Thierry Sagnier's Blog, page 4
June 2, 2023
What's the Point?
I haven’t written anything worth reading in several months. Laziness, for the most part, sort of encouraged by two writing friends, who within weeks of each other, told me, “It’s not worth it.” They were talking about putting pen to paper at a time when many readers have the attention span of fruit flies. I wonder if my friends are right. Is it worth spending hours polishing a few paragraphs? To what end? Lets face it: the vocabulary of the average American is shrinking at the rate of almost 600 words a day due to the use of emojis. People are getting dumber. According to the psychologist Jean Twenge, “Americans' vocabularies might be shrinking despite the increase in education. This is plausible given the steep decline in the amount of time high school students spend reading [...] and the decline in SAT verbal scores over time [...]. This explanation could account for the narrowing of abilities between those without high school educations and those with college educations. The difference in vocabulary by education was approximately 3.4 correct answers in 1974-79 but dropped to 2.9 correct answers by 2010-16. However, this explanation would not account for the decline in performance in all educational groups.” This is indescribably sad.
So what I think I’ll start doing, until a better idea emerges, is write brief forays, a few lines at best. Perhaps the fruit fly readers can spare a few seconds away from their phones and addictive apps, and look at what I write.
What I want to do first is announce a ban on the word fuck. I’m bored with it, with its lack of imagination and meaning. I am tired of any activity that is fucking. Fuckin’ A (or B or C), fuckin’ great, fuckin’ anything where you lack the vocabulary to find a more meaningful term. I might suggest you substitute the French term merde (pronounced maird) which may at least make you appear smarter than you are, and minimally proficient in a second language.
For more than a month, I’ve been trying to do a piece on friendship. The page or two I’ve managed to draft so far will not appeal to the emoji crowd. I now officially give up trying to define the concept. My friends know who they are.
I will not write about Trump, ever. I will defeat the unhealthy fascination I have for this ambulatory tas de merde (see? Your French is already helpful!) I will cease wondering how we’ve come to be where we are, politically, morally, and ethically. The lunatics are running the asylum and it shows. Nor will I any longer share my belief that within one or two decades, this country will cease to exist as it does now and become instead four or five different nations of varying wealth and merit.
There’s not much sense writing about the haves and have-nots. That story is visible at every traffic island featuring men (and increasingly, women) pleading poverty and homelessness on tired cardboard signs. I wonder, though—how are these people faring in our increasingly cashless society?
I’m not going to write about guns, either. There have been more than 200 mass shootings across the US so far this year. A mass shooting is defined as an incident resulting in the death or injury of four or more people. There are some 400 million guns here in the US. Fifty-seven percent of the population favors stricter gun laws, so why don’t we have them? Oh, never mind. I really don’t want to write about any of this. There’s no benefit to flogging a dead horse.
So what I think I’ll start doing, until a better idea emerges, is write brief forays, a few lines at best. Perhaps the fruit fly readers can spare a few seconds away from their phones and addictive apps, and look at what I write.
What I want to do first is announce a ban on the word fuck. I’m bored with it, with its lack of imagination and meaning. I am tired of any activity that is fucking. Fuckin’ A (or B or C), fuckin’ great, fuckin’ anything where you lack the vocabulary to find a more meaningful term. I might suggest you substitute the French term merde (pronounced maird) which may at least make you appear smarter than you are, and minimally proficient in a second language.
For more than a month, I’ve been trying to do a piece on friendship. The page or two I’ve managed to draft so far will not appeal to the emoji crowd. I now officially give up trying to define the concept. My friends know who they are.
I will not write about Trump, ever. I will defeat the unhealthy fascination I have for this ambulatory tas de merde (see? Your French is already helpful!) I will cease wondering how we’ve come to be where we are, politically, morally, and ethically. The lunatics are running the asylum and it shows. Nor will I any longer share my belief that within one or two decades, this country will cease to exist as it does now and become instead four or five different nations of varying wealth and merit.
There’s not much sense writing about the haves and have-nots. That story is visible at every traffic island featuring men (and increasingly, women) pleading poverty and homelessness on tired cardboard signs. I wonder, though—how are these people faring in our increasingly cashless society?
I’m not going to write about guns, either. There have been more than 200 mass shootings across the US so far this year. A mass shooting is defined as an incident resulting in the death or injury of four or more people. There are some 400 million guns here in the US. Fifty-seven percent of the population favors stricter gun laws, so why don’t we have them? Oh, never mind. I really don’t want to write about any of this. There’s no benefit to flogging a dead horse.
March 2, 2023
Refuge
One of my favorite things, now that climbing Kilimanjaro or crossing the Atlantic on the Kon-Tiki are out, is having breakfast at a real diner while reading The New Yorker.
The two go hand-in-hand. I love the weekly mag, and diners, authentic ones with scarred leatherette booths, where the black coffee comes with a spoon in the cup, and there’s an extensive selection of jams in little plastic containers. There are old people there making their tea last a long time, and young couples who have just spent their first night together. Diners are life, almost always as noisy; the conversations vie for dominance with the din of plates being stacked, potatoes getting diced on a grill, and dimly perceived music from tiny speakers set in the ceiling.
My diner meals are always the same: a ham and Swiss cheese three-egg omelet, home fries with onions, wheat toast, and strawberry jam. A glass of ice-water that I will barely touch, and two cups of black coffee with Splenda.
Technically, I am not supposed to have any of these delights. My doctors have warned me about the cholesterol in eggs, the diuretic effect of coffee, and the starchiness of potatoes. The thing is, I don’t care.
What got me through my last cancer surgery a mere two days ago was the image of a large and heavy white oval plate upon which rests a bright yellow omelet, sautéed potatoes, four pieces of wheat toast and, of course a mug of coffee just cool enough to be drained in two swallows.
Possibly, I should have waited a day or two before indulging as I did this morning, but, once again, I don’t care. As age challenges most simple pleasures, I find it necessary to fight back. Life cannot be dictated by people who have my best interest in mind but cannot fathom my breakfast addiction. Having largely given up fried foods, red meat, smoking, alcohol, hot dogs, drugs, risky behavior, sweets, and processed deli items, I am technically allowed seven eggs a week, no coffee, no sugar, all the fruit I want—except for bananas which have too much potassium—sugarless caffeine-free tea, water, and then more water.
This won’t do, and the diner is my always-present refuge and antidote, where waitresses pour more coffee without being asked, and invite me to savor another helping of potatoes, on the house.
I read my New Yorker in peace and savor the food. Will this harm me? Nah. And even if it does, there are more issues at hand than a double-serving of home fries. Plus, I’ve come to believe that where chemo and immunotherapy have failed, Swiss cheese and ham omelets with just enough salt and pepper may just succeed, with an assist of The New Yorker.
The two go hand-in-hand. I love the weekly mag, and diners, authentic ones with scarred leatherette booths, where the black coffee comes with a spoon in the cup, and there’s an extensive selection of jams in little plastic containers. There are old people there making their tea last a long time, and young couples who have just spent their first night together. Diners are life, almost always as noisy; the conversations vie for dominance with the din of plates being stacked, potatoes getting diced on a grill, and dimly perceived music from tiny speakers set in the ceiling.
My diner meals are always the same: a ham and Swiss cheese three-egg omelet, home fries with onions, wheat toast, and strawberry jam. A glass of ice-water that I will barely touch, and two cups of black coffee with Splenda.
Technically, I am not supposed to have any of these delights. My doctors have warned me about the cholesterol in eggs, the diuretic effect of coffee, and the starchiness of potatoes. The thing is, I don’t care.
What got me through my last cancer surgery a mere two days ago was the image of a large and heavy white oval plate upon which rests a bright yellow omelet, sautéed potatoes, four pieces of wheat toast and, of course a mug of coffee just cool enough to be drained in two swallows.
Possibly, I should have waited a day or two before indulging as I did this morning, but, once again, I don’t care. As age challenges most simple pleasures, I find it necessary to fight back. Life cannot be dictated by people who have my best interest in mind but cannot fathom my breakfast addiction. Having largely given up fried foods, red meat, smoking, alcohol, hot dogs, drugs, risky behavior, sweets, and processed deli items, I am technically allowed seven eggs a week, no coffee, no sugar, all the fruit I want—except for bananas which have too much potassium—sugarless caffeine-free tea, water, and then more water.
This won’t do, and the diner is my always-present refuge and antidote, where waitresses pour more coffee without being asked, and invite me to savor another helping of potatoes, on the house.
I read my New Yorker in peace and savor the food. Will this harm me? Nah. And even if it does, there are more issues at hand than a double-serving of home fries. Plus, I’ve come to believe that where chemo and immunotherapy have failed, Swiss cheese and ham omelets with just enough salt and pepper may just succeed, with an assist of The New Yorker.
February 22, 2023
Body Language
For the past few weeks, I’ve tried to talk to my body. My body, of course talks to me all the time—a twinge here, a stiff shoulder there, a finger unwilling to bend when I want it to… Ever since the loss of vision in my left eye, there’s been a problem with both depth perception and balance, so I move slowly and gingerly now, like the aging man I am. I thought perhaps, if my body and I could engage in an adult conversation, I might learn a thing or two about the state of my health and my putative future.
First, I apologized for the mistreatment and thoughtlessness I’ve displayed over the decades. I told my body I deeply regretted the years of drinking and drugs, the time I jumped off a roof while playing frisbee under the influence, the two motorcycle accidents, the overeating, the tons of deep-fried foods and preservative-laden meats, the abundance of sugar, the studied and willful ignoring of fresh fruit and vegetables in favor of Chef Boyardee ravioli. I atoned for neither brushing my teeth nor flossing twice a day as I should, even as I went way too deep in my ears with Q-tips. I also said I was sorry for my years of addiction to Kool filter-less cigarettes and, later, Carter Hall pipe tobacco.
I tried to make amends for no longer exercising. Years ago, I practiced martial arts three times a week, walked everywhere and taught inline skating. No more.
My body, I presume, paid me the courtesy of listening, so I decided it was perhaps time to unload some deep resentments. I kept the biggest one for last, and enumerated ills I’d undergone in the past half-century.
Why Bell’s Palsy, the silly virus that paralyzed the left half of my face and made me feel like Quasimodo? And what of the sciatica that led me to an emergency room at three in the morning? Were both those problems really necessary? What about male pattern baldness which, if not a disease, is certainly harmful to my vanity. And by the way, I dislike the fact that I am on my second set of caps. Teeth, I know, don’t last forever, but I thought caps did. They do not, and they’re stupidly expensive.
And then, of course, there’s the biggie, cancer.
I’ve been told there’s a strong likelihood that my cancer is the result of years of smoking, even though I gave up tobacco in 1998. Cancer, oncologists say, does not wear a Bulova and is not a respecter of time. I’ve been living with bladder cancer for more than twelve years now, and my 32nd surgery is days away, as the disease has recently become notably more aggressive, resisting all attempts to dislodge it. Why is that?
A couple of weeks ago, I filled out the Death Clock questionnaire. You may have heard of the Death Clock. By entering a few numbers—age, weight, BMI, gender and such, an algorithm can predict your estimated time of death. I was curious, answered all the questions, and was told I’d died December 23rd of last year. So I guess I’m living on borrowed time.
I informed my body of this interesting fact but was met by silence. I suppose there are things my body doesn’t like to talk about…
First, I apologized for the mistreatment and thoughtlessness I’ve displayed over the decades. I told my body I deeply regretted the years of drinking and drugs, the time I jumped off a roof while playing frisbee under the influence, the two motorcycle accidents, the overeating, the tons of deep-fried foods and preservative-laden meats, the abundance of sugar, the studied and willful ignoring of fresh fruit and vegetables in favor of Chef Boyardee ravioli. I atoned for neither brushing my teeth nor flossing twice a day as I should, even as I went way too deep in my ears with Q-tips. I also said I was sorry for my years of addiction to Kool filter-less cigarettes and, later, Carter Hall pipe tobacco.
I tried to make amends for no longer exercising. Years ago, I practiced martial arts three times a week, walked everywhere and taught inline skating. No more.
My body, I presume, paid me the courtesy of listening, so I decided it was perhaps time to unload some deep resentments. I kept the biggest one for last, and enumerated ills I’d undergone in the past half-century.
Why Bell’s Palsy, the silly virus that paralyzed the left half of my face and made me feel like Quasimodo? And what of the sciatica that led me to an emergency room at three in the morning? Were both those problems really necessary? What about male pattern baldness which, if not a disease, is certainly harmful to my vanity. And by the way, I dislike the fact that I am on my second set of caps. Teeth, I know, don’t last forever, but I thought caps did. They do not, and they’re stupidly expensive.
And then, of course, there’s the biggie, cancer.
I’ve been told there’s a strong likelihood that my cancer is the result of years of smoking, even though I gave up tobacco in 1998. Cancer, oncologists say, does not wear a Bulova and is not a respecter of time. I’ve been living with bladder cancer for more than twelve years now, and my 32nd surgery is days away, as the disease has recently become notably more aggressive, resisting all attempts to dislodge it. Why is that?
A couple of weeks ago, I filled out the Death Clock questionnaire. You may have heard of the Death Clock. By entering a few numbers—age, weight, BMI, gender and such, an algorithm can predict your estimated time of death. I was curious, answered all the questions, and was told I’d died December 23rd of last year. So I guess I’m living on borrowed time.
I informed my body of this interesting fact but was met by silence. I suppose there are things my body doesn’t like to talk about…
February 15, 2023
An American Dream...
…or an American nightmare?
Last weekend I thought I was in need of a breakfast buffet. My friend Rich suggested several places in NOVA, and then recommended we go to the Golden Corral Buffet and Grill in Manassas, Virginia.
First, some background. All-you-can-eat buffets, to the best of my knowledge, do not exist in France. People would take advantage of the bounty offered and not only eat to the point of bursting, but also bring bags and Tupperware to surreptitiously abscond with enough food for three or four more meals.
We arrived at the restaurant (using the term loosely) around 11:30 in the morning. A very young hostess escorted us to a table and set six large plates in front of us. “That’s because people eat more than seconds and thirds,” Rich explained.
We ordered drinks, coffee for me and water for Rich, who went straight to the steak and roast beef (“Best value,” he said) while I explored the hundred-yard-long array of foods with a somewhat wary eye.
Did I mention the size of the place? It was as large as a football field. I thought it might sit six or seven hundred people, but Rich corrected me. “More like a thousand…” Rich is an IT guy with a much better head for numbers than mine so I assume his calculations were accurate. A quick estimate—1000 people paying $16.95 each. Say three sitting a day, which is a conservative assessment. That comes to about $51,000 daily. Deduct $35,000 for the food, the waitstaff, the rent and upkeep, and you’re still left with $16,000 profit daily, which I imagine is on the low side.
The place was a veritable United Nations of colors and tints. Latinos, Asians, African-Americans, and a small percentage of Caucasians. Almost no one was masked, save Rich and I. Many, many children ogling the 60 or so variety of pastries offered. Pizza, Salisbury steaks, fish fillets of an unknown provenance, mountains of potatoes, fried, mashed, smashed, and baked, and bright orange carrots, zucchinis, corn on the cob, three or four types of beans. One area was reserved for condiments alone and featured three different mustards, mayonnaise, relishes, and at least a dozen other toppings I couldn’t identify.
The customers were patient and happy with a constant flow of diners making their ways from tables to offerings. They spoke a myriad of languages and filled plate after plate. I watched one heavy-set man return to the food stations five time to be rewarded by heaping mounds of I’m not sure what.
I wondered about the infrastructure of such a place. How many pounds of French fries were offered daily? Were they cooked on site? What about the deep-fried stuff (popcorn shrimp, onion rings, chicken wings), the turkeys and sausages and taco fillings? Each section featuring at least a dozen offerings was manned (or womaned) by one or two helpers. Tables were cleared and wiped clean within minutes of coming free and none stayed empty for long.
By the time Rich and I left, stuffed and swearing this would be our only meal of the day, a multi-ethnic line had formed outside awaiting entrance. None had what Shakespeare’s Caesar called “a lean and hungry look.”
Few, actually, were lean at all.
Last weekend I thought I was in need of a breakfast buffet. My friend Rich suggested several places in NOVA, and then recommended we go to the Golden Corral Buffet and Grill in Manassas, Virginia.
First, some background. All-you-can-eat buffets, to the best of my knowledge, do not exist in France. People would take advantage of the bounty offered and not only eat to the point of bursting, but also bring bags and Tupperware to surreptitiously abscond with enough food for three or four more meals.
We arrived at the restaurant (using the term loosely) around 11:30 in the morning. A very young hostess escorted us to a table and set six large plates in front of us. “That’s because people eat more than seconds and thirds,” Rich explained.
We ordered drinks, coffee for me and water for Rich, who went straight to the steak and roast beef (“Best value,” he said) while I explored the hundred-yard-long array of foods with a somewhat wary eye.
Did I mention the size of the place? It was as large as a football field. I thought it might sit six or seven hundred people, but Rich corrected me. “More like a thousand…” Rich is an IT guy with a much better head for numbers than mine so I assume his calculations were accurate. A quick estimate—1000 people paying $16.95 each. Say three sitting a day, which is a conservative assessment. That comes to about $51,000 daily. Deduct $35,000 for the food, the waitstaff, the rent and upkeep, and you’re still left with $16,000 profit daily, which I imagine is on the low side.
The place was a veritable United Nations of colors and tints. Latinos, Asians, African-Americans, and a small percentage of Caucasians. Almost no one was masked, save Rich and I. Many, many children ogling the 60 or so variety of pastries offered. Pizza, Salisbury steaks, fish fillets of an unknown provenance, mountains of potatoes, fried, mashed, smashed, and baked, and bright orange carrots, zucchinis, corn on the cob, three or four types of beans. One area was reserved for condiments alone and featured three different mustards, mayonnaise, relishes, and at least a dozen other toppings I couldn’t identify.
The customers were patient and happy with a constant flow of diners making their ways from tables to offerings. They spoke a myriad of languages and filled plate after plate. I watched one heavy-set man return to the food stations five time to be rewarded by heaping mounds of I’m not sure what.
I wondered about the infrastructure of such a place. How many pounds of French fries were offered daily? Were they cooked on site? What about the deep-fried stuff (popcorn shrimp, onion rings, chicken wings), the turkeys and sausages and taco fillings? Each section featuring at least a dozen offerings was manned (or womaned) by one or two helpers. Tables were cleared and wiped clean within minutes of coming free and none stayed empty for long.
By the time Rich and I left, stuffed and swearing this would be our only meal of the day, a multi-ethnic line had formed outside awaiting entrance. None had what Shakespeare’s Caesar called “a lean and hungry look.”
Few, actually, were lean at all.
January 25, 2023
Of Diners and Avantis
I love diners, those places were the waitress calls everyone ‘honey,’ where the food is just short of too greasy, and the check for a complete breakfast is less than ten bucks. There are still such places, but they’re vanishing.
Back when I drove to Florida a couple of times a year, I would always stop at a Waffle House just outside Savannah. One time I drove my Avanti, an uncommon car conceived by the French designer Raymond Loewe. There aren’t too many Avantis around, and I owned (and still have) one of 500 convertible models ever created.
I pulled into the Waffle House parking lot. I noticed a waitress eyeing the car. I entered the restaurant, sat at a booth, and the waitress came to the table.
She poured a cup of stygian black coffee and asked, “What kinda car is that?”
I told her it was an Avanti, a car far ahead of its time and initially created to save the Studebaker company from bankruptcy. It failed to do so and took its place among such automobiles as the Cord, the Bricklin, and the ill-fated Delorean, made iconic in the Back to the Future films.
I ordered eggs, sausage, rye toast and hash browns. I’ve been to a dozen or so Waffle Houses and they all smell the same, redolent of bacon grease, maple syrup, and burnt coffee.
I finished eating and the waitress gave me the check, then asked, “Can you give me a ride home? My shift is over in five minutes, and I’ve never been in an Avanti…”
She must have noticed my surprise. “It’s five minutes from here… I don’t like walking alone at night. Usually, one of the cooks will drive me but he’s out sick today.”
So I drove her home to a small house just off the main road. She thanked me, said, “Nice car,” paused at her front door and looked for her keys. She entered her home and that was that—no movie ending, no seduction, no greater adventure than driving a tired stranger home.
More recently, a woman in a Trader Joe parking lot exclaimed, “Is that an Avanti?” Her boyfriend 30 years ago drove one, and she had fond memories.
Today I drove the car to a local diner, a fifteen-table establishment and for $10 plus tip, got an excellent breakfast and drank far too much coffee. I could see where the car was parked, and a family stopped to look at it. The father circled the car, bent down to peer at the Avanti nametag on the car’s trunk lid. They took a table nearby and I heard him say, “Yeah, those were made in France. Avanti means forward in French.” Close enough. I didn’t correct him.
Back when I drove to Florida a couple of times a year, I would always stop at a Waffle House just outside Savannah. One time I drove my Avanti, an uncommon car conceived by the French designer Raymond Loewe. There aren’t too many Avantis around, and I owned (and still have) one of 500 convertible models ever created.
I pulled into the Waffle House parking lot. I noticed a waitress eyeing the car. I entered the restaurant, sat at a booth, and the waitress came to the table.
She poured a cup of stygian black coffee and asked, “What kinda car is that?”
I told her it was an Avanti, a car far ahead of its time and initially created to save the Studebaker company from bankruptcy. It failed to do so and took its place among such automobiles as the Cord, the Bricklin, and the ill-fated Delorean, made iconic in the Back to the Future films.
I ordered eggs, sausage, rye toast and hash browns. I’ve been to a dozen or so Waffle Houses and they all smell the same, redolent of bacon grease, maple syrup, and burnt coffee.
I finished eating and the waitress gave me the check, then asked, “Can you give me a ride home? My shift is over in five minutes, and I’ve never been in an Avanti…”
She must have noticed my surprise. “It’s five minutes from here… I don’t like walking alone at night. Usually, one of the cooks will drive me but he’s out sick today.”
So I drove her home to a small house just off the main road. She thanked me, said, “Nice car,” paused at her front door and looked for her keys. She entered her home and that was that—no movie ending, no seduction, no greater adventure than driving a tired stranger home.
More recently, a woman in a Trader Joe parking lot exclaimed, “Is that an Avanti?” Her boyfriend 30 years ago drove one, and she had fond memories.
Today I drove the car to a local diner, a fifteen-table establishment and for $10 plus tip, got an excellent breakfast and drank far too much coffee. I could see where the car was parked, and a family stopped to look at it. The father circled the car, bent down to peer at the Avanti nametag on the car’s trunk lid. They took a table nearby and I heard him say, “Yeah, those were made in France. Avanti means forward in French.” Close enough. I didn’t correct him.
January 23, 2023
The Last Decision
Crossing that uncertain bridge into Elderland varies for all of us. Some do so with an air of certainty, others fear it, others still liken it to being dropped into a vat of ice water. Most of us enter Elderland with a degree of trepidation. Our bodies and minds whisper of failure. Our back and hands hurt and need attention, as do our knees and various internal organs which we’ve hardly heeded for most of our lives. Many of us are fortunate enough to afford doctors whose suggestions we’ve followed—or not. We undergo operations with the hope that the surgeon is knowledgeable, unhurried, and kind. We do not rebound as we did when young. The aftermath of surgery can be long and painful, and the procedures are often unsuccessful in improving our lives.
Our senses deceive us. Hearing and eyesight become unreliable. Foods we once tolerated and enjoyed are now verboten. Activities demanding strength, accuracy and patience are problematic. Our brains, of which we are so proud, now decide to play hide-and-seek with words, names, and locations. Elderland is full of surprises, many both inevitable and unwelcome. We are accused of being wiser and Solomon-like. In truth, we’re simply tired.
Personally, I don’t believe age brings wisdom, an asset derived from the collision of time and experience. In fact, I think for the most part that opinions reached at an earlier age simply harden as the years pass, making us adamant in our beliefs and resistant to innovation. Though there are examples of groundbreaking thinking by old people, the fact is that it is youth that engenders change (for the good the bad), while the old complain and do their best to resist and to remain, well, old.
Change is difficult for us to internalize and act upon intelligently. It confuses and threatens us. Taking the familiar away and exchanging it for a new and perplexing present is of no use to us at all. It negates what we know and at best belittles our own hard-earned familiarities and forces us to re-evaluate our lives and our actions. Often, we realize silently that both are found wanting.
And then, of course, there is the specter of death. We’re terrified of it, of the unknown it presents, of its apparent finality. Can everything we are, the knowledge, the love, the resentments, the pleasures and pains simply vanish? We’ve bought into the Western concept that the most important thing in life IS life at all costs, a rather silly notion. Generally, we’re not even allowed to die in peace and, if mortally ill, we need to sign documents attesting to our willingness to die. Our life, our most significant possession, is subject to the laws of the state. Personally, I have no intention of raging against the dying of the light.
I am, however, seriously considering a chest tattoo that reads Do Not Resuscitate. Just so there’s no confusion about last wishes…
Our senses deceive us. Hearing and eyesight become unreliable. Foods we once tolerated and enjoyed are now verboten. Activities demanding strength, accuracy and patience are problematic. Our brains, of which we are so proud, now decide to play hide-and-seek with words, names, and locations. Elderland is full of surprises, many both inevitable and unwelcome. We are accused of being wiser and Solomon-like. In truth, we’re simply tired.
Personally, I don’t believe age brings wisdom, an asset derived from the collision of time and experience. In fact, I think for the most part that opinions reached at an earlier age simply harden as the years pass, making us adamant in our beliefs and resistant to innovation. Though there are examples of groundbreaking thinking by old people, the fact is that it is youth that engenders change (for the good the bad), while the old complain and do their best to resist and to remain, well, old.
Change is difficult for us to internalize and act upon intelligently. It confuses and threatens us. Taking the familiar away and exchanging it for a new and perplexing present is of no use to us at all. It negates what we know and at best belittles our own hard-earned familiarities and forces us to re-evaluate our lives and our actions. Often, we realize silently that both are found wanting.
And then, of course, there is the specter of death. We’re terrified of it, of the unknown it presents, of its apparent finality. Can everything we are, the knowledge, the love, the resentments, the pleasures and pains simply vanish? We’ve bought into the Western concept that the most important thing in life IS life at all costs, a rather silly notion. Generally, we’re not even allowed to die in peace and, if mortally ill, we need to sign documents attesting to our willingness to die. Our life, our most significant possession, is subject to the laws of the state. Personally, I have no intention of raging against the dying of the light.
I am, however, seriously considering a chest tattoo that reads Do Not Resuscitate. Just so there’s no confusion about last wishes…
January 8, 2023
A Future in Doubt
I spoke with my French half-sister recently. Isabelle and Edmond, her husband of 60 years, lived in a Parisian apartment for almost five decades until they realized in 2020 that, at their respective ages, Covid presented a serious threat. They moved to Luchon, a small city in the Pyrenees mountains. Isa creates music and Edmond runs an art gallery.
I was a kid when my parents decided to come to America. Isa and Florence, my other half=sister, opted to remain in France with their father, an Algerian doctor and filmmaker.
Isa’s life has been devoted to her art. She was a professor at the Paris Conservatory for most of her life and still regularly creates orchestral pieces that are performed internationally. She is also a very big fish in a small pond, perhaps the best-known composer of children’s operas in the Western world.
I last saw her in Paris just before Covid struck. We ate an excellent meal in a small neighborhood restaurant and spoke of her children, her health, my health, my books, and her latest opera which was to be performed in Lausanne.
Isa is a few years older than me and a force of nature. She walks everywhere (I don’t think she ever got a driver’s license), neither smokes nor drinks, and climbs four flights of stairs two or three times daily (the elevator in her building does not work.) She is, simply put, indefatigable, practicing the piano two or three hours a day and leading an active social life.
The thing is, I’ve spent hardly any time with her. I came to the States when I was a kid, and she does not like to fly and so never visited. I’d see her for a day or two whenever I went to France and we’d catch up—who was where and why.
Isa and I believe that the world has largely lost what small degree of civility it had a few years ago. The nitwits, the disingenuous, the duplicitous and hypocritical have made such headways that they now tear at the fabric of society. In France, Isa blames Macron and other politicians. Here, I blame Trump and his zombie followers. All strive to reduce our world to the lowest common denominator, even as we are knee-deep mired in self-centered social media.
Isa has always been a positive realist who sees life as an opportunity to appreciate what was given her. She rarely complains about her lot. I am more negative and consider life to be a random collection of deeds and events. Additionally, I believe in Tennyson’s epiphany that ‘nature is red of tooth and claw.’ We are in never-ending struggles to come out on top, emotionally, mentally, and morally. Since we are not very smart, and egocentric to boot (a bad combination of shortcomings), we are constantly snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and satisfied with small accomplishments.
I believe we live too long and have proven to be poor stewards of what has been given us. Sadly, we leave behind chaos for the next generation, and I am not sure if posterity will find solutions or cause further harm. Sadly, Isa agrees.
I was a kid when my parents decided to come to America. Isa and Florence, my other half=sister, opted to remain in France with their father, an Algerian doctor and filmmaker.
Isa’s life has been devoted to her art. She was a professor at the Paris Conservatory for most of her life and still regularly creates orchestral pieces that are performed internationally. She is also a very big fish in a small pond, perhaps the best-known composer of children’s operas in the Western world.
I last saw her in Paris just before Covid struck. We ate an excellent meal in a small neighborhood restaurant and spoke of her children, her health, my health, my books, and her latest opera which was to be performed in Lausanne.
Isa is a few years older than me and a force of nature. She walks everywhere (I don’t think she ever got a driver’s license), neither smokes nor drinks, and climbs four flights of stairs two or three times daily (the elevator in her building does not work.) She is, simply put, indefatigable, practicing the piano two or three hours a day and leading an active social life.
The thing is, I’ve spent hardly any time with her. I came to the States when I was a kid, and she does not like to fly and so never visited. I’d see her for a day or two whenever I went to France and we’d catch up—who was where and why.
Isa and I believe that the world has largely lost what small degree of civility it had a few years ago. The nitwits, the disingenuous, the duplicitous and hypocritical have made such headways that they now tear at the fabric of society. In France, Isa blames Macron and other politicians. Here, I blame Trump and his zombie followers. All strive to reduce our world to the lowest common denominator, even as we are knee-deep mired in self-centered social media.
Isa has always been a positive realist who sees life as an opportunity to appreciate what was given her. She rarely complains about her lot. I am more negative and consider life to be a random collection of deeds and events. Additionally, I believe in Tennyson’s epiphany that ‘nature is red of tooth and claw.’ We are in never-ending struggles to come out on top, emotionally, mentally, and morally. Since we are not very smart, and egocentric to boot (a bad combination of shortcomings), we are constantly snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and satisfied with small accomplishments.
I believe we live too long and have proven to be poor stewards of what has been given us. Sadly, we leave behind chaos for the next generation, and I am not sure if posterity will find solutions or cause further harm. Sadly, Isa agrees.
August 25, 2022
Nora and Carl and Barbara and Me
Nora Ephron and Carl Bernstein came to dinner some 50 years ago, but I can’t remember what we ate, or most of what we talked about.
I was living in the suburban apartment of my wife-to-be, Barbara, and we both worked for the Washington Post. I’d been fortunate to be in the newsroom during Watergate and had liked Bernstein from the start. He was a street reporter in the old sense (he’s been known to dive headfirst into the back seat of a DC cab occupied by a very angry John Mitchell, Nixon’s Attorney General.) Bernstein was a hug and backslap guy. Bob Woodward, his partner in reporting the story, was a Yale graduate with a limp handshake and many teeth. It was known throughout the newsroom that the Post’s editor, Ben Bradlee, favored Woodward, a fellow Ivy Leaguer, and did not much care for Bernstein, who’d never graduated from college and came from a Jewish communist family. The odds around the newsroom when the paper realized that Watergate was the story of the decade, was that Bradlee would replace Bernstein with a more worldly (and Woodward-like) partner. Luckily, according to well-placed staffers, the Post’s legendary owner, Katharine Graham, wouldn’t allow it and history was made.
That evening, Ephron was an unsmiling guest. I do recall telling them that my first book was soon going to be published, but that elicited no more than a raised eyebrow.
We spoke of local entertainment. The DC area at the time was the capital of bluegrass music. Barbara and I both played with a group of reporters in a band aptly named Informed Sources. Bernstein had played with us a time or two and was, like me, a guitar player blessed with more enthusiasm than talent. Still, having him onstage was a draw, which Ephron did not seem to appreciate.
I don’t know if the marriage was already foundering. When Ephron became pregnant in 1979 with her second child, she realized Bernstein had taken up with another woman, a mutual friend, and soon the Bernstein/Ephron union was no more. The marriage’s failure was recounted in Ephron’s best-selling 1983 novel, Heartburn, and a subsequent movie.
I never saw Ephron again. Her ascent to literary fame was well-earned. Her books are full of humor, pain, and wonder. After her death in 2012, she became a literary icon with biographies by critics who described her ascent from Newsweek gofer to international star.
Bernstein is a journalism legend and a CNN pundit. I don’t know if his guitar playing has improved.
I was living in the suburban apartment of my wife-to-be, Barbara, and we both worked for the Washington Post. I’d been fortunate to be in the newsroom during Watergate and had liked Bernstein from the start. He was a street reporter in the old sense (he’s been known to dive headfirst into the back seat of a DC cab occupied by a very angry John Mitchell, Nixon’s Attorney General.) Bernstein was a hug and backslap guy. Bob Woodward, his partner in reporting the story, was a Yale graduate with a limp handshake and many teeth. It was known throughout the newsroom that the Post’s editor, Ben Bradlee, favored Woodward, a fellow Ivy Leaguer, and did not much care for Bernstein, who’d never graduated from college and came from a Jewish communist family. The odds around the newsroom when the paper realized that Watergate was the story of the decade, was that Bradlee would replace Bernstein with a more worldly (and Woodward-like) partner. Luckily, according to well-placed staffers, the Post’s legendary owner, Katharine Graham, wouldn’t allow it and history was made.
That evening, Ephron was an unsmiling guest. I do recall telling them that my first book was soon going to be published, but that elicited no more than a raised eyebrow.
We spoke of local entertainment. The DC area at the time was the capital of bluegrass music. Barbara and I both played with a group of reporters in a band aptly named Informed Sources. Bernstein had played with us a time or two and was, like me, a guitar player blessed with more enthusiasm than talent. Still, having him onstage was a draw, which Ephron did not seem to appreciate.
I don’t know if the marriage was already foundering. When Ephron became pregnant in 1979 with her second child, she realized Bernstein had taken up with another woman, a mutual friend, and soon the Bernstein/Ephron union was no more. The marriage’s failure was recounted in Ephron’s best-selling 1983 novel, Heartburn, and a subsequent movie.
I never saw Ephron again. Her ascent to literary fame was well-earned. Her books are full of humor, pain, and wonder. After her death in 2012, she became a literary icon with biographies by critics who described her ascent from Newsweek gofer to international star.
Bernstein is a journalism legend and a CNN pundit. I don’t know if his guitar playing has improved.
August 9, 2022
Toilets
I am George Constaza.
Well, not quite, but George and I share some similarities and traits. We’re both overweight, somewhat balding, and continually searching our neighborhoods for clean, well-designed restrooms.
I’m starting to get pretty old and display all the attendant shortcomings that accompany aging. No need to list them here, save one: I am often in need of a restroom and, like George C, can come close to panic if I can’t find one. Case in point, I was in DC’s Dupont Circle neighborhood a couple of weeks ago. I’d driven in from Northern Virginia and the urge became urgent. I found a parking space on R Street and went to six establishment asking to use their restrooms. They all refused, save for a bookstore on Connecticut Avenue. Their restroom was up two flights of stairs and mercifully free…
Let me address the issue of toilet paper. If any restaurateur or maintenance engineer is reading this, I beseech you: Spend the extra pennies to get decent t.p. Giving your clients the shoddy, almost transparent single-sheet tissue found in even some upper-class establishments that should know better is an insult to your clients. Additionally, refrain from purchasing those black plastic dispensers that house a tire-like roll of paper. Too often, it’s impossible to tear off a few sheets of tissues because the paper in the dispenser is so compressed that its edge has melted into the roll. This leaves one with the unenviable task of clawing at the roll with fingernails until enough paper has been shredded to get the tire rolling.
The best restrooms are those found in such restaurants as the downtown Ritz Carlton Café: Single-user rooms decked in dark wood paneling with triple-ply paper and piped-in Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. Though I’ve never done it, I’ve been tempted to eat there rather than in the dining room. It is embarrassing to remember that in my impoverished younger days, I would have stolen several rolls of their paper, since I couldn’t afford multi-ply myself.
At a favorite Middle Eastern restaurant, the bathroom features a spray nozzle attached to the toilet tank, thus allowing a user to rinse after using the facilities. Islam allows believers to clean themselves using toilet paper, leaves, stones, etc., instead of water if certain conditions are met. Consult https://www.al-feqh.com/en/the-ruling... for more information. Note: I have not entered a lady’s bathroom—Muslim or otherwise—since high school, when I did so on a dare and suffered endless taunts, so my advice is mostly aimed at men.
On the subject of toilets, let me state here that slamming the toilet seat down prior to use is considered highly impolite. No one needs a startling explosion when ensconced in a stall, so don’t do it.
When I traveled extensively for work, I often ended up in what were then called developing countries. Rural inns and restaurants’ toilets were often no more than shoe-size footrests. One squatted there and prayed for balance. This was a long way from the now-popular toilet footstools available on Amazon and Ali Baba and found in the truly upper crust establishments.
Enough for now. I’m sure I will revisit the subject again. As George C might say, I wish you a day flushed with pride.
Well, not quite, but George and I share some similarities and traits. We’re both overweight, somewhat balding, and continually searching our neighborhoods for clean, well-designed restrooms.
I’m starting to get pretty old and display all the attendant shortcomings that accompany aging. No need to list them here, save one: I am often in need of a restroom and, like George C, can come close to panic if I can’t find one. Case in point, I was in DC’s Dupont Circle neighborhood a couple of weeks ago. I’d driven in from Northern Virginia and the urge became urgent. I found a parking space on R Street and went to six establishment asking to use their restrooms. They all refused, save for a bookstore on Connecticut Avenue. Their restroom was up two flights of stairs and mercifully free…
Let me address the issue of toilet paper. If any restaurateur or maintenance engineer is reading this, I beseech you: Spend the extra pennies to get decent t.p. Giving your clients the shoddy, almost transparent single-sheet tissue found in even some upper-class establishments that should know better is an insult to your clients. Additionally, refrain from purchasing those black plastic dispensers that house a tire-like roll of paper. Too often, it’s impossible to tear off a few sheets of tissues because the paper in the dispenser is so compressed that its edge has melted into the roll. This leaves one with the unenviable task of clawing at the roll with fingernails until enough paper has been shredded to get the tire rolling.
The best restrooms are those found in such restaurants as the downtown Ritz Carlton Café: Single-user rooms decked in dark wood paneling with triple-ply paper and piped-in Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. Though I’ve never done it, I’ve been tempted to eat there rather than in the dining room. It is embarrassing to remember that in my impoverished younger days, I would have stolen several rolls of their paper, since I couldn’t afford multi-ply myself.
At a favorite Middle Eastern restaurant, the bathroom features a spray nozzle attached to the toilet tank, thus allowing a user to rinse after using the facilities. Islam allows believers to clean themselves using toilet paper, leaves, stones, etc., instead of water if certain conditions are met. Consult https://www.al-feqh.com/en/the-ruling... for more information. Note: I have not entered a lady’s bathroom—Muslim or otherwise—since high school, when I did so on a dare and suffered endless taunts, so my advice is mostly aimed at men.
On the subject of toilets, let me state here that slamming the toilet seat down prior to use is considered highly impolite. No one needs a startling explosion when ensconced in a stall, so don’t do it.
When I traveled extensively for work, I often ended up in what were then called developing countries. Rural inns and restaurants’ toilets were often no more than shoe-size footrests. One squatted there and prayed for balance. This was a long way from the now-popular toilet footstools available on Amazon and Ali Baba and found in the truly upper crust establishments.
Enough for now. I’m sure I will revisit the subject again. As George C might say, I wish you a day flushed with pride.
July 24, 2022
Minou and Me
Mind hunter
The Last Duel I’ve always wanted to be a writer of fiction. For me, there is no higher calling. My father was a journalist; my mother wrote a couple of beautiful children’s books and was instrumental in the creation of Babar the Elephant. My late sister, Florence, wrote novels of such typical Frenchness that she was compared to Francoise Sagan and could never find readers outside of Paris.
When I was a child in that city, the kids my age played cowboys and Indians and while they became small Gallic Roy Rogers and Hopalong Cassidys, I surreptitiously copied the poems of Minou Drouet and claimed them as my own.
You probably haven’t heard of the child poet, Minou Drouet.
In 1955, she astounded France—and a good part of Europe—by writing charmingly adult poems. A literary brouhaha followed. Was she real? How could she, at the tender age of six, write such moving lines? Were the verses penned by adults?
Charles Templeton, a CBS reporter, recalls: “Minou Drouet’s mother was a prostitute and her father a field hand. As an infant she was taken into the home of a middle-aged woman, whose ambition to write well exceeded her talents. She adopted the child and raised her with love, surrounding her with music in a home dedicated to literature. It appeared that Minou was retarded. At six she hadn’t spoken a word. The judgment of four doctors was that she would never be normal.
“One day, Minou’s adoptive mother played a recording of a Brahms symphony for her. Minou swooned. When she was revived, she spoke perfect French in complex sentences. Shortly thereafter she began to write poetry. Some of the poems were published and immediately provoked debate. It was said that no child of six could possibly have such thoughts, much less express them so profoundly. It was argued that, unlike music, poetry demands an experience of life, experience that no child so young could have had. It was charged that her adoptive mother—an aspiring poet herself who sought recognition but had been judged second-rate—was the author of the verses.
“The controversy became a cause célèbre. The French Academy of Arts and Sciences decided on an experiment to validate or to dismiss the claims made for the child. Minou was placed in a room behind one-way glass. She was provided with paper and pencil, and after she was alone and incommunicado, given three subjects to write about. She did as she was instructed, and the results were scrutinized. There could be no question; the poems were the product of a prodigious talent. Jean Cocteau, the eminent writer and film-maker, commented: ‘She’s not an eight-year-old child, she’s an eight-year-old dwarf.’”
I was about five years old when I copied some of Minou’s lesser poems in longhand onto my cahier d’ école and showed them to my mother who, herself an author, thought she too might have a genius on her hands. She called her friends, who called their friends. Could there be a male Minou in the Sagnier household?
In no time, things got out of hand and even at age six, I could see serious and dire consequences. I confessed the truth. It was possibly the hardest thing I ever had to do in my very brief life, and I decided there and then that, no matter what, whatever I wrote would be my own from then on.
It may have been a mistake to choose a writing career. According to surveys, the average income of a fiction writer—if you include the Internet folks and the superstars like Stephen King—is $512 a year. That’s not even fried-egg-sandwich money…
David Robins, author of The War of the Rats and many other compulsively readable novels, likes to say there are fewer fiction writers making a full-time living at their craft than there are professional football players in the game. So it’s a rarefied atmosphere. It’s also, I believe, the most fun a man who refuses to become an adult can have.
Fiction writing, I can tell you with great authority, is not for grown-ups. It is for people who refuse to accept the realities of life and prefer to create their own worlds, which anyone is welcome to visit. My experience is that for the most part, though many enjoy dropping by, few stay there long.
I love fiction. I am not, however, an informed writer. I never read writing magazines. I don’t subscribe to the New York Times Book Review. I frankly don’t give much of a hoot what a reviewer may think of a particular novel, and I generally distrust reviewers anyway. Up until a short time ago, I neither wrote nor read short stories, and I don’t spend a lot of time on the Internet looking at the fiction that’s there. In the pre-COVID past, I attended a couple of writers’ groups and hosted one in my home; I would recommend such gatherings to anyone interested in the craft.
I write fiction because creating and peopling my own worlds with characters I have brought to life is, by and large, more fun than dealing with the world I’m really in. When I finished writing my first novel, The IFO Report, my characters held a party for me. Now admittedly, I’d had a few drinks to celebrate the event, a not uncommon activity back then, but still, there they were, all the lead players of my opus, telling me exactly what they thought of me and my work, and how I could have done better by them.
I like the people I invent. After a while, they become my friends and, as any writer who has gone through the process will tell you, they take on a life of their own. You get to be a god, or a somewhat smaller version of deity. Can there be anything loftier and cooler than that?
I’ve had other careers. I worked for a United Nations agency more than a decade and was a counselor for several years. I wrote for newspapers, magazines, television and radio, and my stuff was published both here and overseas. All of it was interesting, and some of it was fascinating. I probably made more money in one year with the UN than in a decade of fiction writing.
It doesn’t matter. Fiction is my vocation.
The Last Duel I’ve always wanted to be a writer of fiction. For me, there is no higher calling. My father was a journalist; my mother wrote a couple of beautiful children’s books and was instrumental in the creation of Babar the Elephant. My late sister, Florence, wrote novels of such typical Frenchness that she was compared to Francoise Sagan and could never find readers outside of Paris.
When I was a child in that city, the kids my age played cowboys and Indians and while they became small Gallic Roy Rogers and Hopalong Cassidys, I surreptitiously copied the poems of Minou Drouet and claimed them as my own.
You probably haven’t heard of the child poet, Minou Drouet.
In 1955, she astounded France—and a good part of Europe—by writing charmingly adult poems. A literary brouhaha followed. Was she real? How could she, at the tender age of six, write such moving lines? Were the verses penned by adults?
Charles Templeton, a CBS reporter, recalls: “Minou Drouet’s mother was a prostitute and her father a field hand. As an infant she was taken into the home of a middle-aged woman, whose ambition to write well exceeded her talents. She adopted the child and raised her with love, surrounding her with music in a home dedicated to literature. It appeared that Minou was retarded. At six she hadn’t spoken a word. The judgment of four doctors was that she would never be normal.
“One day, Minou’s adoptive mother played a recording of a Brahms symphony for her. Minou swooned. When she was revived, she spoke perfect French in complex sentences. Shortly thereafter she began to write poetry. Some of the poems were published and immediately provoked debate. It was said that no child of six could possibly have such thoughts, much less express them so profoundly. It was argued that, unlike music, poetry demands an experience of life, experience that no child so young could have had. It was charged that her adoptive mother—an aspiring poet herself who sought recognition but had been judged second-rate—was the author of the verses.
“The controversy became a cause célèbre. The French Academy of Arts and Sciences decided on an experiment to validate or to dismiss the claims made for the child. Minou was placed in a room behind one-way glass. She was provided with paper and pencil, and after she was alone and incommunicado, given three subjects to write about. She did as she was instructed, and the results were scrutinized. There could be no question; the poems were the product of a prodigious talent. Jean Cocteau, the eminent writer and film-maker, commented: ‘She’s not an eight-year-old child, she’s an eight-year-old dwarf.’”
I was about five years old when I copied some of Minou’s lesser poems in longhand onto my cahier d’ école and showed them to my mother who, herself an author, thought she too might have a genius on her hands. She called her friends, who called their friends. Could there be a male Minou in the Sagnier household?
In no time, things got out of hand and even at age six, I could see serious and dire consequences. I confessed the truth. It was possibly the hardest thing I ever had to do in my very brief life, and I decided there and then that, no matter what, whatever I wrote would be my own from then on.
It may have been a mistake to choose a writing career. According to surveys, the average income of a fiction writer—if you include the Internet folks and the superstars like Stephen King—is $512 a year. That’s not even fried-egg-sandwich money…
David Robins, author of The War of the Rats and many other compulsively readable novels, likes to say there are fewer fiction writers making a full-time living at their craft than there are professional football players in the game. So it’s a rarefied atmosphere. It’s also, I believe, the most fun a man who refuses to become an adult can have.
Fiction writing, I can tell you with great authority, is not for grown-ups. It is for people who refuse to accept the realities of life and prefer to create their own worlds, which anyone is welcome to visit. My experience is that for the most part, though many enjoy dropping by, few stay there long.
I love fiction. I am not, however, an informed writer. I never read writing magazines. I don’t subscribe to the New York Times Book Review. I frankly don’t give much of a hoot what a reviewer may think of a particular novel, and I generally distrust reviewers anyway. Up until a short time ago, I neither wrote nor read short stories, and I don’t spend a lot of time on the Internet looking at the fiction that’s there. In the pre-COVID past, I attended a couple of writers’ groups and hosted one in my home; I would recommend such gatherings to anyone interested in the craft.
I write fiction because creating and peopling my own worlds with characters I have brought to life is, by and large, more fun than dealing with the world I’m really in. When I finished writing my first novel, The IFO Report, my characters held a party for me. Now admittedly, I’d had a few drinks to celebrate the event, a not uncommon activity back then, but still, there they were, all the lead players of my opus, telling me exactly what they thought of me and my work, and how I could have done better by them.
I like the people I invent. After a while, they become my friends and, as any writer who has gone through the process will tell you, they take on a life of their own. You get to be a god, or a somewhat smaller version of deity. Can there be anything loftier and cooler than that?
I’ve had other careers. I worked for a United Nations agency more than a decade and was a counselor for several years. I wrote for newspapers, magazines, television and radio, and my stuff was published both here and overseas. All of it was interesting, and some of it was fascinating. I probably made more money in one year with the UN than in a decade of fiction writing.
It doesn’t matter. Fiction is my vocation.
