Mind Games from Texas 1975 to Brooklyn 2015

Do kids still send handwritten mash notes to one another, slipped into school lockers or textbooks, passed hand-to-hand in class, delivered by giggling messengers as in an Elizabethan comedy? Or, in a time when young people are besotted and savaged by instant messaging, texting, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok, are written declarations a hopelessly passé technology dating back to their grandparents in the 1970s, if not older?

I don't know, but I can speak of the spine-tingling impact of anonymous written communications. Consider these two stories separated by 40 years.

On a visit to the Brooklyn Museum in 2015, I checked my backpack in the lobby. When I retrieved it several hours later, I noticed a piece of paper tucked into its outside webbing. The page had been torn from a museum map and said this:

I caught you staring at me from across the room but you didn’t come right over. Were you being coy, well it worked. Maybe you felt the need to see the others, knowing that I would seize your full attention. You held your hands behind your back, resisting your desire to touch me. I longed for you to come close but we had to keep our distance under the watchful eye of another. You slowed, staying long enough to see all sides of me. You quietly traced my contours with your looking. I am wondering how I appeared in your eyes. I don’t know if I am projecting but you seemed to be trying to uncover something, as if I held a secret for you. So did you get what you wanted from me? Course I am left with the lingering feeling of our encounter.

That’s all. No address, no name, no next step, no closure. After my pulse returned to normal, I wet a finger and ran it across a word to see if this was, in fact, an actual written note and not a pre-printed piece of performance art that a transgressive artist had photocopied and stuck into my backpack. 

The black letter smeared slightly. The writing was real, even if what was written had no relation to the reality of that evening at the museum, where I strolled with my girlfriend the whole time. The note could only have been slipped into my backpack in the check room. I wouldn't be surprised if the artist observed me finding and reading the note.

I’m left with a mystery of identity and intent that cannot be solved. It made such an impression on me that I wrote about it then, and now, following an open mic appearance about it last Friday, I'm writing about it again, with an update you can see in the comments of the original piece. 

Mind games—these had happened before with the same confounding sense of something beckoning from just beyond my reach. The Brooklyn episode happened 40 years after other notes popped up in my locker at Mission High School in Texas.  The similarity in anonymous, teasing targeting is remarkable. Somebody knows how to get inside my head, first in 1975 when I was a teen, then 40 years later. The mysteries of hidden and malicious human contact linger on. I knew back then I was getting played but, to paraphrase Shakespeare's opening of Twelfth Night, if anonymous notes be the food of (imagined) love, play on. 

Adolescent note writing directed at me started in junior high, when a messenger handed me a passionate declaration of love from a classmate, with her real name. That was obviously a goof because that girl and I never interacted and I had no inkling of any interest from her to, as she wrote, "go around with me, I really love you Van."

Anyway, this note business heated up in the steamy locker area of Mission High School with notes bearing the initials “M.R.” After the first one I somehow expressed my curiosity to M.R. with a response in my locker. She (or he?) responded with loopy adolescent female notes that eventually make references to her buck teeth and big ass. The piece de resistance was a hand-colored piece of cardboard, painted on one side with a stylized "W" and written on the other. Even if a fraud, the sign showed a high attention to detail and makes me wonder about which of my artistically inclined friends might have conceived this teenage masterpiece.

The back of the card said, "Someone lost something, all yours, FINDERS KEEPERS. This is a suviner from an admirer 'M.R.'"

I never heard more. I doubt M.R. used her (or his) actual initials. It could be one person, it could have been a group project from mean girls who wanted to see how I'd react. I imagine I responded exactly the way they wanted me to, like a hungry catfish swallowing a lure in the Rio Grande. Catfishing, today's kids might want to know, existed with nondigital forms of social media.  I’ll post this on Facebook—maybe M.R. is on my friends list. I never heard a bashful confession at high school reunions in Mission in the decades that followed, where liquor and loud music should have loosened up tongues and memories enough to reveal the real M.R. Am I being obsessive? You might say I'm Captain Ahab and M.R. is my now-postmenopausal Moby-Dick. Thar she blows! A hump like a snow hill!

Who was M.R., really? Maria, Mandy, Melissa, Marisol, Rosie, Renee, Rodriguez, Rivera, Ruiz, Reyna? Almost certainly none of them. Who was that sultry and oh-so-evocative Brooklyn note siren? I don’t know. However, the Brooklyn story has a coda that surprised me as much as the original letter. In 2020, five years after my original blog post about the note, I received an anonymous blog comment that led to this exchange:

Hi - I was just going through old papers and found this exact piece of paper amongst my things. I had forgotten about it until now. Like you, it was placed in my backpack when I visited the Brooklyn Museum in 2015. I thought it was real as well but now I’m thinking it was performance art. I haven’t been able to find anything else online about it. I wonder who the artist is!?

I'm curious: how did you happen to find my post on this mysterious episode, after five years?

I typed the text into Google search and your post popped up. I’m thinking about contacting the Brooklyn Museum to see if they know anything about it.

I copied part of the note’s text into a search engine. Only my blog post mentioned it. How many other such notes slid into Brooklyn backpacks that night? Could the anonymous commenter be none other than the mystery writer herself continuing the game from a safe distance? Or did M.R. teleport herself 40 years into the future from Texas to Brooklyn for one more round of teasing? While I doubt I'll ever know (or M.R. even remembers), the curious quest continues. 

Maybe M.R. will read this and IM me on Facebook—the preferred channel for us old people these days. 

Reading the Actuarial Tables

Who’s ever looked at those online longevity calculators to see how long you might live? I have. As of a week ago, my results were: 83 from the BBC, 84.2 by Social Security, and an encouraging 93 by the more detailed NorthwestMutual Life Longevity Indicator, thanks to my boring but healthy lifestyle. It sounds right; my father lived to 92, and I exercise a lot more than he ever did.

Of course, nobody has a lock on another day of this life. Five men I know died in their 60s in recent months. Last Friday marked 39 years since my mother died at 63, cancer. Nobody knows the day or hour. Except in memory, time’s arrow flies in one direction only, endlessly converting the infinite future into our limited present and past.

Let me explain these musings on mortality and “how long.” They respond to this question: does it make sense for me to get lifetime memberships to associations or lifetime magazine subscriptions? Who makes out like a bandit on the deal, me or the publisher?

I got hooked on the notion of lifetime membership in 1984, when I stayed in youth hotels during a month in Europe. I became an annual member of American Youth Hostels (AYH then, HI USA now, part of Hostelling International), then learned about a lifetime deal. I was still in my 20s and ready for globe-hopping adventures involving hostels, so why not? My lifetime membership card is dated January 29, 1987, I was 29 years old. 

The last time I used my membership was October 6, 2001, on Amsterdam Avenue in New York I stayed at the AYH building there alone, by the way, after seeing my father and his wife. I was unemployed and my life was in a shambles and in no rush to get home to the suburbs. The group still sells life membership for $250. I can't even remember what I paid back then, $150? Still, I'm glad I got that membership and supported the organization. That card's still valid, you know.

I kept my eyes open for other opportunities. I sometimes bought the quarterly magazine Jewish Currents. Founded 1946 by communists—that’s right, by fanatical proponents of godless Marxism-Leninism, bound by strict Party discipline!—it now describes itself as “a magazine committed to the rich tradition of thought, activism, and culture of the Jewish left, and the left more broadly.” I like Currents' independence and ability to show me new perspectives. I sprang for a subscription in 2015 and even pitched then-editor Lawrence Bush on an article about my memoir, A Kosher Dating Odyssey. Bush wrote a pleasant rejection email, noting that a book with the word “kosher” in the title wouldn’t be “the cup of tea” of the Currents’ highly secular readership.

When I saw Currents offered a lifetime subscription for $300 in 2016, I checked the actuarial tables and decided I had enough years left to make the deal attractive. Hence, Currents will be rolling into my mailbox until at least the 2040s, so I hope. Or even 2050, if Northwest Mutual got it right and I keep up my fitness routine.

I found few magazines offer lifetime subscriptions. The most prominent: National Geographic for $895. That sounds like a great gift for kids, but I can read it at the library, which I never do anyway. Websites offer lifetime subscriptions to cloud storage services, but the way websites come and go, I prefer to use my 5-terabyte external hard drive for my scurrilous writings and thousands of pictures of cats and the Katonah train station.

Last month, I learned about a great offer from The Jewish Press. This is an Orthodox and highly conservative weekly based in Brooklyn, about as opposite of Jewish Currents as possible. I never subscribed but for decades I’d occasionally buy it to read about the wisdom of sages, advice for singles and their anxious parents, politics and global updates on antisemitism. The Press was offering a four-year subscription for $200. That worked out to $1 on issue, way better than the $3 cover price. After years as a “fellow traveler,” to user a term surely known by the politically aware folks at Currents, I signed up. Its 100-plus page issues roll into my mailbox every Saturday. 

Four years will get me to 2026. After that, who knows? If I'm still around, maybe I'll sign up for another four years while hanging out at a youth hostel during a globe-hopping trek. After all, I still want to get a lot of mileage out of that lifetime membership card. 

2022 Highlight: Cutting the Cable Cord

 What do I remember about 2022 and plan for 2023? My retirement funds tanked, inflation gnawed at the family budget, I got Covid at a wedding in September, I spent more time on Twitter in 10 days than I had in the past 10 years, I had knee surgery in November to fix a torn meniscus, some of the people I voted for in November actually got elected, and I kept working on blog posts and performing at open mics.

But for real lifestyle impact going into 2023, I think of 2022 as the year we cut the cable cord. My partner Naomi and I had Verizon FIOS for years, topped off by Netflix, Amazon Prime, Showtime and HBO. While I liked the series we watched on streaming services (Babylon Berlin, Russian Dolls, The Girls from Ipanema), I’d still use broadcast to check in on the local news, Spanish-language programming like telenovelas and the talent contest Tengo Talento, Mucho Talento to test my limited Spanish understanding, PBS programming, and—my weekend treat—football and baseball games. Mostly I mindlessly clicked around expecting to find something to hold my interest among the hours of advertising-clogged dreck. Well, I did like watching that Canadian show about big-rig blizzard rescues, Highway Thru Hell. 

But this fall, as we overhauled our Verizon spending, we dropped FIOS, the landline and network/cable TV, but kept the Internet services. Roku became our source for programming, along with streaming channels.

Imagine my shock when after we did the Big Snip that I couldn’t get the World Series! No Houston Astros, no more college football, no more Greg Gutfeld on Fox News, no more On Patrol: Live on Reelz, no more Dallas Cowboys! I felt a physical withdrawal at lacking access to enjoyable programs. The compulsion to plop down on the couch and mindlessly slog through the digital wasteland was stronger than I ever suspected.

My response: like any resourceful American, I adjusted to changing circumstances. I found I could listen to baseball on the radio, just like I did in the early 1970s. I found a radio station, KURV in Edinburg, Texas, that broadcast the Astros online so I tuned in to that station on my computer. For those rare moments where I want to watch the local news (mostly crime, celebrities and funny animal videos), I can get New York’s CBS News on a Roku app. Saturday Night Live? I can see segments online, if I ever cared again to watch that tediously predictable show.

Roku is a source of wonders on our TV monitor. We get the PBS Passport for documentaries and British crime dramas. The library-supported Kanopy service keeps me stocked in film noir, musicals, Italian neo-realism, French New Wave and European Holocaust fare I can’t find elsewhere. They’re the standard entertainment during my morning exercise routine; it may take a week to work through lengthy masterpieces like L’Avventura and Rocco and His Brothers, but I like the black-and-white company at dawn. As the three films at the bottom of the screen shot below show, I'm into director Lina Wertmuller these days. 

On the aural front, I recently discovered a Roku app called iTuner, with access to radio stations worldwide. As a music fan, this is tremendous. I now listen to broadcasts from Israel, Brazil, Mexico, Haiti, Portugal, Italy, Cuba, France and Cape Verde. Combined with the equally awesome and genre-searchable radio.garden, I get all the music I can handle.

With brain cells and attention freed up, I’ve increased my time both working on my long-gestating mystery novel and also reading novels. I just started The Lying Life of Adults, by Elena Ferrante. She wrote the novels that inspired the HBO series My Brilliant Friend, which we’re watching and enjoying.

As time passed, I felt less and less of a pull to watch favorites. Sports events on TV all take way too much time, so I never watched a game from beginning anyway. The others aren't so essential I want them back; I've engaged with other materials. The detox process is complete.

So, the bottom line: For 2023 I’ll use my expansion of free time to write and perform more. And if the Dallas Cowboys get into the Super Bowl, I’m sure I can listen to the game on the radio.

Learning to Read, 1851 and 1914

Everybody on my open mic events likes to read (since you’re reading this, you do, too). A love of words and reading is the gateway drug, so to speak, to writing—and we know that that leads to open mics, tangy pseudonymous blog posts and related scurrilous activities. So I thought, what was your gateway to a love of words, reading and writing? Reel memory back to those earliest influences. Dr. Seuss, Dick and Jane, the Bobbsey Twins, the Poky Little Puppy, picture books about baby animals or dinosaurs? Children’s Bible Stories? A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson? What were mine?

Let’s wind back to 1961 and the book my landlady back in Texas used to teach me to read when I was three. That was The Arnold Primer, copyright 1901 by Silver Burdett and Company. The author was Sarah Louise Arnold, “Dean of Simmons College; formerly Supervisor of Schools, Boston, Massachusetts, and Joint Author of ‘Stepping Stones to Literature.'” This Arnold Primer bears a precise script signature, date and location: Joseph Holliday Spilman, Mission, Texas, September 14, 1914."

It opens with “A word to the children, to be read to them by the Teacher.” The teacher would say:

“Children, here is a new book for you. It is a picture book and a story book. You have bright eyes to see the pictures and you have ears to hear the stories. Would you like to learn to read the stories for yourself? . . . The primer will tell you about Ned, and Kate, and Dot and Dan, other little boys and girls—about their toys, their games, their homes, and their friends.”

The book has charming photographs and etchings of children in late Victorian clothes, like plucky Ned in his sailor suit on the first page with the epic opening lines, “This is Ned. How do you do, Ned?” A literary-minded passage:

Kate can read and write.

She can write with pen and ink.

See her pen and ink.

She can write a letter. See her letter.

Can you write?

I treasure the memories of learning about Ben’s drum, Kate’s kitty, Dan and sister Ella, Uncle Jack’s cow Jess and their well-ordered world. By the end of the book, students are reading stories, learning cursive writing (a lost art these days, so I read) and even getting a look at the “manual alphabet" using hand shapes to create letters.

Now consider a book I recent acquired, The School Reader, Second Book, part of the Sanders Series of School Books. With a copyright of 1840, this copy goes back to November 1851. That’s because a man or, more likely, a boy, named Lewis B. Richards wrote his elegant signature several times in the front of the book along with the date. Lewis’s signature could have been from the Declaration of Independence.

The School Reader is a window into another era. Each lesson begins with a vocabulary list and then a story, with a strong moral lesson, including Bible stories like Jacob and Esau. Readers learned how to be a good girl and boy, the perils of betting, kindness to animals, finding lost lambs, being friends with school mates who are outsiders—timeless lessons all.

The details of some stories can match anything found in Edith Wharton’s tales of upper-class lifestyles such as The Age of Innocence. Consider Lesson VI, “Too Late for a Ride:”

Mrs. Morris had asked her little girl, at least 10 times to make haste and drink her tea, but she did not mind her.

She did nothing but play silly tricks; sometimes stirring her tea as fast as she could, to make a tea leaf turn round in the cup, then pouring it into the saucer, she would put bits of crust to swim in it and then call them her boats and her ships . . .

Her mother left the room, and, when she came back, she had on her bonnet and shawl, ready to ride.

“But, said she, “Charlotte, my daughter I am very sorry you have been so naughty; for I meant to have taken you to the gardens with me but you are now too late, and must stay at home.”  

Then Charlotte began to drink her tea, and to eat so fast that she almost choked herself.

But all her haste was of no use, “For,” said her mother, “your aunt is at the door with her carriage waiting, and as she has been so kind as to call for us, there must be no delay.”

So away went her mother, and though Charlotte screamed as loud as she could to go with her, she found it was all in vain, for she was too late.

Her mother was soon too far off to hear her, and the young Miss was glad to hide herself up stairs, that the girls in the kitchen might not laugh at her.

This was a very good lesson for Charlotte: for, although she lost her ride, she was always careful after this, to obey her mother, as soon as she was spoken to.”

“That the girls in the kitchen might not laugh at her”—we’re in Downton Abbey territory here! And I'm enchanted that the story used the word “naughty.” The last time I saw that word must have been in an instant messaging chat on JDate, circa 2007.

What do new readers enjoy these days? I should ask my young relatives in Texas. I sent them a picture book, The 5 O'Clock Band, for Christmas, signed by illustrator Bryan Collier. My son learned to read at an early age as his mother and I constantly read to him. He later developed an appreciation for the Captain Underpants books. I’m not sure what moral lessons could be drawn from that series, but maybe I just need to do a close post-modern metatextual analysis of Captain Underpants.

Gazing at these books, I am borne back ceaselessly into the past (now where did I read that line?) of 60 years ago, learning those letters, figuring out how to write, soon checking out armloads of books at the local library. Those early lessons helped me gave me a good grounding in values. Today’s children could benefit from that kind of moral instruction as a bulwark against what splashes on them from sources that Lewis Richards and Joe Spilman couldn't even imagine.

Reality Knees a Procrastinator Where It Hurts

In her 2021 book The Secret to Superhuman Strength, graphic memoirist Alison Bechdel describes her fitness obsessions. In one scene, she injures her right knee. “I don’t think it’s serious,” she says in a panel. Two years later, she talks to her doctor about the knee that didn’t improve.

Oh how I can identify with that. I read about Bechdel’s knee the day I learned I needed surgery for my aching right knee. To get to the news peg of this piece, I had that surgery Friday morning to stitch up my torn meniscus. Three months earlier something went haywire in my right knee on a walk in new shoes. It didn’t improve and I was loathe to cut back on my pandemic-inspired walking routine (10,000 steps the daily goal). Finally I limped to an urgent care center and the doctor said it seemed like a strained ligament. He suggested x-rays. I didn’t do anything except wear the tight knee brace he gave me. A strained ligament would heal, right?

“I didn’t do anything” has been a loser life strategy since I was a kid. Science projects, college classes and papers, one anxiety-wracked work issue after another, relationship discord. Through procrastination, I delayed but never avoided the inevitable reckoning. As I often tell others, hope is not a strategy. I should know. You can ignore the throbbing of psychic or physical pain for only so long. And then the pain doubles. Or triples. Several times I reached the edge of a nervous breakdown because I simply didn't reach out for help before I reached code red. This caused pain for me and the people who cared for me.

Books have been written on overcoming procrastination. I’ve read them. I knew I had a problem; notes from a summer 2001 therapy session include my plea, “Learn to take action!” And I have learned, in ways that improved my life. I’m in a better place now that I was 20 or 30 years ago. But still, a looming decision can paralyze me.

Case in point: my knee. After the urgent care visit, I soldiered along with more walking. The throb was more an annoyance than major pain; in other words, I thought I could manage the problem rather than get to the root of it. That's not a very effective crisis strategy. I even went whitewater rafting. I’m surprised that thrilling but bonkers experience didn’t put me on a medevac ride to the ER. Then I saw my internist on another matter and mentioned the problem. He immediately ordered X-rays and gave me the names of specialists. I STILL delayed, until after a weekend of whomping pain I got a clue and made an appointment with an orthopedist. He looked at the x-rays and sent me for a high-priority MRI. We met again after the MRI. The verdict: definitely a torn meniscus. He outlined the prep for the procedure, what he’d be doing, and the recovery.

And Friday afternoon I had the surgery. The surgery went well and I'm moving around with a walking stick. Now I’m sitting here with a bag of ice on my knee. I joined Lift Fitness gym and will go there on Sunday to start biking (I'm easy to spot there, look for the old guy in the baggy sweatsuit). But I'll do no major walking until the doctor clears me for that. Longer-term, I need to swap lower-impact exercise for those obsessive 10,000-step days loping over hill and dale at the Ward Pound Ridge Reservation.

Did procrastination make the knee problems worse, or simply prolong the inevitable surgery? I certainly felt daily discomfort with almost every step. I had heard and hedged on suggestions from my partner to get an X-ray and consult an orthopedist sooner—advice I would absolutely give to others. What was my worry? Was it the cost? I have health insurance. That I didn't know what to do? Long ago I mastered the ability to pick up the phone and call my medical practice located about 300 yards away from home. Was it fear of admitting I made a mistake? Walking is not a mistake! A misplaced skepticism about advice? A lack of confidence in my ability to cope? Fear of bad news and the unknown? I know from hard experience that delay often makes the news worse. Master life coach Vito Corleone had a wise and effective approach toward difficult life issues: "Mr. Corleone is a man who insists on hearing bad news immediately."

Editorial consultant Jerry gives me pointers on my open mic script as I ice my right knee.

Ultimately, once the process began, I moved fast, x-ray to orthopedist to MRI to surgery to recovery. The dam of delay broke. And how did I feel taking action? The same way I have in 100 percent of similar situations: utter relief that I did something to address the problem rather than stick my head up my tush. And this starts what can be called a “virtuous cycle” of action on other fronts. One involves learning how to use the Canon 40D camera I bought in 2012 and have barely used, and tinkering with my retirement savings allocation, now that I’m closer to retirement age. 

Final thoughts? I'm grateful I got help from caring professionals. And I'll try to remember my note to myself from 2001: "Learn to take action!" That flood of relief from tackling the latest challenge shouldn't be a one-off, the low point before the roller-coaster of procrastination starts again. Temporary relief can be, in fact, a grievous form of self-deception. Rather, I want this to be the pattern for whatever comes next. Because ultimately, inaction is THE most painful and self-defeating form of action. That's one lesson we all learn eventually. 

Do that and your friends and family and I and Alison Bechdel will all support you.

Whitewater Rafting, Chernobyl and the Tale of the Moroccan Dentist

Like so many stories, this one involves a cab ride. In late September I traveled to Charlotte, North Carolina, for an in-person gathering of my far-flung team at work. We haven’t met since 2019 and I looked forward to getting to know new members and reconnect with the veterans. A highlight of the schedule: A trip to the U.S. National Whitewater Center. Based on the website, its visitors are the kind of people who would be featured in Outdoors magazine. The center enabled our hardy band of white-collar proposal writers, designers, managers and administrators to challenge ourselves by hiking, biking, rope walks, kayaking, whitewater rafting and zip lining.

I’ve never done zip lining or whitewater rafting. Rowing and canoeing as a Boy Scout 50 years ago I could handle, but online scenes of rafts plunging up and down in the center's foaming waters felt way too close to the conclusion of Moby-Dick. I’m ready for Social Security—at my age could I summon rafting savvy from deep in my reptilian survival instinct? I could have opted for hiking, but, well, you know what the kids say, YOLO—you only live once. I brought up a quick-dry t-shirt, swim trunks, Teva sandals and a sturdy band to hold my glasses on in case I went rafting and plunged into the raging waves. Responding to my doubts about whether I wanted to risk it, my younger brother Cooper texted me, “Come on!! Try something different!”

My reply: “Blub blub.”

Finally, I opted for the newness of whitewater rafting and zip lining. The guides at the Whitewater Center were extremely safety conscious, so I felt confident about taking the plunges, in the literal and figurative senses. My big concern was keeping my glasses on in the raft and not bonking my head on a rock if I got thrown into the water. I’m happy to report I stayed in the raft and the glasses stayed on my head. 

Next I did zip lining. After at least 30 minutes of safety prep, I climbed up the 100-foot launch tower for the Double Dare zip line and finally enjoyed 45 seconds (each direction) of soundless gliding over the water course and islands. I barely had time to orient myself to what I observed. But I found the airborne challenge exhilarating; the phrases "zipless" and "fear of flying" mingled in my mind.

I found myself musing, the experience took a half hour of talking and arranging, followed by a minute of ecstatic flying— so similar to other memorable adult endeavors, but that's a matter for another post (or another book). 

Daring zip-liner after challenging his fear of flying.

By that evening, when our team headed to the Optimist Mill food court for dinner, the afternoon of the strenuous life was already passing from activity to legend. During the cab ride, I said to colleagues, “I can take whitewater rafting and zip lining off my bucket list. I also want to go to Chernobyl, but that’s moved down my list, due to current circumstances there.”

One new colleague, Tanya, exclaimed, “You don’t want to go to Chernobyl! I grew up around there! Don't do it!”

The cabbie’s ears perked up. “You’re from Ukraine? I speak Russian!”

And he did. The driver and Tonya amiably chatted for a while then switched to English. Eager to join in, I offered that my paternal grandfather was born in the shtetl of Vishnevets, so I have that connection to Ukraine. I also talked about the itinerary of my 1987 trip to the USSR (Moscow, Tblisi, Sochi, Leningrad). The driver then shared more about his background. He came to the U.S. from Morocco, where he had been a dentist. He held up his cell phone showing a photo of him performing dental surgery. So he wasn’t jiving.

I finally asked, “How did somebody from Morocco learn Russian?” I was thinking, maybe he was an exchange student during the final years of the USSR, taking part in what the propagandists called the friendship of nations.

“Online dating,” he said.

“I can identify with that, that’s how I got interested in studying Brazilian Portuguese,” I quipped.

Besides English and Russian, our multilingual driver also spoke Arabic, French and Spanish, skills that must serve him very well while ferrying passengers around Mecklenburg County. He loved living in the U.S. and still returned to Morocco. He was the kind of tale-spinning, highly observant cabbie that pops up in movies. And here he was, in real life. What would have been a prosaic mile-long trip turned into a cross-culture, cross-languages adventure that I’ll always associate with whitewater rafting. 

And I also connect the ride to the delayed bucket list trip to war-torn isotope-ravaged Chernobyl. Just between us, I still want to get there one of these days, Tanya's well-informed warning notwithstanding. You know—YOLO. 

The wild waters, ready to welcome humans in rafts. 

The Gun in My Hand

From a young age, I knew I didn’t like guns. This made me an outlier growing up in the 1960s in Mission, on the Texas-Mexico border. That realization came to me through a three-day ritual around Labor Day: the white-winged dove hunting season in the brushy fields, orchards and muddy roads along the Rio Grande. My mother, younger brother Cooper and I would go with friends to these massive social occasions. The shotguns boomed, the birds fell and I hated it all. I didn’t mind the killing so much as the noise. To this day I startle easily, and every shot made me cover my ears.

Guns were integral to the culture. Guys at Mission High School had gun racks in their pickups. Photos of the homecoming bonfire’s stack of wood showed my peers guarding it with shotguns. It seemed like just teen macho posturing then, but insanity now. Would they start blasting away if boys from McAllen High School tried to ignite the bonfire early?

McAllen, Texas, July 2011

Local members of the National Rifle Association held safety instruction at my Boy Scout troop, so I knew the basics of gun safety. First rule: treat every gun as if it were loaded, even if you think it’s not, and never point it at anybody unless you intend to shoot. I Iearned early on the risk of ignoring the rules. A teen showing off a gun shot and killed the brother of an acquaintance of mine.

Accidents are one form of gun violence. I felt the visceral pain of another form. My family was very close with another family. Gretchen was my mother’s dear friend, and her son John was a year older than me. We played baseball, rode bikes, shot hoops in their driveway and shared Sunday lunches. I didn’t know Gretchen’s husband Melvin much. He was a mostly silent, disabled oil field worker who read the NRA magazine American Rifleman.

In the early 1970s, Melvin used one of his guns to commit suicide. We had rushed to the house before John arrived from somewhere and Gretchen had to tell him his father had killed himself. I remember John walking in and looking around, wondering why people were in the house.

John struggled in high school, joined the Navy and eventually worked as a PE teacher at an elementary school. Then one day he disciplined some girls over something. They accused him of molesting them. He didn’t but the accusation was devastating. Soon, John killed himself. Did he use a gun of his father’s? I don’t know. I have learned that if you’re suicidal and have access to a gun, most likely you’ll succeed if you shoot yourself. Almost 90 percent of attempts are fatal. No other method is as lethal. As we’ve all learned far too often lately in places like Uvalde (almost 300 miles northwest of Mission) the combination of guns, poor impulse control and mental health issues is a witch’s brew.

I’m still aghast at an example of my own gun handling. Home from college in 1976, I drove with Cooper down to the levees south of Mission for target practice. We used his pistol, a Colt Woodsman .22 that he bought from a friend of our mom’s for $30. Photos show I’m clearly enjoying myself. In one I’m aiming the gun right at Cooper. I cringe to think of that instant, when everything could have gone terribly wrong. I failed to treat the gun in my hands with the respect a weapon always demands. 

Mission, Texas December 1976

Fast forward 27 years to 2003. I visit Cooper in Houston. He takes me to a shooting range. I’d never been to one. The sound is deafening. Thousands of brassy shell cartridges fill barrels and crunch underfoot. I’m hesitant at first but I shoot at targets with a Glock pistol and then a rifle. 

Again, more photos. This time, no fooling around. Something about the novel action of hefting, aiming and firing that Glock stirred me. I had a very memorable time with this peak male bonding, so wildly out of my comfort zone. It’s worth noting that on the same trip I bought my first digital camera, a one megapixel Vivitar Vivicam. I instantly became a fan of digital photography and I’m always packing a camera.

That was my first and only session at a shooting range. None of my gun-savvy friends and family who’d want to take me shooting live within a thousand miles of my home. Anyway, I’d rather hold a digital camera in my hand than a gun. The contrasts between cameras and guns are stark. Cameras make way less noise, I can keep shooting until I get the result I want, I can fix mistakes with editing or just delete them, it doesn’t matter if somebody points a camera back at me, and I’m much better at aiming a camera. I’ll take a Canon over a Glock any day of the week.

I never wanted to pluck and eat whitewings, anyway.

Houston, May 2003

Underground Radio Memories Meet the Internet: From Bang to Erik Satie

If you’re 60 or older, you grew up before the Web made music widely available. You heard something on the radio and you bought the record if you wanted to keep it. Otherwise, the music vanished. And if you heard something once and didn’t remember the band or song title, you were out of luck. You were left chasing the wisp of an aural moment that you could not retrieve.

When I heard and liked music pre-Internet, the drive to acquire it was strong. The 1974 movie Chinatown entranced me but I could never find the soundtrack composed by Jerry Goldsmith. Even when I lived in New York, the mighty Tower Records didn’t stock it. Finally, on a 1984 trip in Europe, I found the soundtrack in the Virgin Megastore in London. I snagged a copy for 18 pounds and very carefully carried it back on my flight on Virgin Atlantic to my studio apartment in Brooklyn. With the theme and 1930s classics “I Can’t Get Started” and “The Way You Look Tonight,” it moved my musical interests towards what’s now called The Great American Songbook. My only regret is I didn’t buy every copy I could get my hands on, since they sell for a mint online.

Radio listening also brought me experiences that took decades to unwind. I once won a contest held by the big Top 40 station in my area, KRIO-AM in McAllen, Texas. This was in 1972 and my mother drove me to the station to get my prize, an album titled Bang by the group of the same name. I was aghast, expecting something by, say, Steppenwolf or Deep Purple. Nope, I could only take Bang. Spinning the platter on our stereo back home, I found it sluggish and I didn’t keep it long. The group vanished and I never could find out anything about Bang online, which sounds impossible, but true—until, literally, I tried again while writing this piece and found the group’s website. The site provides enough videos and tracks to slake my interest. This year marks its 50^th anniversary and an anniversary album is in the works. 

The website shows that Bang album cover, which looks just the way I remember it from a half-century ago. I dove right in to listening to the music and I can’t say my opinion changed. Still, I give the band a lot of credit for recording several albums and touring, and hanging on to do a golden anniversary album. At best, Bang reaches the level of early Grand Funk Railroad and Black Sabbath. Bang probably delivers more, well, bang for the buck in a live setting than on vinyl.

By the early 1970s music my interests had matured past the 3-minute pop delights of KRIO to more sophisticated music then heard on KBFM of Edinburg, Texas. One program played what was then called underground music on the show “The Enchanted Forest,” hosted by a DJ who called himself Yosemite. You can’t get more early 70s than “The Enchanted Forest” hosted by Yosemite, right?? The show played the long versions of Doors and Yes songs. Sometimes an unknown band whacked me upside the head. Yosemite once played material by a band called Jade Warrior. As the name suggests, the music had Japanese colorings. My teen imagination assumed the group was from Japan and made awesome music replete with exotic drumming and flutes. Alas, I could never find anything by Jade Warrior. 

Then I started researching this column and of course Jade Warrior popped up. Far from being sons of the Land of the Rising Sun, Jade Warrior was an English progressive rock band with interests in African and Japanese music. Thus, the name did make sense, as did songs with titles like “Three Horned Dragon King" and "Minnamato's Dream.” The albums made solid background listening with those groovy 70s names, Floating World, Last Autumn’s Dream and Way of the Sun, and I can hear what dazzled me as a high school student. While I liked the memory of Jade Warrior more than the YouTube reality, I might dip into the catalog if the spirit of the samurai moves me.

The Internet did help me circle back to a single obscure reference in a popular album. One of the very first albums my brother Cooper and I got was the self-titled second album from Blood, Sweat & Tears, released in January 1969. As pre-teens, we didn’t really connect with the first cut, the “Variations on a Theme by Erik Satie" (1st and 2nd Movements). Songs like “Smiling Phases,” “God Bless the Child” and the disturbing (if you’re a kid) “And When I Die” written by Laura Nyro were and are more accessible, with lyrics.

Still, the title lodged in my brain for decades, as I asked myself,  "Who is Erik Satie?”

In 2021 I looked up Satie on YouTube. His piano compositions from the late 1800s through the 1920s mesmerized me. From the first listening I couldn’t get enough of Satie’s sound. The YouTube piece “3 Hours of Once Upon a Time in Paris” is often the soundtrack of my workday.

Satie was a very odd duck, his own worst enemy as this article shows, while fellow composers Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy thrived. But lifestyle aside, Satie’s music connects deeply with me. Ravel and Debussy are also excellent in that pathbreaking modern sound. My views were also colored by Ravel’s Bolero as featured in the Bo Derek movie 10.

The Internet intersected with musical memories and fantasies in other ways. My enjoyment of artists bobbed up and down as I rediscovered them. Renaissance (more 70s British prog rock!) faded, early Grand Funk proved grating (I guess you gotta be 14 years old to really dig that Michigan power trio sound). Quicksilver Messenger Service’s Happy Trails album had a 24-minute “suite” based on the Bo Diddley song “Who Do You Love?” I never heard it but in my teen obsession with “longer is better” songs like “In-A Gadda-Da-Vida,” I assumed it was mind-blowingly brilliant. Then I finally gave it a listen on YouTube, or I heard as much as I could handle before I switched to something more concise. I'm sure it sounded more engaging for audience members. I listened to it again when writing this post to make sure I hadn't overlooked an element of hidden genius. I didn't. 

So thanks, Internet, for bringing me back to Bang and Jade Warrior, satisfying my curiosity about "Who Do You Love?" and introducing me to Erik Satie. 

Next, maybe I'll listen to Humble Pie's 1971 "I Walk on Gilded Splinters," recorded live at the Fillmore East, all 23 minutes and 28 seconds of it. At that length, it's got to be glorious. Yosemite told me so in 1973. 

 

A Texas Citizenship Education, 1975

My home state of Texas has been in the news lately, roiled by politics, school massacres, border crossings, abortion and other issues. This story gives you a sense of what I experienced on social issues growing up there in the 1960s and 1970s.

In June 1975, my high school sent me to the “Citizenship Seminar” organized by Civitan International, a service organization. It was at LeTourneau College (now University) in Longview, Texas, 560 miles from my boyhood home in Mission, on the Mexican border. A girl from my class at Mission High School also attended, and she played a key role in my seminar experiences. 

Re-reading my teen journal entries, I was struck by how Civitan intersected with my growing sense of Jewish identity. Speakers at Civitan forced me to take a stand – literally. Hand in the air, “Yes, I am one of THOSE people.”

Some context sets the tone for Civitan. I saved the seminar’s program. Its back page included the Civitan Creed, which included this declaration: “My Creed was proclaimed by the Man of Galilee when He declared, ‘Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even to them.’” So that points to a perspective perfectly aligned with the Christian nature of LeTorneau. I would not be getting official exposure to alternative views.

The program was distilled 100 proof Texas conservative thinking. I wrote about a “stormy meeting” with Norma Gabler, part of a husband-and-wife team with her husband Mel. They successfully pressured publishers of textbooks sold in Texas and elsewhere to alter their subversive, anti-American content. I wrote,

“The session evolved into a shouting match on whether George Washington had VD. That had to do with the accuracy of history books. Then she moved on to a discussion of evolution and creation in science texts.”

Mel and Norma Gabler making a point with large numbers, something about evolution?

“After dinner, we “rapped” about topics like foreign aid, capital punishment and prostitution. I spoke about capital punishment twice. A girl nicknamed Bunny quoted, “Thou shalt not kill.” I later said that was a mistranslation [of Jewish texts]. Bunny countered with, “Well, I know you’re a Jew,” and I felt startled. I asked her how she knew that and she said my classmate from Mission told her I was.”

Clay Smothers.

For real red-meat table-pounding, you couldn’t top black conservative Clay Smothers, who later represented Dallas in the Texas House of Representatives. I reported, “He was very candid on race relations.” Let’s leave it at that. He made Texas Monthly’s list of the Ten Worst Texas Legislators in 1977, an honor illustrated by his quote, “I am against blacks, Mexicans, women, Indians, and queers talking to me about their rights.”

Smothers’ comments about school busing drew a dissent from Martin from Dallas, a friend I made that week (proof that the concept of "Jewdar" works even if I didn't know why). I described Martin as “definitely liberal.” Martin later heard my tense exchange with Bunny, and asked me if I was Jewish, and I said yes. I wrote:

“He said, ‘After what the girl said in the meeting last night, I figured you were.’”

Martin had an obviously Jewish last name, some version of Silver. We skipped activities to talk about Jews, Israel and school.

Another speaker was Kurt Swanda from Fort Worth. His topic: “Of All the Countries, Why America.” I wrote that Swanda was “alternately a prisoner and soldier of and in both" the Wehrmacht and Red Army in World War II. Besides telling gory details about what he saw, Swanda asserted the Russians were way more bestial than the Germans.

Warming to the topic, he shifted gears.

“Any Hebrews, any Jewish People in here?” he asked in his eastern European accent. Hmmm. The Moment of Truth. I timidly raised my hand, knowing with Martin not at that session I’d be the only Jew present. The seminar director noticed and said, “Hey, there’s one back here.” I raised my hand all the way up. Nothing else to do. He asked me if I knew anything about the ghettos. Yes, I said. A little.”

A year later I left for Princeton and rarely returned home except for family visits and high school reunions. Forty-seven years later, Texans still argue about textbooks and rights and abortion and borders and subversive infiltration and who's the liberal and who's the conservative, and so much more. Gabler, Smothers and Swanda have all died. LeTourneau brands itself as "the Christian polytechnic university." 

I wonder if Martin from Dallas remembers our conversations. I had never been able to talk so openly with another Jewish teen about the issues roiling my life. The intensity of our brief connection remains with me. And what about Bunny, who called me out for being Jewish? I never forgot her, either.

The Ultimate Writing Assignment: Your Obituary

I've written a huge range of materials in my life, from Led Zeppelin-influenced high school poetry to business journalism, celebrity Q&As with the likes of Abbie Hoffman and Cesar Chavez, movie reviews, corporate proposals, PowerPoint presentations, press releases, video scripts, resume edits for friends, blog posts (you're reading one right now!), open mic presentations, my 2012 memoir and other scurrilous materials. I've also taken classes that involve a writing prompt meant to challenge my creativity.

In that spirit, I’m going to throw out the ultimate writing prompt. Your assignment: write your own obituary. What would you say?

I’m thinking about this following the death of my partner Naomi’s father on February 25, which I'll always associate with the Russian invasion of Ukraine the previous day. Eric Leiseroff was 96 and had a fascinating life. I wrote Eric’s obituary that appeared on the website of the funeral home, along with a very short version for the regional daily newspaper. How did I summarize his 96 years?

Let’s start at the beginning. He was born in Dresden, Germany in1925 and had the last bar mitzvah in Dresden weeks before the Nazis and their supporters torched the main synagogue during Kristallnacht. Eric (then Erich) and his mother got out of Germany on one of the last trains, a nail-biting trip through Germany, France and Spain, arriving in Lisbon, Portugal in mid-June 1941. They sailed on the SS Excalibur to New York, learning upon arrival that Germany had invaded the USSR. Eric quickly learned English and in 1944 he volunteered for the US Army. Assigned to the 89^th Infantry Division, known as the "Rolling W," he put his German fluency to work interrogating prisoners in Germany and Austria. Eric was with one of the first groups of GIs to reach the Ohrdruf concentration camp.

He returned to the U.S. in 1946, just 20 years old, in pursuit of what he called “a boring life.” He spent 57 years at one job, as a salesman of “fancy paper” used, for example, for linings of perfume boxes. He married Cecelia Katz in 1950 and they were loving partners for 68 years.

The piece earned respectful reviews on LinkedIn, where I posted it. My younger brother read it, then called to say, “I want you to write my obituary!”

“Let’s talk about that in 30 years,” I said.

Or maybe now. Writing your obituary in advance is like prudent estate planning. You never know when it’ll come in handy. I’ve always remembered somebody who did exactly that. I read a memorial in the Princeton Alumni Weekly for Richard R. Uhl '39. He was a creative professional, starting as a musician and producer of radio and TV shows and eventually becoming executive creative director of an ad agency. Then I came to the last paragraph of his memorial:

Our class secretary from 1981 to 2007 and memorialist until 2010, Dick wrote 453 columns and 418 memorials, including all but the last two sentences of this one. The class expresses deep gratitude for his faithful chronicling of our lives and our deaths.

That stopped me cold, so much that I included it in this blog post. I can see myself doing exactly what Richard Uhl did. I’ve joked that my obituary would be a rewrite of my JDate profile of 20 years ago, what a swell guy I am or, given the circumstances, was. I’m reminded of what Winston Churchill said: “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.”

But how do you capture a life beyond the basics? What would you, dear reader, or I write about ourselves in a final summing-up for those who remain? Something comforting and yet wryly self-observant, the high points and the proverbial warts and all?

I wrestled with that issue when I spoke at my father's memorial service in 2018 at the Veterans Administration cemetery in Rockland County, New York. Our relationship had been very rocky but at a memorial attended by his widow and friends I wanted to be fair and positive. I wrote this the morning of the memorial:

My father lived 92 years and he lived each day fully. Like Frank Sinatra sang, he did it his way. Along the way, he had a tremendous influence on me—my interest in the Ivy League, my interest in Judaism, and blues music and even opera. I’m also a camera guy. I didn’t name my son after a car, however. So, a lot of what I am today is a reflection of what he was and what he imparted to me. His legacy will linger on and may his memory be a blessing. Baruch Dayan Ha-Emet—Blessed be the True Judge.

That was tough; writing about myself is even more challenging. In thinking about this piece, mental patterns from decades past flooded back: self-denigrating and pitying, focused on failures and unmet potential. I brooded over comments my father threw at me, like the time he said I walked like a girl (what teen wants to hear that?), and when a significant other termed me “a self-involved prick who just doesn’t get it.” But with and perspective, I’ve moved past being my own worst critic to a more accepting stage. I’d try to say that in my memorial.

Maybe I’d do multiple versions of it for different audiences. I’d need one for the back of the book memorials of the Princeton Alumni Weekly, of course Then there would be a final Facebook entry complete with favorite photos spanning a lifetime, since I always like to illustrate my writings.

Given the world’s state, I may be whistling past the graveyard here. Maybe Vladimir Putin will work out his psychological issues by starting World War III. At that point the world will need a lot of obituaries and mine would get lost in the shuffle. Again, Winston Churchill had a fitting comment from 1941: “If we win, nobody will care. If we lose, there will be nobody to care.”

But I’ll end, in every sense of the word, on a high note, something I’ve said before: There’s no statute of limitation on changing your life. Never stop trying, or thinking your enjoyment of life is over because you reached an arbitrary sell-by date. Circumstances change, as we all learned the past two years. Challenges arise, history moves on, we get a step slower, but it's in our ability to steer our lives in new and surprising directions. I know, because I am still steering. And writing about it now and in that final writing prompt.