The parking lot is crowded. It is dark. Runners are all outside their vehicles, warming up before the race. They are bouncing on the pavement. Doing calisthenics. Pulling and pushing their own bodily limbs into impossibly contorted positions. Not a thimbleful of body fat between them.

As the sun peeks above the roofline of the Hoover Metropolitan Complex, 2,000 of Birmingham’s most bloodthirsty competitive runners begin to gather at the starting line, forming tight social clusters.

They are all listening to music on earbuds. Lacing and re-lacing shoes. Many are wearing skimpy athletic outfits, revealing six-pack abs, massive deltoids, and well-defined gluteal regions. Some of the runners look like living GI Joe figurines and Barbie dolls.

I am wearing athletic shorts purchased from Walmart. I look like a pig farmer from Butler County.

But I’m here.

“This is for the kids,” is the slogan of this race. Everyone keeps saying this mantra.

The BHM26.2 Marathon is a fundraiser. In its eighth year, the race has raised over $1 million for children in Alabama.

All proceeds benefit Magic Moments. Each year, this race brings together thousands of people who inadvertently grant a wish to some hope-starved child in Alabama. A kid with a chronic, life-threatening, or life-altering condition. That’s why I’m here. For the kids.

The music on the loudspeakers starts. The emcee gives us the go-signal. And we’re off.

The mass of runners moves forward. We in the rear are merely shuffling. Because we are not fast runners. We are not competitive athletes. We are what is commonly known to the global running community as, “middle-aged normal people.”

Even so, we all have our reasons for being here.

One woman runner tells me a doctor once told her she would not live to see her 65th birthday, due to breast cancer. She is 71 and runs marathons.

Another man in his 50s began running after his divorce. One morning, on…

Wake up. Get dressed. Remove phone from nightstand charger, put phone in pocket.

Brush teeth with sonic-grade electric toothbrush, using organically sourced, sustainable toothpaste, which your wife purchases at Whole Foods. Toothpaste which is antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, and anti-whatever else.

Enter kitchen. Greet three dogs who are dutifully waiting by refrigerator. And even though the clock reads 5:33 a.m., they are already giving the refrigerator the paralyzingly serious death stare. This is because they know the refrigerator contains cheese.

Your phone dings. The phone is already notifying you about your highly sophisticated security cameras, which have just picked up movement by the neighborhood cats. Don’t ask how, but somehow these cats are intelligent enough to know that whenever they walk past the motion-sensitive cameras your phone dings and they get food.

Make coffee. Use high-tech electric coffee maker, a device which—even though you never asked for this feature—comes equipped with a digital screen capable of connecting to Wi-Fi.

While coffee perks, you check the news on your smartphone.

You do this by

consulting a highly curated list of trustworthy media websites. These outlets are reputable organizations, sites from which you KNOW you can absolutely trust at least 4 percent of what they say. Maybe 3 percent.

Because every reporting organization is, more or less, full of equestrian excrement. But you live with it. Because that’s how the global news cycle works.

This is the reason that, even though you read the news, you never actually know what the hell is going on in the world. You never know which information to believe. Neither would you know how to even validate the “truth” if you WERE to stumble across it. And above all, you don’t have the energy or the time to comb through an internet full of bovine scatological offerings looking for facts because you have a life, and your dogs need cheese.

So, as you watch the space-age machines do…

You know what I wish? I wish I could hug everyone in the world.

I think I’d start by hugging the young waitress in the restaurant where I had lunch. Earlier that day, she was cussed out by an angry customer. He screamed at her. Called her a bad name.

“My job is getting so much harder lately,” she admitted. “It seems like people are getting meaner in today’s world.”

Next, I’d hug the supermarket cashier, who seemed sad as I was checking out. Who didn’t think I could tell that her mascara was running as she scanned my items.

When I asked her if everything was okay, she wore a brave smile and spoke in a Slavic accent. “I’m okay.” And I knew she was lying.

I wish I could hug the guy at the drive-thru window, who told me that his dog, Ishmael, just died.

“My dog got me through a time when I had nobody, man. He was my only friend.”

I wish I could embrace the Walmart employee who helped me

find the raisins, which I could not seem to locate within the stereophonically unmitigated hell that is Wally World on a weekend.

The employee and I got to talking. Today was her son’s birthday. He was turning 10. But she would be working doubles at a second job, and would miss his party.

“It sucks,” she said. “I hope he realizes the best gift I can give is food in the fridge and our bills paid. My mom never gave that to me.”

I wish I could hug her so hard.

But more than that. I wish my simple embrace could work like magic. I wish one hug could empty the recipient of all sorrow, and worry, and fear, and doubt, even if only for a few flickering moments.

And I wish that, as I hugged various people, they would feel lighter. As though the…

The 71-year-old man cradled a small, juvenile robin in his hand. He fed the bird soggy dog-food pellets with tweezers. The bird was injured badly. But not dead.

“Sssshhh,” he said as he fed the bird.

He’s rehabilitated hundreds—maybe thousands of birds over the last 20 years. About 100 million birds are killed annually in the US by window collisions. They call it a window strike. But when birds collide with windows many of them don’t actually die.

Often, Samaritans take injured birds and mammals to veterinary clinics. And usually, one such cheerful veterinary employee will accept the infirm, say, blue jay, and reply, “Uhhhhh… Thanks?”

Most people don’t ever think about where those birds actually go from there.

Well, they go to places like this.

The older man worked patiently with the robin, with his pet cockatiel riding on his shoulder, pirate-style.

Meantime, his co-volunteer tube fed an injured red squirrel. There are lots of animals in this place. It’s almost a zoo.

The tiny makeshift aviary, about the size of a workshed, contains

birds of every kind. Jays, robins, cardinals, finches. There were ducklings in kennels. Cages outside, with furry creatures. Even a homemade duck pond out back.

The older man teaches new volunteers their new trade. He shows younger recruits how to tube feed rabbits. How to massage an opossum’s abdomen to stimulate poop. How to determine when a bird has had enough to eat.

The volunteers become adoptive parents. They do everything.

Sometimes these volunteers spend eight hours out here, in this small, shed-like structure. This tiny volunteer outfit, based in Ohio, rehabilitates and releases nearly 2,000 animals every year.

Which is a huge number for such a small operation, considering that Ohio’s fancy Wildlife Center Hospital only treated 9,000.

It’s a full-time job, the older man says. Some birds require feedings every 15 minutes. Some mammals need to be fed every half hour, even during…

The wind hissed and howled. Waves crashed.

It was January, 1906. The S.S. Valencia was being tossed upon the ice-cold Pacific like a rubber ducky.

Two days earlier, the ship had set out from San Francisco to Seattle. It was a bad trip.

Currently, passengers were gathered along the stanchions, demanding to know what was wrong. They knew something wasn’t right, but had been cooped up in cabins and kept—literally—in the dark.

Passengers kept asking the crew what was wrong, but the crew was too busy running around like proverbial headless chickens.

“Tell us what’s happening!” one of the mothers pleaded with a crewman.

The crewman looked at her, clutching her two sons, and broke the news to the gaggle of moms and dads.

Last night, he explained, while passengers were sleeping, the ship went off course. Celestial navigation was impossible, because of low visibility. So they had been forced to navigate by dead reckoning.

The ship missed its entrance into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. So the captain ordered the ship closer to shore, since weather was

worsening.

It was a mistake. Around midnight, the ship struck a reef.

“Get them back in their cabins!” shouted an upper crewman. “Too dangerous out here for passengers!”

There were 108 passengers aboard. A crew of 56. The iron hull was taking on water. The ship was riding lopsided in the Pacific.

The captain ordered the ship to be run aground, to prevent sinking. Another big mistake.

The Valencia was driven into the rocks again.

The captain ordered all lifeboats be lowered. Mistake Number Three.

All but one of the ship’s lifeboats were lowered. Three were flipped by wind and waves while being lowered, spilling occupants into the drink. Two lifeboats were capsized. One was lost at sea.

And so it was, the great steamship sank and 137 people died. No women or children survived.

Chief Freight Clerk Frank Lehn was…

“Dear Sean… This is not a criticism,” the email began, “just a simple question…

“Are you a member of a Bible-believing church community…? Do you tithe…? Do you worship with other believers and hold yourself accountable…? I’ve been a pastor for 28 years, I have helped many… And I’m here if you want to talk. There is only one way to heaven, friend.”

Dear Friend,

Once, there were two men. They were very different guys. They looked different. Had dissimilar backgrounds. They even smelled different.

The first guy was nice. Raised right. Gave money to his church. Read his Bible all the way through every year—always the correct translation. He volunteered to clean the church toilets.

He was a small business owner. No tattoos. Drove an American made car. Never cussed in public.

The second guy was a tomato picker on a commercial farm. He was sweaty and stinky from work. His coworkers were mostly Mexicans and South Americans who all worked for cash under the table.

This was the only job he could find due to

his prison record. Nobody wanted to hire a guy who had been busted for drugs. Twice.

Still, he’d been sober for the last four years. Sobriety had been a tough road. His body still suffered the aftereffects of hardcore methamphetamine usage. He had jerky movements. Sometimes it was hard to sleep.

To keep his mind occupied, so he wouldn’t focus on his physical afflictions, sometimes he smoked too many cigarettes. Sometimes he smoked a little weed to ease the tremors.

One Sunday, these two men went to church.

At closing prayer, everyone bowed their heads. If you could have heard the prayers going through people’s minds you would have heard very different sorts of talk.

The first man’s prayer was simple:

“God, I thank you for all you’ve given me, and you have given me SO MUCH to be grateful for. I am…

“God help us,” the old man in the nursing home muttered.

He was watching TV, sitting in his big, comfy, pleather chair. A plate of untouched food sat on his hospital tray. The carrots were cold. The turkey had gone to be with Jesus hours ago.

The TV was showing footage of the latest mass shooting.

This shooting happened in a Michigan church. Of all places. An LDS church. Four dead. Eight injured.

“Why’re they happening in churches?” the old man pleaded with the TV.

The victims were in a sacred space. They were worshipping. Fellowshipping. Their kids were safe in the nursery. People were singing. Praying. People died wearing their Sunday best.

“God help us all.”

I had come to this nursing home to visit a friend’s father today. But as it happened, the mood had fallen due to the current headlines.

“We feel the news in here,” said a nurse. “When tragedy happens in the outside world, our residents feel it deeply because we stay connected to the media in here.”

Three elderly women were sitting in the lobby,

watching television. The women reminded me that the shooting in Grand Blanc, Michigan, was not the only mass shooting that occurred yesterday.

There were actually three.

A shooting in Eagle Pass, Texas—two killed, six injured, inside a casino. Another shooting in New Orleans—one killed, three injured, while walking on Bourbon Street.

And the day before yesterday? Three more mass shootings. In Southport, North Carolina, at a bar—three dead, eight injured. Raleigh—four wounded. Alexandria, Louisiana—four wounded.

I ask what the women think about all this.

“Things like this didn’t happen when we were kids,” said the spokeswoman. “I think it’s because we saw each other face-to-face more often. There were no computer screens to hide behind. But today we have devices, and we can totally block out people altogether. We forget how to treat them.”

Another woman had another perspective.

Washington, North Carolina. She was small. White hair. A slow, shuffling gait. She wore Velcro shoes.

She was 94. She came through the meet-and-greet line after my one-man shipwreck. She waited her turn patiently, while I ran my mouth, signed books, and kissed babies.

When it was her turn, we embraced. She spoke in a quiet tone. I leaned inward, straining to hear her whispery voice over the murmuring crowd that mingled in the lobby.

The message was short. But important. A message she had waited 94 years to learn. Of course, at the time I had no idea she was delivering a message at all. At first, I just thought I was meeting a sweet, beautiful 94-year-old woman.

“Tell the people,” she said in a whisper.

I smiled. “Ma’am?”

“Tell them,” she said.

She was weak on her feet, holding my belt with both hands for support. But smiling at me.

I returned fire with my most polite smile. I leaned in even closer.

“Tell them?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“What should I tell them? And who am I supposed to tell?”

She pulled me closer. “Tell your

loved ones how much you love them.”

There were tears in her little eyes.

“And don’t just tell them,” she added. “Show them. Show them how much you love them.”

“Show them?”

“Don’t ever miss a moment to show them love. Give all your love away. Until you’re empty. This is the only reason we are here. And we’re not here nearly long enough.”

Her words were brief, but something in the delivery touched me. She was still clasping my belt for balance.

“Do you understand?” she said.

I nodded. “Yes, ma’am. I think I do.”

“Tell them.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I dabbed an eye. “I will.”

“Show them.”

I blew my nose loudly. “I will, ma’am. I will try.”

“Good,” she gave a broad smile. “Now, have a great rest of your…

Day two of our Great American road trip.

Our little white van rolls into the Walmart Supercenter in Raleigh, North Carolina. My wife and I step out and stretch our muscles in the parking lot.

“Sandwiches?” my wife says.

“Yep,” I reply.

My wife has been driving the last shift. She uses this opportunity to do yoga stretches while simultaneously catching up on missed texts. She does this, skillfully, by placing her phone on the pavement beneath her while performing a uniquely unflattering squatting pose, a position which I call “Bear in the Woods.”

Then she scrolls on her phone while random onlookers watch her, squatting and concentrating on the pavement. You can see looks on people’s faces. Bystanders are seriously wondering to themselves whether any public sanitation laws are being violated.

My wife and I have been road warriors for the last decade. We have traversed almost the entire US in our tiny Ford Transit, taking my one-man train wreck to various theaters, civic centers, campus auditoriums, and used car dealership grand

openings.

I doubt whether my wife envisioned marrying a man whose livelihood was showbusiness, but there you are.

We are a showbiz team. George and Gracie. Fred and Ethel. Mork and Mindy. She works behind the scenes, sending emails, fielding phone calls, and just generally making our whole lives possible. I am simply eye candy.

My wife, for example, drives the bus. She prefers to drive. I know this because whenever I get behind the wheel she grips the chicken handle with both hands and recites the Lord’s Prayer.

Mostly, we putter along the United States in our own mental zones, without conversing. She drives; I am the passenger-seat princess.

Often, I practice material for upcoming shows. I am usually playing a fiddle with mute affixed to the bridge; or a banjo with a sock stuffed inside. Likewise, my wife will be listening to an audiobook, ‘90s…

There is a double yellow line running down the middle of State Street, in Bristol. The line separates Tennessee from Virginia.

Passersby stand with one foot in each state and get their pictures made. People who do this look comical and downright ridiculous.

We pulled over so I could do this.

Namely, because this is Bristol. And American music still lives in Bristol.

The rest of the world has gone techno. Even country music has succumbed to the wiles of the “scrolling generation.” But in Bristol, it’s still the 1920s.

I have been playing music since I was 9 years old. And I owe a lot to Bristol.

In 1998, US Congress stopped shooting spitwads at each other long enough to officially declare Bristol the birthplace of country music. And yet, many Americans still don’t realize this is where it all began.

“A lot of people in this country don’t even know Bristol is related to country music,” says one local waitress, warming up my coffee. “But this is where the big bang happened.”

Today, most people travel to Nashville to pay homage to country music, only to find themselves caught in 24-hour gridlock traffic, non-stop outlet malls, and eternal bachelorette parties clad in white cowboy boots, custom T-shirts, operating giant pedal-buses down Lower Broadway.

But I choose Bristol.

It all began in the summer of 1927. Coolidge was president. Babe Ruth was a household name. Lindbergh was making headlines. Silent movies were no longer silent.

Ralph Peer, a freelance producer for the Victor Talking Machine Company in Camden, New Jersey, visited Bristol. He set up a temporary studio in Christian-Taylor Hat Company warehouse on State Street, beside the train station and the hotel.

The newspaper ran a story saying Ralph would record almost anyone who walked through the doors.

They came from all over Appalachia, all seeking their 15 minutes. They drove raggedy Model A’s along the jagged spines…