David Klein's Blog, page 16

Unusual Movie Choice for a Holiday

For various reasons, it was just the four of us this year for Thanksgiving. With Owen studying forestry in New Haven and Julia working full time as a dietician and studying for her Master’s, the kids lead busy lives. Having this day together felt like a gift. We all contributed to our Thanksgiving feast. Owen […]

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Black Friday at its Best

I spent Black Friday in my usual way—shopping and shopping and shopping. No, not at all. In the afternoon, a walk at Five Rivers with Owen. He’s teaching me to identify tree species. Then at night, Harriet and I went to see our friend Howard’s band, the Coal Palace Kings. They play annually on Black […]

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65,000 Words Down the Drain

You might have started out with enthusiasm and a vision. With a spark of an idea, a single word, a sentence that intrigued you, an unusual character trait—and you’re off and running. And then at some point you realize you’re running in the dark, taking a wrong turn, smacking into a wall. It happens to […]

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Does Anyone Still Read Charles Dickens?

I asked Julia if she had to read any Charles Dickens in high school. Her groan was quite audible: Great Expectations, the coming-of-age story of the orphan Pip, which she called a long and boring slog. Her response jogged my own memory of slogging through Great Expectations and then A Tale of Two Cities for […]

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The Surreal Swimmer

A writer friend of mine was telling me how much he admired the movie, “The Swimmer,” based on a story by John Cheever. Of course I had to investigate. Cheever was one of those mid-twentieth-century literary lions, and his story “The Swimmer” is his most famous one and was often anthologized (not anymore: twentieth-century white […]

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Killers of the Flower Moon

I was hesitant to see the new Martin Scorsese film, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” because its runtime is almost 3.5 hours. I doubted any movie could hold my interest for that long or that I could stay in my seat for that length of time. But my sister insisted I had to see the […]

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The Atheist’s Calling

I remember bits of a conversation with my father, who was a devout Catholic, and along with my mother raised all of his five kids in the Catholic religion. I was an adult at the time, living in California, and back in Buffalo for a visit. I’m not sure what led to his question, which […]

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A “Relaxing and Cooling Loneliness”

Friends is one of those shows that came along after I’d aged out of that type of sitcom, but I got to watch plenty of episodes with my kids, and I developed a fondness for the characters and their foibles. Good old Chandler Bing, charming and anxious, played by Matthew Perry—who was recently found dead. […]

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Preserving one Halloween Ritual

I recently wrote in “A Beautiful, Bracing Chill” about how I dove into the chilly waters of Lake Erie even though I was hesitant to do so. But I didn’t want my ritual swim after a run to “become just one more thing I don’t do anymore because I’m old or lazy or too sensitive […]

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Moon and Cloud

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