Over yonder … just me, just sitting on the stone bench within the old cemetery’s iron fencing. Around me hatched shades of green speak of desultory human attention, blessedly absent from the surrounding dry grass. But green or dry, these wild weeds are congenial to my spirit.

      Just me, still above the hardscrabble, if ever more tenuously. Me, quietly nursing a new sharp pain at the juncture of left femur and pelvis, nevertheless content to just sit through these last final chapters. Just sitting, nearly as still as the old regularly clumped bones of my future neighbors, below.

      If cemeteries don’t encourage reflection, no settings will. . . .

Is enough indeed enough? This less-than-3-minute-long video experiment argues—with help from Leonard Cohen, William Blake, Ecclesiastes and Anaïs Nin—that it is not, that we ought indeed to ask for MORE.

Indeed this short video itself—with highly animated text and multi-layered audio—represents an effort to show that video might be able to say MORE—an argument I first made a quarter-century ago in my book, the rise of the image the fall of the word. Can’t say the evidence I was right has been pouring in, but there are glimmerings. . . .

Click Here to View Video

     A good friend died on the Saturday before the November 2016 election.

      I’ve been wondering ever since: would he have believed what has happened in the years after? How could I possibly have explained what has transpired? How could he have possibly imagined  

•      That a TV reality show personality with no experience in government and a history of failed enterprises and outrageous comments would be elected president of the United States.

•       That a buffoon who was president of the United States would lie about everything from the size of crowds to the direction of a hurricane, to the tune of an average of 21 public lies for each day of his presidency.

•       That a conman who was president of the United States would try to ban residents of Muslim-majority countries from coming to the United States.

•      That a grifter who was president of the United States would refer to developing nations as “shithole countries” . . .

     Meditation is the art of stabilizing the mind to create awareness and a calmness that helps to heal the body, mind and spirit.

      I am an exploding ball of energy, or as my father would fondly say, “you are my thoroughbred.” He raised horses and his thoroughbreds were high stepping, agitated, overly nervous and always the first out of the gate and the first back to the barn.

      For me, learning to control my thoughts, which are like a boomerang on steroids, has always been a struggle. My thoughts leave my brain and then return within a split second and before I know it I am going down another rabbit hole. I am aware how important it is to calm my thoughts because only then can I feel solace and contentment. . . .

      I was some age in the mid-single digits. For it was sometime in the mid-1950s.

      My dad, who edited the newspaper for a left-leaning union, was attending a union convention up in the Catskills somewhere. My mom and I went along.

      Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was a strong supporter of labor unions—particularly left-leaning labor unions. And those unions, to their great credit, were early supporters of the work Dr. King was doing as one of the most aggressive leaders of the Civil Rights movement.

      So, Martin Luther King, Jr., was speaking at that union convention somewhere in the Catskills—at least that is how I remember it. And my mother, as I recall, handed me—a shy kid—a piece of paper and a pen and pushed me toward the front of the room. . . .

      The day on which we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday will also be one of the darkest and most shameful days in the history of this nation, when the man who attempted a coup against the United States will be sworn in for the second time as president.

      Let me reassure you about a few things.

      First, if you’re outraged, disgusted, or depressed by this, you are hardly alone.

      Even though Trump got the most votes, his margin of victory was razor-thin. More than a third of eligible voters (many of whom voted for Biden in 2020) didn’t even vote. According to yesterday’s New York Times/Ipsos poll, most Americans are either worried or pessimistic about Trump’s second term. Half of America hates him.

      I also want to assure you that although Trump is bonkers, his madness will be contained. . . .

This is a short excerpt from Robert Reich’s excellent Substack. For the full post or to subscribe, on paid or free plans, click here.

      I have a lunch date expressly scheduled for Monday. It will begin before noon, and I’m hoping we will hang out for the rest of the day.

      If it has to end because my lunch partner has to return home or go to work or has some other feeble excuse, I will go to the movies. Maybe I’ll see “A Complete Unknown” again or maybe, if I really want to stretch it out, I’ll go see the interminable “Wicked” for a second time.

      Then I’ll go get a bite. And maybe go for a walk. Or go get a drink in a bar without TV screens if such a place still exists.

      What I mean is, I’ll do anything to avoid Monday’s inauguration . .

      The first presidential inaugural I ever attended (and covered as a reporter) was Richard M. Nixon’s first, in January 1969. 

      The coldest inaugural I ever covered was Ronald Reagan’s second, in 1985. (The inaugural parade had to be held at an indoor arena near Washington since the wind-chill during that time in January was minus 25!) 

      The most litigious inaugural I ever covered was Nixon’s second, in 1973. (I was arrested and later was branded by the FBI as “potentially dangerous” for simply doing my job covering the parade.) 

      The most embarrassing inaugural I ever covered was Jimmy Carter’s, in January 1977.  (I’ll explain in a minute). 

      Until Donald Trump shat all over it, the peaceful transition of executive power in America, symbolized by the celebratory, even giddy, inauguration of a newly-elected president, was one of the shining jewels of the American experience. God willing, it will become that again, when Trump, set to be inaugurated one more time on Monday, exits the stage for good. …

      I’m a lyrics guy. With one notable exception, I know them. I remember them. The exception is: “Tumbling Dice” by the Rolling Stones.

      However, I’m also a guy who can’t carry a tune.

      Which sucks. I know—except for “Tumbling Dice”—all the words but can’t sing them.

      Karaoke is, of course, out of the question. Joining in when everybody is feeling “Yellow Submarine” is also out of the question, even though I know it’s: “And he told us of his life in the land of submarines.”
      And on those increasingly rare occasions when I might find myself in the midst of a singalong, I’ll manage to position myself next to a fellow or gal who can sing, so I can prompt him or her with the words: “…But then I spent so many nights thinking.” Pause. “How you did me wrong.” Pause. “And I grew strong” . . .

Being able to see the Milky Way at night

Greeting someone at the gate

School snow days . . .

And more of what we don’t miss

Watches we had to wind

Dissecting frogs

Suitcases without wheels . . .

     I’ve found a new way to annoy companions.

      When walking or driving at night, even with other people, I suddenly stop when I see an unusually bright, unblinking star and spend some time trying to figure out—often making use of my “Skyview” app—which planet it is.

      This is not much of a problem here in Manhattan, where the light pollution often succeeds in obscuring whatever stars the buildings fail to block. But there are still plenty of places in this world where planets can easily and regularly be discerned. And planet discerning—abruptly looking up—has apparently become one of my responses to aging. . . .

      During our lifetimes, the public schools originally designed by white adults for white children have chronically failed Black students and students of color. It is one of the great failures of our generation.

       Whether we call it an achievement gap or an opportunity gap, the fact remains that the results of schooling in America, especially in the American south, are now and have been consistently and significantly different for white and children of color. The recent decades of piecemeal attention to inequalities in schools have not succeeded in overcoming the persistent effects of racial segregation in public education.

       A proper response now would be to re-examine the whole enterprise and re-imagine public education in the most inclusive ways possible. . . .

      This year that just passed, here’s a pretty shitty litany:

•        I almost died from a heart attack.

•        A friend of almost 40 years did die, partly from a heart attack, partly from internal bleeding when he fell and wasn’t discovered for days.

•        A very energetic friend—same age, of course—fainted in the street and had to have surgery for a previously undiscovered genetic heart condition.

•        A friend who was minding her own business got run over by a car in a supermarket parking lot and was knocked unconscious for several days.

•       A friend who swims and dances was in the cardiac intensive care unit and on a ventilator with the sudden onset of takotsubo cardiomyopathy, or broken heart syndrome.

      There’s more, alas, but you get the idea. . . .

      The haunting and lovely strains of the Navy hymn, Eternal Father, Strong to Save, brought me to tears as I listened to the Armed Forces chorus and orchestra perform the beautiful song at Jimmy Carter‘s funeral. It evoked so many feelings, both about my own father and about our country—and the end of an era.

      Truthfully, the era ended a while ago, but the finality hit me during the service.     

      I was 24 when President Carter was elected, and I had moved back to Alexandria, Va., after two years of teaching in the Virginia mountains. His inauguration is the only one I ever attended.

      It was a glorious cool winter day and he and Rosalynn got out of the limousine and walked most of the route down Pennsylvania Avenue. Everyone cheered.  …

       I never stop wondering what it is that makes us love music. I’m sure brain scientists have delved way into the subject, but here are the thoughts of a layperson, who happens also to be a musician.

      There’s something about sounds—a.k.a. music—that to us (“us” depending on one’s culture in this case) are more compelling than mere speech. They captivate us and grab our hearts. Trying to figure out what it is about those sounds that captivates us is an intriguing rabbit hole in which to dive. 

      And those sounds could not have a more important role than they do in these troubling times. I'm a skeptic when it comes to the value of talk therapy, but music therapy? Unquestionably beneficial. And if you want to inspire yourself to struggle against the forces creating the trouble, little helps more than protest music. . . .

      My role in discussions of new technologies has been as an “anti-declinist”—a coinage of my own, a coinage that mostly has not caught on.

      Still, give me an example of any now-beloved or at least now-accepted technology, and I can cite right-thinking people at the time who were convinced it was evidence of ongoing decline, a step on the road to ruin. That includes, for instance, the printing press, which, Leo Tolstoy concluded near the end of War and Peace, was “Ignorance’s weapon.” So Tolstoy—apparently dismayed that a lot of crap was being printed—dismissed the printing press as “ignorance’s weapon” precisely at the moment when he was about to use it to give us War and Peace.

       Knowing this and having written about a couple of dozen other new technologies that were similarly disparaged, dismissed and even feared when they were young, I should be the last person to criticize a very new technology, a technology obviously still experiencing growing pains, a technology that will obviously significantly improve.

      But that’s what I’m going to do. . . .

      At a certain age, memories become malleable. They begin to fit the stories we’ve told again and again, the telling of the memory becomes more real than the memory itself.

      I’ve been thinking about the tricks of memory recently because I’ve been thinking about the most exciting sports event I’ve ever attended. I’ve been to the World Series several times, to the Stanley Cup Finals, a Super Bowl, the NBA Playoffs, and tennis’ U.S. Open. I’ve seen, in person, Willie Mays and Michael Jordan, Pele and Jim Brown and Bjorn Borg. As a one-time professional sportswriter, it was my job to be at thrilling sports events.

      But in my memory, nothing—not before, not since—compares to the excitement of a boys’ basketball game I was at more than half a century ago.

     The details are both hazy and remarkably distinct. . . .

      The mass-violence incident in my hometown of New Orleans on Jan. 1 took me back to November 1977 and another mass-violence incident in the city. On the morning of Nov. 7, a man named Carlos Poree shot his estranged wife and her father and went on to shoot eight more people in the French Quarter and Central Business District.

      My father was the ninth person shot.

      I came home from school that afternoon to learn that my father had been shot in the neck while walking to a restaurant for lunch. While I had been gabbing with my girlfriends in my high school cafeteria, my father was lying on a sidewalk, receiving last rites from a priest who happened to be in the area—the first of three last rites he’d receive over the next 48 hours. . . .

      We were born into this—this notion that to be an artist was perpetually to be rethinking what an artist should be, a notion very much at the heart of James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown.

      I don’t think Mozart saw himself as involved in continually reinventing music. Rembrandt was struggling to portray what he saw, not struggling to reconceptualize what painting might be.

      But the rules of painting had changed dramatically in Paris in the second half of the 19th century as Claude Monet, Edgar Degas and Camille Pissarro began painting en plein air; painting fast, with a palette of bright, sunlit colors; and painting ordinary people—not Napoleon on his horse. A theory—a wonderfully invigorating theory—had been placed before Napoleon’s horse. . . .

       My main concern is the assumption in much of the politics that appears in Writing About Our Generation is the notion that its authors, editors and readers, occupy a generation.  What exactly is it?  And does it possess purely chronological, or also class, economic, educational, geographic, gender, political and other parameters?  If so, as I'd suggest, use of pure generational boundaries may be of little help and much obfuscation.

      In contrast, I'd suggest that there runs through most American, upper-middle-class, liberal minds—those of us who haven't yet given up on Enlightenment perspectives and hopes—several overlapping beliefs (perspectives?) about material progress, its links to social values, especially distributional ones, and democratic means of ensuring and securing through democracy, better things and ways for society, especially its poorest members. 

      Failure to deliver on this promise (hope?  wishful thinking?), while preserving our own comforts and privileges, produces cognitive dissonance at best, evasive hypocrisy at worst, and the drift of voters away from the likes of us and toward such dreadful tribalist hucksters as Trump and Netanyahu, two examples of a growing trend. . . .