Focusing on Hope

Although it can be easy to get demoralized about certain aspects of modern-day life - e.g., climate change denial, the mainstreaming of hate by divisive celebrity pundits, the disinformation assault of social media - in the end, doing so is a choice. Isn't it vital to continually remind ourselves that making a choice to focus on things that give us hope is much healthier - for us, for our loved ones, for the world? What did you most recently focus on that lifted you? 

No matter what kind of day or week I'm having, each time I see a streetside lemonade stand being run by a group of children, my heart fills with optimism. How can anyone resist being touched by those handmade signs? How about the way the kids beckon cars and cyclists for business by waving or sometimes even shouting? For me, this kind of innocence is infectious. Even when I'm running late or not thirsty, I try to pull over. Almost always, while doing business with them, I'm beguiled by these young entrepreneurs. And I drive or ride away smiling.

 

My sisters and I had more than one streetside lemonade stand when we were kids. My daughter set one up right in front of our first house when she was in third or fourth grade. Her business partners were some of the kids from the neighborhood. When some kids across the street from my current home began setting up their stand recently - with the same kind of folding table you see almost every time - I began re-living both my own experiences and my daughter's. It felt wonderfully familiar and reassuring. I purposefully avoided listening to the news that day.

It's Complicated (Even with Limited Rainy Days Left)

What word or expression would you say most closely describes your relationship with money? For me? It's complicated. 

My complicated relationship with money began, in part, thanks to an incessant parental refrain I heard from early childhood through adolescence - "Be sure to save for a rainy day!" There's no blame attached to this recollection. Given what my parents endured as teenagers at the height of the Great Depression - hardships I cannot begin to comprehend - their rainy-day mantra was understandable. But when combined with their oft-repeated claim that their biggest disagreements were about money - specifically how to stretch each paycheck while raising four children - the messaging I internalized was bound to complicate my attitude about money. I was also taught - as I'm confident many of you were - that talking about money, especially how much you make, was impolite. More complications. 

Inheriting the legacy of my parent's dire experiences living through an economic apocalypse was only the beginning. With that foundation, I moved into my undergraduate years in the late 60s and, for better or worse, embraced the ethos of anti-materialism that suffused much campus life at the time. Over those impressionable years, I found myself most drawn to folks who treated money as a means to an end, not as an end in itself. All my tribe knew we would eventually have to make a living but we spent more time, more energy, and had a lot more conversations about how to make a life and how to avoid having our things own us vs. the other way around. That idealism informed my decisions back then and continued doing so for the coming decades. A by-product of that? More complications, as mature adult life and the necessity for making enough money to support a child into her young adult years became my highest priority. Included in that equation? A pledge that she would finish college with no debt. More rainy day saving, minimal spending on self, complications.  

At 76+ years old, I want for nothing and can afford to do much of what I want.  And the number of potential rainy days left to me to save for is no longer a factor. Why then does my relationship with and attitude about money still bedevil me? What prevents me - aside from stubborn habit - from spending money on myself whenever the spirit moves me? It's complicated.

Challenging the Big Three, Work, & OPS

How many times have you found yourself in a conversation about food at the same time you were sharing a meal with somebody? I'm not necessarily talking about the food you were eating at the time, but just about food in general. Given the critical social role food plays in our lives, it's predictive for conversations to often go this way. Think about your last five conversations. How many - sharing a meal aside - have touched on food at some point? 

Soon after this exact thing happened recently while having dinner with new friends, I began reflecting on other predictive conversational topics. Asked to estimate, what percentage of the conversations in your life would you say have NOT involved either food, the weather, or family? Which topic would you say occupies the next highest spot after those big three? Work, perhaps? I suspect work could be up there, especially for those of you having a higher-than-average share of troublesome colleagues. I know during my full-time working years - particularly when I supervised people - talking about work happened more frequently than I wanted. 

With my full-time work years behind me and Act Three well on its way, I'm confident in asserting that ailments have taken the place of work as a reliable - if tiresome - conversational standby. Still, there's no question in my mind that ailments of every stripe - what my wife calls OPS (i.e., Old People Shit) - continue to lag behind the big three. How about some of you from my Act Three cohort? How regularly do your conversations travel mindlessly down OPS Road? Have your complaints approached or surpassed the big three for conversational airtime? 

Final questions. Which conversational topics would you welcome being more regularly introduced into your life? The topics you select don't necessarily have to supplant any or all of the big three - I'm guessing that scenario is highly unlikely - but wouldn't you welcome shifting that percentage around a bit? What prevents any of us from doing the introducing?  

A Perpetual Gift

Of the benefits connected to my reading life after retiring, being newly exposed to a large number of great authors clearly tops the list. I'm most indebted to one individual for this significant enhancement in my reading life - the moderator of the first book club I ever joined. Over the sixteen years I've known her, only a handful of authors she has introduced to me haven't earned a spot on my list of keepers. And I've returned to several from that list - William Boyd, Louise Erdrich, Colm Tóibín - multiple times, without being disappointed. Readers: Have you got someone like this in your life? If yes, when did you most recently acknowledge the perpetual gift that person gives to you?

Which brings me to Lauren Groff. Strictly speaking, it was a different reading soulmate who first pointed me toward this prodigiously talented young-ish (born 1978) author. But from there the story repeatedly circles back to my friend of sixteen years. When I mentioned to her my admiration for Groff's 2016 novel Fates and Furies, she suggested we immediately slot it in for our next 1x1 book discussion. Turns out she'd read several of Groff's short stories in The New Yorker and admired them, much as I'd admired Fates and Furies. 

Reflections from the Bell Curve: 21st Century Couples

Five years later, for the first time - at my friend's urging - we violated a norm we'd established at the inception of our book club of two. We picked a novel by an author we'd previously read - Matrix (2021) by Lauren Groff. Wow, what a ride that was. Since then, Groff's name has surfaced several times in our book-soaked interactions, including me attending a short story class my friend taught, extolling Groff as a modern-day master of the form. Did I mention my friend's evangelism compelled me to pick up Groff's collection of stories entitled Florida (2023)? Holy shit. 

Reflections from the Bell Curve: Delayed Empathy

Reflections from the Bell Curve: Darn Her, Anyway

At this point, I'm guessing you'll know who crossed my mind a few weeks back when still another bookworm offered to loan me Groff's latest collection of short stories - Brawler (2026). And as I was being pummeled by Groff's gift, again, who did I think of? If you've got a fellow bibliophile who has brought as much to your reading life as my friend has to mine, I sincerely hope you'll let them know. 

Upcoming Semi-Compulsory Viewing

If you're the kind of viewer who enjoys following a mini-series from its outset, be on the lookout for the debut episode of Ride or Die - starring Octavia Spencer and Hannah Waddingham - streaming on Amazon beginning Wednesday July 15. If you don't mind jumping into a series after it begins or you're not much of a TV person, I urge you to mark Wednesday August 19 on your calendar. That's the night episode #6 of this new series will be shown, if you decide not to binge beforehand.  

I'm drawing your attention to this in the hope you'll celebrate with me as the top name - of three - scrolls by in the opening writer's credit for this particular episode. Like most, my daughter's career has had its share of victories and defeats. And this series - her first experience working in a writer's room after her move to LA a few years back - was frustrating and satisfying in nearly equal measure.

But the sequel to this story is happy enough to make this crowing father even more obnoxiously proud. Today, my daughter and her writing/directing partner started work on season two of Ride or Die, already renewed before season one begins. Keep your fingers crossed for syndication, please. In the meanwhile, I'll keep you informed about which episodes in season two will have her name at the top of the writing credits. Count on it.   

     

Where My Heart Is

"LA's fine but it ain't home, New York's home but it ain't mine no more."

Early in my young adult years as an itinerant musician, I took up temporary residence in Los Angeles, the only extended period of my life when I've actually lived outside of New Jersey. For several reasons, LA and I were not a good fit, which made my return to my beloved home state quite welcome. My unease with LA life in the early 70s also helped to permanently cement Neil Diamond's clever phrase from I Am, I Said into my lyric-addled brain. 

More than a half-century later - with visits to my new grandson in Los Angeles a regular occurrence - that lyric now fits me even more snugly. I like it OK out here - that tired and anodyne adjective "fine" is perfect, actually - but I still have trouble picturing myself feeling settled in LA. Great weather, nice vibe, ocean nearby, what's not to love? And if that hoary cliche is at all accurate and home is where the heart is, at present, LA holds many of the winning cards. 

Still, hard to predict if the desirable elements and those winning cards will persuade us to re-locate. In the meanwhile, this week the little man and I are perfecting drum interludes from Wipeout, analyzing the cinematography of Citizen Kane, and translating The Odyssey from the ancient Greek. Stay tuned for regular updates. 

Dear Edward

It would be reassuring to know my circuitous journey with Ann Napolitano's 2020 novel Dear Edward sounds even marginally similar to a journey one or more of you have had in your life with a book. If that's the case, please make a comment here or otherwise reach out to me. The story of my journey with this book will make this post longer than my norm. I hope you'll indulge me. 

June 2: I'm drawn in immediately by the intriguing epigraph, then fully immersed for over 100 pages. I stop reading just before Act Two begins, although the book's three act structure is not clear to me until my subsequent sittings on June 3 -5. (Important: As has been my practice for over sixteen years, before starting, I'd read no reviews of the book and purposefully avoided even glancing at the book jacket or reading the blurbs on the front or back cover. My intent since beginning this new-to-me practice in 2010: To enter every reading experience as a tabula rasa so that my opinion of what I read is - as near as is possible - entirely my own.)

June 3-5: The masterful way Napolitano executes the central conceit of her book - toggling between a flight from Newark to LAX vs. Edward's life from twelve-sixteen - captivates and propels me through all three acts over four consecutive reading days. The author's muscular but unshowy prose prompts me to copy numerous passages. Particularly poignant are the "Dear Edward" letters that Edward's uncle had been hiding from him, letters that Edward discovers about halfway through the book, thanks to help he gets from his friend and next-door neighbor Shay. As I finish the book on June 5, I'm uncertain about the epilogue. I decide to postpone writing an entry in my book journal or publishing a blog post about the novel until I'm closer to deciding how the epilogue has landed with me. In the meanwhile, I give it the highest possible rating on Goodreads, i.e., five stars. 

Early a.m., June 12: Still unsure about the epilogue, I begin - but don't complete - my book journal entry. A few excerpts = "...a moving and straightforward novel; one of the best of its type I've finished in a while...", "...I was riveted without exception...", "...excellent...".

Later a.m., June 12: Book in hand, I attend a meeting and unexpectedly run into a friend whose taste in literature I hold in high esteem. I mention having recently finished Dear Edward and ask if she's read it; she says no. But her unfiltered flip dismissal catches me off guard. "A book club book, mainstream". The plot now thickens a little. Given my lingering uncertainty about the epilogue, I start questioning myself, wondering if five stars was premature. Did I perhaps miss some glaring author missteps or overlook some cliched bestseller/mainstream tropes?    

June 13: Book journal entry - part 2 - starts when I copy the jacket, adding my usual {bracketed} asides to help cement key plot points in my mind. And then a peculiar thing begins to happen. I start finding flaws in the novel, ones that did not occur to me as the propulsive page-turning story swept me along. There is little doubt that my conversation on June 12 is contributing to my shift. This troubles me. Am I that malleable? My book journal entry remans incomplete. Final sentence that day: "Unsure where I'll go next when I attempt to finish this (now) ambivalent entry."

June 24: It's now been almost three weeks since I finished Dear Edward, with my waffling continuing to block me from completing my book journal entry. But the story and Napolitano's delivery of it will not leave me alone. Each time I re-read a copied passage or sentence, I am moved anew.  

A.M. June 25: I meet that same friend and discerning reader for a discussion about a different book. When the notion of time as a construct arises in our discussion of that book, Dear Edward comes back to me full force. I vaguely recall the final sentences of Napolitano's novel - in the epilogue - which takes place when Edward is nineteen. Didn't this gifted author skillfully allude to that same construct in the closing? I re-borrow the book from the library just to be sure. And here it is; we're now approaching the end of my circuitous journey:

"Shay is the girl wearing pajamas with pink clouds on them the first time he entered her room, and she is the woman who will give birth to their daughter ten years from now, and she is the young woman, her face wide open, offering him everything. Edward hears his brother's voice inside him; Jordan tells him not to waste any time. Not to waste any love. He watches Shay lean in his direction, and when she kisses him, she blots out the entire sky."  There's much more where that came from; I plan to share more with you in a near-future (and shorter) blog post about this exceptional book, one I've now concluded is worthy of the exclamation accompanying a five-star Goodreads rating: "It was amazing!"    

P.M. June 25: Book journal entry completed. A book club book? I'm still unclear what that actually means. Mainstream? Perhaps, but who cares? Would this unapologetic snob - one who fancies himself a fan of literary fiction - recommend it? Without question. End of journey.

Reflections from the Bell Curve: A Hard Book Can Be Good To Find 

        

    

76 vs. 67

The last time I reversed the digits of my age to use in a post was early in my blog's lifespan when I published 61? or ... 16? in July 2011. Months ago, a faithful reader stumbled across that relic in my archive, prompting me to re-visit this particular thought experiment, especially because it will be easier to recall specifics of my life from a distance of just nine years vs. forty-five. I hope you'll join me today and have some fun with this, regardless of the way your reversed digits fall. 

(If you are someone who journals and you retain your old ones, why not take a peek and see what you were up to at that earlier point in your life? That is, provided the reversal sends you back in time. If the reversal instead sends you forward, why not conjecture what you'll be up to at the older age the reversal places you? For those in double digit territory - 33, 55, 77 - or those with a "0" as your second digit, use your imagination. You don't expect me to do all the work, do you?)

* At 67, I started my own book club. Next January, the club will celebrate its tenth anniversary. And in September of this year, the club will reach another milestone - our 100th book. 

* Over the span of my 67th year, with a good friend's help, the first critical phase of a long-postponed project - my daughter recording eight of my original songs - was finished. The completed CD with overdubs, mixed and mastered, was held off for release to coincide with my 70th birthday. Directly below is a link to Bandcamp, a music site you can visit if you'd care to listen to one or more of the tunes. Lyrics are included. 

Til There Were Two | Patrick Barton

* At 67, I met the young man who would become my son-in-law approximately five years later. He is a welcome addition to my family and now the father to my beloved grandson.

Please join me in this thought experiment. When I'm 78, I'll try to remember to repeat the experiment a third and final time; forces my hand to project forward to my 87th year. a more daunting prospect for sure.  

Reflections from the Bell Curve: 61? or...16?