Last night when the L.A. Dodgers’ Manny Machado swung and missed so awkwardly at a wicked Chris Sale pitch that he fell down, the Major League Baseball season came to a close. The Red Sox won, which at this point is getting kind of old (my Cardinals fan friend calls Red Sox fans “professional Irishmen”). Nonetheless, I generally root for the American League, and seeing Sale—who labored with mostly bad teams for years with my White Sox—close out the championship was pretty cool.

Unless the White Sox are in the playoffs (an infrequent occurrence), around this time of the year I pick an alternate horse. Sometimes it’s a team/fan base that I least dislike. This year it was fun: I took the Brewers and Astros. The Brewers had a really entertaining team, a smart young manager, and the best radio announcer—Bob Uecker—in the business. He’s funny, yes, but he calls a damn good game, too. And thanks to a little App on our phones (MLB AtBat) Beth and I could listen to him call all the Brewers games.

As far as the Astros, well I can’t help it—we’ve written before about our friend Kevin who works in their front office. I just love seeing him in selfies with players like Alex Bregman after a clinching game. I also wanted the Astros to be the first team to repeat in forever.

Alas.

If you grew up in Chicago on either side of town, you have to learn to savor the World Series regardless of whether your team is in it or not. (In some ways, it’s a lot more pleasant; it’s certainly less stressful.) There’s always some regular guy that plays out of his mind. And games that are incredible for one reason or another. This year, that guy was a journeyman player named Steve Pearce and that game was the insane two-games-in-one 18-inning marathon.

Our pal Nancy Faust will be back behind the organ for a spring training game in 2019.

I also like this time of year because of the anniversaries of the 2005 World Series—the four games my White Sox took from the Astros when Houston was still in the National League. That 18-inning Red Sox-Dodgers game brought to mind a gut-wrenching, 14-inning game the White Sox won. There was much shouting at the TV, and ultimately, screams of joy in the wee hours. (I did not make it to the end of the 18-inning affair this year.)

Speaking of the White Sox, Beth and I saw our friends Nancy Faust, her husband Joe, their son Eric and his girlfriend last week. We caught up, got some great stories about Old Comiskey, past players, Haray Caray—and we had a lot of laughs. They are all delightful people and I thank my lucky stars that, thanks to Beth and her writing, they are our friends.

Still, I always get a little melancholy when that last out of the World Series is made. It’s probably silly to care so much about a game, but hey, it’s my silly. And there’s this: Nancy told us that she’ll be playing the organ for the Cubs-Sox spring training matchup at the Sox spring ballpark.

You know, I went to spring training once when the Sox were in Florida. But I haven’t been to Arizona yet….

That’s what the web looked like in 1993.

Sometime last week I happened on an article titled ​“Mosaic’s birthday: 25 years of the modern web”.

The opening paragraph is a story in itself:

In the beginning, the web, or WEB as it was known then, was a mystery. Like gopher and archie, it was a character-based internet tool interface that only the proud, the few, and the early internet users knew about. Then, everything changed. First, the Commercial Internet Exchange (CIX) made it easy for anyone to get on the net, and then two graduate students, Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina, at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, created the first popular web browser: Mosaic.

On one hand it’s hard to believe it’s already been 25 years. On the other, it’s hard to believe that just 25 years ago, we weren’t using email, browsers, social media—or reading blogs.

Back in the early 1990s, when we lived in Urbana, Illinois, I was privileged to be present at the creation of the web. I worked at a spinoff from the aforementioned NCSA called Spyglass. Spyglass developed data visualization software for brainiac researchers in fields like astrophysics, climatology, oceanography and hydrology.

The Cray supercomputer at NCSA back in the day. Not exactly compact.

The genesis: The University of Illinois’ NCSA had acquired a Cray supercomputer. NCSA took applications from scientists around the country to use supercomputing time for their research, and awarded supercomputing time to the best of the lot.

The scientists who were selected and got to run their simulations then faced another problem: They generated unprecedented volumes of data that were impossible to interpret visually with conventional graphing tools. (Hard as it is to imagine, even those color weather maps of temperature/barometric pressure didn’t exist yet.)

Spyglass developed a suite of tools that allowed users to create a bunch of new, colorful kinds of graphics from enormous datasets. Because back then the Mac had superior graphical capabilities, that’s what our products were on (until Windows 95 came out).

Sales sheet for the Spyglass data visualization software.

The products were super cool. I wrote the manuals for them (yes, paper books that were packaged in boxes with diskettes), as well as marketing materials, ad copy, etc. We were, in a word, a pretty lean operation. We had to be. Our market was pretty nichey. We were fighting for our commercial lives. Then one day one of the company founders got an email from Tim Berners-Lee. Berners-Lee was a brainiac with the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)—this is the joint that now runs the Hadron Supercollider.

The email explained this new thing, the web, with hypertext links. Meanwhile the kids at NCSA—Andreesen and Bina—were adding graphical capabilities to Mosaic. ,

I still remember seeing the web for the first time at our modest little office in Savoy, Illinois. A group of us was looking over the shoulder of one of our code guys as he surfed the small number of web sites that existed—mostly corporate sites of big technology-focused companies. By today’s standards, they were incredibly crude. But back then, it was magic.

Bina and Andreesen—and a lot of their NCSA colleagues—headed to Silicon Valley to seek fortune and fame at a company that eventually morphed into Netscape. The University was left with a successful program, a bunch of browser code, but not much else. Spyglass stepped in, struck a deal with the university, cleaned up the code for commercial markets, and started selling Mosaic.

We had a visionary CEO named Doug Colbeth, whom I’m proud and grateful to still call a friend. He knew that browsers were not a sustainable business. Spyglass sold the code to Microsoft, and it became Microsoft Internet Explorer. Spyglass morphed yet again into a company that was ahead of its time—it created browser code that could be embedded in a variety of devices—anything from TVs to exercise treadmills. Spyglass was talking about the internet of things before the term existed.

When I joined Spyglass, I was one of about a dozen employees. We didn’t have health insurance, but in lieu of such things, we got pieces of paper called stock options. Beth, being practical, preferred cold, hard cash. But I was elated—somebody thought enough of me to make me an owner.

We worked our asses off and got lucky. Spyglass went public in 1995. We celebrated with a big picnic at the Kane County Cougars—a minor league baseball team—in Geneva, Illinois.

But even after that, we couldn’t hold still. Companies were being born and going out of business on a daily basis. One day I’d come into the office thinking, “We’re gonna own the world.” The next, “We might not be here in three months.”

But thanks to Doug’s course correction, we survived. We grew. We had corporate retreats. We had Jim Lovell, of Apollo 13, speak at one of them. We had arrived.

For some of us, the thrill was gone. I was one of those. I left. Those pieces of paper bought me and Beth and our son Gus two seasons on the beach in Nags Head, North Carolina. Every morning I put Gus on the bus, and every afternoon I took him off. I watched dolphins work their way along the coast while Beth and I had morning coffee. We body surfed and took outdoor showers that made our skin feel like we were 12 years old. If we hadn’t spent that time on the beach, I might be retired by now. But I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

Sometime I can’t believe it all happened. But it did. And it reminds me that for all our human faults, there are always people out there pushing the envelope of knowledge just because. It reminds me of the importance of public research institutions. Of collaboration.

It also makes me remember that, although not everything in my life, in our lives, has gone the way we’d hoped, George Bailey has nothing on me.

Writers in my classes who are downsizing into smaller apartments or senior living centers come to class musing about all the stuff they’ve accumulated over the years. What do they leave behind, I wonder. How do they decide?

I also wonder what writing assignment I might give to prompt them to answer those questions. Wonder no more! Sheila, a writer in my Wednesday class, emailed me a while back with a list of prompts she wanted me to assign. If you’re blind, can something still catch your eye? Maybe not. So, one of Sheila’s prompts catches my ear: “Write about Something in Your Closet.”

I like to use prompts that are vague and open to all sorts of possibilities, and this one would work in three different instances:

1. Writers who had moved lately could tell us about an item that passed the audition and made the trip to their new closets.
2. Writers still at home could write about something they’ve stowed away, and why they still have it.
3. Anyone in class with an urge to divulge family secrets could write about skeletons.

I assigned the prompt to all my December classes, and 97-year-old Wanda responded instantly. “Any of you remember the George Carlin skit called Stuff?” she laughed. “We all need a place for our stuff!”

I told writers who were uninspired by the prompt to go home, open a closet door and take a look. Pat did exactly that, opening her essay the next week describing herself standing in front of the closet in her entry hall and hesitating. “My closet is such a nag! If I open the four imposing bi-fold doors a big red neon light is going to start flashing, ‘To Do…To Do.’”

Carol hoped to avoid the nags from the closet in her condominium by hiring a residential professional organizing service to help her downsize. She moved to a smaller apartment six weeks ago, and the organizer was there to help her unpack as well. “Once again, with my daughter assisting, she was a whirlwind.” Dozens of boxes disappeared in nothing flat, she said. Dishes and pots and pans were all stacked in the right cupboards. The organizer also managed to cram everything from the large wardrobe containers into the only clothes closet in Carol’s new apartment. “Summer clothes are mixed with winter ones, longer items on one side, shorter things on the other…everything that I kept has to be somewhere in there, but where?” she asks. “What’s in my closet? I wish I knew!”

Mary moved recently, too, and wrote of how the closet in her new place haunts her at night now. ” I can almost hear my closet crying – it is so empty!” she wrote, explaining what had gone on once they’d decided to move. “I saw beloved old 78 records from my college years fly off into oblivion, years of Nativity scenes collected from all over the world escape back into other houses, stacks of papers disappear into shredding machines, and sets of dishes and silver and table linens vanish out the door.” Mary described the contents of her new lonely closet as “the belongings I have saved from the moving van, the charitable resale stores, the electronics recycling center, the backyard trash bin, the book dealers, my new best friend Phil at UPS, the far flung homes of our children, and the on-line auction clutches of Everything But the House.”

Bob and his wife Linda are still in the condo they’ve lived in for years, and he opened his essay with a decree. “There should be a marriage law that all closets should be divided equally between husband and wife,” he wrote. “Why is it that my wife’s closet is more than two-and-a-half times bigger than mine? Linda has clothes for all seasons, and if you ask her, she’ll tell you there are at least seven or eight seasons in Chicago.” Linda’s closet floors are covered with shoes, but he can count the things on his tiny closet floor in one hand: tool kit, box of hair styling equipment, shoe shine stand and a small stool where he sits to put on his shoes and socks.

That is, until Linda got a new office chair and made plans to take her old overstuffed heavy desk chair to their summer place in Indiana. “But in the meantime, where do you think her old chair is sitting?” he chuckled as he read out loud in class. “Well, it’s sitting right in front of the little stool I used to sit on to put on my shoes and socks.”

As for Sheila, the writer who’d suggested the prompt? She wrote about a uniform from her working days. “I’ve kept my Air Canada ticket agent uniform in the back of my closet FOR 34 YEARS,” she wrote. “I’m proud of my airline career. It was my identity.” Perhaps she can carve out a new identity now as the student who provides writing prompts for her memoir teacher. This was a good one!

When I assigned “Spirits” as a writing prompt over the Halloween weekend, I expected the writers in my memoir classes to come back with stories of living in houses that were haunted, going to psychics, reading Tarot Cards, seeing ghosts or visits from the “other side.” Instead, I heard essays about team spirit, kindred spirits, vodka, Christmas spirit, you name it. This one, called “My Spirits Restored,” was particularly moving, and the writer has generously agreed to let us publish it here.

by Maggy Fouché

In 1994, three years after we got married, my husband and I became homeowners. Claude and I had acquired a collection of artworks while we were both single, and our new home transformed into an art gallery. Paintings and carvings of all sizes and colors filled every room in the house. Fortunately, our taste in art was similar, with only a few exceptions. Pieces I didn’t like ended up in the unfinished basement. Throughout our life together we acquired more art from travels abroad and visits to local art fairs and galleries.

Djenane and her husband Jacob with their Aunty Maggy

When Claude died, I had to sell my house. The paintings became a casualty of the real estate agent’s dictates. “Put all that away,” she said. “Prospective homebuyers don’t want to see any of your personal effects.”

Everything got wrapped in brown paper and put in the basement, and I prepared to transition from a three-bedroom house to something smaller. Trips to Goodwill and the city’s recycling center on Goose Island became a routine part of my life, and the art collection became just another thing to get rid of.

Unfortunately, my attempts to sell art on line went nowhere. My home’s antiseptic makeover worked, though, and the house was sold.

On moving day all the paintings got put in various boxes simply labeled “Art.” Without knowing which box contained the pieces I really liked, I put them all into the storage unit in my new apartment complex. I’d dispose of them later.

My opportunity came just a few months ago when my niece Djenane was getting married. “Aunty Maggy,” she said one day, “Jacob and I need some art to decorate our new home. I love the place, but the walls are so bare!” I gave her one of the paintings I had tried to sell on Craigslist. She was thrilled.

So was I.

I told her I had more pieces and she could come and take whatever she wanted. To prepare for her visit, I spent a weekend unpacking all those boxes marked”Art.” Removing the brown paper wrapping and seeing my favorite pictures emerge was like being reunited with old friends. Something inside me was being restored.

Now Maggy looks at her favorite paintings every day.

I’d discarded much more than I thought in those four years of purging, and now I found something I didn’t even know I’d lost. I separated the pictures I wanted to keep and showed Djenane the rest. She took two paintings and four carvings – Hurray! A major dent in the inventory.

Now my focus was on reuniting with my old friends and making up for the years of neglect. I took advantage of a 60% off frame sale from Michael’s to get two of them properly mounted and framed. Then I called my handyman to come help me hang them in the living room.

Now, as I read, write, or just sit in my new art gallery, I feel their warm embrace. “Hi, Maggy!” the paintings seem to say. “It’s good to be back.”

One of a gazillion lighthouses in the area known as Downeast.

I’m just back from the Iota Short Prose Conference on Campobello Island, where I was a student rather than a teacher.

Mike flew with me and Whitney from O’Hare, rented a car at the Bangor Airport and drove us to our destination: the easternmost point in the United States.

We settled right in to our quiet little inn in Lubec, Maine. Without the racket of air-conditioners in the way, we’d wake up each morning to the happy sounds of birds and enjoy a cup of coffee downstairs before heading outside so Mike could drive Whitney and me a couple miles to Canada.

That’s FDR and Eleanor’s summer place in the background.

Those morning drives would start with a cheery, “Hello! Bonjour! Passports?” from the lady at the customs booth, then into Canada we’d go. Mike described the scene as we’d cross the water — often foggy, always beautiful — and I’d open my window to take in the mixed scent of sea and pine. After kissing me goodbye at the conference cottage, Mike would spend his days at lighthouses, on beaches, whale-watching, or visiting historic Roosevelt sites.

And me? I’d spend my day with writers at Campobello Roosevelt International Park, the site of the workshop. Some of my fellow Iota attendees were Canadian, and some were from the United States. One had come all the way from Jerusalem. one thing we all had in common? We all were accomplished writers. Some of us had published books, some taught English and creative writing at the college level, some wrote weekly columns for local newspapers, many had blogs. Sessions were led by authors Abigail Thomas and Debra Marquart. Their presentations and sessions were rich and pushed me out of my comfort zone — in a good way.

Abigail (I call her Abby now) is the author of New York Times bestseller A Three Dog Life. She fell in love with Whitney, the first service dog to ever attend an Iota Conference. And while she thanked me politely for signing a copy of Writing Out Loud for her, she couldn’t fool me: the thing Abby was really excited about was getting my Seeing Eye dog’s pawtograph (I stamped Whitney’s paw-print inside the front cover of Abby’s copy of Writing Out Loud).

Debra Marquart (Deb to me now, of course) is the author of a memoir, too. The Horizontal World is available from the Library of Congress talking book program free of charge to people who are blind, and I read it right before we arrived. Deb teaches at Iowa State University and must have had experience there with students who have disabilities — she thought to send her printed handouts to me online. I read them before class using my talking computer.

I used my talking computer to write my asignments in class as well. My laptop came in handy when it was my turn to read those assignments out loud, too: headset on, I’d listen quietly to my piece while simultaneously repeating the words I was hearing out loud for my classmates. That was, perhaps, the best thing about the entire conference for me: for a wonderful four days, I felt like I was in my own students’ shoes. Sitting around a circle, reading my own assignment out loud, hearing others read theirs, it helped me understand why the memoir classes I lead mean so much to the writers who sign up here in Chicago. My dozen or so fellow classmates and I developed trust and empathy — a community, really — through our writing. I’ll be using that trick –listening to my computer via headphones and reciting what I’m hering out loud — at my appearance at The Book Cellar in Chicago this Wednesday, too.

A lobster roll. In the background, lobster traps. Did I mention lobster?

But back to Maine: the food wasn’t bad, either. Mike was invited to join us at the Iota Conference farewell dinner. Whole lobsters, literally fresh from the sea that day, for everyone! Mike and I were on our own for dinner on the other nights of the conference, and we feasted on lobster rolls, fresh haddock, salmon — you get the picture.

If you’re a writer who needs a shot of energy, I highly recommend Iota. And if you need a change of pace, scenery, and state of mind, I highly recommend Lubec and Campobello. For more, see my and Mike’s recent blog posts.

PS: If you’re curious about the in-class assignments I wrote and read out loud during the Abigail Thomas workshop at Iota, sign up for my newsletter. I’ll be publishing one of the impromptu essays I wrote at the writing workshop in my Writing Out Loud newsletter tomorrow.