Looking ahead down the road a ways

When Mr. Trump goes down to defeat in November, after he’s done complaining about the rigged election, the unconstitutionality of Biden’s withdrawal, the AI enlargement of Harris’s crowds, the oppression by the Fake News, he will finally turn his attention to the creation of the Trump Library, two words that do not sit comfortably together, and my guess is that he will designate Mar-a-Lago as the site for the government to maintain and for him to have the right of residency. A special wing will be created for the public display of top-secret documents.

He will, of course, want to control the narrative of the Library, choose the historians who will be in residence there, so it will proclaim his Greatness and the Tragedy of his Unjust Defeat and the Meaning of his Martyrdom. There will be a great deal of Capitalization of Key Words at the Library, and in the Portraits of Himself will be no flaws of pigmentation nor strands of hair askew. The Faithful will come to the site and Rededicate themselves to the Great Cause. But eventually they will all die off and one day a young executive will take charge and she will ask herself, “What do I do with this trash heap?”

Let’s get together, people, what do you say?

It was rousing, even riveting, to watch the glorious art of public speaking come bursting out alive at the Democratic convention in Chicago, never mind your political persuasion — to hear the English language crackle like fireworks in the cadence of great gospel preaching — and here in the age of social media, influencers, memes, to see one speaker after another light a fire under that enormous crowd and bring them to their feet, roaring, arms upraised. Churchill would’ve been cheering, Teddy Roosevelt raising a ruckus, William Jennings Bryan shouting Bravo.

The Democrats could’ve called off the convention; they’d already phoned in the roll call and given Kamala the nomination. But this one was worth the trouble.

The beautiful winding road of August

I went up the coast of Maine last week and came across a wonderful little café and it was so good I pulled out my pad and pen and sat writing for a couple hours. I like to write with people nearby but not involved with me personally. The waitress was all business, she greeted me by saying, “Yeah?”

I asked if they served lunch. She said, “Yeah. Take a seat.”

What an awesome August this has been

Mon Dieu! Mille Félicitations to you French for the merveilleux et excitant Paris Olympics, and many thanks to YouTube (or Toi Tube) for the nightly highlights (points forts). An old man doesn’t have hours to spend whilst commentators kill time and runners warm up for the 1,500-meter, just shoot me the juice, Bruce, and show me the Olympic break-dancing gold medal taken by a Canadian — a Canadian ! — and, okay, he’s a Korean-Canadian, Philip Kim, but Olympic break-dancing? B-boys and B-girls spinning and twisting and doing impossible physical feats. And the USA’s Suni Lee doing the twisting vault routine that needs to be seen in slow motion several times to be believed.

I am 82 and, for me, trotting around the block would be an Olympic event. So to see the Swedish pole-vaulter Duplantis perform the ridiculous feat of lofting himself feet-first with the rubbery pole and squiggle over the crossbar is like watching a man climb up a brick wall — it’s surreal, it has no relevance to life on this planet today.

Marine on St. Croix’s Ralph Malmberg, the inspiration for Ralph’s Pretty Good Grocery

Obiturary: Malmberg was an ‘amazing and interesting character for being, you know, a quiet Swede,’

It is never too late to learn a lesson

A dear friend once said to me out of the blue, “Today it will have been forty years since the last time I vomited,” and I said to her, “How do you celebrate an anniversary like that?” It was a witty moment, one of many in our friendship, and if we’d only collected them all, we could sit down and write a Cole Porter musical, but we didn’t and anyway Cole Porter isn’t so hip anymore and we’re busy doing other things.

I, for one, have been on a tour doing a one-man show and having a great time until last week in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, after a dinner of six oysters on the half shell, clam chowder, and a lobster roll, I awoke at 4 a.m. feeling sick to my stomach and headed for the bathroom.

Riding around the country in August

Ten blissful days driving around New England doing a one-man show in small towns and it’s not easy to write about bliss but one should try, especially since I write so kvetchingly about misery and annoyance.

What makes it blissful is that I’m not in charge. My wife took away the car keys long ago and it turns out to be a pleasure. In a few months, Joe Biden will experience this. He’ll go back to Rehoboth Beach and play Scrabble and finally have time to read Dickens. I was a boss for years and I still remember the dimwit things I did, but now, with my road manager Janis Kaiser at the wheel and making all the decisions, I am in the blessed position of passenger, just like when I was ten, looking out the window, watching the world go by. She drives through Connecticut into Massachusetts, four-lane highways lacing through deep forests, and suddenly we’re in torrential rain, the wipers slapping, we’re passing giant semitrailers, blasting through puddles, and it’s all a travelogue movie to me: she keeps us on schedule, I sit and take it all in and my mind wanders. We slow down and motor through a town of brick storefronts right out of the late 19th century, we pass a herd of Holsteins, we come into a traffic jam caused by a flock of geese casually crossing the highway, it’s one lovely moment after another.

Standing on the sidewalk shaking hands

I did something last Sunday I’d never done before in my 82 years. I went to a café on the main drag of Keene, New Hampshire, and I could hear my wife say, though she was five hundred miles away, “Wash your hands before you eat, you’ve been shaking hands with a hundred people,” so I walked to the rear of the café and found the men’s room door locked. A waitperson nearby, what we once called a “waitress,” said, “Use the ladies’.” I looked at her aghast. “Go ahead, we do it all the time,” she said. “Yes, but you’re a lady,” I said. She laughed. She said, “Go ahead, it’s no problem.” I waited a minute. She laughed at my timidity. The guy in the men’s must’ve been doing his eye makeup. So I went into the ladies’. (That’s not my term; that was the word on the door.) It was a regular toilet, except with no urinal. I put the seat up, aimed very carefully, then flushed, washed my hands, and emerged. A woman stood there waiting. She was more my age than the waitperson’s. She looked at me somewhat severely. I wanted to explain but didn’t know how. (“I was told to go in there”? It sounds sheepish, even shamefaced.)

I’ve been at the Metropolitan Opera during intermission when women standing in a long line at the Women’s broke out of line and stalked into the Men’s, no waiting, and, I assume, went into a stall and did what needed to be done, and if a man had stared at them afterward, they would’ve said, “What’s your problem?” But I’m not a New Yorker.

A perfect summer night in Manhattan, under the stars

What a world of marvels we live in. I sit with my daughter at night on a terrace under a birch tree looking out at the lights of Manhattan and I take my phone and shoot a video scanning the city lights and text it to a friend facing surgery in Minnesota who is in isolation, her immune system compromised by chemo. She is Catholic so I also send her a joke about the priest and the Baptist sitting together on the plane. The priest orders a glass of wine, the Baptist a 7-Up. The Baptist says , “Christians should not touch alcohol,” and the priest says, “Jesus drank wine.” The Baptist says, “Yes, and I’d have thought better of him if he hadn’t.” All this with a gizmo the size of half a sandwich. No wonder young people love it so much.

I’m of the ancient pen-and-ink-on-stationery era and I like to write limericks to friends such as an Episcopal priest facing surgery:

Finally, Democrats have a good week

I’ve been on a solid high ever since July 21 when I was sitting in a café on South Wabash in Chicago, the El rumbling overhead, and the word came that Joe Biden had stepped out of the race and that Democrats now could find a candidate who demonstrates energy and acuity and passion and is not simply trying to pronounce all his words clearly. I know this sounds cruel but I am Joe’s age and he makes 81 seem like senescence whereas it can be, given good genes and fine pharmaceuticals and some luck, a beautiful chapter of life.

I read the bulletin on my phone and looked around the café packed with people of many shades, and for all I’ve heard about us living in a Third World country, it didn’t look that way to me at all. Chicago is the city of Oprah and Saul Bellow, John Belushi, Mavis Staples, Studs Terkel, where the Rolling Stones made a pilgrimage to see Muddy Waters, which tells me that America is Great and has been for a very long time and people who don’t know that are in need of assistance.