Public Service Announcement: 2025

Which public service announcement affected you enough that you almost immediately changed a behavior?  

Years before becoming a vegetarian, I stopped eating veal almost immediately after spotting a PSA that described the brutally short lives of these defenseless animals. Forty-five years later, the photograph accompanying that PSA remains as clear to me as any I have ever seen. Don't recall who sponsored it nor do I remember where I first saw it. But that PSA was - for me - a life-altering experience. 

Over my seventy-five + years, PSA's have helped to shift public behavior in several key areas. They've helped reduce litter, alerted people to the dangers of nicotine and the risks associated with drinking during pregnancy, promoted recycling. Asked to identify a contemporary issue in need of a PSA in 2025, what would be your top priority? Do I have anything in mind? What do you think? But I'd rather hear your idea first.    

 

Swing Time

Smart authors like Zadie Smith frequently exhilarate and demoralize me. Depending on the kind of day I'm having, I can toggle from one to the other during a single sitting with one of her books.  

"At eighteen she was already expert at the older woman's art of fermenting rage, conserving it for later use."  

Swing Time (2016) demands and deserves a reader's full attention. The surface story of two childhood friends who drift apart growing into adulthood is straightforward. But in Smith's masterful hands, a simple premise becomes a novel of ideas. Her sharp insights, startling intelligence, muscular prose, and undeniable gift for storytelling are some of the elements that will entrance you from the first page.

"Maybe luxury is the easiest matrix to pass through. Maybe nothing is easier to get used to than money."

Having now read three of her novels, I'm confident saying Zadie Smith is one of the smartest authors I've ever read. If time were an unlimited resource, I would re-read her books several times because I'm certain doing so would bring me closer to understanding everything she is offering. But time isn't unlimited, hence the demoralizing aspect spoken of above; I long to be smart enough to get all of her ideas the first time through. On the other hand, that exhilaration I feel just as often when reading her? Man, what a gas that is. 

"...and the thin stream of their objections was completely subsumed by the quick-running currents of my mother's talk."

Reflections From The Bell Curve: On Beauty And Synaptic Sparks

Rushing and Hurrying

What could be more mundane than a large tractor trailer slowly making a turn onto a narrow suburban side street? 

And yet, being directly behind that truck as it maneuvered, I found myself thinking of how frequently I rush and hurry to no useful end. I wondered: What drives me to act this way? Short of a life and death emergency, what is the point of ever being in a rush? How much would I reduce my stress by slowing way down? What gets in the way of me more often acting as deliberately and purposefully as that truck driver did while making his turn? How much has hurrying ever enhanced my effectiveness? How much does rushing contribute to a tendency to quickly lose my patience?  

Will these reflections - all connected to observing that truck - stop me from mindlessly hurrying the next time? Probably not. But perhaps these wonderings will bubble up at some point in the future when I'm impatiently rushing for no reason. Good enough.  

Assist With a Reprise

Having several music geeks as regular readers of my blog has had clear benefits. Foremost among those benefits has been assistance these folks have provided when I'm developing or updating one of my music appreciation/history classes. Hence, my request below. As always, if I end up using any idea of yours - music geek or otherwise - your compensation as a consultant will be negotiated offline. 

Tunesmiths: The Ascendancy of Singer-Songwriters was developed in 2017 and subsequently delivered several times over the next few years. In the reprise I'll be delivering later this year, I'm considering which singer-songwriters to add to update the course a little. This will not be a wholesale re-write. I'm just tuning up (ahem) my six-hour course to potentially include a few singer-songwriters who've earned a significant musical spot alongside some of the giants who came of age from the early 60s through the late 70s. Your parameters/my request follows.

* Suggest only singer-songwriters who've made their name without having first been in a notable band. For example, I did not feature Neil Young (late of Buffalo Springfield, etc.) or Sting (late of Police) in my 2017 course and don't plan to add either to this reprise. (In a more contemporary vein, this rules out Beyonce, for example, late of Destiny's Child.) The 2017 version began - as will 2025 - with Dylan. And that version ended with Elvis Costello who has had a long, significant, and growth-filled run since his debut in the late 70s. Any suggestion you offer for this reprise must post-date Costello and also be close to the high musical bar he (and Dylan) have set.   

* Except for Stevie Wonder, my 2017 version was pretty white. If you have suggestions to help me with this deficit, I'm listening. But please remember: Debut after 1980 and has since demonstrated musical staying power. 

* Last parameter: For any suggestion you make, please provide at least three songs that you feel make your case for the importance and the lasting appeal of your nominated singer-songwriter.

OK, get busy. I thank you and my brother - music geek par excellence - thanks you more. I've worn out his brain since I began developing and teaching these courses in 2014. Poor guy needs a break. 

Before the Hoopla Begins

I did not lose anyone close to me twenty-four years ago. Our national nightmare touched me when I learned a day or two after of the death of the father of one of my daughter's sixth grade classmates. 

It happened that I was in the middle of teaching a multi-week class on leadership at Northern State Prison in nearby Newark, N.J. that same week. From the windows of my classroom, even from that distance, dust from the debris was still visible, hovering in the air.  

For months leading up to this date next year, I suspect we'll all be inundated with reminders about the 25th anniversary. I'm certain most Americans - least of all those who lost someone close to them - do not need the hoopla attached to "big" anniversaries as a reminder to honor those who were taken on this date. And though I don't often think of the father of my daughter's classmate, this moment my thoughts are with his surviving family. I hope they've found a way to continue to heal.

So Far Away

Over these first eleven months of his life, either his grandmother or both of us have managed to spend extended time with our first grandchild almost every other month despite him living on the other side of the country. In addition, our daughter makes sure we "see" our grandson nearly every day either via phone calls using FaceTime or the pictures she regularly uploads onto Aura. The screen displaying up-to-date rotating pics sits on our kitchen counter, delivering continuous joy. Though I frequently disdain technology, I acknowledge the vital function both FaceTime & Aura serve having a grandchild so far away.  

And that distance felt most acute late yesterday as it dawned on me that my first Grandparent's Day had passed without me holding that little man close. I "saw" him but couldn't touch him. I heard his giggle but couldn't tickle him to prompt that giggle. I wasn't able to watch him react to any of the songs on the sixty-hour Spotify playlist I've constructed for his musical education. (Another benefit of technology; might be time to modify some of my reflexive disdain.) 

I hope every grandparent reading this post savored every moment spent yesterday with grandchildren. For those grandparents who have any of their grandchildren nearby: I sincerely hope you know how lucky you are. I'm counting down the days until late September when I get to belatedly celebrate my first Grandparent's Day reading to that little guy, playing the guitar for him, feeding and putting him to bed. I'll be thrilled just being in the same room with him. 

Olive & Lucy

I've never been a big fan of novels that feature a recurring fictional character. But now that I've read five of her uniformly excellent books over a period of nine years, Elizabeth Strout has made me a believer. I've become attached enough to Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton that I'm committed to following both wherever Strout takes them.

Lucy by the Sea (2022) is the third of Strout's books featuring Lucy that has thoroughly enchanted me although it's the fourth (of five) in the series. That fact alone is exciting because it means #3 (Oh William!) and #5 (Tell Me Everything) will bring me even closer to Lucy when I read them. Also, a trusted reading soulmate has raved to me about Tell Me Everything. Bonus: Olive Kitteridge appears offstage briefly in Lucy by the Sea. In that moment of pure reading magic, I felt like I'd bumped into an old friend. 

Strout's unquestionable mastery has never once let me down. I cannot recommend her too highly. If you begin with either Olive Kitteridge (2008) or My Name is Lucy Barton (2016), I suspect you too will be unable to let go. And after you get hooked, let's talk, OK?

 Reflections From The Bell Curve: Olive And I And Ouch

Reflections From The Bell Curve: Straight Into The Top Fifty

The Rest of the Megillah

Reflections From The Bell Curve: Kosher? Only This Bell Curve Maven Knows

Call me a putz, but because the post above has been one of my most popular since it was published eight years ago, I decided only a schlub would give up after one try. Besides, a few comments made on that post reminded this schmo of some critical Yiddish gems he uses regularly, stuff left out of the first part of this megillah.    

I ask you, what better word is there than schmear to describe what to do with the cream cheese before you begin noshing on a bagel? While on the subject, unless you know bupkis about food, how does anyone survive without blintzes and latkes? And no, I've never been concerned about what those foods might do to the size of my tush. Thanks to my forebears, the heft of my tuchus was a given before my first knish or the start of any collection of music-related tchotchkes. My shiksa daughter will attest to the fact that the size of my tush has little to do with consumption of kugel and the like. I'm grateful my schnozz falls within a more normative range.  

I'll conclude my spiel - like the first - lest any noodge accuse me of wearing out my welcome. But first I want to thank a fellow hiker - a real mensch - for providing me with schnorrer, the latest addition to my Yiddish treasure chest. He gave me that jewel recently via a comment made on my original 2017 post. I must admit, his long-delayed comment got me all verklempt. Mazel tov, John.