Fifty, Going On…

Last April I sent a 50th birthday greeting to a friend I worked with, Pat. I had remembered her 40th birthday party at the office ten years before (or so I thought), festooned with black crepe paper and black balloons. Imagine my embarrassment when she told me I was one year early with my greeting. Well, like a broken clock I can confidently now say Happy 50th to Pat.

Coincidentally, my friend Martin is turning 80 (pictured here, playing Scrabble with Ann), so I am exactly midway between their ages, a triangulation that tripped a “growing old” electrode in my brain, conjuring those immortal lines on the topic I’ve carried around with me since I read them: Eliot’s Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock: “I grow old … I grow old …I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled” http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html and John Masefield’s poem I inexplicably memorized in its entirety when I was a teenager, perhaps for a moment such as this, On Growing Old: “Man, whose young passion sets the spindrift flying, Is soon too lame to march, too cold for loving.” It is perhaps the most eloquent poem on aging. http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=l&p=c&a=p&ID=430

When I turned 50, I wrote Martin a letter, part of which covered the way I felt about that birthday at the time. Hopefully, Pat is more sanguine about the occasion than obviously was I:

Yes, I am watching middle age fade in the sunset as I approach my 50th birthday next month. I have never been sensitive to my age, perhaps because I have always been among the youngest of my peers -- in business particularly. Suddenly, as if someone flicked a switch of a grotesque neon light, I am caught in the glare of my own impending senior citizen status. No longer am I among the youngest. Even my boss is younger than I. Everyone calls me "sir" and I do not like it one bit.

I can't imagine how I am going to be able to adjust to this unwelcome shift in status. Originally, I thought it might be fun to gormandize my 50th head-on by giving a funky country music party -- ten-gallon hats and all.

Now, I've convinced Ann that it might be best if I just slip-away into the oblivion of seniority by doing nothing. Even though you are a few steps in front of me, you need not feel honor-bound to point out all of the wonderful reasons it is to be 50. The only one I can think of is not to be 70!
(Post Script: We had that party anyhow. Glad I did. Now, 70 doesn’t seem so onerous.)

But, my favorite 50th was Ann’s (pictured to the right just a "few" years earlier). It was special as it was a surprise party, and it was not the first time I had successfully pulled one off for her. For Ann’s 40th she thought she was going to a wedding. Friends of ours who had been living together had agreed to serve as the bait and we printed one wedding invitation, which was of course sent to us. So Ann was dressed to the nines and we had to drop off our young son at another friend’s house on the way for babysitting, thinking she was going to a big “wedding.” But at our friend’s house everyone from Ann’s past had gathered, including her mother and relatives from California. Her knees buckled when the door was opened.

So it was with much pleasure I was able to engineer another surprise party exactly ten years later. That afternoon we were out on our boat ‘Swept Away’ at our favorite Crow Island anchorage, the tiniest island in the Norwalk chain, where we literally lived during summer weekends, year in and year out. Many of our friends were there too on their boats but gradually they left and I had persuaded Ann to stay to enjoy the waning hours of the languid Sunday late afternoon. That should have been her first hint something was up, as I was the one who usually left first, to clean up the boat, and then return home to get ready for the workweek.

Unknown to her, our friends and many relatives were waiting at a restaurant at our marina where I had reserved a private room. Upon our return to the slip I suggested we go out for dinner, something I knew she would jump at after a weekend on the boat. I said I preferred the restaurant at the marina, that I was too tired to go off someplace else, and so she was ambushed by another surprise birthday celebration, this for her 50th.

Here is my toast to her at the gathering. While some specifics might make sense to those who have been close to Ann over the years, the gestalt paints a picture of a special person, without whom birthdays would be meaningless to me:



Welcome, friends and relatives, to Ann's 50th birthday celebration. Thank you all for helping to make this a special day for a special person and thank you to Patti, who was my co-conspirator in arranging this celebration.

The relationships one forms weave the fabric of one’s life; by this definition, our Annie has a real reason to celebrate on this special day. And those relationships are as much built around many small detailed moments as they are around life's more momentous occasions.

How many languid afternoons have there been -- on the 'Afternoon Delight' -- at our beloved Crow Island, with Annie, Betty, Tony, Cathy and John locked in mortal battle over a scrabble board, Ann suddenly exclaiming, "I can put all seven letters down and my word has a j,x, and z!" Publicly, I have contended that Ann cheats at Scrabble. (After all, she is always clutching that book that lists one million two-letter words and one billion three-letter words.) The truth be told, though, she has always been a fierce competitor and has a real love of reading and words.

Then, there were those times with Sue and Ray, their Donzi skimming over the Long Island Sound at nearly 60 miles an hour, Ray smiling demonically with his hat turned backwards, Sue employing Ray to slow down, and Annie in the rear seat screaming, "Raymond, Raymond, RAYMOND!" Be assured, Ray, she loved every minute of it, but not as much, perhaps, as those quiet, harbor cruises as the sun was setting at the Great Salt Pond, Block Island.

Potluck suppers on the 'Swept Away' and the 'Our Dream' (or, as Richard and I have sometimes referred to our boats as an "Eggaton") also stand out among these special moments. Watching Annie cook -- and as you all know she is a great cook -- is quite an experience. It gives new meaning to the word "hyperactive" and watching Marlene and Annie in tandem entitles us mere mortals to reach for the Valium.

Nancy and Betty-- in the New York arena, and Marge and Peter -- in London territory -- know of Annie's love of the theater, eating, and, let's not beat around the bush, fine, EXPENSIVE, things in general. And, as in other matters, going to a restaurant or the theater with Annie is an experience, ranging from her crying out "BRAVO, BRAVO, BRAVO!" at the end of a performance, to turning to a stranger in a restaurant to ask for a bite of his meal, or, even, his life history. Annie has no shame in a restaurant and even has been known to ask for large take out portions of the Fried Calamari from La Bernadine.

So, it is no wonder that Annie's friendship with Arlene began in a restaurant on 14th Street, La Bilbania, in 1964. Annie's love of travel was fostered by this friendship. Together they braved the vicissitudes of Montezuma's revenge in Mexico and left most of the men in Spain and Italy pining for their early return. Their antics at the Pensione in Spain have been written about in some of the world's most notable tabloids.

But being a friend of Ann's is not always like trying to follow a big brass band. Patti and Ann, while ostensibly taking their dogs for a walk, engage in secret "girl talk." In fact, if there is one single, attribute that makes Ann Ann, it is her capacity for intimacy, for understanding human nature, for giving and helping. She has touched many lives.

But with that great gift is also an innocence, even gullibility. Exactly 10 years ago we orchestrated a surprise 40th birthday party for her. She was easily convinced that our friends, Carole and Terry, were going to be married. One wedding invitation was printed and sent to us, and that is where she thought she was going when she arrived at her own party.

Of course, Annie is no different as a Mother, Aunt, or Cousin. Cousins Mimi and Sherman have watched her grow, since she left Atlanta, Georgia in 1959, for New York City, to find her life. When you think about it that was either an extraordinarily brave act or one borne out of naiveté. Annie was one of the original "women's libber" but did not even know it.

Mimi and Sherman were nurturing to Annie in her early New York years and, in fact, she ultimately inherited their rent-controlled apartment at 33 West 63rd Street. This became our first apartment.

As a young, single woman she made a career for herself, first as a receptionist and ultimately as a Customer Service Manager at the publishing organization where we met in 1965. In between, she dated men with simple names such as Takeshi, Schlomo, and the one I have the most difficult pronouncing, Jack. Favorite activities in New York were bicycling, exploring the Village and dancing the Mambo at the Palladium. Simply put, Annie was a beatnik, a bohemian who chose the path most of her Atlanta high school classmates could hardly imagine.

To her niece, Regina, and her Cousins, Suzanne and Michael, Aunt Ann has been an inspiration -- an accomplished career women, who has traveled around the world and, of course, let's not kid ourselves, she married well.

But that strong nurturing, zest-for-life instinct in Annie is never more evident than in her role as Mother to Chris and Jonathan. She stood by Chris while he went through some difficult transitional years. She was, and is, always there for him.

Her relationship with Jonathan is, as many of you can attest, a very complicated one. Perhaps that is because they are in many ways alike. Jonathan, I can think of no better compliment.

Finally, the most incredulous thing about Annie is that she puts up with me. That qualifies her for Sainthood! So to my best friend, I raise my glass to say, "Happy 50th Birthday, and here is to the next 50!"

Post Script: While posting this, I realized that today would have been my dad’s 92nd birthday. I included a piece about him at the conclusion of one of my first blog entries: http://lacunaemusing.blogspot.com/2007/11/literature-and-family.html

Hunger Artist Redux

Last Friday we went to the Maltz Jupiter Theatre, where we have had a season subscription since the theatre opened five years ago, to see Master Class, Terrence McNally’s Tony prize-winning play about the great soprano, Maria Callas. The play was based on classes she gave at Julliard at the end of her illustrious career.

The theatrical productions at Maltz have been inconsistent. Some are chosen to appeal to its diverse, mostly retirement age, audience and as such they are merely a pleasant way to pass the evening. But Master Class was unlike anything else this season or in prior ones, with a soaring performance by Gordana Rashovich who plays the iconoclastic diva. The review that appeared the next day in the Palm Beach Post provides the detail:
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/search/content/accent/epaper/2008/04/05/a4d_feathea_master_0405.html

We knew we were watching an extraordinary performance, one that vaulted a very good play into greatness. During intermission I stepped out into the breezy, balmy Florida night and was surprised to see a number of people leaving the theatre, overhearing objections such as they felt they were being lectured to, the play was too confrontational, or, even, disappointment there was not more music. These criticisms of course missed the whole point of what this play is about. It was a lecture; the audience is attending a “master class” which by the very definition is a place where students come to be taught, but the play is a conceit for us to see into the very soul of a true artist, the remarkable opera soprano, Maria Callas. And we are confronted by Callas’ caustic observations about art and life, and her inner musings about her rivalries and her love affair with Aristotle Onassis.

The comment about not being “enough music” jogged a memory, while standing there in the Florida night, of the Franz Kafka’s short story I read so many years ago in college, A Hunger Artist. Those details came flooding back as I watched a few people getting into their cars, driving off. Kafka’s allegorical work portrays a “hunger artist” – a man in a circus sideshow who is a fasting artist, one who is literally starving himself to death for his art and for the spectacle of the masses. They ignore him, streaming past his cage, going off to see the lions being fed instead.

And similarly Master Class is about the artist’s relationship to society and the sacrifice required to attain a level of perfection, one that Callas achieved in her career, and now Gordana Rashovich finds in portraying Callas. All art is a solitary journey, for the creators and the performers, although in the performing arts it is a symbiotic relationship, somewhat of a contradiction for the performer who on the one hand must be a vessel for the creative artist’s intention, and this was at the heart of Callas’ performances (“listen to the music!” Callas demands of her students in the play), but on the other hand feeds on the approbation of the audience. McNally says, and Rashovich states with such conviction, that the performer must dominate the audience, in a sense to bring the audience to a level that the artistic creator intended. McNally and Rashovich make you actually feel the gut–wrenching sacrifices and demons that possess a great artist such as Callas and the artists for which she serves.

Rashovich’s performance prompted my wife to write her first ever “fan letter.” It says volumes about this extraordinary performance…

Dear Ms. Rashovich:

I'm 66 and this is my first fan letter. I've been a devoted theatre lover since I was 16 and spent a summer visiting NY from my hometown of Atlanta, Ga. and saw a string of fantastic plays on Broadway that left an indelible mark. I moved to NY on my own in 1959 and saw every conceivable play I could afford and have been an insatiable devotee of live performance all my life, both in this country and abroad.

But last night, I felt privileged and blessed to witness what I can only say was such a tour de force as to leave me breathless. Your performance was so outstanding, nuanced and powerful, that it reincarnated Diva Callas before my eyes. I had seen this play years before in NY, but the actress was completely lacking in your ability to possess the role, body and soul.

I just want to say thank you, for all your hard work, years of dedication to your craft and for giving my husband and me such a thrilling evening, which we will never forget.

Photo Ops

Distance, light and shadow, and color (or the lack of it), make for interesting representations of scenes in two dimensions, particularly without much in the foreground.












Madeira Cliff


















Placid Beach












Tortola Scene














Asheville Flower

“He that goes a-borrowing goes a-sorrowing”

Here is another maligned minority ready to blame others for its own actions, and expecting the taxpayer to foot the bill: “FORECLOSURE VICTIMS INVADE BEAR STEARNS HQ, PICKET JP MORGAN.” It’s not that our hearts do not go out to those people, but why should those not in foreclosure pay for another person’s poor judgment or even avarice?

Lost in the recent high stakes financial shenanigans are the savers, people who did not avail themselves of “easy money,” to buy homes beyond their economic reach. Or those who refused to be seduced by home equity loans to buy into the American dream of vacations, new cars, the easy, beautiful life which assaults us in an continuous loop on the media. Or those in retirement who are dependent on their savings and social security to see them through. They are everything our government is not: responsible, truthful, balancing their budgets at all costs.

How can we punish savers? Let’s start by giving them investment options based on chimerical ratings that are established by rating agencies paid by the very institutions they are rating. Then let’s ratchet down their income from CDs as we try to bail out an economy of credit excesses. Let helicopter dollars rain down on all [http://lacunaemusing.blogspot.com/2008/02/tautological-economics.html] to encourage more spending! But, that’s not enough; let their government take an unprecedented $29 billion dollar risk, ultimately at the taxpayer’s expense, to bail out the bond and equity holders of Bear Stearns (an action rationalized as needed to save our entire financial system). Let’s also talk about eliminating a more progressive graduated income tax in favor of a flat tax so, when savers spend their savings, which have already been taxed once when they were first earned, let’s tax them again via a national sales tax. While we’re at it, let’s also undermine the dollar and introduce inflation so their savings buy less. Then, finally, as social security benefits are adjusted by inflation, let’s artificially understate the real inflation rate to further erode their benefits!

What would Ben Franklin say today, “he that goes a-saving goes a-slaving?”

Horses Can't Read

Some of the most beautiful scenic photographs I’ve taken have been somewhere in the Caribbean, but here are a couple that just simply make me smile. Horses in a cemetery was taken on one of the Bahamian islands and Johnny’s’ Ice Cold Nuts was precariously perched on a street in Port of Spain, Trinidad.

Silda, You Are Us

If you’ve seen the two brief news conferences where New York Governor Eliot Spitzer first admitted his appalling indiscretions and then when he announced his resignation, the image of the sad, shocked face of his wife, Silda, who stood by her man during the news conference, is indelibly etched in your mind’s eye, as it is mine.

The microcosm of the event is bad enough, a man who overzealously campaigned against the very thing he indulged in, one who was born into privilege and pursued power behind the veil of championing the public good. Perhaps self-loathing led him to become the Elmer Gantry of public prosecutors. His downfall might evoke the Aristotelian definition of tragedy, but it fails on the measure of not evoking pity. He got his just due. The only pity we can feel is for his wife and his children.

But as a metaphor, Silda’s sad visage is emblematic of our own crisis, watching our country’s cultural and economic decline. We stand by, helpless, shocked, bewildered.

American industry and values were once the envy of the world. The “arrogance of power,” as the late Senator Fulbright put it (“the tendency of great nations to equate power with virtue and major responsibilities with a universal mission”), dragged us into Vietnam and now Iraq. We seem to be content following naïve or morally corrupt political leaders, damn future generations. Rack up debt, abandon the environment, and watch our educational system become one of the least effective of all developed nations. Our financial institutions are so unstable that Federal Reserve is now financing the excesses of this decade, with unknown consequences in the future.

Our energy policy is suicidal, a stake in the heart of the dollar, as we are content to massively export our dollars abroad to feed an insatiable appetite for fossil fuels. Greater reliance on alternative energy, within our technological reach, remains elusive thanks to the lack of leadership (http://lacunaemusing.blogspot.com/2007/12/politics-as-usual-where-is-leader.html). And we now share oil and basic material resources with rapidly developing emerging economies, and there is no world solidarity about how to deal with the consequences to the environment.

With no incumbents running for the presidency, we might have had a chance to begin to expunge short-term thinking from the political agenda. But the Democratic primaries have dissipated into political demagoguery, with race rising to the surface. Republican and Democratic candidates alike claim to have a “plan” to deal with the economy, education, the environment, Iraq, terrorism, but these “plans” seem like nothing more than sound bites to get elected.

To be effective, our new President needs to be inspirational, someone who knows how to unite disparate voices, reach across congressional isles, and mobilize the best minds to reverse our spiraling decline. One has to wonder where we would be if the popular vote had determined the Presidency in 2000. We now need to be concerned about the consequences if Democratic “superdelegates” ignore the Democratic primary popular vote.

Words Do This

Why write this blog? I tried to explain the motivation in my first entry (http://lacunaemusing.blogspot.com/2007/11/publishing-and-lacuna.html), but did so in a tentative, self-conscious way. Self-consciousness immobilizes writing and I was reminded of this in a recent email exchange I had with my friend, Art.

First a little background. We met Art and his lovely wife Sydelle on a cruise to the Caribbean after I retired. They had been teachers in the New York City Public School system, dedicated and deserving Purple Hearts for their service. They have wide-ranging interests, traveling the world, staying in elder hostels and constantly learning.

Art is active in woodworking design and sculpture and still plays organized softball and, Sydelle, who has a beautiful voice, performs in local theater groups, and has a wonderful sense of humor, something she demonstrated when they attended my 65th birthday party. She wrote and designed a special birthday card, parodying the lyrics of nine songs from Oklahoma. I particularly like the one that is set to the music of “The Farmer and The Rancher”…

The piano and his books they
are his friends.
The piano and his books they
are his friends.

He stays at home to play
the keys.
Grabs a book and starts
to read.
Bob is happy with his
little friends.

It’s a wonder that he likes us
It’s a wonder we all think
It’s a wonder he invites us
We liked him better when he
used to drink!

It is creative and funny (to those who know me) as it comes close to the bone. Good writing, even parody, explores the truth, no matter how indelicate.

Art had emailed about my modest blog efforts saying, “I've always been reluctant to attempt to write creatively.” He then went on to relate a fascinating story about how he recently reconnected with a friend after losing track for fifty years. As I said to Art in my response, “But, you complain that you are not a writer, and what an interesting note! I think good writing is to say what you want/need to say and do so truthfully. And that is what you did telling me about your friend. Methinks, you ought to get busy on your own blog and not be self-conscious, which is the biggest enemy when I write. Another problem is expectations, mostly my own, pertaining to topics and how often I might write. It sometimes feels like that plant in Little Shop of Horrors is crying out to me, ‘Feed Me.’ I’m trying not to be a slave to it.”

And writing is work, to get it right, at least from the writer’s viewpoint. It is also solitary, something I’m comfortable with although I’m out of sync with many of my contemporaries who prefer playing golf or bridge. I have nothing against this, but I’m too compulsive and competitive to play games that would distract from my own interests.

Not long ago I read the 70-year old classic by Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write; A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit. It is less about “how to write” than it is about the philosophy of writing. As Ueland clarifies, “At last I understood that writing was about this: an impulse to share with other people a feeling of truth that I myself had. Not to preach to them, but to give it to them if they cared to hear it. If they did not – fine. They did not need to listen. That was all right too…. You should work from now on until you die, with real love and imagination and intelligence, at your writing or whatever work it is that you care about. If you do that, out of the mountains that you write some mole hills will be published…. But if nothing is ever published at all and you never make a cent, just the same it will be good that you have worked.” On a subliminal level those words probably in part led me to write this blog, as working on it is productive and meaningful (to me at least), as is practicing the songs from the Great American Songbook, trying to interpret the compositions of Bill Evans, or, I guess, working at one’s golf game if that’s what you care about.

Given my profession, publishing, I have known many writers, some eminent in their fields. But I love following the progress of my older son’s writing (Chris). He is a natural and I’ve encouraged him to bring his gift to a broader audience. But he writes mainly for himself, “with real love and imagination and intelligence.”

A while ago he wrote a playful piece, spot on this topic, so appropriate that I borrowed one of his lines for the title of this entry. Now, I hope he does not mind my closing by quoting it in its entirety:


Why Am I A Writer?

I am not a writer. The words volunteer to join my feelings. I pay them no money.

Most words volunteer their time because they are bored with their lives. They are used to the same routine day in and day out at other jobs: Journalism, Cubicle Jobs, Entertainment, Internet, History. Most of them have been saying the same thing to the world. Things they say they are not interested in. There is no use for the words in their other jobs; so they end up coming to me.

"I have no resources, I can't pay you anything," I say to them.

"It doesn't matter." they say, "We don't judge"

I told them they could stay for as long as they want. There's not much overhead to house them, feed them or keep them around. "You think you'll have a career with me?" I asked.

"It doesn't matter. We have transferable skills," they mentioned. "If we can't continue with your organization, we could probably get much higher, more in-demand jobs."

"There are times I don't want to write. I don't have anything to say." I said. "What will you do then? Won't you get bored and leave?"

"We don't usually do that unless what you write about us is boring. We don't care if you don't use us; it’s what you say which will probably be the deciding factor."

"I'm afraid you’re boring me, and I don't want to use words anymore."

"I don't think you have a choice. You're stuck with us whether you like it or not."

"Not necessarily. 'Actions speak louder than words'. I can simply not write and let you fellows go on your own. I can bike, swim, get a job, climb a mountain, make love, go shopping, or any number of things. There would be no need to write about these things. I would be free.

"Free? How do you think you will be free of us? You're conscious of this freedom, this thing you call 'time' which lives in your mind."

(‘Freedom’ was the only word that would not volunteer in my vocabulary. I remembered her saying that she was too busy to talk with me. She gave me her cell number and said I should call her tomorrow.)

"We know what you're saying, and we don't care"

"I know," I admitted. "You came and ruined me."

"It’s not that we meant it,” they said, trying to be empathetic. "It’s just that our jobs are to be pragmatic, to say what there is to say about you."

"Why am I a writer, then, when I would feel like this?"

"We couldn't answer that. We let others do that for us."

"What others?"

"You know," they whispered, "out there". They pointed outside my window.

"The world? Are you saying people who read this?"

"It doesn't have to be read if you're a writer."

"What does that mean?"

"Words do this."