by Kevin Burton When I was a sort of young beep baseball player, I had a team mate who always talked about heart guards. Beep baseball is baseball for blind players. The ball is slightly bigger than a softball and depending on who made the ball, it can be quite hard. When …
Category Archives: journalism
Thursdays With Mom: Golden Memories
by Kevin Burton I took custody of the gold yesterday. Didn’t make me any richer, not in the monetary sense anyway. The transaction took place at my mother’s apartment at an assisted living facility twelve miles north of where I live. I go there to visit her just about every Thursday. We are …
Thanking God For Closed Doors
by Kevin Burton One of my frequent prayers is that God will “open the doors that need to be open and close the doors that need to be closed.” This is a necessary prayer because I can’t see around time corners to see the future and I’m not always so good at the …
News At My (And On My) Fingertips
by Kevin Burton On the next-to-last night of our Upper Midwest vacation we found ourselves watching the clothes go round. We were in Norfolk, Nebraska, boyhood hometown of Johnny Carson, when we gathered our quarters and the Tide Pods Jeannette had bought for the occasion, and took advantage of the Hampton Inn’s coin …
Up All Night And Original Thinking
by Kevin Burton I’m sitting in the dark, on the couch my mom gave us. I hear the sound of a train in the distance. There is romance, poetry in the sound. I’m in the Man Cave and it couldn’t be mancavier. Two smallish beacons of light accompany the night without interrupting …
So Tomorrow, Is It Fall Or Is It Autumn?
by Kevin Burton I hear you asking, should I say “fall” or “autumn” beginning tomorrow as the season changes? I hear you asking this because my hearing is good. It’s my vision that isn’t so good. Both my vision and hearing are selective, as my wife will tell you, and as you …
My Bilingual Doubletalk In Mexico
by Kevin Burton My career as an English as a Second Language teacher came to an abrupt early end one night under the streetlights outside a small taco shop in Puebla. To tell you how and why that happened, I first turn to BBC writer Nicole Chang, who recently wrote about what speaking …
Baseball And Radio, A Perfect Pairing
by Kevin Burton The greatest marriage of all time marks its 101st anniversary today. May death never part the two. The two I speak of, baseball and radio. Baseball on the radio has been a comfort to millions of Americans all their lives. Baseball was the national pastime, radio a sort of national …
Stumbling Into Success Through Humility
by Kevin Burton This is not a story about soccer, but that’s where it starts. One time, I think it was while I was a reporter with the Muscatine Journal, I was assigned to do a soccer story. I still don’t know much about soccer, but back then I knew next to nothing. …
Seeing The World As A Blind Newsman
by Kevin Burton I’ve heard some speeches, I’ve made some speeches. In the end, I am speechless. For years I was a self-styled superhero, defending the blind from the ignorant and the arrogant. I had logic on my side. I had passion. But that metaphorical cape I wore on the job, I …