When I was in high school the light switch in my bedroom was a bronze plate we picked up in Charlottesville while visiting Monticello. Inscribed around the cream-colored on/off switch was this simple Jeffersonian quote: “Freedom is the right to choose.” There was more, but the switch smack dab in the middle made it difficult to read.

So whenever I had put the light on I could read at least that part of the quote. One day I was reading that quote and the light went on. This historical trinket suddenly became current. I did not have to go to college; it was an option. I did not have to stay in the crappy job I had; I did not have to follow one career path. What at the time seemed like inevitable destinations became simple choices I could make—or not. The indirect effect of this knowledge was to quit complaining about what is not going well for me and either accept it or change it—kind of a cousin to the serenity prayer. In essence: I put myself in whatever situation might be questionable and, therefore, I can take myself out of it simply by choosing to do so. I became aware of something everybody else seemed to have known instinctively: it’s my life and I can do with it what I choose.

This comes with responsibility, of course. I don’t want to make choices that hurt others. I don’t want to make choices to satisfy me now while compromising my future; and I don’t want to make choices good only in the long run but destroy my sense of now. It’s not easy, this balance; in fact, it can be profoundly complicated. Talk about the power of language: the simple phrase, “Freedom is the right to choose,” comes with unspeakable responsibility.

In 1985 I sat on a platform next to Richard Simmons, just him and me, with about fifty mostly women from Worcester, Massachusetts, at the end of a one hour workout I conducted which Richard had joined in the middle. I turned the cool-down over to him. The cool-down was the last five minutes or so during which we motivated the people to keep at it. Richard was the best at this.

He calmed everyone down and said, “You feel trapped, don’t you.” He teared up but honestly it was sincere. “You feel like you don’t have any choices, don’t you? Your husbands ignore you. They make fun of you at the mall. You stopped looking in the mirror, didn’t you?” Everyone nodded. It was absolutely silent. He was good. A crowd had formed at the open doors to the studio. “The only time you feel in control and good is when…you eat…isn’t it?” Everyone laughed and agreed.

“You’re not trapped! Freedom is your right!” he said. “Your freedom doesn’t belong to anyone else. It is yours. It is the most precious gift you have! Don’t hand it over to anyone.

“You can choose to eat something else. You can choose to laugh when people laugh at you. You can choose to feel good about yourself. If you stay home and don’t do something for yourself that helps, it is because you decided to stay home; don’t blame anyone else. If you go for a walk, if you ignore people who make fun of you, it is also because you decided to. It is your choice. Remember that.”

I saw some lights go on in the studio; women looked up seemingly suddenly empowered.

We all stood up and he hugged everyone in the club. Everyone. I finished working that day, moved, taught college, and more than doubled my age. I walked into class last week and asked people why they chose to come to college. It was the first day and for many the first time in college. No one could answer me. I made some suggestions about the future and majors and moving forward and blah blah blah but they just stared at me. They didn’t even nod.

So I asked again: “What are you doing in English Comp?”

Almost like a chorus, their response was, “It’s required.”

I swear for a moment I could hear music coming from the studio speakers, hear Richard’s overly-excited voice bounce off the walls followed by his calm voice which reached into each person’s fears and settled them down.

I looked at the class. “No. It isn’t. You’re eighteen, at least, you’ve graduated high school. This is not required. Nothing is required of you anymore. You can be here or join the military or get a job or hitchhike to flipping Key West and serve tables at Captain Tony’s. This is a choice. You freely choose to sit in that seat this day and take this course. The sooner you remind yourself you don’t need to be here the better you’re likely to do in this course.” They stopped looking at the cell phones and paid attention.

We talked a while but I was only half-paying attention to what I was saying. Part of me thought about the times I complain about my job, other situations in my life, the conditions in the world; the sense of doom and apprehension which saturates society right now. Sometimes we don’t get to choose, or when we do it doesn’t go our way. What then? What if I DID show up to exercise but I’m still not losing the weight? What if I DO want to be in English Comp but I just don’t understand the material? What happens when even when I choose, I do not feel awash with the glory of freedom?

Jefferson wasn’t dumb. So I went back and looked up that old quote.

“Freedom is the right to choose, the right to create for oneself the alternatives of choice. Without the possibility of choice, and the exercise of choice, a man is not a man but a member, an instrument, a thing.”

Property. Without exercising our right to choose, we are not free. There is no difference between someone who is not free and someone who chooses not to exercise those freedoms.

Richard’s favorite cool-down comments were about choice. “You have two choices,” he would say. “You can choose whatever blocks your way to slow you down, or you can choose to do what it takes to overcome it. You can choose to take control of your situation, or you can choose to hand that choice over to someone else. But if you do, it is still your choice.”

I got more out of that job than anywhere else I ever worked.

 

The semester starts now and students will fill the classrooms ready for their lives to begin. Unfortunately, they think they can do so whenever they want. Some stroll in saying they got stuck in traffic, but they do so carrying coffee from Starbucks. Some are late because they couldn’t find a parking spot and I tell them if they got here so close to class time that finding a spot was an issue, they left home too late, and they’re never going to make it in the corporate world. I share with them Lee Iacoca’s decision to eliminate all personalized parking spots at Chrysler. He said if you’re doing the job right, you’re there early enough not to need a reserved space anyway.

Some stand in the hallway talking to some significant other about not being able to bare being without that person for another hour. Some stand up half way through the class and leave, apologizing, saying they had the wrong class even though they were looking for biology lab and I had just spent thirty minutes talking about creative writing. That doesn’t bother me, but in some other class somewhere is the student who was supposed to be in mine, and that student strolls in to my class half an hour late saying he was in the wrong class. He says when the professor started talking about dissecting a rabbit he wondered if it was creative writing after all. Ironically enough it could have been.

Please understand that this problem—showing up to class late—is chronic and widespread and over the years has gotten worse. There is recourse, however. We can count them completely absent if they walk in the door even a few seconds after we start lecturing. When they’ve missed fifteen percent of the course, including tardiness, they can be withdrawn with or without a failing grade. This rule is required to be on every faculty member’s outline. I put it on there but to be honest I don’t always adhere to it. I teach many military students, and after class, those who arrive late often show me their duty sheet and talk about a colleague who needed counseling. We learn to know what excuses are legit or not. Unfortunately, some of the tragic excuses are valid.

I really try not to be a prick. And it isn’t the “showing up late” that is a problem specifically, anyway; they can get the notes from someone. The bigger issue is their sense of individualism at a time they should be demonstrating their ability to work with others and respect them. When someone is late, that person is basically saying, “Whatever you are doing is no where near as important as what I am doing, so you’ll just have to wait.” This is true if someone is late for class, for dinner, a date, anything. See what happens if you show up late to a job interview. College degrees are common. 4.0 GPA’s are everywhere. So I like to ask my students what do they need to do in this class to stand out as someone worth recommending to another college or for a job? Because showing up on time and doing well is where the class expectations start. When they regularly show up late, they’re already not worth recommending; they’re just in the way.

And they have the excuses ready, so we have the policy. We can play with the wording how we wish, and every semester I adjust it just a little. One of the more frustrating fall semesters I noted that attendance was not an issue. I wrote that I didn’t care when they strolled in. I wrote that I know they have so many other obligations, so I wished to help out any way that I could. If they arrived late, the outline stated, I’d be happy to type up the notes and give them to them, and follow it up with individual phone calls to make sure they understood the material. I would even brew a pot of coffee, I wrote. Very few students understood my sarcasm.

But like my military students, the other students with legitimate tardiness because of kids, jobs, illness, and more, are the ones who call to apologize and usually get the work done ahead of time anyway. Those who do have valid reasons to be late are usually the ones who never are. No, it is almost always the lazy ass, howl-at-the-moon stupid ones with no jobs who live at home that show up late. One guy came in eating an Egg McMuffin saying he just woke up and rushed in as fast as he could (except for stopping for breakfast, of course). Several students over the years have reeked of alcohol. One woman showed up late, yelling, “Do you have any idea what freaking time it is?”

So this semester I’ve once again updated my course outline in anticipation of the lateness that is only getting worse. The dean of the department still needs to approve this:

Attendance Policy:

“What is so fucking difficult about getting to class on time? Let’s simply assume traffic is heavy, the weather is bad, accidents are everywhere, and the parking spots are taken. Get your ass in the chair by the time class starts or go home and come back when you grow up into a responsible human instead of an entitled little shit who thinks you can show up when you damn well feel like it. If you are late to work or don’t show up, you get fired, if you are late to class or don’t show up, you fail. Either way, F. It’s a great fucking letter. And as for your oh-my-god-this-is-the-best-ever excuse, we’ve heard it already. And no, you AREN’T paying me. You can’t come close to affording me. If you’re not ready to attend class, go in the hall, call your parole officer and say college just didn’t work out after all.”

I know the dean well enough to know she will at least want to approve this one. So I’m going to give this a shot for awhile. Now, back to the rough draft of my course outline.

I have to finish the Cell Phone Policy.

 

 

 

The days following New Year’s are always the ones we inevitably balance by looking back and looking ahead at the same time. We assess and dismiss and excuse and celebrate our actions and inactions from the last year, and we resolve to act and hold back in the year to come. For me it is hard enough to do one of those things, but both simultaneously is a juggling act which makes my mind melt out of my ear. I need to process things differently than others I know. I made my resolutions and so far I’ve held to them both, so now as I walk outside where nature forgives my shortcomings, I take some time to look back. I love looking back.

I get up early in the morning by design. I like to listen to that pre-dawn stillness which in no time at all a thousand voices will disturb. I like the way the light holds off a while, almost as if it asks permission to spill across the sky. And then slowly the silence creeps off and hides behind some trees somewhere just before the phone rings, before the traffic picks up, before it is time to track time again and multitask.

I spend some of the morning looking forward to the day and some of the day remembering, but mostly I prefer to simply be present as the sun comes up and the morning flock feeds behind the oyster boats on the bay.

And I like the steady rain in the late afternoon. My son and I take pictures of the local waterways just about then, or we are home throwing the football; on those days neither of us can catch the slippery skin, but we don’t care. We are so much in the moment, eyeing down the ball, blinking at the wetness on our faces, knowing we’ll be inside and dry soon enough, soon enough indeed.

I like to walk along the river and recall a friend’s voice from college telling me everything I’m doing wrong as he loved to do, always with a laugh; or my grandmother’s voice when I called telling me she would let me go almost as soon as she answered because she knew I “had to get going.” I love how I can see clear as sunlight my father putting his fingers up to show me how much Scotch he wanted, the same amount every time. I love how I remember that so well I can still see him sitting there and hear him saying, “Just about this much, thank you” to the point I can’t breathe. Some people go lifetimes without missing their dads, cursing them for convoluted reasons. I love how I loved and was loved so that now my eyes sting. Why would anyone not want to feel this way? Why would anyone wish to avoid the sadness that comes with good memories?

If I could take only one memory with me when I move into an age of forgetting, it would be walks to the river, my son on my shoulders, the sun on my back, those moments. Or the times we went fishing when he was four, never catching a thing and never caring. Or maybe the sound of house wrens just before dawn, or the whippoorwills just after dusk. I’d like to take that feeling of an open fire on my face and the cool night on my back. Or the sound of my father’s voice telling me to sleep well. Or my mother’s laugh, the way she takes a long breath. I’d like to forget all the times I got angry, all the times I was critical, and replace them with the memories of all the times I listened to the sound of rain on the canvas awning at our home when I was a child.

I know I’ll want to remember one more time the foghorns on the Great South Bay drifting through the air, my brother and sister still asleep, my mother making coffee, my father in his bed. I take it the grand design allows we forget the minutia as we age, but I’ll salvage what I can. I like remembering the way my son laughed uncontrollably when he was two and I chased him across a field. Or the echo of the speakers at my high school football game, or the sound of cars off in the distance when my friends and I would hang out in someone’s back yard or neighborhood street on a Friday night, laughing, telling stories about nothing at all.

Sometimes now when I am out for a walk, I stand at the water and wonder where everyone is. And I look up the coast and imagine my childhood friends, now adults, sitting with their families, reading the paper, watching a movie, most likely long ago forgetting what we did when we were young. But I’m glad they’re there, just a few decades away, somehow still part of some shared history.

I embrace melancholy; I celebrate memory. This is not to say I don’t spend the majority of my time planning and moving forward to what’s next. It is just that in the early morning, before the sun has had her say, before I am about to walk into the realm of a thousand voices and the movement of life, I like to remember that it’s been a good ride so far.

The length of a lifetime from the beginning looks nothing at all like the brevity of that life from the end, like standing on a diving board terrified to leap, knowing you have to anyway for all the others lined up behind you waiting to have their chance. It’s your turn so you jump despite the fear of how far it is to the water, but when you “rise again and laughingly dash with your hair,” you look up at where you started and think, that wasn’t so far at all.

No, it isn’t far at all. Which is why while planning ahead I also like to find a friend and say, “Hey, do you remember that time we…”

And then we laugh a long time. Until we cry.

A quick lesson from Journalism 101:

Experts are the individuals who have the most facts, usually gathered across multiple degrees and a long career. They are not the ones whose sole qualifications are smooth looks, a smooth voice, and, if possible, a sense of humor. The Fourth Estate demands expertise. “Fair and Balanced” is an amateur attempt at a quick Brand. It makes no sense. Real news is often not fair. Real news covers the facts, the verifiable facts, the indisputable facts no matter where they lead, and if they only lead in one direction then we all head that way. That is journalism. That is fair. Fairness is found in the research to unearth the absolute facts, not in the reporting. And balance has nothing to do with results. Thoroughness in research is where the balance exists.

I teach research methods. We discuss the best sources and how to eliminate the false ones, how to validate the authority of the source, and how to insure a phony source isn’t presenting itself as an authority. This is a challenge in a world where verification before publication is nearly non-existent.

Then we discuss the significance of knowing how to do this. I tell them it isn’t just for when someone in their future says, “Quick, write me a well-documented research paper with excellent sources.” That probably won’t happen again after college. It’s so when they’re finding the right company to work for, the best investment for their income, and the best advice on health and medical issues, they know they’re not being misguided by incomplete information.

It also helps when listening to pundits pontificate about what’s best for our country, our families, and our children. I don’t want advice from my neighbor who “also had that condition” on what medicines to give a family member. I prefer a, you know, what do you call it? Oh right, a doctor.

And yet, honestly, most people are doing just that: taking advice from people who are more qualified to grow vegetables than they are to suggest who should run our country. These fools have thrown a damp blanket over true journalism, which insists upon validation of all sources. In essence, the most popular disc jockeys in the country, they call themselves commentators, are making everything up as they go.

Sean Hannity is a conservative talk show host who discusses political topics and influences millions. His education? He dropped out of NYU and Adelphi. It was his radio experience that enabled his charismatic presence to cover for his lack of expertise in anything he discusses. In the world of Mass Communications, he is not a journalist, though he plays one on TV.

Rush Limbaugh is another conservative talk show host discussing political topics and influencing millions more than Hannity. His Education? He dropped out of Southeast Missouri State University. His radio experience enabled his smooth voice and sharp wit to cover for his lack of expertise in anything he discusses.

These two have absolutely no background or degrees in journalism and how to verify information properly, or political science, or any experience in either politics or journalism beyond being disc jockeys with opinions.

We simply don’t need another DJ.  

Here is a disturbing example: Mike Savage has written multiple best-selling political books supporting his commentary as a syndicated talk show host, though his three degrees are in botany, medical anthropology, and nutrition. He is not a journalist, not a political scientist, and not funny.

Thom Hartmann, as well, is one the most successful progressive talk show hosts as well as a business mogul, but his degree in Electrical Engineering from Michigan State didn’t qualify him for the multiple best-selling books he has written about politics. That came from his popularity in a completely unrelated field, broadcasting. Hartmann, like the others, used his popularity to present himself as an expert on politics, instead of the true experts who become popular because of their authority on a subject.

And these same DJs are the same people who lead the masses in knocking Main-Stream-Media. Let’s have a gander at a couple of the more popular commentators these other frauds have attacked: Chris Cuomo is a lawyer who is the brother and son of NY State Governors. Megyn Kelly, most famous for being ridiculed by President-elect DJ Trump, has a political science degree from Syracuse and a law degree from Albany. Come on. If you want to know what might have the worst effect on your future when congress changes laws, who do you consult? A botanist? Two college dropouts with no experience in either law or politics but managed to stretch a college DJ gig into a career because they have good voices? Or a lawyer with a political science degree; another lawyer whose family has been in the governor’s house for decades?

To teach at a university, you must have a terminal degree in the field you teach. I teach writing, as such my undergraduate degree in journalism, as well as my second graduate degree in creative writing directly informs my instruction.

This is a no-brainer. My brother-in-law, for instance, is a well accomplished tenured historian at Temple University and author of multiple definitive volumes in history, but he can’t teach chemistry. No one no one no one at all, no one at all, anywhere—no one—questions this. And education is not the only occupation which requires employees be learned in the areas they work. The oil industry hires scientists in their research and development divisions, corporations mostly rely upon those with an MBA to handle their financial plans and investments, and very few marketing directors have a degree in criminology.

But unfortunately, what you need to be qualified for a particular job is no longer clear. If you’re going to manage a health club, should you be an expert in fitness? Management? Business? Nutrition? Any one of them would be effective but only one of them would not be sufficient. This is why people often work in teams, staffs, faculty.

Administrations.

Can you imagine an entire staff at any business or office where none of the staff has direct experience in the field? Inconceivable. Can you imagine what would happen if the people consulted for the most important decisions were not experts in research and investigation but instead radio personalities or billionaires with experience in a completely unrelated business?

You get the picture.

So how do we understand the dangerous trend in recent years to dis an individual’s outstanding qualifications for something more appealing, more Reality Television-like? Facts never used to be so pliable; truth came after excruciating research and triple-checked sources. Informed individuals stood down when that research showed them wrong. Trust was a given.

The same criteria used by many people in this country to choose a president would not get them a passing grade on a research paper in a freshman composition course. Misinformation is childish. Incomplete information is embarrassing.

And inexperienced, uneducated, unqualified commentators are not journalists, they’re not advisors and they’re not looking out for our best interests. They’re simply dangerous.

 

 

 

I have a collection of books I received on Christmas nights through the years. All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriott, A Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins, Bound for Glory by Woody Guthrie, Robin Lee Graham’s Dove, and more. Of course, Christmas morning was filled with the normal toys, candy, clothes, sporting goods, one year a bike, a guitar another, a whirlybird which my Uncles commandeered for the day, and many more memorable gifts. Honest to God, we were very lucky; it was an awesome childhood.

But the books have a different history. While Mom and Dad collaborated in many things, like in most families my mother was Santa when it came to shopping, wrapping, hiding, and organizing the gifts. She went to great lengths to make sure she spent exactly the same amount on each of us. And while I really don’t think we were spoiled, mostly because our parents made sure we appreciated everything, I also don’t remember ever thinking there was something I was expecting but didn’t get; that is, I was never disappointed. Yes, Mom did well. On Christmas morning as we unwrapped our presents, we’d make sure to say, “Wow, thanks Mom!” even on gifts we saw coming. By the end of the morning, though, we’d make sure to also throw in “and Dad” to the thanks, but he didn’t mind when we didn’t, ever.

And like in most families we drifted into that quiet period after opening gifts when we were engaged in our new items, and Mom was getting breakfast ready as well as dinner for the company which inevitably filled the house. Dad would read the paper, and Christmas, which really started when we returned home from Midnight Mass, would do its magic.

But later in the day after everything settled down, Dad would emerge from some quiet place and have a stack of gifts for us, chosen, purchased, and wrapped by him alone.

Books. It was amazing how he seemed to know exactly which ones to choose, and I don’t remember him ever asking what we were interested in. He just observed and took it from there. He’d hand us each a book he had signed inside with a “Merry Christmas, Love, Dad” and the year. I don’t remember when the tradition started but it had to have been early since one that I received was The Boy Who Sailed Around the World Alone, which is the kids’ version of Dove. I wasn’t yet a teen.

As the years went by we came to anticipate the books earlier in the day, though he usually held out. There were some exceptions; like one year when he gave us each money. I bought Illusions by Richard Bach and asked Dad to sign “Merry Christmas, Love, Dad” in the book anyway. Another year he replaced the books with Broadway tickets to see Katherine Hepburn in “West Side Waltz.”

It became my favorite part of the day. It wasn’t just the books, though. While I cherish the memories of Christmas evenings on the couch or stretched out on the floor with our books, it was also a specific moment I got to share with my father and keep up on a shelf . 

I have kept the tradition going since my son was born. Winnie the Pooh, Curious George, Hamlet, anything by Dr. Seuss, Charles Schulz, or Thor Heyerdahl, and more fill his shelves. We really do formulate our lives based upon what we’re exposed to growing up. Michael has the kindness of Pooh, the curiosity of George, Schultz’s sense of humor, and Heyerdahl’s sense of adventure. Go figure.

I try and wait until the end of the day, but it doesn’t always work out that way. Now I understand that Dad didn’t just give us books; he gave us his sense of understanding, of knowing, of remembering and anticipating. When I look at the books Dad gave me, they absolutely anticipate my life—music, adventure, the sea. What did he think was going to happen with a list like that? Actually, probably exactly what did happen.

As the years moved on and we all moved out, we started giving him books; he absolutely loved reading. We had to coordinate sometimes so we didn’t get him the same one, and I don’t think we ever did. He received volumes about Brooklyn, about baseball and golf, about history—one of his passions. The last book I bought him was a first edition copy of John Grisham’s first book, A Time to Kill. He loved Grisham’s work. That book is on my shelf now alongside the books he gave me.

I thought the book exchange between Dad and me would end, but they have not. I can’t give him books anymore, so I write them. When I started working on a book about Michael and me training across Siberia, I knew it was going to be framed as a series of letters to Dad from me about our trip. Several pieces have already been published but I have a long way to go. I want to get it right. I want it to be a book he would have bought for me, signed, wrapped, and given to me late in the day, just when I thought I was getting tired, when his gift would wake me up and send me on some adventure well into the night.

Merry Christmas Dad, Love, Robert

 

An editor who reads this blog wants to publish one of the entries from much earlier this year. This is not normal. Anything “published” is generally not considered for publication by someone else unless it is an anthology of some sort. Material published in blogs—really anything online, including Facebook—is considered published. Period. This is why for the most part when I am writing something if I decide it has journal/magazine/newspaper worthiness, I don’t publish it here.

In fact, I have several categories of writing. There is the “blog” file, which includes material more akin to a diary entry than any essay I would attempt to convince an editor to consider. Usually the material is too provincial or “me” driven for wide appeal. I try and make most work relevant to more than my ego-driven world, but when they really remain little more than observations and digressions, I file them for the blog.

Then there is the “reading” file. These may include publishable work that is not yet ready to be published, but more often includes “bar” driven work which hopefully never will be published. The latter is crowd-driven and doesn’t always translate well to the page, despite the popularity at a reading. One example is a piece I wrote about a language mishap with my mother at the airport. On paper it doesn’t work because you can see the punchline coming.

The “in progress” files are those that I have every intention of combing through and sending to journals, magazines, and newspapers. They don’t all get finished, let alone accepted, but these are the ones with potential. This is why you’ll rarely see me write about Siberia or Spain on this blog—that material is still in the “in progress” file for future publication elsewhere. Maybe. Hopefully. 

I have a “great line” file, filled with notes of, well, observations and digressions, which may or may not end up in any of the above publications. This often also includes lost grocery lists and to-do lists from my office. I found my license in this file once. 

Sometimes crossovers occur. One morning last May I sat at Panera and blogged about my trip to Arlington National Cemetery. Within minutes of hitting “publish” I reread it and thought it might be good enough for a newspaper and sent it to the Washington Post. About ten minutes later they accepted it and asked if it had ever been published. I went back to this blog, deleted it, went to Facebook and LinkedIn and deleted any reference from those sites, and wrote back and said “of course not.” Luckily their acceptance was only minutes after it appeared on here so only a few people might have read it. And recently, I heard a story about one young woman who was accepted in the New Yorker, a game-changer for any writer. Unfortunately, her mother or someone she knows was so excited she published it on Facebook, and the New Yorker pulled the piece. That makes my stomach hurt and it wasn’t even me. Stories like that are why writers are a bit protective of where the work goes. The definition of “published” now seems to be anywhere that is beyond a writer’s own computer.

Still, this is the first time for me that a publisher read the blog and wanted to put it in a journal.

Hopefully none of these distinctions reflects quality. The real file breakdown for me is more content driven. If something has content with broad appeal, I’ll work it for “other” publication, so that isn’t an issue. Still, content often tells me which file it goes to.

I like to think this blog is akin to a few of us sitting around a table at a pub long after most people have left, and the conversation moves from hysterical to ridiculous to some philosophical point, where we are savoring the last drink and take whatever we were talking about and, well, digress. This makes the writing more personal and, hopefully, more universal at the same time. In the end, the best stories cannot be recorded. They must be lived. It can be a hard balance for this writer between “living” my life and “writing” about my life. I tend to bend in favor of “living.” There is no file for that, so some stuff just won’t end up anywhere.

Sometimes my son and I will be out taking pictures and note how the absolute beauty we see just isn’t being translated in pictures at that particular time. With the eye it is indescribably brilliant, but the shutter speed and F-stop just didn’t do the job. Writing is like that. Some subjects cross my mind when I’m out for a walk and I can’t wait to write about them. But when I do, they fall embarrassingly short. Like how grateful I am to be able to spend so much time outside; or how much I miss having Scotch on Tuesdays with my dad, or how much I want to pick up a phone and call my friend Cole, or Dave, or Trish, but they’re gone, and I can never correctly capture the emotion which falls between grabbing the phone and putting it back down.

 

This past Sunday morning I listened to the news while I drove home from a village across the river. No wonder I am on blood pressure medicine. People argued over the choices of the transition team for the new administration. An NFL player was shot and killed during a road rage incident. An Oakland resident complained about the response time of the paramedics to a deadly fire. Protestors in North Dakota waited for reinforcements from a group of veterans. Political analysts all agreed at the dangers of a pre-inauguration phone call to Taiwan. A man from Nevada did very well on the quiz show with NY Times Crossword Puzzle editor Will Short. Oklahoma State lost.

I turned into the driveway and wound my way through the four hundred feet of woods to the house and remained outside all afternoon. I found myself in desperate need of a little peace of mind. It seems the seasonal changes in nature are the only persistent and predictable aspects of life. When I am in the woods or walking along the water, I could as easily be ten-years-old as fifty-six, and it could as easily be 1969 as 2016. I could be on Long Island, or in central Massachusetts, or here at home, finishing off a cup of tea on the porch as wrens come and go for safflower seed.

Yesterday the sky looked like it might snow though it was in the fifties. It had that low gray layer of late autumn haze out over the bay so that I could look right at the sun. It was pale yellow, almost a mere shadow of a glow. Just a few days ago the sky was so deep blue it was as if there couldn’t possibly be a storm anywhere in the hemisphere; one of those days. As far across the bay as I could see, and to the west up the river, nothing. Not a single disturbance moved the water or the trees or even the marsh-reeds, which tend to bend at the slightest brush of breeze even when a heron takes flight.

So I stayed outside all day yesterday. Mostly I raked, but I also moved planters around, piled empty pots behind the garden shed, and cleared off the trail in the back woods where deer bed down at night, and at dusk a fox always scurries around waiting for Michael to toss some leftovers into the brush. The oaks are nearly bare, except for a few that keep their leaves until spring. This land has mostly hardwoods, so the view above isn’t impeded anymore, but down at eye level an abundance of holly keeps the property green all year. The laurel, as well, remains, and a little higher up the thin pines stay green.

It might snow this year. It seems every year snow falls more regularly. Three years ago it snowed so much I don’t remember it clearing out enough to see the grass until well into February or March, which for this part of Virginia out on the Chesapeake is unusual. I’ll take it, or the heat, doesn’t matter. Ice cold hands from doing work without gloves or a back covered in sweat in August are equally satisfying. I like being in nature, wearing it, letting it penetrate beyond the visual so that all of my senses come to life.

From my perspective in these woods, whether the view be unobstructed across fields and waterways, or blocked, able to see only the nearby thicket like shadows on the wall of a cave, it is a beautiful world; despite the news today we live in a beautiful world. While humanity votes in and casts out, the natural world bends and turns and spins and thrusts itself forward in endless revolutions of perpetual next. This country is still an infant, despite what we call history as well as histrionics. It teethes on change and feeds on self-indulgence. To be fair, it always has.

But this country, where the river has ebbed and flowed for tens of thousands of years, and the watermen still cross the reach each day before dawn like their great-grandfathers did, is stronger than any news cycle. Here in the early morning a channel marker rings and the oyster boats return to their docks by the time the morning news anchors have poured their first cup of coffee and sign on to keep us informed about what is “important.”

I have no argument in nature. I have no sense of conflict. The paths are not compromised by a lack of decorum, the deer are not prone to an absence of character, and the osprey and eagles which frequent these skies do not suffer from questionable integrity. Nature is neither crass nor belittling; it does not lie. The trees remain firm in their convictions, the birds—with one exception—do not mock other birds, and the skies, whether cloudy or clear, have no ulterior motives.

The summer I turn sixty I plan to ride my bike around Ireland. At first I thought about walking around Ireland but since a friend of mine who has done this before and who I am hoping will seriously consider doing it again says biking is the way to go, biking it is. I normally don’t plan that far in advance, but I do need to study the language you know.

I also need to do my homework. My sister-in-law, who is an avid biker and has donated much of her time and youthful energy to biking long distances for charity, will be a big help for useful tips. I’ll be studying maps of small villages and large cities, history books, and catalogs of rain gear.

I have my reasons for this. One, it is pretty there. I’ve seen pictures, and my son Michael spent some time there some years ago. Also, we do have some ancestry in the old country, though “McCormick” can’t possibly be an easy lineage to trace. Still, doing so just might spice up the journey a bit. And, of course, like most dreams, this one just latched on to my thought process and won’t let go. That’s how it happens, for me anyway. Ideas for work or ideas for travel get a hold of me from somewhere inside and maneuver their way into my bloodstream until the only way to excise them is simply to follow through. They are in charge, after all. We all know that.

Still, I thought I was done with riding bikes decades ago.

When my family first moved to Virginia from New York I was just about to turn fifteen. We actually left Long Island the very day I finished ninth grade and drove the whole way south that evening in the rain. So I spent the first summer in Virginia not knowing a soul. Since I could not yet drive, I occupied myself until school started by biking everywhere. Some days I would ride along the oceanfront, through the state park, down to the southern beach near the Carolina border and home, with total distances at least once a week of around one hundred miles in a day; the other days about half that. I was bored so I biked. Other influences encouraged me to take it up a notch, and the following summer I planned to ride across the country on what was known at the time as the “Bikecentennial” path, from Williamsburg to Oregon, in 1976. That dream never occurred, of course, and a few years later during my sophomore year at college someone stole my bike so I moved on.

Jump to now: Yesterday I was in an office with a few colleagues, one of whom is much older than me. He was talking about the things he never did when he was younger, including dreams he had as late in his life as my age now. I hear this a lot from people I am surrounded by. You slow down when you get older. You can’t do the things you used to do, they often say. Those dreams died a long time ago, they say.

Left turn: I wrote a piece a few weeks ago for a journal. I’d spent a lot of time on it some years ago and it simply never worked. It takes place in two different countries and for some reason I was always married to the idea of writing it chronologically, which is already against my nature. But that idea climbed inside and locked in. I edited, added, cut—everything, and the piece simply never worked how I wanted. Great story, crappy writing. It happens. Then a few weeks ago I found it while looking for something else and while reading it over, one paragraph on page four stuck out, like the numbers at NASA in A Beautiful Mind—total illumination. I immediately realized that paragraph needed to be the beginning of the essay, so I rearranged the order of things. I sent it and they accepted and I am happy.

Not everything we do happens in the order we thought it might. Sometimes ideas need to work themselves out. Lao Tzu was right: “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”

So apparently I didn’t dream in the right order. Who knew? Some of the things I dreamed of doing when I was young I’ve not gotten to yet, and other ideas I thought of and carried out immediately. Timing is everything, in relationships, in art, in dreaming. Sure, I’ll never be an astronaut, a baseball player, or an ice cream man (that one died when 711 put stores on every damn corner). But I’ve got several buckets filled with possibilities, and whenever I let go of the “it’s too late for that” mentality, the younger I feel and the more energy I have.

Maybe sometimes we give up on things because of what we believe instead of what is true.

Some dreams clearly require compromise. I’m not going to ride from Williamsburg to Coos Bay, Oregon—just not driven to do so anymore; but I will from Dublin to Galway. Nowhere in my plan did I include an ambition to break any land-speed record. I might ride at the same pace as Richard Farnsworth in The Straight Story when he rides a tractor across the country to visit his brother. But he got there, and so will I. Age is only a factor insofar as the method is concerned. Jack Nicholas once pointed out when winning the US Open in his forties that he didn’t need to be as strong as he was at eighteen, he just had to use different clubs.

I think sometimes people don’t lose the ability, they lose the will.

And for the record, I calculated the distance already. The average length from birth to death is about eighty or so. Subtract from that the fifty-six I’ve already spent, and I’m down to twenty-four, or about the time it took my son to get from birth to now. In there is work, sleep, sitting around and staring at the water, and, of course, writing. That leaves the “active” part of what’s left at about three weeks, or so it seems. I can ride that out, for sure. I’ll rest when I’m done with it all. And anyway, some dreams I had in my twenties are just now cycling back.

By the way, if anyone is interested in Ireland during the summer of 2020, start training. Ireland’s coastline is 1970 miles long. That’s about twenty days at the summer of 1975 speed. Rearrange some routes, eliminate all expectations except to enjoy myself, multiply my age and divide by eyesight, and it’s going to be a long summer, but a great summer.

Sixty is the new fifteen.

Oh, and dear naysayers: Cornelius Vanderbilt didn’t start buying railroads until he was 70; Katsusuke Yanagisawa climbed Mt Everest at 71;  Margaret Ringenberg flew around the world at 72; Bill Painter climbed Mt. Rainier at 82; and Frank Schearer was waterskiing long after he turned 100.

Maybe I should wait a few decades.

Today I saw pictures of people celebrating Thanksgiving in various ways in various locations. My incredible sister made the full spread for her family and a friend, and I am certain she was up before six making stuffing for the turkey, the pies probably done from scratch the day before. She has an uncanny ability, as did our mother, to simultaneously make dinner as well as dessert, while cleaning them up at the same time. The ratio of the work she puts in to the time it takes to devour the fruits of her labor is completely out of whack, but I’m sure she not only doesn’t mind, she is most happy on days like this, as is our mother. On holidays she very much reminds me of her. Though the way she sits back and enjoys everyone enjoying the day is Dad all the way.

My brother, his wife, two thirds of their daughters, along with our mother and one son-in-law all went out to dinner in DC. This after driving from near Houston and stopping along the way to visit in-laws and play golf with my son and me. There are three men in the family for whom I have incalculable admiration for their kindness, ethics, and example: one is my father, one is my son, and the other without question is my brother. Plus, he was kind enough to let me win at golf, though we are both sure it was because of the clubs I used which used to be his. Today in DC I bet he is back at his daughter’s place and they’re all sitting around talking, planning whatever’s next. He, like my sister, picked up all the best traits of our mom and dad.

Yesterday we had turkey, flounder (one can’t live this close to the Chesapeake and not include seafood on any menu, usually oysters in the stuffing), and all the trimmings. I sat on the porch and listened to the Vikings/Lions game while the sun came and went in an otherwise mild day. And in the spirit of the day, I sat in complete appreciation of everything in my life, and some things not in my life at all: no suffering, no hunger, no want, no question life has been good. My scattered family were close to loved ones and I’m sure all taking a moment or two to remember Dad.

These are the moments my father lived for. Not work, not vacations, and not even golf, though some might dispute this last activity. No, hands down, my father’s life was family, especially around the holidays. He absolutely loved his children and was proud of us; he adored his five grandkids, and he could never contain his passion for his two great-grandsons. So when the holidays arrive, I miss him more than usual, which is already a lot. I have a love/hate relationship with holidays. I suppose everyone does at some point in life. It is beautiful to look ahead and see new generations experience new and old traditions for themselves, and the house is filled with laughter and football and the blending of aromas—that is the “love” part. We pass around the same old jokes and stories, and we add a notch every year with new adventures and ambitions, the faces of young family alive with promise. But sometimes I still wish my dad was inside carving the meat or talking to my brother about how Notre Dame is doing this year. So yesterday I took a moment to walk off by myself and remember.

It was my usual walk along the water and through woods that run past ponds and marshlands. It is a place of absolute peace, far from just about everything. Even the local market was closed for Thanksgiving so that if I did want something I would have had to drive fifteen miles to get it. I walked and thought about Thanksgivings when I was very young when so much of our extended family came to our house on the Island, and also in my early teens when just my paternal grandmother and aunt would celebrate this holiday with us. The day went much like how my sister’s day went this year, but in addition there would be football streaming from the living room, and dinner planned for about halftime, and wine, and the aromas of Bell seasoning or apple pie or turkey. Sometimes there would be light snow. Often just cold gray skies. When we moved south we could count on warmer, blue skies. My sister or I would slice the cranberry sauce. My dad carved. But he also spent some time in the margins, watching everyone enjoy each other. He would sometimes sit on the porch for a moment alone while everyone was inside talking, and he would sip a beer and talk to whoever came out for some quiet, which always included myself. I would catch him watching the river, or looking at the cardinals moving from tree to tree. Sometimes he was looking out, but sometimes I wondered if he was looking back.

I wonder if during those days when he stepped aside for a moment it was possible he was thinking about his beautiful childhood in Brooklyn, and his large family crowded around on holidays, his older brothers, his younger sisters, his Chesapeake Retriever. I know he wouldn’t trade the holidays we had for the world, just as none of his children would trade the ones we share with our own families. But when he stepped outside quietly and sipped his beer and looked off across the river, I like to think he was missing his father. Perhaps his childhood home on holidays was also filled with laughter and conversations and all the excitement that comes with it for a large family like his. And I wonder if back in his childhood, sometimes his dad, whom I never knew, might have sat off by himself, quietly, taking it in and enjoying his family enjoying themselves while my grandmother was making dinner, and he sometimes quietly looked out the window and thought about his youth.

It is an incredible gift to be thankful for what we have; I believe this is more rare than most of us know. But every once in a while in the mix of the young energy and the middle-life balance of planning and recalling, I like to step aside and remember why it is we do so appreciate family. It is because of Mom and Dad’s example. It is the absolute conviction that we can always count on the holidays to bring us closer to family and friends, both the ones we are surrounded by and the ones who went on ahead and are waiting, watching the cardinals move about, watching the river run.

I had a third grade teacher on Long Island who hated boys. This was not a secret; even my mother used to complain that the woman, whose name I long ago blocked out, despised boys. She would make us sit in the corner but never the girls, would never call on us if we apparently knew the answer but always would if we apparently did not.

And I remember once she said that boys who play outside are very susceptible to spider bites and that might be dangerous since it isn’t unusual for a spider to lay eggs inside you. In fact, she said, she knew of someone who had been bitten in the cheek by a spider, and it started to itch not long after the bite. It became uncontrollable until he ripped open the bite scar with his nails and hundreds of baby spiders crawled out and down his cheek and neck, but some had already crawled into his brain and he died not long later.

We were eight years old.

This can’t be true, I remember thinking. We live in New York, not Panama. The following summer my family moved further east on the Island into a new house in a small village surrounded by an arboretum, a state park, and the Great South Bay. There were bound to be spiders. Still, I spent most of my time during those years hiking through woods, climbing trees, walking forbidden trails to mysterious creeks, and building forts in the trees behind our house. In fact, I’ve spent the better part of my life outside in nature, and I don’t think I ever had a single spider bite, let alone a colony inside my face.

But the story stuck. The following year at a new elementary school, I had better teachers who told us we could grow up to be anything we wanted, and nothing at all could stop us; absolutely nothing. Mark was going to be a musician and Norman was going to be a great athlete. I was going to play baseball. Unfortunately, I sucked. But no matter what happened, I always felt lucky. And I wasn’t afraid of spiders anyway; I just didn’t want them building canals through my dental work.

Who does this? Who so instills fear into others as to mark them for years, decades, to come? When I mention to my students that in my youth it was simply expected that we’d at the very least treat each other with respect, they laugh. They tell me in no uncertain terms that they believe they are entitled to treat each other how they see fit, and the funnier the disparaging comment, the more popular the person.

They call me old. Go figure. Students don’t have much hope in their future. Faculty doesn’t have much hope in students. The media doesn’t have much hope for our country. It goes on. And all of them attempt to outdo each other in securing the best sound bite. There are some days I long for a good arachnid attack. Still, I am an acute optimist.

— 

I remember in fifth grade at my new school, Timber Point Elementary, where we had to work things out for ourselves in the schoolyard. One kid, Steve Brady, was constantly making fun of another, Norman Esiason. Yes, him. My teacher, Mr. Kingston, was on playground duty. He asked them to settle the issue in front of everyone. He stood next to them like a ref in a boxing ring waiting for the contenders to touch gloves. They stood there silent a long time. I believe now Mr. Kingston would have been satisfied with a handshake. But Norman suggested that Steve sit with him and his friends at lunch the next day. He said he supposed they might have more in common than Steve thinks.

I never forgot that. And I’m glad, since I really don’t see it so much anymore even among adults, let alone kids. I miss the time when people who didn’t agree were still somewhat respectful of each other. Such mutual acknowledgement of separate ideas should not be found solely on the playing field. To not treat each other with respect would be at the very least un-sportsmanlike conduct.

We make fun of each other too much. We ridicule what we don’t understand or agree with. We insult what we are threatened by. We manipulate what we wish so we can win. We ignore our weaknesses and pay too close attention to those of others without stopping to say what we admire in others. We should change.

I am being overly idealistic and simplistic, I know. Please don’t make fun of me for it or slip some spiders onto my pillow. From what I have witnessed, despite the more immediate successes of questionable character, it is still the only journey that has enduring results.