PODCAST · society
: lower black pain.
by Jd Michaels - The CabsEverywhere Creative Production House
Life’s lemons into rich, dark chocolate. lowerblackpain.substack.com
Episodes
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If You Want Anything At All.
I’ve had, according to my resume, 8 jobs. I’ve had a few more than that: some not worth mentioning and a few I really don’t need to remember. But the major ones, the places where I stayed for years and years - those have been pretty interesting because I entered those companies as one thing and...
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Say What You Mean And Say It Mean.
For over half of her four decade career, my mother taught fifth grade. A span of that length allows one to view societal trends and social constructs in detail: one class morphing into the next, bringing new behaviors, pressures, and responses. The perfect in-situ scientific laboratory to observe...
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Oh, Boo-tiful.
There are only two commercials for underarm deodorant. In the first, someone wearing a white shirt runs after a taxi, pushes their kid on a playground swing, or performs any other action requiring brisk movement: at the end they enthusiastically wave with their hand high in the air and give…
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autumnatic.
Calendars were not invented on “day 1”. That’s what I thought as a kid - that if you wanted to know how old “calendars” were, you just counted backward from, well, now until you were back at 1. Then I remembered about all that “B.C.” time, and then… I just looked it up. The Gregorian Calendar,...
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shellsandleavesandsticksandrocks
Spring Cleaning: the opening of windows and freshening of linens and dusting off of bookshelves and vacuuming in the corners of ceilings, an annual frenzy of “getting ready” for the longer and warmer days of the year - which ironically are most frequently spent outside. ’Tis the season for that...
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6 to 60
just six weeks to 60and i’m feeling fine (’til then i’m gon’ party like i’m fifty-nine) there’s not all that much difference in how I speakbut when i move now there’s an audible creakand a slight subtle wincing that plays on my face‘cause the creaks never seem to come from the same place just six...
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Player’s Choice.
The beginning of fall marks an annual celebration of learning: Back to School Time again. I did buy a new cool metal lunchbox this summer, though I’m reticent to take it to work (a grown up place that does not seem to lean toward whimsy in any fashion). Instead I am engaging in the season by...
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Picture Day.
[1 - 8x10] My most consistent historical visual record was compiled through time capsules delivered in paper envelopes with cellophane windows: my annual school photo. The Mondrian-like layout of large, medium and impractically small shots were all on one page, which (because I did not grow up in…
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Cheese. Cake.
We used to have framed photos on the walls of our apartment: * there we were, on a rollercoaster. * there we were, wearing cowboy hats at night, illuminated by an endless garden of neon lights. * there we were, smiling beneath a windmill. After a time (measured in decades) these treasured…
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Prints.
Thanks, Technology. We appreciate the assists when we start our car with a button instead of a key, or warm something up in the microwave (unless it’s frozen and then we have to do that thing with the spoon where we wait for the glacier in the center to thaw just enough that we can use a…
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Kodachrome.
I was looking for a photograph yesterday, from a while ago - of my wife and a friend out in front of a convenience store at night riding one of those giant toy animals that moves when you put in a quarter. It was winter and my wife was wearing bright purple leggings and our friend was wearing...
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SRS 26 | Summer: (un)Wind
The nice folks at the American Association of Retired People sent me a brochure about five years ago, which I tossed in the recycling, unopened, chuckling to myself at the blatant inaccuracy of their mailing list. Three years ago I got a large envelope from them in the mail, promising the gift of…
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SRS '26 | Summer: Madness.
Last week I purchased an empty bottle of mouthwash. It arrived from eBay very well wrapped and protected with paper and another type of paper in a ziplock bag surrounded by bubble wrap, in a box. It was very inexpensive, mostly because it’s an empty bottle of mouthwash. I am writing a series of...
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SRS '26 | Summer: Time. Blues.
This is my sixtieth summer. I don’t quite have the hang of it yet. I’ve done all the important research: Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon were fantastic professors, taught me all about beach culture and how to “hang ten” on a surfboard and sing my summer feelings in groovy song. Admittedly…
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SRS’26 | Summer: Breeze.
Hyperthymesia sounds exhausting. It’s exhausting to say, quite honestly. It is the rare ability to accurately remember nearly every day of one’s life in absolute detail - what you wore, ate, saw, said, and did. Every day. Of course there are days that I remember…well, pieces of days. Mostly...
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Kitsch of July.
We live in a Brooklyn apartment; no basement or attic, so we have to rent a storage unit in one of those huge warehouses that used to be a factory for something. What’s stored there is a point of mild contention - things we thought we might need someday before we actually got to Someday,...
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Good Luck, And.
Commencement speeches are engineered to inspire those beginning a new phase of life. They are meant to be epic, a benediction offering direction, courage and motivation, an address to the fresh battalion, a manifesto unique to a specific group of people and moment in time. I’ve been watching a…
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The Signal.
They were free but did not know But they were always free until somebody kidnapped them transported them by sea and took their language, names and history and held them in captivity until December 1865 when that was legally abolished and prohibited across the USA good news for all law of the land...
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Loving Day.
Allow me to begin by firmly stating that every day is a “loving day” at our house, a so-pleasant stream of consideration, kind words, pleases and thank yous, and (very often) unsolicited cups of tea. Which is all very nice, but during this exact time of year such Loving shines a bit brighter, as…
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Message in a Bottle.
I don’t know if you believe in UFOs, astral projections, mental telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance, spirit photography, telekinetic movement, full trance mediums, the Loch Ness monster and the theory of Atlantis, but your disbelief can calmly hover regarding the existence of time machines because I…
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The Camelhair Coat.
I realized this week that there is a story I have skipped, a fixed point in my timeline that was seminal to my understanding (such as it is) of the world. Given the “generational grimoire” intent of this column, I will tell it now. Perhaps the telling will reveal the reasons I took so long to…
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I, Jaime.
Each night at our home, in those twilight moments betwixt dinnertime and bedtime, I wash the dishes. It’s the end of the day, days long and deep and somewhat stressful, but a wholesome meal and bright conversation at the dinner table have soothed me, and all I have to do is make a clean bridge…
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Spirit of '26.
I used to have to read the book before I saw the movie. My prime example is Jack M. Bickham’s “The Apple Dumpling Gang”, a 1975 summer family film that I earned a ticket to upon completion of the paperback. Disney changed a great deal from the original novel (its first line is, “The fact that…
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So.
This time of year is CRAZY busy, with May Day and Mother’s Day and Star Wars Day and Cinco de Mayo and our anniversary and Eurovision and Beltane and Free Comic Book Day… the days are just packed. Mixed into this is the birthday of this column, which is technically the second Thursday in May…
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Ember.
Dorothy Parker is my favorite writer. She was born in 1893; by the 1920’s she was one of the most famous writers in America, with an unmatched rapier wit and seemingly endless supply of clever verses. Much of her work was famously collected in “The Portable Dorothy Parker” a rather thick volume...
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Objects In Motion.
The CORIOLIS EFFECT is a scientific principle describing how one object on Earth can be accurately propelled to meet another object on Earth while both objects, the air around them, and the Earth itself spins at 1000 miles an hour. The coriolis effect also explains why, even though the Earth is…
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(Not) Saving The Grapes.
Coming from a family of diabetics, I never really ate a lot of sugar, but sometimes my mother would buy Thompson seedless grapes and put them in the fruit bin in the refrigerator. Since they were a little bit expensive, we would very carefully ration them. But grapes have a bit of a half-life...
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Career.
Fisher Price makes toys for small children. An American institution since 1930, the company is most famous for their line of “Little People”: colorful, nearly indestructible 2 inch tall figures depicting different occupations. Long before hoards of mega-achieving Barbie™s dominated toy store...
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Last Leg.
So I went through my closet and drawers for spring cleaning, but there isn’t all that much there that I don’t wear… save one specific category I realize I may have legitimately grown beyond. I had three years of wearing slacks and now I’m kind of done I bought them all online, on sale They…
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Object Impermanence.
It’s Spring Cleaning time, which must be like Black Friday for the famed home organizer Marie Kondo. Her books fly off the shelves at this time of year as hoards of us peek out of the dusty doorways of our winter shelters, squint at the newly blue skies, and resolve to simplify our closets,...
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Penny For My Thoughts.
For the last two hundred weeks, I’ve written an original American humor column in what seems some of the grimmest times in the history of this great nation. It was to be a salve, a balm, an analgesic to relieve the legacy pressure of undeniable, inescapable, and unavoidable identity. It was to...
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Hot Pony Club.
Johnny Carson, Weird Al Yankovic, and Ryan Reynolds were all born on the same day of the year as me. My daughter thinks the Ryan Reynolds part is cool, as she believes this might indicate a mysterious source of Deep Rizz that I may be astrologically heir to, and perhaps could still…
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14 Days To Go.
I’ve never completed a marathon, but I imagine it’s running without the luxury of choice - one can’t pause for a quick cappuccino or afternoon film matinee. Exhausted and bedraggled, one is driven to complete the activity due to the pressures of publicly expressed determination, earnest...
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Historical.
Popular media in the 70’s and early 80’s did not uniformly reflect a kaleidoscope of cultures - the most prominent and consistent staple being a popular family comedian who shall no longer be named. The watershed moment came in 1977, when ABC aired the mini-series “ROOTS”, based on the personal...
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1984/1988.
I don’t think he ran the race to win, I think he ran to tryto show 2 million kids like methat weshould never shy awayfrom being inthe human race,and that our faces weren’t forbiddenor a burden orexceptions as we all could be exceptional. I think he ran to hold a doorthat he would not walk...
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Positive I.D.
Back before we had a kid, I didn’t take a vacation for a little over seven years. Sure, there were times that work was supposed to be closed, like Christmas and New Year’s Day and weekends and nights, but I ended up on some phone call or finishing a project or had to show up in the office anyway....
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Stories.
The genesis of this column was a desire to alleviate my daughter’s legitimate angst regarding her annual recognition of Black History Month, which she found heavy with legacy. Yes, I said. You’re absolutely right, I told her. It’s not a pretty story, and we don’t just tell it every year, it’s...
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The Winter Of This Content
Getting older is fun, but feeling older is not my absolute favorite. Quite often there are aches, and sometimes pains. My grandmother used to call them “miserys” (miseries?) and was proud to tell us when she wasn’t experiencing them. I’m not quite that dramatic (ok. well.) and I do understand…
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Warm Mugs.
I enjoy making hot chocolate. Ironically, I can’t drink it, as I’ve developed a myriad of late onset allergies, but it’s incredibly satisfying to whip up in the winter for the family, and always brings at least three levels of happiness. * First the audible “Oh!”- eyebrows raised in happy…
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Don't You Fret.
Brinks aren’t great. Edges are already suspicious, but brinks are just the worst. Except for those money delivery trucks; each of those is a minimalist Recreational Vehicle filled with Pure Dreams (tainted only by a measure of grand larceny). But every other brink? Terrible. And all of that...
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Adventures In Cinema
We, are simple folk, with little need for the fancy or extravagant. A grateful family of humble artists - days without drama, foods without gluten, we push ever onward finding delight in what might seem mundane or insignificant. For instance, a certain movie trailer appeared this week for a film...
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Brand: NEW.
Happy New Year! Used to be, long ago, that I was “in advertising”, deftly mixiting key wordses and imagery like an Ibiza DJ, building the hype of the crowds ’til they were uncontrollably driven to purchase soup, or perhaps very high-end non-basic cable television add-on channels. Heady stuff. I...
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The Gift of Laughter.
I’ve been to a few baby showers, and no one brought the baby little stones, though that is the story of Christmas, that there was a magnificent child whose first gifts were all rocks of some kind. Well precious stones and aromatic resin that kind of looks like rocks. Then there is the tale of the...
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The Lesson of Patience.
Santa comes but once a year, like your birthday, but somehow it seems longer between Christmases than birthdays. December feels like it has 72 days rather than 31, with the 25th kind of always just out of reach, like that dolly zoom Hitchcock used to do where the thing in the middle just lurches...
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The Value Of Dignity.
A Christmas list is a bold statement - the idea that you deserve something, much less the entire contents of a manicured list, is a brave stance to take, particularly when you’re young. And then bringing that list to a man you only see once a year and not spending your time catching up or asking...
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The Joy of Learning.
Sure, you can give presents at the holidays, in boxes, like everybody else, but the real challenge is always to find something UNIQUE, isn’t it? Something no one else would ever think of? Something fun to give that inspires happy surprise in the give-ee. Well, the best things in life, I’ve heard...
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Thank you.
You know there’s more pie, right? I’m so glad you’re here, but … pie. I don’t want to distract you. Priorities and all. If you do have a minute, I’d love to tell you a little story. It’s not very long, but right after you really should go back to that pie idea. The “Give-a-Show Projector” :...
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One Of Our Things.
It’s been pointed out that the Eskimo culture has many words for “snow”. In my family we have two. One is “snow”, which we use when there is snow. The other is “frost”. It’s “family thing”. You’ve got them, with your family - chosen or domestic, that collection of words or phrases that mean...
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The Boy From Atlantis.
I remember getting less than five spankings.After the first one, I really did attempt to avoid them. As my only present parent, my mother usually held the exclusive monopoly on even the threat of spankings, but I did get one when I was three years old from a babysitter when I totally bit a bully...
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Snapshot.
5/13/73 It’s Sunday, after church. My mom and I are in the back of my uncle’s car, heading to the fancy cafeteria that the family visits on Mother’s Day so that: * Grandma won’t have to cook and * we can celebrate her publicly as our Center Of Attention (which is always her second favorite gift,...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Life’s lemons into rich, dark chocolate.
lowerblackpain.substack.com
HOSTED BY
Jd Michaels - The CabsEverywhere Creative Production House
CATEGORIES
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Life’s lemons into rich, dark chocolate. lowerblackpain.substack.com
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: lower black pain. is created and hosted by Jd Michaels - The CabsEverywhere Creative Production House.
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