On the Richard Record

  The 94 Feet That Conquers “Can’t”   By Blake Richard If there is no writing about sports, let there be writing about love. If there is no writing about love, let there be no writing at all. If there is no writing at all, let the world delete to cereal dust and disappear into a bowl of oblivion. Perhaps no one really knows where love comes from, but you do not have to know where it tips off to know it is the hardwood of anything on this planet; something to get a steady footing on, to care for, to believe in, to write about. It is found in all molecules of being, ounces of ocean, sidelines of songs, and it is certainly within every one of us—sports enthusiast or not. I for one have fallen so deeply in love with basketball that an essay is not really about a game at all. In high school, just like everyone else, I was told a college essay, along with those suffocating standardized tests, would be some of the most important things to get me to where I wanted to go. They we...

Home Lake Dedicated to Bob Uecker, “Mr. Baseball,” who transformed the complexities of a game of failure into a Superior form of life. Get Up. My high school baseball coach once explained a very simple concept to my team: in order to win the game, we only needed to cross home plate more than the players in the other dugout. Home plate—the beginning and the end of each run scored. A run that can propel a team to victory or consume them in the most agonizing defeat. Memorable cases may cause home plate to be the end of a legendary career or the start of a walk-off grand slam in the bottom of the ninth. It can be found beneath bench clearing brawls or handshakes between rivals they make documentaries about. In all its simplicity, home plate is where a game of complicated failures all begins. Popouts, groundouts, strikeouts—each aggressive in isolation. A failure for one, success for the other. For as long as I can remember, Lake Superior has been no friend to baseball. Nearly ...

8:27 to 9:32, Scrambled Jerry with a pelican took a mannequin that's not putting off a whole lot of odor. Standing out there with his life jacket on, it took like all of one day, and destroyed the side of his garage.  By the end of the day, Brian's gonna resign for all of us.  Yup, good idea. We don't care anymore. I think I'd try to get the shirt off a few lesbians lately. It'll take six years after you mail it. Something along those lines.  Take notes for me, I'm going to jump in it--millions and millions and millions of dollars. No, no, no, this can't fucking be real life.  Excuse me, the fish guy, you haven't offered it in five years. Oh yeah, choose two. A hotel or Hispanic special. Not in any way, shape, or form do you want my feedback. Bless you black blazer. That's how the Indian's say it.  We used to party in the marina until your life jacket touched Arizona pantry room shore.  I screwed up Nevada. In all seriousness, I'd personally ...

  Some Words From A Northland College Classroom Here are some writings from an unedited Creative Writing notebook, all crafted in Wheeler Hall at Northland College. Creative Writing was one of my favorite classes, and getting the "creative juices" flowing during class was often attributed to opening my blue notebook not creating masterpieces, but creating enjoyment and a feeling so free it was simply just seeing what happens.  Immaculate Infinity                You walk down the sidewalk with your hands in your pocket, palms sweating. Your head is high, but you look down, still able to see the stop lights go from green to yellow to red. Leashed pets walk by you, their owners paying no attention. Horns honk and tires screech, but you don’t look. Your shoe came untied three blocks ago, but you continue walking. It doesn’t matter. You need to get where you’re going.             The...

  “…and although ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won, but exact their dues of work and self-denial, anxiety and discouragement.”             Somewhere out there is a roll of film and some prints from an early stage in my growing passion for photography. Among those frames is a less than bush league photograph of my favorite waterfowl species, the Wood Duck. I remember snapping that photograph like it was from an outing this morning. Not far from where I shot my first duck, which was also a Wood Duck, this drake flushed from a tree near a spot on the river I would frequent with anyone who wanted to join. For those who don’t know, Wood Ducks are often classified as “tree ducks.” Tree ducks nest in tree cavities and are often found perched in them as well; somewhat of an oddity among all the waterfowl species. Nonetheless, I’d never seen one fly out of a tree before this moment, and even the ones ...

  Before Firsts Become Lasts I used to only be old enough to understand a dog with gray hair. An old dog that’s now buried under a seedling of a birch tree that continually sprouts her soul, reaching into the warm air summer after summer. That tree, though it could very well live beyond even my lifetime, represents her youth—when firsts were closer than lasts. A time that was just a bit too far out of reach for a little boy to remember. There’s an old picture of that boy wearing a camo rainsuit and a Boston Red Sox cap, bumping smoothly along in the hull of an aluminum boat beneath overcast skies, holding onto the dog he eventually became wise enough to know he never wanted to let go of. The picture is old enough to show little of her gray hair, only starting to poke out into the cool canopy over Canada. But that’s as old a memory as I can recall. The rest, I guess, is brought back only by photographs that are seemingly as old as time itself.   … Ten years later, I sat...

  Reds & Knots                The story of another wanderer in the wilderness begins with a camera, and ultimately ends with the memories captured with it…                … Somewhere along the lines of “don’t stop believing,” are some words to live by. Iterations are out there, but the premise of each are similar. And whether you’re Jonathan Cain and Steve Perry of Journey or anyone from anywhere, everyone believes in something, right? While piano chords hummed and rhythmic guitar riffs rattled radios, Perry sang words that were eventually repeated by millions of believers. Though the members of Journey most likely know not of the Red Knot, I can’t blame them—a combination of the words never crossed my mind until seeing turned believing. I am from a land where Red is the color the ground turns in the fall when Maples and Oaks she...

  Severely Ordinary   is the sunrise, as mundane as the next fence post. The stars try to hold on, the starlings the same. But the universe will soon transform to ocean. The ocean soon to be set on fire. Ablaze, it crackles like hills of sand. Silhouettes crawl by flames, calling to the sandhills of which they came. Turn around called the coyote, So I did. To see her gold and glowing, galvanized by smoking clouds, shifting to forgetfulness. Written in timelessness so not to forget, maybe it’s not so ordinary after all.