If there is an emerging genetic underclass, I could run for class president or class clown. Read more in ![Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]](../wp-content/uploads/2008/04/isle_royale_fog.jpg "Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]")
"Brendan, this is what the world looks like all the time to me. Just a little fog. It’s a fine day for boating on the Great Lakes.” Without missing a stroke he turned to dart a skeptical glance at me. Brendan the Navigator. When we named him I didn’t tell his mother everything the legendary Irish name implied. But I imagined him taking on the role of navigator for me. Growing up with Coastal Survey charts and tales of Great Lakes shipwrecks, he came to know Superior as another home. He never doubted the wisdom of canoeing there with a father who was half blind. 
![Charlotte Casiraghi in a red dress. [Source: Stylophile]](../wp-content/uploads/2008/02/charlotte_casiraghi_red_dress.jpg "Charlotte Casiraghi in a red dress. [Source: Stylophile]")
When I figured out who Charlotte Casiraghi was, I realized that I once sent a poem to her mother. 
The legendary Kiki of Montparnasse posed for Man Ray’s 
![Eugène Delacroix. Liberty Leading the People. 1830. Louvre, Paris. [Source: Wikimedia Commons]]](../wp-content/uploads/2008/05/delacroix_liberty_1830_2.jpg "Eugène Delacroix. Liberty Leading the People. 1830. Louvre, Paris. [Source: Wikimedia Commons]]")
Every family with an oral tradition has a story that is told and re-told at Christmas until it acquires the power of myth. This is mine. It tells how my grandmother, Ona Willis, joined the Salvation Army.
It was a rainy night in Columbus, Ohio on Christmas Eve in 1944. All three of Ona’s sons were [...]
Praying for a Piano Player
7
December 24, 2023 at 2:00pm
by Mark Willis
Playing by Ear · memoir Add Your Comment
Song For My Father
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November 3, 2023 at 9:44am
by Mark Willis
Robert F. Willis (May 12, 2023 - November 3. 1987)
For Bob Willis, All My Love
I remember walking through snow to Long’s Bookstore
two men not at work on Wednesday morning
with time to kill before going to the clinic.
The father says tentatively
pushing hands into coat pockets:
I don’t know what poetry is
I work with my hands
I’m awkward with [...]
Bonne fête Papa: A Flaneur’s Gallery
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June 21, 2023 at 12:05am
by Mark Willis
Paul Cézanne. The Artist’s Father, Reading “L’Événement”. 1866. Oil on canvas. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
When I stood before this painting last month at the NGA, it happened to be the day that would have been my father’s 88th birthday. It reminded me of his devotion to reading newspapers, his pride when I [...]
Bob Willis · Flaneur's Gallery · politics Add Your Comment
The King of Swing at 100
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May 30, 2023 at 11:40am
by Mark Willis
Benny Goodman was born 100 years ago today. If my father were here to celebrate Benny’s centennial, he’d surely turn to this music from the legendary 1938 Carnegie Hall concert, the first jazz concert performed in that august space. NPR Music had a fine Benny Goodman tribute this morning.
Playing by Ear Add Your Comment
Things Are Looking Up for the Willis Brand
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March 13, 2023 at 11:13am
by Mark Willis
My father took a Jeffersonian, big-tent approach to family. If your name was Willis, that was good enough for him. “Everyone’s a cousin somehow,” he liked to say, “even the ones who got hanged or thrown in jail.” So he would have been pleased with today’s news that Chicago’s Sears Tower, once the tallest building [...]
Moving Out
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November 23, 2023 at 8:10am
by Mark Willis
Here’s a story for Kaitlin on moving day. Like the best of possessions that we accumulate and move from home to home throughout our lives, it’s mercifully light and has legs of its own.
I remember when I told my parents that I was moving out. Actually, I didn’t tell them, I asked for their consent [...]
My Kind of Republican: In Memory of My Father
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November 3, 2023 at 6:28am
by Mark Willis
Robert F. Willis (May 12, 2023 - November 3. 1987)
I can still hear my father’s Rock of Ages voice confessing, “I voted for Richard Nixon for President three times, and I was wrong every time.” That was after Watergate. By the time Ronald Reagan came along, my father was a Republican in name only. He [...]