The Sneeze

People at a coffee shopIt’s amazing how many friendships at our coffee shop start with an orgasm.It’s not that the people working in the windows are unfriendly.

It’s just that they’re busy. Some are working remotely on an employer’s clock, some on projects with impossible due dates. The PhD candidates are focused, focused, focused.

You can spend weeks without sharing the first word with a stranger next to you. Then the unexpected happens and the unspoken code of silence is broken by a sudden sneeze, or likely by a series of sneezes.

That involuntary convulsion* is greeted with a ‘bless you,’ ‘gesundheit’ or other expression of ‘good health.’ Once those words are uttered you and the stranger are on speaking terms, however limited.

Weeks pass, it’s still tentative at this point. You may ask to plug in your power adapter or briefly, very briefly, compare laptop devices.

But with enough time the big question will inevitably be breached: “What the fuck are you working on?”

Suddenly you’re discussing careers, childhood memories, foibles, allergies to synthetics. You’re talking existential threats and sharing photos of pets.

There are myths aplenty about sneezing: It’s as close as you can get to death. Cupid’s sneezes shape the course of love. Someone is gossiping about you. And who are we to say none of this is so?

Unlike the sneeze, the hiccup is greeted with silent bemusement in the windows of our coffee shop. Flatulence is a different matter.

* Here’s what happens: Particles tickle nasal passage, palate and palatine uvula push down and back, tongue lifts to close mouth; vapors escape mostly through the nose with force and velocity.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Neil Lukatch

People at a coffee shopThe morning’s short, impromptu memorial service was all the more moving for being unplanned and unscripted.

Linnea and Ian stopped in to introduce Tristan to the coffee shop that Linnea and her father loved.

Her father is gone, she told me. We spent a moment sharing what that loss means. Ian’s father had died as well, so the birth of Tristan was providential.

Linnea and her sister Jordan grew up with Neil. On the mornings when she could sleep in, she’d wander down past the couple doors to our corner coffee shop to greet her father.

He would already have spent hours with the likes of Joyce, Dickens, Austen, Faulkner, Flaubert, Stevens, and Eliot. Neil was a published poet himself and he used literature to explain “life’s greatest treasures and worst vices” to his daughters.

Neil Lukatch taught people to think. He was much sought after as a tutor for ACTs, LSATs and personalized learning strategies. (This from a guy who owned a comic-book store?)

When Neil and I got to know each other, we discovered that Linnea and my son were friends from high school and that Neil had tutored Ben.

Our friendship was built around the hamburger. Scouring suburbs for the best of the best provided the perfect guy excuse for two old men to make plans and get out of the house.

More than anything else we talked about being fathers. We liked to think that meeting our paternal responsibilities to the best of our ability would make up for our wild years.

To my blog’s question of “What’s the most important thing your father taught you?” Neil sent this: “How to love a child! There isn’t even a close second best.” He passed that wisdom on to Linnea.

The table where he liked to sit is now often claimed by a fascinating guy who reads and rereads the same impenetrable works of literature that Neil dedicated his life to. He is not Neil.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Hipster Coffee Shop

People at a coffee shopThe decor of our corner coffee shop screams a healthy disdain for tidiness and convention.

Its owner is either a genius at creating a welcoming underground, counterculture ambiance – the kind of space that retail designers charge ten of thousands to come up with – or he’s simply a bro who doesn’t give a shit.

There’s paint peeling around those enormous windows. Vintage floor tiles are cracked and gaping. There’s no effort to hide exposed conduits in the walls. An invisible film of neglect covers every surface.

Having said all that, the joint runs like a precision time piece. Service is crisp and friendly, lines short. The ugly dispenser of tap water is almost never empty. Customers double park and pick up orders fast enough to avoid parking tickets.

The place is an incubator for remote gig-workers, creatives, small LLC owners and university rats who set up shop and stay for hours. The energy is electric.

A room full of tattoos, piercings, pony tails, hipster knit caps and splashes of florescent hair offer you an opportunity for self-renewal. Osmosis on the cheap. Forget that trek through Nepal. Who needs Burning Man?

All you need do is sit quietly with a cup of coffee, breathe in the vapors and it WILL happen. When you’re in the moment, you’ll connect with a freer, looser, hipper, preservative-free version of your authentic self.

But fear not, wild thing, the minute you step out that door, you’ll return to the person your life choices and your dependents need you to be.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Jeff Boarini

People at a coffee shopJeff came through the door of the coffee shop with a fire in his belly.He’s running to be mayor for our small suburban town. The folks at our coffee shop applaud his decision, his neighbors are grateful.

It’s good to have at least one candidate sign up to challenge an incumbent. Issues are raised that might otherwise stay under the radar.

Jeff Boarini has never before run for elected office but here he is, an underdog, squaring off against a sitting mayor who easily won his last election and enjoys a serious funding advantage.

The village is debating fundamental questions about its future. Should it preserve the home-town feel of a vintage village? Or become more urban, like the first-tier metropolis it borders?

Jeff would like more information on how population growth and increased density are in the city’s best interest; and how they would create the affordable housing they are hoped to provide.

A city government, he believes. must adopt a budget it can live with long term, a financial plan its residents can afford.

During his professional career he was charged with keeping projects on budget and deadlines on track. But he’s aware that a city mayor carries much more than fiscal responsibilities.

As a recent widower and a father caring for an son with cerebral palsy, he’s learned first hand and knows better than most people that government exists to respond to the needs of its residents.

Whether win or lose, the fact that Jeff has stepped up to challenge the status quo is an uncommon service to his community.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

John Kennedy

People at a coffee shopJohn is notorious as a cheapskate when to comes to spending other people’s money.One of the regulars at our corner coffee shop is busy knocking on his neighbors’ doors.

He’s running to replace a council member, Melissa Wynn, who after twenty-eight years of service is retiring from the city council of this small, suburban community .

The village has been John’s home for four decades. He and his wife raised their children there, educating them in the public schools.

John’s three business start-ups created jobs throughout the community. He’s known for his decades of volunteering; establishing, funding, serving as a member and presiding over non-profit organizations.

Never timid about offering well-articulated, alternative ideas to the powers that be, civic commitment seem to be part of his DNA.

Few have John Kennedy’s knowledge of past civic initiatives and policy shifts. Time and again his town (like municipalities everywhere) has assumed that simply spending additional taxpayer dollars would solve problems that remain as challenges to this day. He believes the budget should be balanced without raising taxes.

Affordability, transportation, diversity, equity and the environment are more important to this community than most. And John agrees with those goals.

But the basis of his campaign is that they can only be achieved when city government is dogged in finding less expensive and more sensible solutions to its challenges, in protecting the families invested in it.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail