Search Results for: I Saw An Angel Last Night

“Blessed are the men and women who take up hopeless causes, and fight against great odds,  against powerful forces, and happily take on tasks others find hopeless. They are the true angels, the chosen ones, come to walk among us on the earth, destined to go mad with love and caring.” – Jon Katz, October 10, 2018.

One should, wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald in “The Crack-up,” be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. “This philosophy,” he wrote,  “fitted on to my early adult life, when I saw the improbable, the implausible, often the “impossible,” come true.

I liked Thomas Toscano right away.

A  Bronx- born former opera singer and Opera Company Director in Brooklyn, a veteran conductor and composer, Thomas is outspoken, cynical, funny, sometimes outrageous. And dedicated.

Under it all, he is a big-hearted pussycat and idealist. He could retire, of course, and live a quiet and peaceful life. He won’t, he can’t.

When you go into the studio, there is a sign asking you to sit down on a sofa and wait if you are a guest. If the door is locked, the sign says, please go away. The Fish Fry truck that is usually parked in front of the station was at the airport for a few days he said.

Tuesday, we sat alone in the studio (he is almost always alone in the studio, even while doing his marathon four hour morning talk show) and I got to sit and watch him put some music over the promo he and I had done for my radio show “Talking to Animals.” We are doing a trial run tomorrow at 11 a.m. at the embattled little radio station WBTN.

It was like a ballet, he was transfixed, muttering about the software, fingers flying over the keyboard,  his love for his music revealed.

I saw this gruff and impatient man laugh and smile with the joy of creation, and I saw his heart and soul shine as he overlaid Van Morrison’s “Bright Side Of The Road” over his promo for the animal show I am going to be going tomorrow, Thursday.

He chose that song because I said I loved it, it was my favorite song.

The station has been fighting for its life for some years now, it has few volunteers, almost no staff, ancient and  deteriorating equipment, few sponsors and no money to speak of. Like community radio stations all over the country and the world, there is little room left at the table when the lobbyists, corporate media companies, and government regulators get at the trough to shape and dominate the media landscape.

When is the last time you saw an actual human on Fox News or CNN?

WBTN has no lobbyist, it doesn’t even have an engineer. It has Thomas Lawrence Toscano, a social warrior who seems to live in the ratty old shack that WTBN calls home like some dogged woodland elf. I’m sure he vacuums at night.

This is familiar turf for me, I was born with a copper spoon in my mouth.

It seems I’ve been  trying to outrun corporate America for most of my life, and failing. First, I saw them come for newspapers, then television, then publishing, not government. Then, of course, they came for me and you, just watch the news.

I fought and fought for many years, then fled the battlefield retreating to a farm and place and blog that no corporation  has yet decided to take over or make money from.

Of course I loved Steven Toscano the minute I saw him, he is a brother,  fighting the good fight for all of us, and even thought it is very difficult to see how he will win the fight to save the little station that could, it is even harder to imagine how he could fail.

For all the struggles we are going through, this is still the story of America I most love, the little guy against the giants, unable to quit or hide or retreat. Sometimes, say the stories, he or she even wins.

The giants seem to be getting meaner and bigger these days, fights like this one need to be won. There are very few places left where ordinary people get to speak their minds, or speak at all.

I’m happy to be there tomorrow, trying to put this radio show together, putting it on with Thomas. No better place for me.

When I was eight years old, I dreamed of having my own radio show. When I was 13, I had my own radio show at the Veteran’s Hospital in Providence,  playing music to the patients there. When I was 15, I had a weekend radio show on public affairs, we talked a lot about the United Nations and whether or not China should be admitted.

Even I didn’t care. I know the glory of fighting lost  and hopeless causes. This one just might be possible to win. You can donate here.

When I moved upstate and wrote books about animals, I did a radio show about dogs with WAMC (Public Radio/Albany) anchor Joe Donahue. I loved it, we were flooded with calls.I enjoyed it, at some point I irritated someone in power, a gift I have always had,  and the shows abruptly ended).

I’ve been looking for another shot at my own radio show ever since.

People seem to grasp this latest  Quixotic campaign of mine. The show will be streamed all over the country. Who knows?

I’m getting a whole bunch of questions e-mailed to me today to bring to the program, in case nobody calls. (the station call number is 866-406-9286, you can stream the show here), and lots of encouragement from the readers of my blog, we call them The Army Of Good, and I do few things without their blessing.

I hope to get a few calls, I have a fistful of questions.

They love good causes in this army, this is how we keep ourselves sane these days.

People all over the country understand the value of community, it’s fragility and endangerment in the Corporate Nation

I have no illusions. There is no sponsor, no engineer, nobody to screen the calls or process them but Thomas, I don’t know how many listeners.

He hinted that if the show worked, I would need to learn “the board” the Vietnam era studio set-up that sits bravely at the heart of the tiny radio station.

Poor Thomas, that may be the most hopeless cause of all.

So off we go, tilting at windmills, chasing dreams. This is my destiny, I think, nothing makes me happier or feeling closer to life. The point is not to win. The point is to fight the good fight. Thomas knows this, and so do I.

Onward. The Fight For WBTN

This week, I saw a wonderful video clip of an interview Willie Nelson did on the TV show “The View.” Willie shocked Texas recently by agreeing to sing at a fund-raising benefit on behalf of Democratic Senatorial Candidate Beto O’Rourke, to whom  I have donated $25.

Many of Willie’s fans are outraged by what they consider a betrayal of their conservative values, and are sending him the outraged and nasty messages that are now a hallmark of public discourse in America, and that I get every day, in much smaller numbers than Willie, I am sure.

In America, thinking for yourself is considered treasonous, it was once considered sacred.

Disagreement is a capital crime here in the birthplace of democracy, punishable by banishment and flogging, mostly digitally. Whips have been replaced by tweets and texts and FB messages.

People tell me all the time I should be ignoring these messages, not writing about them. I disagree. These people should be called out, and this issue squarely faced, it is literally choking free speech to death.

Willie was asked on The View how he felt about all the heat he was taking – O’Rourke’s opponent is Republican Senator Ted Cruz. “I don’t care,” he said on TV. “I really don’t care.”  I give my opinion, he said, and other people can give theirs.

This plain response was considered so shocking it made news all over the country, and went viral on social media.

I needed to hear this this week, and I was grateful for Willie’s directness and clarity. I needed some myself.

The week was very interesting, in a perverse way. It started with the Vulvas. Every time I write about Maria’s Flying Vulva Potholders, i seem to unleash a storm of outrage and invective from the people I call Stuffpots and Fuddy-Duddies.

It’s curious, few of these people go after Maria, they seem to focus on me.

I think the reason for this is obvious.

Maria is nicer than me, more polite than me. And much more tolerant.

I am happy to be the lightning rod for her Flying Vulvas. She wouldn’t call anyone a “Fuddy-Duddy,” as I love to do, and perhaps this is one reason I love her, and the reason why few people  send her nasty messages or fight with her.

But the problems this week went well beyond the Vulvas.

I admit that I love to stir the pot, and I also agree that I have great fun writing about the Vulvas. I like a storm. I feel like Clarence Darrow in Dayton, Tennessee in 1929, he wasted little time worrying about the dunderheads who put a school teacher in jail because he taught the theory of Evolution.

He didn’t care what the righteous thought of him, and they didn’t think much of him. When I was 10 years old, I ran away from home to Boston to see Inherit The Wind. I’ve seen it about 100 times since.

I’ve loved poking stuffpots ever since. Kids are impressionable.

I have little patience for people who find artistic representations of Vulvas disgusting or revolting or immoral or who tell other people what to think. I don’t really care what they think, and they don’t really care what  I think.

Why pretend? In America in 2018, almost no one changes their mind, they just choose a label and stick to it.

I would never deny them their right to express themselves. I want the same for me.

Willie gets it. Maria is entitled to her art. They are entitled to their opinion, I am entitled to mine. Blogs are easy to start, don’t mess with mine. We don’t need to be beating up on each other.

No  one is forced to come here and read my mumblings and rantings. If they find me offensive or combative or stupid, all they have to do is go somewhere else. It’s easy to do and absolutely free.

“Your post was intentionally antagonistic so people would reply,” wrote a Vulva Critic. “Then you criticized a post for not containing “thoughtful criticism” I give you “thoughtful criticism” and your response is it (the Vulva potholders) is “no big deal.” So I can only conclude that you don’t really want to discuss an idea, you simply want people to agree or put them in their place. Very manly of you.”

I missed the thoughtful criticism part, perhaps I just didn’t see it. I had no desire to be antagonistic, just honest. Is it really the same thing?

What can I say, really?

In America, there is this  deepening idea that everyone must want to be agreed with in order to state a belief, and that anyone who disagrees is somehow an enemy or villain or traitor.  Why on earth should Willie Nelson be under siege for choosing a candidate to support?m Is he being antagonistic?

I will be truthful, I have little appetite for discussing this issue with every uptight person in North America.

My ideas about opinions have always been shaped by the Revolutionary firebrands who created this country and the very idea of free thought, people like Thomas Paine,  an early hero of mine, who makes me look like a hanging plant, or Thoreau or Emerson,  who cared nothing about whether people agreed with them or not and did not spend their days arguing with angry strangers from unknown places.

Being provocative was the point.

Their idea was that a good writer challenged and stirred people,  they did not not bow to them or seed agreement or kiss asses. And their ideas were their own, not community property. Their ideas weren’t devoured or trampled upon in seconds by hordes of angry and self-righteous ants.

Over the years, I have come to feel this way about Willie Nelson, a much more talented man than me, but very much his own person. He just doesn’t care what other people think of him, and he isn’t afraid to say it. That is the the mark of an original thinker, or artist, and the only way to be one.

That’s my idea too. I don’t care if people like me or agree with me, I am not one who only talks to those who think like me, God help all of us. I learn much from people who disagree with me, as long as they are not pompous or rude. On social media, so many of them are.

I care that I am true to myself. Anybody can start a blog, they don’t need to come here and try to tell me what to write, especially if they don’t like me or find my ideas worthwhile.

The truth is, this has been something of a nasty week, even by my standards.

I got into a brief social media cat right with someone named Lynne who corrected me for saying that donkeys had been working with people longer than dogs. She was correct about that, which I readily admitted. But she also scolded me for being a lazy writer and failing to read the World Atlas.

“You as a writer should know better than to make such a broad statement as this,” she huffed, “especially when it is not based in fact.” I told her I would rather be wrong than rude, and I accepted the correction, and corrected the piece, I  also said didn’t need the scolding.

She got in the last word, and is welcome to it. Turns out she was ticked off at much more than my thoughts on donkeys, as I suspected: “Your generalizations of life in New York State are not necessarily representative of the whole country, colorful & entertaining as they are.”

Now I get it. She doesn’t like my politics, or what she thinks my politics are.

I’m supposed to somehow represent the whole country, not me or even New York State. That would sure be interesting to read. I think we all know what she means.

This morning, another angry warrior suggested I did nothing in the world of value without using other people’s money. She called me “sweetheart,” so I know she was a bit creepy.  I think we all need to think about turning off cable news for awhile. Lots of people are starting to sound like the people on those panels.

There is something in the air this week, perhaps it is the awful and inescapable news we see and hear every day. The angry and disconnected are aroused, they are crawling out of their shadows like the zombies in Night Of The Dead and come out of the mist to yell at me and scold me.

I must have gotten on somebody’s list – it might be those cursed Vulvas, or my troubled ways.

The Kabbalah says that when the energy field around us is charged with negative or stressed out energy, we find ourselves in a lower state of being, suffering from depression, anger, fear, hostility.  Angry people violate our personal space, we become “low-hearted.”

So I need to change the energy around me. I am low-hearted this week.

Or it might just be that I am the arrogant asshole these people think I am. If so, my own punishment will come soon enough.

It’s not for me to say what I’m like, you can each make up your own mind. The irony is that I am just starting to like me and know me. A bad time to discover I’m a jerk.

I am sadly no Thoreau, but I share his idea that ideas are personal and precious, they have a right to live in peace for at least a few seconds before all sorts of people rush to their smart phones and accuse me of not agreeing with them, or of not representing everyone in the country, or of  being an awful person.

Ideas are fragile, and personal and individual. They don’t live by polls or popular opinion.  They don’t always need to be agreed with instantly and universally. They need time to grow and evolve.  They are easily undermined or lost or drowned out in the din. Like angels, they stand or die on their own, given a chance. They are easily killed, and so many die.

Thoreau didn’t have to deal with Facebook Messenger or comments. He would have hung himself in that cheap little cabin.

I have no desire to represent anyone but me, and that is sort of the point, and the reason for returning to this issue, as I do.

It is important to me, and that is a good enough reason to write about it. I will keep raising it because it so directly affects free speech and thought. People very much want the right to be rude, they have come to see it as a birthright. I don’t.

Identity is precious. I have always had to fight for it, I always will. So does anyone who wants to swim in these waters.

People who seem to need enemas have found in the last few days. If you are public, you just have to put up with this in America. But I can write about it.

I want to say something shocking and blasphemous:  No matter what people think,  I have no wish to argue my beliefs on Facebook or all day or anywhere else.  My ideas are my ideas, they are no better or worse than that, and like the great Willie – he is my brother this week – I will keep expressing my beliefs, right down to my last one,  and everybody else is free to express theirs.

I’ll be happy to stand or fall with Willie.

What I admire about Willie Nelson – he is a pre-Internet public figure, as am I – is his ownership of his ideas, for better or worse. He doesn’t really care what other people think of his opinions, he is free to have his, and they are free to have theirs.  He came to his ideas before a thousand people could e-mail or text him in macro-seconds to tell him they are all wrong, or that they don’t agree.

So did I.

What people rarely learn to do on social media is listen or contemplate.

Charlotte Bronte, who wrote Jane Eyre, wrote “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”

Go, Willie.

Audio: I Don’t Care

For most of my life I lived in New York and other big cities and I came to love theater and film,  my two cultural passions There was so much theater in New York, although getting to the theater was often difficult, and the price of theater  in New York rose so rapidly I could only afford to go once in a while.

Some of the shows I would love to see – Hamilton, The Book of Mormon, Angels In America – can cost up to $1,000 or more, middle-class and poor people are priced out of Broadway.

When I moved to the country, I thought I was leaving the theater – and many movies – behind.

Our little town is blessed to have Hubbard Hall, an old opera house, but in order to survive, the Hall is turning to educational programs and theater for kids and students,  and occasional smaller shows. We have no movie theater.

The surprise for me is that I have seen more excellent theater this year and last than I was ever able to see in New York, and for $60 or $75 a ticket. We have two Equity theater companies within driving distance – the Williamstown, Mass., and Dorset, Vt. Theater Festivals.

Both send plays to Broadway and get some of the best actors in the theater. Both are almost shockingly inexpensive and easy to get to.

We saw our sixth play of the summer tonight, an inventive and surprising and quite wonderful interpretation of Jane Austen’s Pride And Prejudice. It was a great performance, innovative and touching and funny, all at the same time.

The theater in Dorset is well endowed – its a very wealthy town –  and small and intimate. They get seasoned actors and we have enjoyed every one of the plays we’ve seen, from one on the pressures on mothers with newborn babies to the stories of African-Americans trapped in bad jobs.

Beyond that, you can park right across the street, maybe 10 yards away, use the bathroom at almost any time, and be out of the theater and on the way home 10 minutes after the final curtain. Bottled water costs $1  bottle and  fresh-baked almond cookies are two dollars.

In Williamstown, the theater – it is big and beautifully designed – has a parking lot right behind the theater, it takes a minute or two to get back to our car. There is no parking fee either for Dorset or Williamstown.

The two and a half hour play we saw tonight – a lavish set large and gifted cast – cost $65 each for two seats, center orchestra, on the aisle.

I bought them two weeks before the performance, and when I had to cancel because of a friend’s funeral, I called the Playhouse the morning before the play, somebody answered the phone on the first ring and they gladly moved the tickets to another night, same seats. No charge.

And they were actually friendly.

I am home writing this 35 minutes after the play ended.

We saw four plays at the Williamstown Theater Festival this summer, two at Dorset. We loved every one of them, and we have one more to go – “Ann,” a one-woman play about Ann Richards, the last Democratic Governor of Texas. That one is sold out already, we are going on September 1.

Next year we’re buying a special ticket that gets us into four shows of our choice for a little more than $200 a person.

We also found an Independent Movie Theater in Williamstown, Mass, that we joined for $100 a year for both of us, and it costs $5 a movie. We’ve more than earned that fee back. We park on the street in front of the theater. Then eat Indian or Mexican or Thai food.

In nearby Bennington, Saturday matinees cost $5 for adults at the movie theater there.

Tomorrow, we’re going to see the new Spike Lee movie,  BlackKlansman. $10 for the two of us.

People from my other life often asked me with sorrowful voices if I don’t miss culture living in the country.

No, I don’t.

And I don’t miss $40 in parking or $800 tickets either, if I can get them at all.

This is a stereotype, I am delighted to shatter. There is a ton of culture in the country, at least in this part of the country.

I really missed seeing plays in New York as it became too complicated and expensive to go. I missed seeing movies because they were often crowded and too expensive.

I see fine theater all the time again, and every movie I want to see. There is a ton of culture in the country.

Last night, Carol messaged me to ask if I would be interested in speaking at Ed’s funeral service later in this week. It was thoughtful and gracious of her, she was asking if I wanted to play  a role in Ed’s funeral.

I knew the instant i read her message that I couldn’t do it.

I think it was at that moment that I realized just how deeply I felt about Ed’s sickness and death and how much it had affected me, and how little I had come to terms with my own feelings about it.

I wrote back to Carol that I would rather not speak at Ed’s funeral, that it would be too hard for me to do. That surprised me and opened the gate for me, I turned to Maria and said “the truth is, I can’t do it.” My head was in a whirl.

We both looked at one another, and I felt a great surge of pain and sadness.

I am never uncomfortable speaking in public, I’ve been on a score of book tours all over the country and never once felt uncomfortable standing at a podium talking to large groups- sometimes hundreds – of people. Like Ed, I always felt destined to tell my story, i always assumed somebody would want to hear it.

But I know there has always been a loneliness in me, a sense of being apart, of standing outside of the circle. This feeling has protected me as well as isolated me, is beautiful to me as well as sad.

For the past couple of months I’ve come to see Ed and Carol almost every day, and watched this strong and proud man melt away in front of me, reduced to diapers and unable to sit himself up, go to the bathroom, or even speak and his very soul and flesh was eaten away bit by bit.

I have also watched his loving and devoted family suffer along with him, as the person they knew and the life they know began to come apart. It was very painful to see Carol, who is also my friend, in such pain. It was very difficult to see Ed so frightened and shattered.

I wrote about it every day, determined to fulfill my promise to Ed to record his death in the hope it might be useful to others.

I didn’t see it, but of course it took a toll me. I protected myself by refusing to see it. Ed wanted badly to share this chapter in his life, he asked my help. I agreed. It is, after all a great story, a universal one. And I loved Ed.

To do this, I had to slip into my old reporter mode, I had to detach myself and focus on the feelings and emotions of others, I worried about Carol and Ed’s kids, and of course Ed.  I was fine, I told anyone who asked, I didn’t have brain cancer. I hate the idea of stealing other people’s grief and trouble.

Going over there made me feel as if I were doing something useful, and sometimes it was helpful, and I think it was valuable and useful – I’m proud of what I wrote, of what Ed and I did together in our final act of friendship – but the truth is there is really nothing someone like me can really do to halt the onrush of this awful thing.

There is an endemic helplessness to watching and observing someone else’s suffering, rather than doing. I am not a hospice nurse, they are built differently.

I could distract Ed and tell his story and bring Carol some fruit and vegetables and books, but none of us had the power to stop this onrushing train.

Yesterday, when I went to the farm Maggie, Ed’s daughter, was in great pain, she worried she should have done more to help her father, she was so upset and I took her hands and asked her if she believed in God.

Yes, she said, she did, and so I urged her to let God do God’s work, and trust him to make those decisions about Ed and his life. Don’t play God, I said, it is too great a weight.

I don’t believe in God the way the Gulley family and many other people do, but when I realized – I knew – that I couldn’t speak at Ed’s funeral, a completely natural thing for me to do, then I realized I needed to give myself a talk and allow myself to feel, rather than simply record what was happening in front of me.

It would not be honest to hide my own feelings while writing about the feelings of others. It is time for me to understand what I am feeling and acknowledge those emotions.

I can’t only live through the mind, the soul has a right to a seat at the table.

Monday night, I read some posts online, some people were assuring Carol that Ed was flying with the angels now, and this struck me as curious and bothered me, it wasn’t something I could picture Ed doing happily, or at all.

I was going to write a hopefully funny spoof of the idea, a bit of humor and satire picturing what such a flight with Ed would be like, him flapping his arms in soldered tractor parts and talking about his cows.

I think I needed to laugh.

But I couldn’t post the piece, the whole idea of it bothered me. Something held me back, it sounded an alarm. I never hold back on what I write.

I rarely doubt the point of anything I write, but this one troubled me. Something was  wrong. It was the wrong piece, it was a distraction, it was too soon and too glib.

Bit by bit, I saw something was wrong. I couldn’t sleep. I was shutting down. I felt the old waves of loneliness and depression. I was up all night, drifting and shaking into the dark and familiar space that lives in a part of all of us.

I could barely speak to Maria all night and we rarely have trouble speaking with one another. It was a long night.

This morning, as the sun rose, she sat up with me and we talked, and she told me the truth – we do that for each other.  I just had not dealt with my own feelings about Ed’s illness and his death, she said, it was such a big part of my life these past months.

At I listened to her, I thought of course, of course, I could never get through a talk about Ed in this way, and I was not about to break down in front of a big field full of people.

And then I saw the light and knew what I had to do, I had to come downstairs and sit at the computer and write some truth. My place of safety and strength, the way I find myself. I may be slow to grasp many things, but I believe in the truth, and I decided some years ago that I will not lie about myself any longer, or ever again.

I have no secrets now, and that is the safest place I have ever been.

So I need to stop a bit and feel a bit and be deliberate about my life today.

I need to take some pictures and herd some sheep and hang out with Red and Maria and go see Ali in our office in Schaghitcoke and plan some good. I don’t think I can cry, I rarely cry, I learned not to do that.

I need to get familiar with myself, to go inward and say hello.

I do understand why I hide this pain, it was so dangerous and frightening in my life to show real emotion to anyone – the Gulley family seems able to do this quite openly and honestly. Their lives are not perfect  but they feel safe enough to feel.

I learned from my earliest days not to do it. Never. I can tighten up like the tightest drum.

It’s ironic, but there is another side to this truth,  this very caution also enabled me to sit with Ed day after day and be calm and steady and write. That is the awful gift of the reporter.  A police sergeant, a friend, cautioned me to give up police reporting, I was handling what I saw too well, he said.

So I did.

If I didn’t  hide my emotions I wouldn’t have been able to sit with Ed day after day. So it is a gift as well as a defensive trait.

This exchange with Carol revealed my own pain and loneliness as well as hers, and at the end, Ed’s. He was beyond the reach of any of us, and if there is a God, I hope Ed is in his or her hands.

The spiritual task is not to hide from this loneliness or to let myself drown in it, but to see it and speak the truth about it and understand its source.

Then to bring it into the light.

Then the sadness loses its power, it is not a task of the mind but a task of the heart, and I tend to live in the mind and shy away from the heart. My life with Maria has changed that, but it will always be there.

So my loneliness was revealed to me as the other side of my gift to watch and see and capture what is in front of me, and that is precious to me. Once I experienced this, I found my loneliness to be not only tolerable but fruitful.

What has alway seemed something that is painful and sorrowful has also opened the way to a deeper knowledge of what some people call God and what I see as quite sacred but do not really have a name for. Perhaps it is God under a different name.

So I need to be honest with the people who read this, and more importantly, with myself.

So I cannot speak at Ed’s funeral:  me, a public person who has spoken a thousand times in front of strangers.

I just have too much feeling and emotion inside of me for him and his family, and his death, much of which I am only beginning to see and understand.

This is the right decision for me.

And yes, I will absolutely and soon write about Ed flying with the angels. Every time I think of it, I smile, and I know Ed would get the greatest kick out of the idea, he would be happy to give the angels his lecture on the price of milk.

“There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.”- John Calvin.

Tomorrow is my birthday, I will be 71 years old, born in the Lying Inn Hospital in Providence, R.I., to Eve Katz, my father was at home when I was born, he had absolutely no desire to be there, as was often he custom then.

The men waited outside, or at home, and swept in grandly when the bleeding was over. I guess that set the tone for much of my life. It is a new world.

I was the last child my parents had, and I never imagined being 71 years old, when I was young, the idea of being so old was really unthinkable. And I never thought I would live this long, my life was so filled with confusion and pain.

Here I am, I am a tough son of a bitch, as my friend Ed Gulley would say, I lasted this long and am still standing and full of myself and busier and happier than ever before. Isn’t that a kick in the ass? Crisis and mystery is just around the corner?

My blog here is my voice, and it has given me strength and direction. Maria is my life, my center.

I am married to an extraordinary person, and our relationship has given me a new lease on life, one I will not waste this time.

I saw this old barn the other day and went to say hello, you and me, I said, we are still on our feet and plan to be around for a while. The barn was like an old friend, battered a bit but quite proud.

It is true that you get wiser as you get older, and it is also true it is usually too late to do all that much good. The future does not belong to me. But I will use what I have learned and share my life.

Old men  have no business being in charge, or telling other people what to do, they are too tired and cranky, their spirits too wary and reflective. You can know too much as well as too little.

I do not fight for power,  I am happy to get out-of-the-way for the next generation. We made something of a mess of things, as most generations do.

My birthday is not a huge big deal, but it matters getting to 71 largely intact and with all of the parts I was born with, unless you count hair. I feel about 35 and I don’t do old talk or exercise in gyms, which I think helps to keep me alive.

The biggest change in my life is that I know when to speak and when to shut up and I sometimes need naps. Tomorrow, we are setting off after lunch for one of those sleazy motels Maria loves near Williamstown, Mass.

We will visit the Clark Museum, get Indian food for dinner, go see a play at the Williamstown Theater  Festival, get breakfast at a funky yellow diner Thursday morning, come home early and get to work.

I realize that these are all things Maria very much loves to do (except the theater, which is what I really love to do) but isn’t that the point? I love doing what she loves to do, that is what makes a great birthday for me. I just learned that a few years ago.

Maria has reminded me that making love is the breath of life, and I hope to do some of that, it gives me a sweet and lasting glow, and reminds me that age is what you make of it, not what other people make of it.In those special moments, I am 21.

The impending death of my friend Ed  reminds me to make good use of my time, and live fully every day as long as I can and as well as I can. Life happens every day, and one day in the not too distant future it will happen to me.

My dread is that I will have life a meaningless life, full of regrets. It’s not going to happen.

I like Maya Angelou’s idea of celebrations, it keeps me from dismissing the birthday as just another day for corporations to make more money.

“Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you need to say your nightly prayer,” she wrote. “And let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good.”

I vow once again on this birthday to not spend a day of my life mourning what is lost, lamenting what I missed, regretting the poor choices I made, writing angry messages to strangers,  or envying a single human anything they have.

Next month, we get another dog, tomorrow I write on my blog and take photos and love my wonderful wife and see a play. Later this week, Red and I see some Mansion residents and help some more refugees. Friday, I will call a bingo came and sing out the numbers.

Can life really get any better than that?

Like John Calvin said:

“There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.”

So I’ll do it.