How do you travel?

      I’m asking because my friend and colleague Mitch Stephens, the co-editor of this site, is currently traveling in Scotland, and then he and his wife will be going somewhere, although they haven’t quite made up their minds exactly where yet and definitely haven’t made any reservations.

      Not for planes, nor trains, nor automobiles. Not for hotels, too.

      They might be going, they think, to southwestern France. Or maybe to Spain. Or maybe they’ll explore more of the UK. Or maybe not. They’ll figure it out. They’ll make those reservations, just no need to do them until they have to.

      They hadn’t made their train reservation to Edinburgh and their hotel reservation in Edinburgh until something like a few minutes before got on a plane to London.

      It’s a great way to travel. It’s not, any longer, my way.

      And I’m guessing, it’s not the way many of us now travel these days. ...

      By day, I am an arts warrior, public servant, heroic crip. Open, responsive, cocksure, ambitious—I seize the public gaze as a bully pulpit. Offstage finds me enslaved by quivering muscles contorting my stride.

      After surgery, my swollen spine shut down. Gurus and saints abounded, but no roses from above. Paralyzed weeks turned into months—a flicker, a twitch, a wave, sitting to standing, six steps to go home, with wheelchair, ankle brace and cane.  

      Gestures repeat to imprint; but gravity intervenes. Syncopated embellishments focus spatial awareness, though alignment remains akimbo. With little sensation, each footstep is defiant. Only in the pool can I run with the ponies again.

      Twenty-eight years now—I still fixate on atrophy, ignoring progress. Balancing rehab and recovery, clinging to a reconnecting, physical therapy and pharmaceuticals combat lost kinesis, encouraging hope.  

      Night murmurs locate points of pleasure: behind the left knee, above the nipple. I crawl inside the softness, relishing the incandescent kundalini rush absent pain. Legs lie quiet, the burning subsides. Stillness embraces me.

      In the extra room (that we do not have), I plié and pirouette with dramatic abandon, leaving behind my imploded, twisted carcass. The tumor does not return. My pelvis aligns. Depression dissipates. Then I awake. ...

      My mood these days rises and falls as frequently as a sailboat flung between swells in gale-driven seas. The sharp twists and turns often leave me exhausted and metaphorically seasick by bedtime.  

      The true cause is neither wind nor water, but tracking polls and other analysis for the 2024 presidential election. I follow them obsessively as they fluctuate as wildly these days as the waves and wind in the eye of a major storm.

      Take Sept. 24. I probably checked my go-to political headline site, politicalwire.com, about 15 times, starting at about 7a.m. soon after I rolled out of bed. The news good, then pretty good, then worse, then good again, then pretty devastating.  

      At 7:47 came the news, from CNN, that “more than 400 economists and former high-ranking U.S. policymakers are endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris and her vision for the American economy.”  

      Chalk up one for the good guys. ...

There was so much I wanted to do and accomplish at 22. Experience motherhood, join the Peace Corps, become a psychologist.

      Instead, I became a clinical social worker; earned a master’s in social work; left my home and my religion; and moved away from New York. I was on a journey to become myself.

      I wanted to organize workers into unions, act on the stage, and start a revolution. But where would I begin now that I was 32?

      When social work lost its allure, I switched to a college teaching position. (I could start my revolution by enlightening students.) I married and had three wonderful children without morning sickness and labor pains (they were the product of my husband’s first marriage) and earned a Ph.D., too.

      And suddenly I was 40.

      When I turned 50, a line from “Fried Green Tomatoes” seemed to fit me well: “I’m too old to be young, and too young to be old.” Up until then, I had had too many moments of longing, waiting for the future. Too many days had gone by without savoring my existence. ...

      Here’s something you definitely do not want in a job:

      An understanding that the faster you drive the more money you make.

      But at the beginning of my junior year in college—a semester I spent away from Haverford College and in New York City, going to NYU—I got a job in which such a calculation clearly applied.

      I became a “hack,” a cab driver.

      It wasn’t a hard job to get: You got your driver’s license upgraded to a “Chauffeur’s License,” applied to the New York Taxi and Limousine Commission, took a test on the addresses of various places taxi customers might have been inclined to go (such as Yankee Stadium: then 161^st Street and River Avenue) and sat in on a safety class (in which I learned to stay away—on two-way avenues with a median strip, such as Park Avenue or upper Broadway—from the left lane, which the instructor labeled, the “suicide lane”).

      And there I was: an English major sidling up to the dispatcher in a room on West 126^th Street very much like the one that would later be portrayed in the TV show, “Taxi.” ...

      I’ve lived with anxiety all my life even though I’ve never been officially diagnosed with it. Anxiety just wasn’t a thing when I was a child, even though I was quite aware of it. I kept it to myself. I have taken medication a few times, but as an adult, I’ve dealt with it organically. I started running in my twenties and discovered endorphins are a great antidote to feeling anxious. I still exercise regularly.

      A little later in life, I adopted yoga and meditation, which have been incredibly helpful over the years. I’ve also learned to do deep breathing when I panic. 

      But despite those strategies, I still deal with those uncomfortable feelings, especially when I’m in a situation where I don’t have control. Yes, that describes most of life, doesn’t it?

      Many situations trigger my anxiety. We are currently in negotiations over the sale of our house. And we will soon be moving into a new smaller house. 

      But until that happens, my anxiety is a constant unwelcome companion, the familiar dread sabotaging my stomach and stealing my sleep. I’ve often envisioned my anxiety as some sort of being, so I was gratified to see it portrayed as a character in the recent movie “Inside Out 2.” …

I live in North Carolina. Mark Robinson is my lieutenant governor.

      Let me rephrase that first sentence: I live in the Chapel Hill part of North Carolina, which is really not that much different from living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. But Mark Robinson is still my lieutenant governor.

      And Mark Robinson, Republican candidate, has a chance to become my governor.

      It is, obviously, more than just an embarrassment.

      It is also, alas, not an aberration. For years, when we moved here, North Carolina had been a beacon of the almost-progressive “New South,” under governors like Luther Hodges, Terry Sanford and Jim Hunt. Despite being represented on the national stage by Jesse Helms, it had created the first collaborative research park. It had created the original Smart Start program for pre-kindergartners.

      Despite Helms, it had started to creep out of the shadow of segregation and Jim Crow and poverty. Instead of tobacco, it had become known for cutting-edge research and technology....

      My Frye boots, big, bulky and battered, the oldest living household survivor of my 1960s fashion sense, passed away peacefully Sept. 9 after a long period of increasing obsolescence and occasional embarrassment when I tried to put them on. 

      They were pre-deceased by my Nehru jacket, several pairs of bell-bottoms and a number of tie-dyed shirts.

      The Frye boots, which were born to go with my “Georgy Girl” cap and my flower-power plaid denim pants, started life as an accoutrement before becoming symbolic of a consistent misunderstanding of fashion that had long ceased been fashionable.

      I was a terrible athlete as a kid. One year I got a total of one hit in the entire Little League season. But I have since learned that even if I ain’t particularly coordinated, I can be excessively dogged.

     So as an adult I ran some and biked some. But I didn’t dare a triathlon until I was turning 70.

     We had bought a house near a lake, and I had finally learned to do a half-way decent crawl. And, one day, it occurred to me that I could now do all “tri.”

     It proved unsurprisingly hard—a half-mile swim in a bay, a 13-mile bike ride, then a 3-mile run. (This was a “Sprint Triathlon”; all those distances are doubled in “Olympic Triathlons.”) There were hills (though not on the swim)....

Back in 1974 Rick and I bought a hay field in the hills of Vermont. Our son had just turned two.

      We decided to follow Scott and Helen Nearing’s lead after reading their book “Living the Good Life” and build a stone house. The permit was secured in July, which only gave us a few months to put a roof over our heads before cold weather settled in. We lived in a tent and several college friends arrived to help.

      I found a bevy of field stone on a farmer’s property, and he agreed we could take as much as we needed. So, every day I put my son in a Snugli on my back and drove to Farmer Norris’ field and hauled stone back to the building site. I managed to make 36 trips....

      Last month I was artist-in-residence at The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia developing ideas for an interdisciplinary installation for an exhibition this fall. I am primarily a filmmaker and got to experiment with a very talented studio production team. A rare and precious opportunity indeed.

      Accompanying me was a perfect book, Adam Moss’ “The Work of Art: How something comes from nothing.”The writer, former editor of New York magazine and The New York Times Magazine, interviews 43 creatives on how they make their work, using iconic examples to illuminate their process.

      His aim: “to render the experience of creativity—that is, the frustration, elation, regret, first glimmers, second thoughts, distress and triumph that leads to works of art” . . .

      I view Donald Trump as sui generis—one of a kind. We simply have not seen in this country one politician who, by himself, is so off-the-charts narcissistic, ignorant, lazy, venal, dishonest and cruel.

       Add to that his designs on destroying our democracy—he tried and failed once on Jan. 6, 2021, and hopes to do it again, bigly—in 2025, and Houston, we have a problem.

       That, in turn, raises a question for me, a former White House correspondent and national political correspondent, who tried over 20 years with the New York Daily News—through Democratic and Republican administrations—to be as objective as possible in his political reporting from Washington:

        “How can one be objective in reporting on Donald Trump?” . . .

(photo: Jose Luis Magana/AP)

      Happened to mention to the doorman this morning that I have something difficult to do tomorrow, and that I’m anxious.

      Quite anxious, to be sure, though I didn’t go that far with the doorman.

      Am I more anxious because I’m old?

      It feels that way. Do less and what you do do feels more difficult. And you move and think somewhat slower so maybe things are in fact more difficult for older you—for older me.. . .

     I’ve been watching presidential debates since the beginning of presidential debates: since Vice President Richard Nixon was out-cooled by Senator John F. Kennedy. Indeed, I don’t believe I have missed any of the 36, by my count, televised debates between or among the major presidential candidates in the United States.

       And, over lo these many decades, we have learned—and various and sundry presidential-debate coaches have learned—that certain basic demeanors and moves tend to be effective in these debates:  

•       Being “cool,” to begin with—cool in 77-Sunset-Strip terms: confident, reasonably attractive, comfortable-on-TV. Kennedy was that kind of cool. Pushy, stiff, unlovely Nixon was not. . . .

      It was at a dinner in Barcelona, less than a year after the 2016 elections.

      We were eating with an old colleague of my wife’s, relocated to southwestern France, and his twenty-something cousin. The young cousin didn’t have a university degree, but she spoke Catalan, Spanish, English, French and had thought deeply about politics.

      She asked us about Trump.

      She explained that there were equally reactionary government leaders throughout Europe. There were xenophobes and racists and pseudo-fascists with horrible ideas, people like France’s Marine Le Pen and Britain’s Nigel Farage.

      They were awful, she acknowledged, but they were also smart as hell. They were highly educated. They knew their stuff.

      How, she asked us, could Americans have elected someone so obviously, so completely … stupid? . . .

When you have agreed, under pressure, to go see something you had no interest in seeing: In this case Glen Hansard in concert, although, yeah, "Once" was fine. Mature, open-minded fellow that I am, I was kicking and screaming up until Hansard took the stage at the Beacon Theater in New York City. This video--less than a minute long--tries to capture the words and thoughts of the reluctant concertgoer.

Click here for the video and for links to other "idea videos" by Mitchell Stephens

      The last time there was a presidential debate, things didn’t go too well.

      You could tell from the first minute. At my house, we turned off the TV about 15 or 20 minutes in. It had just become too painful to watch.

      Maybe that’s why we’re so worried about Tuesday’s debate?

      So, much, it seems, is riding on it.

      Like only the future of our democracy. . . .

LIVING THE DREAM:

COUNTING INVENTORY AT A PIPE-RACK CLOTHING STORE

[Let us know what’s the worst job you have ever had. Something you suffered through while young? Or an adult drudgery? Or something good that turned bad? Write to us at writingaboutourgeneration@gmail.com.]

      I am maybe mid-way through high school in the Bronx in the early ‘60s and looking for summer work.

      Some kids might have signed on to their parent’s shops or businesses. (There were more mom and pop operations back then, or so it seemed.) But no such luck for me. Both my parents worked (pop was a note teller at a bank; my mother a bookkeeper) so it’s not as if I could have signed on as an apprentice.

      Somebody told me about New York State Youth Employment services. I contacted them and wound up at the worst job of my life: counting inventory at a low-end  pipe-rack clothing store in Manhattan (or was it Brooklyn?). . . .

      Will November 5 be the most consequential election of our lifetimes? It sure seems that way, right now, but every four years it can seem that way.

      So, we decided to look back and, with the perspective of time, consider how consequential each election in more or less our lifetimes turned out to have been for the United States and for the world.

      Our leanings are decidedly liberal, but consequential does not necessarily mean furthering peace, human rights or the lives of the poorest among us. Ronald Reagan’s first election proved, for example, quite consequential, though we were not fond of the consequences. 

      Your conclusions may vary.  Let us know where you think we went wrong. 

      The 20 elections since 1948, near the beginning of our generation, are listed here from least to most consequential . . . .

       Yawning through breakfast? Eyes closing during work? Nodding off while driving? Well, of course. We are at the napping age. But certain choices must be made.

       First, you have to decide when to nap.

       Deciding, for instance, to nap in the middle of the night while you are already sleeping is always a good choice, since it gives you a solid head start. . . .