-buddy gray

february 19 1950 – november 15 1996

There’s something about a man with a plan that makes him memorable. If not everyday, remember buddy today.

It’s just like it was yesterday. I was 8. You were off being a hero. We love you and miss you.

When I was 8 -  I was just a kid. Third grade science tests and new best friends. But I remember that November – it was my mother standing by the school door so I wouldn’t take the bus – it was the silent ride home in the van with my sister – it was the sense deep inside my 8 year old self something was wrong – it was the moment my mother turned around after she put the car in park.

November 15, 1996 – a troubled man took away the life of my uncle. My uncle – buddy gray – was a hometown hero. He quit college and protested the Vietnam War despite his father’s disappointment. He moved to the worst neighborhood in Cincinnati and started letting the people who slept on the street, sleep in his own apartment. Then once day, he turned a building into a shelter, into a home for those homeless and had no where to go. He started the Drop Inn Center in Over-the-Rhine – in Cincinnati. It’s a place that still stands since the 70′s and since the passing of my uncle 15 years ago.

I remember the news that week – I remember the walk downtown where we scattered his ashes with hundreds of people – and I remember the speech my other uncle, his brother, gave. Some of the words echo in my head..  “He feared no man. He took nothing and he served everyone.”

Wish I could be there to walk the streets buddy walked on November 15. If you knew buddy or knew of his legacy, I encourage you to go and be a part of it – to share stories about him and everything he stood for. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about my uncle, my hero, and a man who fought many years to change an ongoing and extremely sad issue in inner city streets. Every day there’s one less person sleeping on Cincinnati’s streets, we can thank buddy. Without his vision, who would’ve fought the fight in Cincinnati?

I can make a Skype call, email, or chat my co-workers… Right now the subway is the only place I can be unconnected. Even that is about to change.

Guess it is time to go abroad.

Hopefully that means sightseeing, blogging, photography, reading, and relaxation.

Stay tuned…

More updates to come this weekend, if I have internet, and lying around in my bed all weekend listening to the rain and dreaming of my summer sunny days.

“Great news for those of us in Midtown. At least all the tourists will be safe.” via jalopnik.com

I’ve always been a wanderer. From Ohio to New York to London to New York to Ohio to Italy to New York, I always found it hard to stay in one place.  While I did jet set to Ohio in May and June, I have the urge to leave the city. My staycation [more to come] last weekend stirred up those feelings.

My trip to Chicago in a month seems much farther and a vacation is calling my name. But where would I go?

Open to suggestions, I’ll write about it on here.

[Photo via Flickr]

When I was in 8th grade, I knew I wanted to end up in New York. Maybe it was from the movies. Maybe it was wanting to go some place I had never been.

When I was 16, I knew I wanted to study journalism at NYU. But I didn’t think I’d end up there. It was the money, the distance, and the lack of self-confidence. Turns out my 16-year-old blogging self documented this. Also turns out, you can seriously Google and find anything.

Also for such big dreams of being a writer, looks like I was pretty terrible at it when I was 16. Then again, I also wrote awful poetry about boys who weren’t worth my time. Guess we can look back at the old journals, blogs, and cards- to see exactly who we used to be and how we changed since then. We’ll also see how we stayed the same and made some of our dreams come true.