Columns
From the New York Times, Time magazine, and the complete Chicago Tribune syndicated columns
From the New York Times, Time magazine, and the complete Chicago Tribune syndicated columns
It’s a shock to realize I’m the same age as Mitch McConnell the ancient turtle-faced senator who gave us the Supremes and the Second Coming of Trump and I am 13 years older than the late Lindsey Graham the joyful senator who told Trump to go to hell and then became such an intimate pal that the Leader seemed to express actual human feeling at his passing, at least he made an attempt to.
It goes to show what drudgery public service is that it ages people so severely. I am bouncing around telling jokes and singing duets and poor Mitch needs help to get to the toilet. Some people thought the photo of him in the hospital was fake but that’s what politics does, it artificializes a person.
Read MoreOne beautiful aspect of the digital age is its advancement of democracy. Back in the newsprint age, you had William Safire, Maureen Dowd, George Will, Russell Baker, Molly Ivins, and if you wanted to tell them how dense and dim-witted they were, you had to put pen to paper and address the envelope and put a stamp on it and drop it in a mailbox and weeks later it might appear in Letters To The Editor, which nobody read anyway. Now the big shots speak and the peasants get to post comments immediately and often the comments are the best part.
Check out an interview Chad Smith the CEO of the Boston Symphony gave WGBH not long ago after he got in hot water for dismissing the popular conductor Andris Nelsons because he was not in “alignment” with the BSO’s need “to serve our communities more expansively and inclusively” in deciding “whose voices get to be heard, whose stories get to be told.” The BSO, he said, was at a “pivotal moment” and needed “broad alignment” to “address the issues” and Maestro Nelsons was not in alignment.
Read MoreIt started with an episode of lightheadedness that caught me off-balance but I ignored it and later felt really lightheaded and a little dizzy and went around the corner to Urgent Care and my blood pressure was a little high so the doctor called my doctor who suggested I go to an ER on the East Side and so I did.
A New York ER is another world from the one I live in. It’s obliged to deal with all who ask for treatment and this afternoon it was packed with people lying on gurneys or sitting on benches, mostly elderly, some with companions, and a cacophony of dinging bells and beepers and pages and people in white or blue with badges tending to business.
Read MoreA hot summer day comes to a lovely end as we sit on the porch at dusk looking out at a cove on the Connecticut River and she puts her bare feet on my lap and sips her white wine and a boat goes by and she looks at the Weather app on her phone and says that a thunderstorm is heading our way. I enjoy storms, she does not, so this puts me in the role of male protector, which I don’t get to perform often.
I think of my parents, how my mother liked to put her feet on his lap, the affection between them. I knew from when I was tiny that they loved each other. They came of age during the Depression, knew hard times, and she canned vegetables and darned socks and mended pants and bought day-old bread, but they were sweet to each other.
Read MoreI had an appointment last week for a checkup with my surgeon who repaired my busted left shoulder and I was dreading having to confess that I hadn’t done the exercises, but I did — a person should not lie to your doctor — and he was okay with that. I can lift my computer case up and into the overhead on a plane and I can shampoo with both hands and put on a jacket. The shoulder doesn’t hurt. He said, “If you’re happy, I’m happy.” He is a perfectionist, as you expect your surgeon to be, not a hobbyist, but he also knows that allowances must be made. Past the age of 75, a person has to make their own choices. I’m a writer, not a mountain climber. Modern medicine took care of a congenital heart problem that tends to kill people off around age 59 and I am almost 84. My left shoulder shrugs. I’m happy.
I’ve been wrestling with a book for a year and a half. I want it to be good because it’ll be the last book I write. The world has heard enough out of me, time for an Old White Male to dump his stack of unfinished work, the screenplays, three novels, a musical, files full of promising beginnings that petered out, and use his remaining time to take long walks and see the world. There are historic sites in New York I’ve never visited: the Stock Exchange, Trinity Church, the Tenement Museum, the Morgan Library, Macy’s, the Brooklyn Bridge, which I’ve never walked across, Yankee Stadium. There are books I should read, such as Proust’s. I wrote a limerick about him but never read his stuff, which strikes me as ungracious.
Read MoreI am dreading Wednesday when I must go see Dr. Taylor, the surgeon who did my shoulder replacement, and confess that I have sinned and not faithfully followed the exercise regimen and so my left shoulder is not fully functional. It aches a little, it’s stiff, doesn’t extend fully, and I repent. On the other hand, what does “fully functional” mean for a man of 83 and 5/6ths? I can still shampoo my hair with my both hands and pull on my underwear. I’m not a rock climber, I’m a writer and a stand-up comic, I enjoy my work, I love my life. I live with a dear woman who fascinates me and also does household repairs and manages the finances. I am an Episcopalian and look forward to the Resurrection and the amazement of my Brethren ancestors that I was allowed through the gates.
So I’m not a model patient. I suffer from Repetitive Exercise Resistance Disorder going back to high school and the trauma of chin-ups and the rope climb in gym class. I looked it up on a wellness website and the symptoms describe me to a T — occasional irritability, mood swings, weird dreams, certain melodies going around in my head, a twinge in my neck, and, what’s most crucial, the inability to call up a therapist and make an appointment. I can dial the first four numerals and then no more.
Read MoreLife is a gift, dear friend, and you can go along for days, weeks, absorbed by nonsense and then one day you’re on a jet plane, a window seat, as it’s descending toward LaGuardia through dense cloud cover, the plane bucking and bouncing in the storm, and the wheels are lowered and still no sign of ground and there is a prayerful hush among the passengers, even the baby in row 8 who was crying so hard is silent, and you’re thinking of Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper the Day the Music Died, and then suddenly you’re zooming low over rooftops of houses, an alley, someone’s backyard, cars whizzing by on a highway, and then WHUMP you’re on the runway and the pilot reverses the engines hard and you are alive, everyone takes a deep breath, life resumes.
This happened to me last Monday. I hiked through the terminal promising to be a better person and I still intend to clean up my act, walk two miles a day, cut back on carbs, read Scripture, contribute to the food bank, and give up pork sausage in protest against cruel treatment of pigs in honor of the pig whose mitral valve is in my heart.
Read MoreI flew from New York last Thursday where a big parade in lower Manhattan celebrated the Knicks winning the NBA title and I flew to Raleigh where on Saturday crowds gathered downtown for a parade celebrating the Hurricanes winning the NHL championship, two joyous public events that had nothing to do with me, meanwhile my Brazilian friend Lenny is cheering for Brazil in the World Cup. I’m happy for all of them. The Latino kid with the tattooed arms, who runs the elevator in our building, was in a state of delight the morning after his team beat the Spurs in the closing seconds to take the title.
Everybody wants to be part of a great cause, a tribe, a fellowship, a sisterhood — everybody except Henry Thoreau the great American killjoy who chose solitude. Sit on it and spin, Henry, and when you come back to Concord, do something about your hair.
Read MoreA long day of writing is like a day of canoeing down a creek, twisty, some unexpected pleasures since I love writing whereas I hated canoeing. Other than that, they’re similar. I was paddling my canoe in Manhattan last Thursday and Jenny reminded me that we had a date to go hear the Met Orchestra play Bruckner and we should leave in half an hour. So I put on a jacket and took note paper and pens and took a train to Columbus Circle and walked to Carnegie Hall.
I’m not high on Bruckner and she is because she’s a musician and Bruckner wrote some gorgeous delicate passages for strings in between the detonations of brass. But I am glad to give the man another chance. He was a humble organist trying to break into the world of Wagner, Brahms and Beethoven, and who am I to turn my back on him?
Read MoreIt’s been almost twenty-five years since I entered the pillbox community, men and women who own a little plastic container of fourteen little compartments, which we open morning and evening and take our pills, a sweet ritual for me, marking the time since I likely would have died. I was born with a heart defect that Dr. Mork heard when I was 12 and told me I couldn’t play football and that Dr. Orszulak surgically repaired when I was 60, an age at which numerous Keillors had dropped dead. The pills are to keep me functioning. There is no pill to make a man exercise regularly but otherwise I’m okay.
So in a couple months, I’ll be as old as my grandma Dora who used to send me a dollar on my birthday. She died of a stroke. I take pills to ward off strokes.
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