Robert A. Wagner +/- The Little Wretches: Blog

Friends who had to quit drinking because drinking would kill them are drinking again.
Friends who quit gambling because gamblers would hurt them for being unable to pay what is owed are gambling again.
Family with advanced emphysema who can't breathe or walk without an oxygen tank are chain-smoking cigarettes.
Family battling depression can't get off the couch.
Friends are still reeling from last week's loss of Bryan Longo under pitiable circumstances.
As I'm leaving the house, a loved one asks, "If you knew someone who was considering suicide, would you tell them to go to the emergency room?"
Yes. If I knew someone who was considering suicide, I would get him or her to the emergency room.
But I've got to go, see you later.

Friends have seen their children grow strong, healthy, well-educated, full of hope and promise.
Friends battling chronic illnesses are in remission, working, in healthy, loving relationships.
Friends who parented lost sheep have seen these sheep find purpose and go [...]

The process of creative revision is like running a distillery or refinery. You take your raw materials, cook them down to their essences, combine them, remove the impurities, and sometimes make use of the impurities, too. It’s like making gasoline and whiskey, or more broadly, fuel and spirits.

Sometimes, you mix a little bit of this and a little bit of that, just to see if it will explode or catch fire, nothing too dangerous. And sometimes, stuff you expected to explode just sits there and does nothing.

I recently completed a major revision of my “Red Beets and Horseradish” project, adding new songs, radically revising others and remixing everything. The new recordings were posted and a link sent to a moderate number of people who’d previously expressed interest in my concoctions. I asked for feedback but received few responses.

So I’m asking again.

The Writing Program at the English Department of the University of Pittsburgh didn’t necessarily teach me anything about [...]

While folding my clothes in the Laundromat, a man (he appears to be some kind of athletic coach) is speaking authoritatively (and intrusively for those who would prefer to be left alone with their own thoughts) about his parenting skills to the woman whose job is to keep the place tidy and report any malfunctioning equipment to the owner.

In passing, I learn that the Laundromat Lady is sixty years of age, but she appears to be well-kept: slim, her hair still bleached the color she probably bleached it back in 1970. She is even wearing bell-bottom jeans. I also learn that she reports for work at 5:30 AM, or is supposed to, at least. She was late this morning, and for this, her adult daughter is to be blamed.

She doesn’t understand that I need to be at work at 5:30. She thinks I’m supposed to be there to help her get ready with breakfast and clothes.

The Lecturing Coach mentions that he considered visiting the laundromat earlier this morning, dropping the hint that he enjoys [...]

Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” playing inside the WaWa as I buy my Sunday morning coffee.

Does anybody notice? Who here knows the song? Who here cares about the song?

When will I walk into a WaWa and hear Phil Ochs?

As I wait in line at the cash register, a man tells his buddy that his son made the dean’s list and started sixteen games as a freshman. He played in twenty but started sixteen and made the dean’s list.

What do I know about these men, their lives, this friendship and the son-in-question? They could have been buddies in a rat hole in Vietnam or casual acquaintances at Sacred Heart Church. But I immediately speculate as to the proud father’s motives.

See what a good father I was? My son is a good young man because I raised him right and taught him well. Me, I never got the chance to be on any dean’s list or play on any team, but my boy is showing the world what I was made of.

Or maybe the other guy knew the boy, asked about him, and [...]

April 24, 2011 will be celebrated as Easter Sunday by many. It also happens to by the birthday of my late brother, Charles John Wagner.

While emptying my father’s house after his death and its sale some years later, I found several bookshelves with religious pamphlets and other assorted materials my mother had used in preparation for her volunteer job of teaching Catechism to mentally retarded people.

My mother died tragically (suicide? homicide? accident? who knows?), and I couldn’t bear to throw away any of her remaining effects so I put it all in boxes and have taken it with me to the various homes and apartments I have subsequently inhabited.

Had my mother lived, it is a certainty that my father and brother would still be alive. Her death took away my father’s will to live and robbed my brother of any reason for hope in this world.

I recently purchased a new printer/scanner and thought it would be fun to make scans of some of the religious images in my mother’s old [...]