He's back on the Stack

Welcome new subscribers and hi to old ones

Did ya miss me?

Hi folks, I’m back on the Stack after a week’s respite in the heat and humidity of Jacksonville, watching my son steer the Triple A Syracuse Mets to four victories over the Jumbo Shrimp. And now, evidently, I’m writing to a millenary audience. Hey, I don’t write a Substack for a week and suddenly, my subscribers grow to over 1,000! Funny, isn’t it. “All you had to do, Nogo, was shut up.”

Looking back, it’s amazing how often someone might have had occasion to offer that very comment throughout my 72 years, 11 months and 21 days on this planet. All timing, isn’t it?

So, what was it like watching all that baseball? As I’ve said before about NASCAR and sex, they’re both much better in person. There are those who suggest the sport is boring but no less an expert than the famed sportswriter Walter Wellesley “Red” Smith once noted “baseball was dull only to those with dull minds.” Or something like that.

In my mind, the game remains the most unpredictable, continually surprising and intricate of all the major sports. And the more I read and write about baseball, the less it helps you anticipate what a season will be like. It was fascinating to be there watching, even in the nearly unbearable heat.

Here he is, the vacationing Substacker, to quote David Puddy: “Gotta support the team.”

Here I am on my 713th post, writing to an audience of at least 1,000! Hello, friends! Welcome! If you’re new to this Stack, let me explain. Since my focus last week was mostly on baseball along with reading a couple of books (more on that later) and sweating, what I tried to do with my Notes was pull up something different every day and put it in a Note.
You know, the idea was resurrect a few pithy Substacks that maybe new readers hadn’t seen yet or ones I hoped were fun or intriguing or chatty. One thing I’ve noticed as I head into my third year on the Stack, folks tend to stay in their lanes. I just can’t do that. I wouldn’t know what lane to start in. And by not writing last week, that really hit home to me. I had a lot to pick from.

If you looked at what went down in my Notes, here I was going from my junior high football career, to a great, most undiscovered Paul Westerberg song, to Charles Dickens’ remarkable popularity to my surprising - and delightful - apparent ability to teach Shakespeare to high school kids to a Kurt Vonnegut blessing, a brief nod to the late Jeff Beck (BTW: finished the book “Blow By Blow”! More on that coming) and then there’s the one time I was able to fix those principals who try to find ways to nail their teachers with their lame-ass “Marzano Evaluation Sheet” by outsmarting them with a killer once-in-a-lifetime-assignment on Herman Melville’s “Bartleby The Scrivener” (really cool, weird story) - hey, that’s a pretty diverse field. And before that, there was Johnny Cash, Muhammad Ali, Bob Cousy, Henry Thoreau and The Edge (from U2).

I guess the message is, if you’re a stay-in-your-lane person, you might wonder where in the name of St. Peter I’m going with this Substack. I wonder the very same thing. I don’t know that I could really answer it. I don’t think it’s that strange to go from Ernest Hemingway to Bryan Ferry to Ted Williams, those are all characters I’ve read (and written) a lot about. I think this ended up being an advantage when I wound up teaching English classes because I couldn’t help but go against the grain, it was built in. I had to go somewhere else.

That meant, of course, you had to get some buy-in from your students. “Hey, this is NOT like any other English class I’ve been in, what gives?” When then-Tallahassee Community College’s Dr. Sam Cunningham interviewed me about teaching 1101 many years ago, he asked what would I do?

And I blurted, “Well, it sure wouldn’t be like my high school English classes. They were boring.” Which, even though it might have been a stupid thing to say, I think got me the job and started me down the immortal Path to Education. I had to teach these kids not just to write but to really read, too. I had to find a way that would work for me - and them. So if it was U2 or Bob Dylan besides Shakespeare or Raymond Carver or Laurel & Hardy, strap yourself in.

I remember being in one of my early classes and talking to my wide-eyed students, asking them “Why wouldn’t you want to know something?” I still think that’s a good question. And evidently, one that I hope informs these 713 pieces on Substack.

No, I can’t tell you where we’ll wind up, like that Vonnegut joke - “Keep your hat on. We could wind up miles from here.” Which, of course, reminds me of that great Randy Newman song, “You Can Leave Your Hat On.” I wonder if Newman knew that joke? See, Vonnegut to Randy Newman. Not that hard. Sorry, folks, it’s how this brain works. Or doesn’t.

A while back, a Substacker named Benjamin Antoine wrote this: “Every time someone reads your writing, they’re choosing to spend their time with you. That’s something to be grateful for.”

A thousand! Damn!

Author John Nogowski recently found a whole box of CDs that he hadn’t listened to in years. How cool! He’s written three editions of a book on Bob Dylan (“Bob Dylan: A Descriptive, Critical Discography and Filmography”) a forthcoming book on Neil Young (“Neil Young: A Descriptive, Critical Discography and Filmography”), two books on baseball “Diamond Duels” and “Last Time Out” and a book on his experiences teaching Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” at a struggling Florida minority high school. He’s written a free Substack since May of 2024 and regularly contributes to the Hartford Courant. All of his books are available on Amazon. He welcomes all his new readers and is working on a book on Bruce Springsteen, who he predicts “some day will be big!”