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
I was brought up to make myself useful and for a few years I did that with an early morning radio show, waking people up with jazzy jug band tunes and limericks and Ole and Lena jokes and now, at 83, I’ve become an advance scout, assuring the young that old age has many benefits — there’s no need to be cool anymore, in fact it’s well beyond reach, I don’t know who is famous anymore or why, so I just enjoy life day by day and spend as much time as possible with people who make me happy.
Personal identity becomes a closed book. You know that you know who you are. So you just work with it and don’t think about morphing into a genius or a giant insect or a prophet of doom.
Read MoreOld age is the age of gratitude, when I come to appreciate the beautiful details in life such as Lenny our doorman in New York who says, “Taxi?” as I come across the lobby pushing a suitcase and when I say, “Please,” he hustles out into the street and lets fly with a classic two-finger whistle like the shriek of a predator and a taxi makes a swift U-turn and pulls up and Lenny grabs the bag and throws it in the trunk.
It’s a moment you see in classic New York movies but not much in New York except for Lenny who is from Brazil. Other doormen, I think, are history majors who dropped out of Columbia and they just raise an arm to hail a cab which I can do perfectly well myself. It’s the shriek that gives a sense of New York urgency. We had to go to Brazil to find the right man.
Read MoreI don’t like to read about new medical discoveries for fear I may learn the wrong things, such as the news that childhood virus may be a factor in old-age dementia, which strikes me as brutally unfair, my having grown up one of six kids who passed viruses around like we shared beds and towels and hardly ever covered our mouths when we coughed. Mother said, “You’re going to get sick anyway, might as well hurry up and get it over with.” Little did she know it would lead to becoming a moron and nincompoop at the age of 83.
Not saying I am one, understand, only that I’m running a risk I didn’t know was there. I am still pursuing my goal of becoming the Country’s Oldest Successful Stand-Up Comic.
Read MoreWatching Zohran Mamdani campaigning before Election Day, smiling, full front teeth visible continuously with only a momentary closure of lips for long periods of time, the friendly expression looking genuine while walking through crowds shaking one hand after another, turning up the charm, offsetting the word “Socialist” around his neck, maintaining his nonstop grin, a physical feat as amazing as the Dodger outfielder who leaped against the wall and snagged the Blue Jay triple and broke the hearts of millions of Canadians. As amazing as when my friend Bob Douglas would set down the mandolin and pick up a pair of spoons and play them against the outstretched fingers of his left hand, playing snazzy ragtime percussion, like your church choir dropping their gowns and becoming the Rockettes.
The wonders of this world never cease to amaze. I took the 8th Avenue subway to midtown Manhattan a couple weeks ago in the heaviest downpour in memory — the train stopped at Columbus Circle, the track flooded ahead, so I climbed up to catch a cab and waded in a river where Columbus’s statue stands and got drenched in the typhoon. Even in the mass metropolis, Nature exercising command when it chose, office workers ducking down into the subway, soaking wet.
Read MorePoor Canada, losing the Series the way they did, two straight losses in front of 40,000 rabid fans — and who knew Canadians could be rabid? Canadians, for heaven’s sake, but there they were, putting their Canadianness aside and screaming, praying, demanding justice be done, the Blue Jays ahead three games to two, all they needed was One Win, but no.
Before our eyes, one rally after another was snuffed out and then that tremendous triple in Game 7 and the impossible leap of the Dodger center fielder, his glove stabbing high in the air even while colliding with a teammate to snatch the ball and then the DP in the 12th and thirty Dodgers jumped up and down hugging each other while the 40,000 sat stunned in silence at the cruelty of it — the crappiest Prez in U.S. history had slapped a tariff on Canada out of pure spite at a TV commercial, God in Heaven owed the Series to the North, but no. And I sat stunned at midnight in New York, realizing that baseball is not about justice. That’s why it’s called a Game. And I guess life is a game too.
Read MoreI spent last week in St. Paul, seven days, five of them gorgeous and sunny with bright fall colors preceded by two wretched cold rainy days, serving as contrast, just as Muzak makes you appreciate Mozart, and it put me into a mood of wild unreasonable optimism, the very thing our country was founded on, if you ask me. Conceived in hope and dedicated to the proposition that tomorrow may bring something truly astonishing.
The Midwest I grew up in didn’t encourage wild hopes. “Ikke tro at du er noen,” said the Norwegians and you could tell from the tone of voice what it meant: don’t think you’re somebody, mister. Don’t get your hopes up. Look out you don’t trip on your shoelaces.
Read MoreThe jewel heist at the Louvre proves what I’ve long felt, that going to an art museum induces stupor and you don’t notice what’s right in front of you clearer than day. Two men going to work on a Sunday in Paris, cutting a hole in a glass case, escaping out a second-story window on a hoist, as museumgoers strolled by — I’ve felt this same stupor looking at Degas. Two masked men in tutus could’ve tippy-toed past carrying a guard in handcuffs and I wouldn’t have noticed. Apparently, looking at jewels produces an even greater stupor. The burglars could’ve taken their time and made off with a wheelbarrow of crowns and gone out the front door.
One more reason for you and me to not invest in emeralds and to keep a hand on our wallet when in a museum.
Read MoreI flew to St. Paul last week as it took a turn toward winter with a cold rain and me without a warm coat but then thought better of it and the sun came out and the fall colors brightened. My sweetie was starting rehearsal for Mozart’s Così fan tutte, playing viola, a good enough excuse to come back to my old hometown. The Mississippi still flows by, magnificent as ever, and the downtown sits on a high bluff and the trains still run through Union Depot, one to Chicago, one to Seattle, each daily.
I have a soft spot for St. Paul, having found a career there when I was thirty. I loved radio, having grown up in an evangelical family that refused to get a TV, and a started a live variety show on Saturday nights, a chance for me, a writer, to be friends with musicians, a low-income aristocracy of warmhearted people. The show started in a storefront and went to a theater and toured the country and other people ran the business and I had the fun.
Read MoreWherever you go in the world, if people ask you where you’re from and you say Minnesota, they say, “It gets cold there, doesn’t it.” When New Yorkers travel to Minneapolis, we don’t say, “That’s a really big city, isn’t it.” That would be dumb. But somehow we haven’t created a brand personality for ourselves other than weather. We wanted to be an arts mecca and a tech center and we had our chances but didn’t make it. What we’re left with is our status as America’s Number One producer of turkeys, which doesn’t have the same allure.
With global warming, Minnesota’s status as the Boy It Gets Cold There State is not even accurate, and what’s worse, it’s taken away we Minnesota males’ chance to demonstrate competence. After fourteen inches of snow, you go out the door and hear tires screaming and smell burning rubber and see Nadine the neighbor lady at the wheel of her Buick stuck in a snowbank and you walk over and tap on her window. She opens it. She looks crazed, in a rage, foaming at the mouth, and you say, calmly, “Let me help you.” And she gets out and you get in and you rock the car gently back and forth, and expertly rock it over the hump and out of the snowbank. She offers you money. You say, “No no no no. My pleasure.” You walk away.
Read MoreIt’s good to see Zohran Mamdani meeting with New Yorkers who opposed him in his run for mayor, including a closed-door meeting with a bunch of rank-and-file cops. Earlier in his career Mr. Mamdani uttered the words “defund” and “police” close together in one sentence, which is dumb, and he’s not saying it anymore. It’s what you’re supposed to do after you win a primary and become the Democratic candidate, meet with people who disagree and say fewer dumb things.
There are dedicated cops and some not so much but when you need the police you need the police, you don’t need a pollster, a nail polisher, or a politician. My lasting memory of New York cops goes back to when I landed at JFK and headed for the cabstand, heard shouting, saw people waving their hands and a young woman lying on the sidewalk apparently unconscious. A guy in an orange jacket got on his walkie-talkie, and two cops came running, one of them got on the phone and the other one lay down beside the woman and talked to her and put an arm around her.
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