break. Marigold was trying to find a suitable patch of grass to do what I call, “leaving constructive criticism.”

The boy watched us in rapt wonder. We are a team. Dog and man. Marigold and me.

I am Marigold’s “Seeing Eye” human. My job is to guide her through this world of woe. I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’m trying.

And at this particular moment, I was following Marigold closely with a plastic baggy over my hand, ready to do my duty.

“Why is she blind?” the boy asked.

I chose my words carefully. Because how do you tell an innocent foster child that somebody took a blunt object to this puppy’s head and destroyed her eyes?

How do you tell a child there are humans out there who would use

a length of rebar as a weapon against a soft, floppy-eared puppy?

“Someone hurt her,” I said.

“Why?”

“Not everyone’s a nice person.”

The boy’s eyes grew serious. “Yeah. I know.”

He looked at Marigold prancing along and said nothing. He just observed.

The kid was maybe 6. He wore Levi’s and a striped shirt that showed his little belly. His hair was strawberry. Opie Taylor eat your heart out.

His foster mother said he’s had a rough life. And that is all I’m permitted to tell you about him.

He watched Marigold with great interest. Marigold walks with a cautious gait. Sometimes she high-steps like she’s hiking through tall grass. She does this so she won’t stumble on any sudden obstacles.

We’ve been working on things, every day. When we go for walks, off-leash, I…

Lake Martin is calm. There aren’t many people here. Spring break is over. All the bikinis and beer kegs have gone home, never to return again until this summer.

I am watching the still water, thinking about how much I’ve changed.

I’m older. I’m stiffer in the mornings. I don’t have the metabolism I used to. Used to, I could eat a Big Mac and finish the day like a hummingbird. Now I become akin to a gorilla hit with a tranquilizer dart.

Time seems to move faster, too. I don’t know why. When I was a 10-year-old one day lasted a hundred years. At this age, a day is only a few minutes.

Life, my granddaddy used to say, is not unlike a roll of toilet paper; the closer you get to the end, the faster it goes. And oftentimes, the roll is finished long before you are.

Wisdom.

Sometimes I wish we could slow down the aging process, but the only way we could do that is to get Congress involved. And what would

be the point?

Old age used to be coveted. Old age used to be a big deal. Sadly, it’s not cool to be old anymore. When was the last time you saw an elderly person in a car commercial?

My grandmother used to always say old age is a privilege denied to many. She ought to have known. It was denied to her. She wasn’t 70 when she died.

My aunt Irma was 77 when she went. She was a tough woman. She buried three husbands, and two of them were just napping.

I bring all this up because I made a speech yesterday at an old folks home. Yes, I know you’re not supposed to call them old folks homes, they’re “assisted living facilities.”

But the old folks were calling it an “old folks home” because old folks don’t get worked up about…

“What is Easter?” the boy asked his grandfather.

The old man and boy sat on the front porch. That’s where people used to sit in the olden days. They used to build porches on the fronts of houses so you could wave at your neighbors. Now they build “decks” on the back so you can wave at your above-ground pool.

“Easter is a day of rebirth,” said Granddaddy.

The two cohorts were still wearing their Sunday best. The boy: His necktie and khakis. The grandfather: His button down, crisply pressed, with only a few tobacco-spit stains on the collar.

“What’s rebirth?” the boy said.

“Well, you remember when you was born, don’t you?”

“No.”

“Well, trust me you were born, or else you wouldn’t be here.” Granddaddy took a sip of his Doctor Pepper. “And today it all happens again.”

“What happens again?”

“You get born.”

“I get born twice?” the boy said.

He nodded. “Look at the trees and the flowers, see how they’re all blooming? You see those azaleas across the street.”

“Which ones are the azaleas?”

“The pink ones that Mrs. Wannamaker will slit your throat you if

you touch.”

“I see them.”

“And the trees, look at them. They’re turning green. The birds are singing. That’s what resurrection means.”

“It means birds?”

“No. Resurrection means, when something comes back to life. And it’s a miracle, every time something gets reborn. Because a new beginning is a miracle.”

“Is that why we look for eggs on Easter?”

“No. Hell. I don’t know why we look for eggs.”

He took another sip. “Look,” he went on, “you know all those crosses people wear around their necks?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I think we’re wearing the wrong thing around our necks. We shouldn’t be wearing the cross. The cross is death. It’s a tool of execution. It’s like wearing an electric chair around your neck. Or a hangman’s noose.”

“Granny wears…

Yesterday was Vietnam War Veterans Day. It’s the day the last troops were pulled from Vietnam.

In Washington D.C., near the intersection of 22nd Street NW and Constitution Avenue NW, just north of the Lincoln Memorial, stands their wall. A wall of black granite. It’s huge.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial consists of 140 stone panels, polished to a high finish, sunken into the earth. The panels create a massive wall that is 493 feet and 6 inches long, about the size of a skyscraper laid on its side.

You expect the wall to be big, but you’re not prepared for how big it really is. This thing is ginormous.

I was in D.C. a few months ago. The granite gleamed in the morning sun, I stood before the never-ending wall of stone, sipping a bottle of water, taking it all in. The Washington Monument was on one side, Honest Abe was on my other.

There was an old man and his grandson roaming the wall, reading the names reverently. The old man had a wild white

beard, he wore an army cap.

“Look, Grandpa,” said the kid, “is this one my uncle’s name?”

“Lower your voice,” said Granddaddy.

“But… Why are we whispering?

“Respect,” the old man said.

There was indeed a very respectful mood at the Vietnam memorial, which surprised me. I’ve been to U.S. war memorials before. And at most National Park Service war memorials the mood is nonchalant, happy even. Because most memorials commemorate wars that happened so long ago that nobody can remember them.

At the Gettysburg Memorial, for example, I saw hundreds of families pushing strollers, laughing, posing with performers in Civil War costumes, snapping selfies. At Arlington National Cemetery, I saw school kids playing tag among gravestones.

But people were silent here.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is not like other American memorials. Here, I saw old men touching the wall, heads bowed. There were…