“What is your name?” my mother said to me on the fortieth day of my fifty-eighth year. We were clearing brush along the tree line of her property. It was about four o’clock. Time of day is noteworthy for people with Alzheimer’s disease, like my mother. I knew she was sundowning. This term describes what happens – generally in the late afternoon or early evening – to a person with Alzheimer’s after her energy level starts to fizzle. She gets confused and perhaps suspicious. He

Basketball runs through Damon Fleming’s body up into his fingertips. As a kid he wanted to play in the NBA. He discovered he had natural basketball talent. He once scored sixty-two points in a dustbowl tournament on the south side of town. The year was 1984. He was fifteen years old. Jump ahead six years to a carwash in Salt Lake City, Utah. Damon found himself shining shoes. Not just any shoes – really, really large shoes. Damon’s first paid customer was “The Mailman” –

The Mile Square, Indianapolis – March 24, 2018. That snow – thick and heavy – rolled up quickly into the ball of a snowman by a little girl unaware that the man fifty yards away was hoisting a loaded AR-15 rifle across his shoulder. This was the youth-led "March for Our Lives" anti-violence gun rally and it was intended to be peaceful. The man wore a camouflage hat, thermal gloves and jacket, and sunglasses – despite the day's rainy, snowy mix. This was not his first rodeo; h

The Mile Square, Indianapolis – March 24, 2018. “Protect kids, not guns!” they chanted – the old, the young, the kids, at the youth-led "March for Our Lives" anti-gun violence rally in the Mile Square. “Protect kids, not guns! Protect kids, not guns! Protect kids, not guns!” “I think my best bet is to make sure you don’t have a damn gun to start with,” said the male school teacher in the blue jacket to the man with the AR-15 rifle. The man with the rifle turned to a hooded wo

Meet Michael. Homeless in Indianapolis, he sleeps on the ground near the famed Lucas Oil Stadium by night and drums buckets underneath the Artsgarden walkway for loose change and a few bucks by day. "Mom got sick one year," he said, "and she asked me and my brother and sister, 'What would you like to get for Christmas?' She was like, 'Get something really big, within reason.' I decided to pick up the drums. So she went out and bought me a drum kit and I’ve been doing that eve