My Act Three Tribe (Redux)

I didn't fully appreciate how much my fourteen Rogue Scholar travelling companions had brought to my life until early today as my wife and I finished a Shutterfly project commemorating our adventures together. Though mentioned on this blog several times since we all met in Alaska in 2015, considering the riches this community has bestowed on me, I cannot overdo the tributes paid to them here.

Soon after our 2024 reunion in Rocky Mountain National Park, the group decided a celebration of our years together was in order. Two of us worked on crafting several questions for everyone to respond to in writing. The responses were then compiled into a final document and distributed to all. (Sample question: How did our time together add value to your life?) It was in the re-reading of the responses to those questions - and deciding which select few to include as text in the Shutterfly project - that my appreciation for my soulmates grew even deeper. One celebration response included a mention of every person in the group - by name - and how that person had enriched the author during our years together. The time put into that one response alone reminded me - again - of how grateful I am to have made these Act Three friendships. As another person said in a different celebratory response - What a gift!

How do you celebrate the people in your life who have given gifts comparable to those my Rogue Scholar tribe has given me?

A Private Life

Although I didn't thoroughly scour my archives to be 100% certain, I'm reasonably sure the time between my last post about a movie and today is the longest gap of its kind since I began reflecting from the bell curve fifteen + years ago. My recent ten+ weeks of movie silence here is not connected to the number of films I've sat through since late May when a re-watch of Fargo inspired a post. But not a single film since then spoke to this unrepentant movie geek like A Private Life did. Cinephiles: Put this one in your queue. 

Aside from Jodie Foster's predictably excellent performance - speaking in French throughout - what sets this 2025 movie apart from some of mediocre fare I've endured these last few months is its incisive script. As the film opens, Foster is experiencing personal challenges as well as setbacks in her professional life as a slightly aloof psychiatrist. The director and screenwriters then imbue that straightforward premise with astute insights about the stories we often create in an attempt to make sense of the things that happen to us. 

"Irony can be an effective way to avoid dealing with fear." I'm accustomed to capturing sharp phrases in my journal while reading. But I cannot readily recall the last time a line of movie dialogue that did not come from a book hit me with as much force as the one directly above. I felt compelled to write it down, much like when I'm reading. When did a line of movie dialogue recently do the same for you? 

I recommend A Private Life without reservation.

p.s. How refreshing it is to see a sixty-three-year-old movie star who looks sixty-three. On a parallel plane, not long ago I read a NY Times article about Jodie Foster. In that article, I recall her comment that having a personal assistant struck her as "... like having someone else living your everyday life ..." or words to that effect. Is it possible she is carefully curating a down-to-earth public persona? The cynic in me would be inclined to believe that but those lines in her face tell a different story.

Native American Day

Cinco de Mayo, Christmas, Columbus Day, Juneteenth, Martin Luther King Day, St. Patrick's Day, Veteran's Day, Yom Kippur. How is it that a day acknowledging the native people of this land of ours - with or without closing schools and the post office - has yet to enter the public conversation in any meaningful fashion? In my view, having to share a day with Columbus - although well meaning - is not adequate in redressing the egregious way native people have been treated here in "America". 

I'm as clueless about this long-running oversight as anyone. After all, on every August 1 since 2012 I've used my tiny spot in the blogosphere to promote the idea of celebrating something on this date to mark the otherwise barren month of August. But until earlier today the idea of a Native American Day did not occur to me.    

Reflections from the Bell Curve: Still Closing the Gap

In my meager defense, I can only offer the gaps in my education. And though I've tried to surmount some of those gaps in recent years - the subject of the 2023 post above - doing so will remain a work in progress for all the time left to me. 

I've had fun dreaming up ideas for a national holiday on this date for fifteen years. National Book Day, National Gratitude Day, and last year's National Technology Turnoff Day are a few of my whimsical favorites from earlier iterations. Today's notion to mark August 1 as Native American Day is more earnest. I know I'm not alone in thinking an acknowledgment of this kind is long overdue. Join me.

A Pledge to Respond in Kind

Thinking back on your life, what have you accomplished that continues to give you significant satisfaction? For the purposes of today's thought experiment, I'm requesting parents put aside - just this time - the most obvious answer, i.e., your children. What might be the next thing that comes most readily to mind?

Although the years spent teaching guitar to my youngest nephew is not the next thing that comes most readily to my mind, the sense of accomplishment I get listening to him play is up there. I suspect the fact that he's getting married this coming weekend contributed to this Act Three-ish reflection popping up recently. I mean, it's difficult imagining someone still in Act Two - that is, someone not likely to have a twenty-something youngest nephew - spending much time on a thought experiment like this. After all, while in Act Two, most of us on the bell curve are still working at the big stuff, aren't we? But when we're in Act Three - or like me, quite a bit along into Act Three and watching the youngest members of our extended families starting adult life - isn't it predictive for us to be looking back at accomplishments, at least occasionally? 

So, when this reflection first began percolating weeks ago, the first thing I did was capture in my journal several things that came to mind, including that time spent teaching guitar to my nephew. Next, I did what I almost always do. I asked my ideal reader and partner of forty-eight + years to respond to today's thought experiment. Though unsurprised that her instinctive response was our daughter, I asked her to dig deeper, just as I'm asking you to do. Her "secondary" answers gratified her and reminded me of significant pieces of her legacy. I'm guessing the same could be true for some of you. I hope a few of you will share something here. To anyone who does, I pledge to respond by sharing a different accomplishment of mine, another from that same journal entry, the petri dish for this post. 

The Bee Sting

Over my reading life, I've enjoyed a fair number of novels that exceeded 500 pages. But I can readily recall only a handful that held me end-to-end like The Bee Sting (2023). Weeks later, I remain astonished that Paul Murray was able to sustain enough narrative momentum over 643 pages that I was never once out of his spell. His tragi-comic tale of a family trying to find its way is a literary marvel.

"...and she feels a kind of worn relief like they are normal."

Given her dire upbringing, Imelda Barnes has always yearned for a normal life. Her husband Dickie has spent his life struggling trying to land on what is normal, a struggle that intensified the day he and Imelda were married, her face marred by a mysterious bee sting. Their teenage daughter Cassandra envisions normal life as something to be found in Dublin, living with her friend Elaine, far from the small town where both of them have lived since childhood. And twelve-year-old PJ's vision of normal toggles from the virtual world of video games to a texting bond he's formed with someone who wants to show him around Dublin to the bunker he and his father - along with a cranky survivalist - are building in a clearing on the Barnes's property. 

I offer that taste hoping it might tempt some reader(s) to try the full meal. If you do, please remember to check back in with me when you finish. I sincerely want to hear your thoughts about this book.

In the meanwhile, tell me this: What was the last novel of over 500 pages you finished that held you like The Bee Sting held me? 

p.s. Thank you to Ann Patchett - via her weekly podcast - for directing me to this winner. 

Another Skirmish with Technology

It's been a week since my latest skirmish with technology. Though I acknowledge the benefits modern technology can deliver, the snafus that routinely occur using it can be infuriating. What happened in your most recent skirmish? I hope you were alone when things went technologically awry. I was not.

 

The day before sound-check went smoothly. And looking around the auditorium before beginning my presentation entitled The Magical Musical Mystery Tour I felt prepared, comfortable in a nice space that I'd used previously, and pleased to see at least fifteen familiar faces scattered throughout the nice-sized audience. 

But as the first stanza of Please, Please Me played, I could hear something was off. I've listened to that jewel more times than I can count and immediately noticed that both the propulsive rhythm guitar interlude between the first two lines of the stanza and George Harrison's brief guitar obbligato preceding the first refrain were seriously muted over the house sound system. I said nothing to the audience and quickly discounted it as a fluke with the first song. Twenty-three more Beatles gems still to go - with plenty to point out to the audience about each - over the next ninety minutes. Things would work out.

If only. By the middle of the second song, it was clear to me - if not to most of the audience - that this glitch was going to be with me, in varying degrees, for the rest of the night. In several cases, I was unable to make the pertinent musical distinctions I wanted to make because those distinctions were lost somewhere in the technological void between the playlist on my phone and the house sound system. In Rain, Ringo's explosive drumming was nearly inaudible. In Fixing a Hole, the harpsichord accompanying Paul McCartney's vocal was totally inaudible. Piano for the entire length of While My Guitar Gently Weeps? Missing. As you can probably guess, I could go on. 

Though all of this was out of my control, I apologized several times and was later admonished for overdoing the apology bit. Most of the people who spoke with me afterwards - or since - were kind, saying they enjoyed the presentation despite my difficulties. Others assured me they might not have noticed the glaring sound gaps had I not drawn attention to them. Am I evolved enough to say those kindnesses and reassurances - true or not - have helped me extract a lasting lesson from this fiasco? I am not. Above all, what remains with me a week later is an abiding frustration with technology. 

Catnip

Had someone asked me weeks ago if any reader of this blog had ever noticed a thematic similarity between any two of my posts, I would've laughed. I was reasonably confident any redundancy of mine would bypass even faithfully attentive readers. After all, having published almost 2700 posts since March 2011, there have been several instances when I could not recall something I'd written about until some relic had somehow been disinterred from my archives. I suspect the same may be true for anyone who has been at this blogging gig as persistently as I have. Though I use the search engine diligently to help me avoid repeating myself, every tool has limits.  

So, when a recent comment pointed out overlap between two recent posts mentioning my current East vs. West Coast dilemma, what happened? In a span of minutes, I was chastened I'd covered similar territory in a matter of weeks, flabbergasted someone had actually picked up on it, and finally, thrilled that same someone was paying attention. Fragile ego? Guilty as charged. In my defense? Name a single writer - famous or not - who doesn't want their work to reach people, however marginally. Catnip.

Special thanks to that reader for the comment; made my month. 

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.