Jury Duty

by Bill Kent

I had a moment last night when I wondered if my life would go this way, or that.

Remember how we used to have these moments? Or, at least, we thought we did?

In high school, so much was about this or that girl agreeing to go out with me. Most of them didn’t, but the right one did.

Remember those tests we needed to pass in order to get into college, and have other people call us a genius? I took them all, and scored badly. But I got into a college and later, I learned the tests were biased against “over thinkers” like me. I also learned that life isn’t kind to most people who are called geniuses.

When I was younger, I hoped a regular life changing moment would happen if the next minute, hour or day, my parents would stop fighting and get along. They never did, even after they divorced.

Did you panic when you had to take your Driver License test? On the day I needed a car, my mother refused to give me the keys to her Plymouth Fury because she thought I’d track dirt into it the front seat foot well, which, for my mother, was worse than wrecking it. My father gave me his Cadillac, which was so big I couldn’t see the parallel parking cones.

I passed.

In college I thought I would sit down at the right dining hall table, get into a vibrant discussion about the Way Things Are and no longer experience intellectual doubt. Didn’t happen. Like most undergrads, I experienced some earnestly intoxicated moments, whose only change was to make me wish to never be so intoxicated again. That college course that everybody said would transform my consciousness, didn’t. I remember the professor’s jokes were good.

Most writers need a day job to support their literary ambitions. I got some. They brought me to those depths when I’d ask myself, what if, for my entire life, I NEVER do anything more than unpack books, bubble milk for cappuccino at a French cafe, saute vegetables in a restaurant kitchen, make sandwiches at a deli, sell lamps and lighting fixtures and apply industrial butter on buckets of movie theater popcorn?

Though it is said in the martial arts that the way you do one thing, is the way you do everything, after I did my one thing with writing, I wasn’t much good at anything else. For most of my life, writing has been my day, night and weekend job.

During a trip to a strange place, I wondered if this adventure might shape how I see the rest of my life and, perhaps, furnish some expertise so that when I become a REAL writer I would be known for distinctive stories about people who live in strange places, like Ernest Hemingway in the Caribbean, Damon Runyon in Manhattan, or Raymond Chandler in Los Angeles, rather than the anodyne suburban sprawl that nurtured my unremarkable life.

Nahh. After a lifetime of travel, and travel writing, I can say with certainty: no matter where you go, wherever you think you are, you’re…not. The reason it’s called fiction is that you’re SUPPOSED to make it up.

I got into the martial arts because I was certain it would change my life. I learned a lot of things that have nothing to do with fighting, or being strong, or doing a trick like breaking a board that impresses people. One bit of wisdom is that perseverance ever-so-slowly makes failure disappear. Perseverance also makes the reasons you got into something unimportant. I flunked my first black belt test and felt even worse when nobody would tell me why. Ten years later, when I was teaching the 6 a.m. morning karate classes, it didn’t matter.

One thing DID matter in my life: marrying the right person. That changed everything until–

I got a form letter telling me I had been selected for jury duty at the county courthouse. I had to call a phone number or check on a website the night before I had to show up, in order to find out if they still wanted me. If they did, I had to park in the special parking spaces, bring the form letter with me, arrive before 8 a.m. and dress respectfully. I could bring a paperback book but I had to leave my phone or any “recording device” at home.

Several years ago, before everybody had cell phones that could be used as recording devices, I was summoned to the county courthouse. I remember going into a drab room filled with other people doing their best to show the world how much they didn’t want to be there, and then being told I wasn’t needed and that I wouldn’t be needed ever again.

My wife told me that she was once summoned. She went, was not selected, but she said she found it interesting. So, this time, I decided that going down to the courthouse might not just be interesting. Might a collaboration with American jurisprudence bring something new into my life?

I spent the month thinking about what I should wear that would be respectful. I imagined myself on an interminable, nightmare trial that would never end. Might I be subjected to the rigorous, if not wholly speculative, character analysis as jury members are on that trial-fixing TV show “Bull”? Did the courthouse have a cafeteria, or would I develop a seasoned familiarity with the dreary dives I’d never visit with my wife?

Finally, with so much freezing air blowing around, would my car fail to start on the day of my summons?

At 6:30 p.m., I looked on-line, and then called the phone number: I was not among the chosen. 

And that was it for this almost 71-year-old. Three-score-and-ten years is the cut-off for jury duty. Below that Biblical terminator, you must sit quietly, listen and still yourself with the knowledge that someone’s fate in your hands. Turn 71 and I guess they think you take too many bathroom breaks, fart loudly, drool all the time or are so ugly nobody wants to look at you.

So I woke up with dogs barking and my wife downstairs in the kitchen, running the electric buzzsaw coffee grinder. One of the dogs came up and licked my face. I rolled out of bed and did some martial art stretches. I didn’t think about what I’d wear. I went to the closet and pulled out an old shirt I’d had so long I didn’t remember when I bought it. I put it on and it felt good.

I put on some old bluejeans. My socks were a bit worn but still functional. I went downstairs to a breakfast of poached egg on avocado toast and reminded myself that maybe, just maybe, I’m a very lucky guy.

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Shrodinger’s Dog

Erwin Schrodinger’s famous thought experiment illustrating quantum superposition is a terrible thing to do a cat.

First mentioned in a 1935 letter to Albert Einstein, the physicist wanted to illustrated the absurdity of a situation in which a cat is put in a box with a device that can kill it at randomly, or not at all. The cat may or may not be alive or dead, and anyone outside the box can’t know the cat’s fate until the box is opened.

Applied to quantum superposition, in which the nature of a particle or a wave cannot be determined until it is measured or observed, Schrodinger’s Cat asks how long can a thing exist in an either/or state?

As far as I know, no one has ever tried this with a real cat. Numerous physicists have used Schrodinger’s ideas to posit stranger things about quantum phenomena, including Hugh Everett’s “many worlds” interpretation, in which, upon opening the box, one cat, perhaps the dead one, is observed, while the living cat exists in another universe.

In 1960s, a few years after Everett came up with his formulation, the notion of “parallel worlds” became a fad in literary science fiction, which gradually spread to other kinds of entertainment. We now have an “alternative reality” genre of storytelling that asks what would happen if this thing didn’t happen, or that one did. The recent Academy-award winning film “Everything Everywhere All at Once” builds on this, by suggesting that if one thing happens in our universe, there are an infinite number of universes in which something different happens, no matter how ludicrous or unlikely, and that understanding can add help us cope with our apparent shortcomings.  Walt Disney’s Marvel Comics Universe has used this idea to revive popular characters have been written out or killed, and tell the outsider-learns-humility superhero story over and over again.

This said, it still, in our universe at least, a terrible thing to do to a cat. Why dod Schrodinger put in a box, rather than some other animal? Perhaps a universe exists in which people discuss Schrodinger’s Hamster. To quote the great Chico Marx in the movie “The Cocoanuts”: “Viaduct? Why not a chicken?”

Indeed! Why be so mean to animals? Why not inanimate objects? How about Schrodinger’s Mat, a variation on the theme of Paul Simon’s song, One Man’s Ceiling is Another Man’s Floor?

Or Schrodinger’s Bat: in another universe, bases were also loaded at the top of the ninth inning. The hometown hero stepped up to the Homeplate, swung the bat and did NOT strike out!

Or Schrodinger’s Spat, in which two nice, well-meaning people go into a bar, or find themselves at a family gathering, or in an office where they get into an dispute over something so infinitesimally unimportant, but the argument goes on and on and on and on….

And what can we do about Schrodinger’s Fat?  No matter how much we exercise, what fancy new drugs we take or what we do or don’t eat—those extra pounds are coming from another universe in which scheming slim fit savants have figured out a way to outsource excess flab into our world.

This brings to mind a recent evening that required us to put the dogs in a kennel. We went to sleep in an unusually quiet house. For a single night we were without terriers to bark, growl and yip at delivery trucks and people walking dogs that had the audacity to sniff, snort and raise a leg in front of our house.

I’ll admit, it was easier to go to close my eyes and dream, until I awoke in the darkest part of the night and thought of what Schrodinger described as quantum entanglement: particles that interact with each other will continue to interact with each other no matter how far apart they may be.

Did I hear a dog breathing near my ear? Was that a lick I felt on my face?

A message came into my mind. “We’re okay. We’re not with you. But we love you anyway.”

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The Rumsfeld Pen

One of the chores of living in the free world is picking up other people’s trash.  In our neighborhood, this includes dog droppings, stomped plastic water bottles, dented drink cans, crumpled fast food bags, baby wipes, and pieces of boxes and packing material that once held something that brought  someone joy.

No, we don’t live in a landfill. Our surroundings are well-landscaped, so anything that doesn’t belong is all too easy to see. When we walk our dogs, visit the mail box, roll out the trash cans or go out to pick up the morning newspapers, my wife and I take note of the weather, inspect whatever is green or blooming in the front and side gardens, and then scan our immediate surroundings, our eyes sweeping left to right, for yucky stuff scattered by those who feel free to do so.

We actually caught someone in the act a few days ago. “Pick up the poop!” my wife said to the culprit, who stopped in her tracks, dragged her dog back to the scene of the crime, removed the offending pile and then left an even larger pile in front of our house the following morning.

Of course, not everything we find is garbage. I cringed at the sleepless nights awaiting whoever strolled a baby and didn’t see the infant fling away a pacifier. Melting snow will reveal a lost glove, scarf, reading glasses.  caused by an infant’s pacifier hiding in the bushes. Those we put where they could be seen, at the edge of the sidewalk, atop a fire hydrant or hanging from a road sign with the hope that those who lost them will retrace their steps and find them.

We had a problem with the pen. It appeared to be an ordinary black plastic ball point until we looked closer and saw, in fading gold ink, the seal of the US Department of Defense. Next to that, in the same fading gold, was a loopy signature. I squinted and couldn’t figure it out.

My wife could. “Donald Rumsfeld,” she said.

I glanced around at the staid, respectable beige-and-brick facades of our suburban enclave. Some who lived among us were retired military, intelligence, state department and aerospace. Might this belong to a neighbor who had worked for Rumsfeld when he was Secretary of Defense for Presidents Gerald Ford and George W. Bush. Did they remember him as the architect of the Afghanistan and Iraqi wars, the promoter of “shock and awe” and “known unknowns”? Did their retirement package include a souvenir pen and, maybe, a challenge coin?

Or did they find themselves in the Pentagon’s Fort America gift shop one day and figure that a pen emblazoned with Rumsfeld’s signature was the perfect gift for…

Again, we looked around. What home hid the owner of this pen? What might have happened to make them lose it?

We made a guess. We put the pen in front of a door and continued our dog walk.

On the next morning I glanced at that door. The pen was gone.

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When Books Call

When I go downstairs to let the dog out into the backyard, I pass bookshelves. Most are heavy with volumes I have yet to read.

As I follow the dog, I glimpse a little of what is printed on the books’ spines. They remind me of gates in a vast train station. They offer to take me to wonderful places I know nothing about.

Going to such places made me a writer. In my childhood, books took me away from my allergies, bickering parents, my rolypoly silhouette and an abiding shyness. When I entered the world of a book, I found that, no matter how miserable I was, somewhere, somehow, things were more wonderful than I could imagine. Good guys beat the bad guys. Eccentric detectives solved crimes and delivered justice. A girl would enjoy the company of a bashful hero merely because he saved her from a hungry dragon. An awkward youth with something to say, was heard, and appreciated, for sharing what is most wonderful in his life, or for speaking the truth.

And views from spaceship windows–of other planets, other spaceships or dear old earth–were always spectacular.

Now, as I near my seventieth year, I find some of my childhood limitations returning. My allergies no longer trouble me, but I lack the endurance for long runs and heavy lifting. I do not have a big gut, but I’m not as fast, flexible and trim as I was when I was teaching karate. I’ve abandoned the self-defeating behavior I used to suppress my shyness and ignore my social anxieties, so I’m merely shy and anxious when I’m around other people.

I also know that good guys don’t always beat the bad guys, and that the more you come to know a person, the less good or bad they become. I’ve learned that about half the murders committed in this country are unsolved, and that no one–not even the lawyers–can depend on our legal system to be fair and just.

You don’t have slay dragons to find someone who will enjoy your company, but that doesn’t guarantee that you will live happily ever after.

That, and people don’t change much. If someone doesn’t like you, doesn’t want your business, is unimpressed with what you say or do, don’t try to win them over. They won’t give you the attention, approval, respect or trust that you deserve, no matter how many hoops you jump through. Best to withhold what you have to offer until you find those who will accept it, and you.

One very good thing: I don’t need to explore outer space. Ordinary views from a home window are more beautiful than those overlooking mountains, oceans and other worlds.

Another good thing: true salvation exists between life’s peaks and valleys. Not only are there more of these “merely okay” moments than the sums of our fears and epiphanies, giving yourself the time to appreciate them is a survival skill. You can build on those moments. They are the ground beneath your feet.

So I no longer need a book to take me anywhere. This place, this moment, is good enough and, in many ways, better than I can imagine, because I am married to someone with whom I live lovingly and contentedly.

In my adolescence, I used to read a book every two to three days. After I became a book critic, or when I prepared a history lecture, I’d average two to three books every week.

Now I spend more time with a book. The autodidactic thrill has been replaced with quotidian satisfaction. I no longer fool myself into thinking that I will be a better person if I can do this, or achieve that. It is enough to be alive and be kind to others.

But the books still call to me. Though I no longer need to be taken places, I enjoy the ride.

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Let Me Not Forget the Beauty of a Printed Page

by Bill Kent

Until recently, I had invented only one prayer in my life: Let me not forget the pleasure of a cup of tea.

I came upon it on a cold day when I was working in a supermarket: my first full time job after college. I had imagined that this job–all this college English-and-Religion double major (minors in History and Classics) could land after I was turned down by a bookstore and the Washington Post, and could not stand the hour-and-a-half each way, double-bus commute to a kitchen supply store–would be sufficiently mindless and minimally remunerative so I could do my writing in the mornings, evenings or whenever everybody else in Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown neighborhood was out having fun in restaurants and nightclubs.

I soon learned that any kind of work takes something out of you. Work it drains the well of energy and motivation that, in the best circumstances, needs time to refill. I had too many long minutes when I could put much on the page, or, worse, what I put on the page was rejected by magazines whose editors had no idea what it’s like to work on a cold day in a supermarket, hoping for a published short story born from so much toil and trouble would make it all worthwhile.

A wise person might have told me that work of any kind, be it making your bed or steering the misfortune of a vast, multinational financial empire, has inherent rewards, many of which aren’t obvious, or remain unknown for a long time. But all I felt at the time was drained, exhausted and incapable of achieving anything other than the fast, focused, manual labor that the supermarket demanded.

And so, on a cold morning when all I could do was trudge through the snow in old clothing that let the chilling wind freeze my skin, I went to the dim, dingy back of the supermarket where wet, cruddy boxes of what was supposed to sell that day towered so high you couldn’t see the ceiling lights. There I joined the people on the day shift waiting until the preposterously stingy owners arrived with a key to open the front door, sat down on a crate and let someone give me a ceramic cup of tea, whose warmth radiated outward, into my frigid fingers, up my arms–

When I brought it to my face and caught a scent that wasn’t decomposing you-don’t-want-to-know that wafted through the cracked insulation around the walk-in refrigerator. The tea touched my lips and filled my mouth with a hot, briny tang that burned away the wet cold that numbed my face.

The stubborn, critical part of my brain noticed that this wasn’t a fancy tea that I used to drink when I lived off campus and thought I was so sophisticated when I tossed leaves from a tin into a cup, doused them with water from a wabi sabi kettle, stirred them with a Japanese tea whisk and felt I was sooooooooo Zen.

The rest of me simply ignored the snide sophisticate and wallowed in joy: what I drank was good, it hit the spot, it was just what I needed!

And it was so easy. I didn’t have to wake up early in the morning and figure out how to drag my story’s characters out of trouble. I didn’t have to suffer the distant refusal of editorial gatekeepers to recognize that SOME DAY this unloved manuscript will be celebrated as a nascent indication of my waking greatness.

Nahh. It was just a cup of tea. Common. Simple. Free, in that the bag came from a box of expired tea bags that shared secondary space below the powdered creamer and the no-label instant coffee jar, the single plastic spoon and the battered electric water boiler that, until I had my cup of tea, was the only heat I felt in the place.

Never forget this, I told myself. Never forget the simple things that are free, easy and surprisingly plentiful. Never forget that there’s more to life than dreams come true, ambition fulfilled, goals achieved, seeing my writing in the New York Times and the Washington Post (which I would do, ten years later, but who would have known then?). Never forget the pleasure of a cup of tea.

Now I have a second one: never forget the beauty of the printed page.

Though the floor beside my bed, the table adjacent to my comfy chair, and the shelves in every other room tower with hundreds of books I have yet to open, I stopped reading a few months ago.

I’m not sure why, beyond the uneasy notion that what I was reading (mostly history and biography, with fiction and poetry for fun) didn’t seem “real” anymore. It’s one thing to look at a book about some famous person who lived and died before I was born, whose every twitch and twiddle could be shown to have made a difference, save civilization catastrophe and bring about the beginning of the world as we know it, and say, “what does this have to do with me?” It’s another to question the truth of a text, of the very words that can only be read one after the other, and with some difficulty (I had eye surgery a while back). Yes, we live surrounded by texts that we trust to be important, meaningful, necessary and true. But they are still texts: words (or numbers, symbols and images) that we string together in our brains so that we may approach what it is we believe to be important, meaningful, necessary and true.

I read newspapers and magazines. I glanced at the dour events, as well as the weather chart, on the morning and evening news. I read some of the junk mail sent to me, just to see if it was really junk.

It was.

But in order to understand how junky it all was, I had to interpret it. Texts don’t speak to us. Interpreters do. What they say, and what we hear, depends on many things. Someone who doesn’t know English and has never seen an octagonal red sign posted at the entrance to a potentially dangerous intersection (or, worse, thinks such things don’t pertain to him) is not going to STOP before rushing in. Most of us would rather not read the ingredients posted on a chocolate bar wrapper before we eat the candy. How many of us would play the lottery if we could make sense of the statistical likelihood of winning?

I began to think about this and decided that there may be other available insights into what is important, meaningful, necessary and true. I began to look more closely at the sky and landscape as I walked our dogs. I searched for glimpses of the things I did not typically see as I drove to the mall or surfed the Internet.

I can’t tell you if what I found was equivalent to the joys of reading Mark Twain, Emily Dickinson and so many of my favorite science fiction writers for the first time.

So I picked up my Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, turned to a page at random, and read something I didn’t understand at all. Then I read another that I did.

I opened a book about the history of diplomacy, paused at a difficult passage and noticed how easy it was to think about what I had read, and arrive at some kind of understanding, or judgement, about it. Did this make sense to me? And if it did, was I savoring that flicker of light inside my head as a part of my world that was somehow distant, blurry or merely unknown, became know?

If yes, I read more. It is simply a beautiful thing to see words on a page without the glaring snarky advertisements, noisy pop-up ads and the so many other insidious distractions that pull your eyes this way and that, making just about any session in front of a cell phone, computer screen or the big TV streaming stuff that so often is not worth the time and money–so exhausting that you find yourself empty of energy, incapable of pausing, thinking and otherwise enjoying your day?

I’m not saying that we should cut the cable, go off the grid and otherwise isolate ourselves from the greatest cultural connector in human history. But I am questioning the wisdom in exposing ourselves to so much stuff, without the critical capacity to decide what is worth our while, that it ultimately numbs us to what is, and always has been, important, meaningful, necessary and true.

Because even if you have an ad blocker, things pull your attention away. The fun of indulging silly whims, the thrill of shopping without leaving your comfy chair, the endless opinions, reactions, declamations, bullying and belittling on social media–drains us, weakens us, uses us up.

The printed page can do that, too, but it doesn’t move so fast. We can get really mad at what might be happening in the news, but, if it’s on paper, we turn the page, or push it away. We’re not being controlled. We’re far more in control of what see, hear, feel and now, as much as we are in control of the food we cook for ourselves.

Like that cup of tea, it can be a simple pleasure. It can be a hope and a prayer. Let us never forget the beauty of a printed page, so that we can find in it what nurtures us, sustains us and, every once in a while, reminds us of what really matters.

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The Fifth Year

In a few hours I’ll interview a chef who learned to speak English by reading Dr. Seuss during his afternoon break. I’ve been told that when he became a U.S. citizen, his employer threw a party for him at the restaurant where he worked his way up.

One of the questions I’ll ask him will be at what position he started. Before chefs became celebrities and culinary school was considered a practical alternative to a liberal arts college, chefs started as pot washers. Having stood over a steaming sink and scrubbed crusty burnt residue off sheet pans in restaurant kitchens, I know the wisdom in this.

A watched pot shouldn’t burn.

After gaining this, and other experiences from the hospitality business, my writing appeared in print more regularly. But I never forgot that feeling of kitchen teamwork when the evening rush began, how even if things weren’t working perfectly, you had no time to do anything more than follow through, and that, when the rush ended and you could see clear to end of the working night, you felt that you had helped make good things happen.

The chef I’m interviewing opened his restaurant at a time when restaurants are struggling for too many reasons: food costs are high, inflation has taken some–if not all–the money people would spend on a night out, take-out delivery services cut into what is already a narrow profit margin. My news feed sends me stories of customers balking as restaurants add junk fees to checks, post-pandemic work-at-homers aren’t patronizing office block eateries anymore, how a new drug that suppresses human hunger might kill off the fast-food industry, and a Michelin starred establishment that closed because the owner felt that prices were too high.

I’ve learned from the many food and hospitality stories I’ve done have that there aren’t any good times to open a restaurant. The majority fail within two years because landlords raise the rent, it’s too hard to find and keep good employees, bad employees steal too much, or what seemed to be a great kind of cuisine or concept didn’t catch on quick enough.

I’ve also learned that there are optimal qualities for restaurant chef/ownership. The first is that you shouldn’t need more than four hours of sleep a night. The second is the capacity to work constantly during the other twenty or so hours. The joy in cooking, or the shared pleasure in making people happy with great food, is not enough.

Once in my life I actually made a difference in a restaurant’s success. A husband-and-wife had just opened in a converted gas station and were struggling to define themselves as different from a more famous competitor–and their location on the main drag made it difficult for people driving past to slow down quick enough to turn into their rather small parking lot. I interviewed them, showed that they were just two people with two young kids who loved this kind of cuisine and had everything tied up into this dream.

The day the piece appeared, people began to find their way into their parking lot.

Publicity, happening exactly at the right time, isn’t enough. You need courage. The you need it to persuade suppliers, contractors and landlords to wait a little bit longer for your to pay them. You need it to believe, not only that your dream will come true, but that great big gobs of pure luck will help you succeed, no matter how hard you work. You need it to believe that you really can do this, when the compressor in the walk-in refrigerator dies, the plumbing backs up, or you have a pandemic that equates a meal with friends with death.

You need all that to make it to the fifth year, when restaurants have paid back their start-up costs, found a loyal customer base, a group of dependable suppliers, a pretty good idea of what works and what doesn’t, and have established a reputation good enough to withstand the reviews people post on line.

By then you might forget when the first food writers came to your place and asked you what you’re going to do that’ll put your place on the map.

I hope this chef makes it.

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Human Contact

We hadn’t been to a favorite restaurant in a while. Things had changed, and we had to learn how to eat all over again.

First, we had to hit the QR code on our phone the table to see a menu. This wasn’t an entirely new experience. We had done this at another place and the magic worked. What didn’t was my habit of browsing a menu, letting my eyes sweep up and down, back and forth, until they rested on an item. Seeing it on a phone required me to sweep and swipe around, which actually reduced the amount of items I could choose.

Then there was the difficulty with special requests. We have severe food allergies. Every restaurant visit usually begins with one of us explaining and a requesting that food be prepared without cross contamination with items that we could not consume.

The on-line menu had pull down options for comments. We didn’t trust those because we couldn’t be sure if the chef would actually see or read them. Also, we had to know before we ordered if any items contained things to which we were allergic.

We saw servers delivering the food but no one lingered long enough (or perhaps, using that well-worn skill that servers hone, they pretended not to see my politely waving hand and needy facial expression) to notice us and answer our questions. One of us had to rise, find the host and ask.

A server rapidly brought our drinks and appetizers and left before we could ask for cutlery and napkins. We waited a few minutes and no one visited us, as is customary in chain restaurants, to ask if everything was okay. The appetizers were finger foods. We needed napkins. Was this a simple mistake or evidence of a new procedure intended to reduce footprints, carbon, human or otherwise.

I stood up, went through the maze of tables and found the host, who gave me two set-ups.

By then, a server came with the main courses. We thought about ordering another drink but found ourselves locked out. We would have to go through the entire ordering procedure again, so we decided to forgo the second drink. When it came time for coffee, which we didn’t order the first time around, I stood up again and found a human being who wasn’t the host and wasn’t serving. Like the fretful soul who tries to resolve problems with supermarket self check-out machines, this person’s job was to talk to people at tables who had problems with the on-line menu. It turns out this was one person in the restaurant whose job was to talk to people at tables.

We were told us that the two french press coffees we were about to order were actually too much, and that we could get by on one. When I tried to pay with cash, he said the restaurant would take cash but had no cash register and couldn’t provide change. I gave him a credit card, the same card to which the on-line menu had charged.

He presented me with a printed receipt, and tab to sign. I signed and left another tip because I felt relieved that I had finally found a human being who would talk with me and put a personality on the service.

Having worked in restaurants and grown up at a time before cell phones became required for contemporary life, I felt a little uneasy about the first tip that had been taken automatically. True, the service was fast and efficient, and the food was as good this time as it had always been. I know how hard and low-paying restaurant work can be, so I’m not stingy with tips. And I have never objected to tips factored into the bill when I’m dining with six people or more.

But it’s disquieting when the act of tipping, and how much to tip, is taken from me. It raises the question: if no human being takes the order, a different server arrives each time with the food, and no one talks to me, who am I tipping? Whom am I thanking for good service? Whom am I appreciating for welcoming me, answering my questions, and, in the case of the food allergies, making sure an enjoyable night out doesn’t end in a hospital emergency room?

I understand that there has been a culture war against human for many years. Some people think it’s cool to have the world brought to them through the playing-card sized screen of their phone, and would rather have their desires met without the competence, benevolence, effort and warmth of another human being.

That happens at buffets and supermarket take-outs. At a restaurant, we should enjoy the entire experience, even if it’s as simple as a smile from the person who pours your coffee.

I’m sure the trend toward eliminating the human touch in restaurants, and other businesses, into a cell phone will continue.

I just hope the person paid to talk to people like me keeps their job.

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Not Dead Yet

The form letter came in the morning mail, addressed to the family of…

Followed by my name. The local voter registration office was sorry for our loss and was dropping me from the ranks of registered voters because I was had died on…

When exactly?

I became concerned. It’s one thing to prove that you’re dead: you (or someone who is handling your postmortem affairs) gets a death certificate from the county. But, once a government agency assumes you’re dead, how do you prove otherwise? The closest thing we have to a “life certificate” is a flimsy social security card and number, which has no picture. I know I have a birth certificate but I’m old enough NOT to know where to look for it if I ever need it.

Then there’s the uncomfortable possibility that insurance companies can cancel my numerous policies, some necessary for health care and prescription drugs. What about my driver’s license?

I thought of the small pile of cards, paper, some laminated, some wrinkled, folded and fading, that say I am what I am (and, to quote Popeye, “that’s all that I yam.” I remembered numerous pre-internet science fiction novels and thrillers about sneaky operatives who are “off the grid,” that is, technically nonexistent so they can create fake identities at will. This sounds like fun until you consider Terry Gilliam’s dystopian film Brazil, when one agency makes the equivalent of a typographical error (on a genuine typewriter!) that brings chaos down on our poor hero because, in the future, the many bureaucracies have reached attained a web-like state of interconnection (symbolized by the pipes and wires that burst and dangle from the film’s nightmarish sets), so that when one makes a mistake, they ALL make the mistake.

My wife checked the voter registration list on line and found that her name was on it. Mine was not.

Was this because of the way I voted, or for whom I did or did not vote in the last election? I recalled a trend sweeping the country in which a political party was purging voter registrations in such a way that those who had voted and still wanted to vote had to somehow prove that they existed.

My wife advised me to gather my ID cards and my passport with the morbid letter and visit the agency in person. We parked in the visitor space. I entered a moderately impressive lobby and turned right into one of those bleak, windowless rooms where rows of desks are defended by a broad, featureless counter where you can almost feel the frustration, agony and irritation of all the not-yet-dead folks arriving to complain.

Except I was alone. A supervisory person assumed an arms-folded, defensive posture behind the counter. I had, after all, arrived without an appointment.

“I’m thinking of changing my middle name to Lazarus,” I began, displaying the letter.

A smile, and then an explanation as another person who may or may not have sent the letter arose from the wilderness of desks. Records were checked and, low and behold, a person with my first name and last name died a few months ago in a different town within the county. He had a different middle name but whoever put his name in the records and hit the button that sent the form letter to me, didn’t check middle names.

The person apologized for my confusion. I was assured that this would not affect any other records with my name on them, within the county, state or federal government.

“Does this happen often?” I wanted to know.

Not often. I was told, but occasionally, when names are similar.

I thought of the dozen or so people I had located on the internet who had my first and last name. I had sent some emails. Now I know why at least one of them didn’t respond.

Then I was thanked for helping them train new voter registration office employees, and others in the country, to compare middle names. I would get a letter soon confirming that I was placed back on the voter registration list.

I stood still for a moment. Then I asked, “should I do anything else to make sure everything is okay?”

“You can celebrate your birthday. You now have two of them.”

I decided to take the rest of the day off.

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Good News

I was shocked on Christmas Day to see some of my familiar news media offering lists of events that happened in 2022 that were actually good.

What surprised me is how much there was to report. As a news junkie and part-time member of the news media, I heard so little about things that were pleasing, inspiring, optimistic and hopeful (not quite the same as optimism, and arguably more important). Some of these stories confirmed that, despite so many genuinely awful occurrences, things were improving, happy and affirmative of what I valued, as a United States citizen and human being.

That good news was featured around now is appropriate for those who celebrate Christmas, as the word “gospel”–the written accountants of the birth and deeds of Jesus–derives from an old English construction meaning glad tidings.The idea of doing things that increase happiness around this time of year goes back even further, to ceremonies observing the winter solstice, when the sun, whose hours and position overhead appeared to shrink, was now returning, bring the promise of warmth, the spring thaw, rebirth, health and sustenance.

Not all of what I read and saw warmed my heart. A few celebrities who had behaved badly in public (or whose private life was made public) lost a few fans. Politicians who disappointed us were ALMOST held accountable for failing to be the people we thought they were. Much that we were told to fear didn’t happen, hasn’t happened yet or wasn’t worth being afraid of. Pharmaceutical and medical research-and-development departments here and abroad had a shelf-load of treatments, medications, new surgical techniques and devices that will diagnose dangerous disease sooner, and, maybe, cure us of our many, many ills.

That also didn’t thrill me because, if you watch most network news programs, many commercials are for drugs that make similar promises until you hear the almost-too-fast-to-hear “fine print” with such blase’ observations like “may cause death.”

But then there was the fact that gas prices were way down from what they had been. And a tale of an environmentalist whose work with whales and harbor masters had increased the number of whales in one small part of the world. I’m not sure if more whales equals a slightly better world (it may not be great for what the whales eat) but it’s nice to think about.

After a year in which we were shown how some charities were most charitable to those who ran them, it was gratifying to know that the great majority of non-profit public service organizations were actually helping people. More kids who didn’t have the funds to go to college were seeking, and being admitted to, schools that cut their tuition fees. Affordable housing projects admitted their first residents. More people were installing and using renewable “clean” energy systems. A rocket sent from our planet tossed a satellite at an asteroid seven MILLION miles away and made the asteroid change course.

And, on Christmas morning, I could watch on a cellphone screen my three-year-old grandson play with a toy I selected and mailed to him. Way back when I was reading my first science fiction stories, video phones were ways that blaster-wielding heroes could glare in defiance at snickering interplanetary villains, but the rest of us had to make long distance calls and fret about the extra charge for dialing outside our area codes. Now I could see, and hear, someone find happiness from a toy that, way back BEFORE I began to read science fiction, was a wish come true.

Sooner than later the world will have to endure the post-New Years hangover, monstrous credit card bills, and suddenly increased fees for stuff we forgot we were paying for. We’ll have mornings when we slip on the ice from last night’s deep freeze, the car won’t start, we hear sirens and see the ruin of a house or the crumpled damage of an automobile that left its driver barely alive. An appliance we valued for years will suddenly die–just when the year-end sales have ended. The seasonal sicknesses will find us, no matter how careful we were at avoiding them. Some authority figure will insist that what we thought was fine or, at least, okay–was not. Someone will does something terrible will get away with it. A disastrous storm will blow in. Earnest news anchors will tell us of another act of rudeness that forced a passenger plane to make an emergency landing, or introduce us to a place we had never heard of until a mass shooting happened there.

Politicians will let us down. We’ll have to stop doing what we’ve been doing because if we don’t, we’ll bring about the end of the world.

The rich and famous will resume behaving badly in public. My grandchild might tire of his toy, or a new one will distract him.

Life will “get back to normal.”

But we’ll know that, on one day, at least, things were a little bit better.

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Should I Quit My Day Job?

I was recently asked for advice by someone for someone who wanted to leave an unfulfilling but highly lucrative career and become the writer they always wanted to be. This was my reply:

First of all, you’re already a writer. Call yourself one and feel good about it. Anyone who writes is a writer. Anyone who finishes what they write deserves praise for not giving up, or, more often than not, giving in to a dream and trusting it enough to follow where it leads.

Avoid telling friends, colleagues and peers that you’re a writer because they’ll ask what you’ve published. The process of publication does not make writers, but it can certainly break them. Your friends may want to read what you’ve written. This can be very frustrating, because the best that they’ll do when you show them is tell you that it is “good.” This isn’t what you need. What you need is for someone to say that your work was worth doing, reading it is worthwhile and that you are the writer you want to be.

Only you can tell yourself that, and once you do, you find out it doesn’t make much difference in the “real world” where most people have no idea what writers go through in order to produce that great poem, short story, novel, newspaper story, magazine article, non-fiction book, speech, prayer, song lyric, screenplay, limerick or one-liner joke.

And these people wouldn’t believe you if you told them.

If possible, find a hospitable, welcoming writers group near you. I assure you, this is not easy. I founded one because others were either too far away, or ruled by dictatorial Svengalis who were more concerned with reinforcing their opinions about writing than nurturing the work of others. I am no longer a member of that group, but, last I heard, it still meets.

A good writers group should feel like putting on old, comfortable clothes that you love too much to get rid of. After a few minutes, you stop thinking of what you’re wearing and you feel good enough to do just about anything and not worry about how you may appear. At best, you become playful. You wander back to those times in your childhood when you cloaked your toys in stories. or gazed at clouds and had a very good idea of what it would be like to live up there.

Nurturing that sense of play is the primary task of a writers group because the world around us is far too serious and overrun by those who would tell you that you are paid to do THIS and mistakes are FATAL. Yes, there are niceties of grammar, punctuation and spelling (that sink in after a while); one must honor the customs of genres, and our mass-market driven culture comes with rapidly changing definitions about what is and isn’t art. But you should feel safe enough in a writers group to share work that is unformed, possibly derivative, unusual, surprising, not-your-best and otherwise new, without anyone (including your own inner critical voice) saying “YOU CAN’T DO THAT!!!” or, worse, “you’re wasting your time.”

No one in a writers group should have to tell you that you CAN do this and your time is well spent. Instead, they should tell you what in your offering works for them, what might need refinement. You should not feel obligated to follow anyone’s suggestions. But you should not become defensive if you thought you were being funny and some didn’t laugh. The work you bring to a writers group is new, and new things always come with surprises.

You should leave each session with the certainty that you are part of a peer group that merely wants its members to succeed and not go too crazy over the momentary joys, sudden frustrations and daunting set-backs that are part of any creative effort.

Also, consider what you’re reading right now for pleasure. This is tough for those whose job it is to read business, legal, or academic prose that can be so numbingly dull that you wish the alphabet had never been invented.

What you enjoy reading restores your soul, reminds you that writing is worth doing and remains your best teacher, especially when you have those moments when you don’t know if what you’ve done is any good, or you’re reached a point in composition where the words stop and you don’t know what to do next. From your reading, you know that if __________, did it, you can do it, too.

Or do something even better.

Finally, consider if any of your work would “fit” into publications, either on-line or in print, that you like to read, look for that publication’s submission guidelines and send it out. Of course you’ll get more rejections than acceptances, but that one acceptance just might feel good, and build a relationship with an editor of that publication. All writers benefit from good editors. May you meet several along the way

When I began to write books, my editor said, “Don’t quit your day job.” I found that insulting. Writing was my day job! My journalism was appearing in many publications. My wife was working. We had a child.

Second, I knew that the publishing industry pays like any business in the arts. Those who are starting out, but are earnest enough to work hard and meet the needs of publications, are paid very little, or nothing. Those whose work regularly rides the best seller lists, wins awards, inspires pithy grunts from critics, is made into movies or over-long streaming series, are paid more than any human being has ever earned.

This is rarely the fault of those who write, even if they strut and fret and tell eager interviewers how much they’ve suffered. In truth, the marketplace creates inequalities. I’m almost never paid what my work is worth. Sometimes it’s too much for what was an easy, blissful, effortless tip of the hat. Other times, it’s too little for a chore in which every line was rewritten five times.

Back when I was making a reputation as a lively, competent, trustworthy journalist, I was in an atmospheric Atlantic City tavern with a much older newspaperman who had had a book on the bestseller list gazed up at me over a glass of beer and warned me not to give up my day job.

I fumed: this WAS my day job!

He said, “then you should find something that brings the money in regularly. Because you can make a fortune writing, but you can’t make a living.”

I disagreed then, and disagree now. A day job can rob you of the energy and desire, to do anything but flop on a couch, sip bad wine and watch stupid TV.

You can make a living as a writer, though you can never be certain of how much, or when the checks will arrive. The pressures of meeting financial obligations are sufficiently extreme to interfere with, or subvert, whatever feelings of pleasure or profundity you get from writing. 

I have a karate black belt and used to teach martial arts. One thing teaching teaches teachers is beginners won’t understand some things and may even refused to believe what you’ve learned is true. Students of any endeavor, art or industry must put in time before what they heard from their kindly old teacher makes any sense.

When I taught writing, I gave this bit of what I called “black belt wisdom”:

You don’t write despite your life. You write BECAUSE of it. 

I’ll translate: I’m sure you have many moments when you find your current job frustrating or unfulfilling and you see yourself doing something more worthwhile with a pen, paper or word processor. We all have moments when writing feels like the most important thing, even if no one reads what we’ve done (although it’s very nice when they do and say good things about it!). 

You may even imagine yourself in a nice house, beach bungalow or mountain chateau, with a glass of splendid wine at your side, in a comfy, Architectural Digest profiled chair, facing a view of nature at her most magnificent, with an idea that is blossoming into a trilogy destined to change the course of literature.  Let’s sweeten the fantasy a bit: you’re a well-published author, with prize winning, best-selling work to your credit, and the latest Broadway genius wants to make your book of poems into their next musical!

You just may achieve all of that one day BUT, right now, what you feel is a powerful urge to BE a writer.

Okay. You ARE a writer. Let what you’re experiencing right here, right now, motivate you. Write about what your day job is like. Tell the truth about how it feels to have a career laid out before you like hopscotch squares, and to find it all wanting.

Or write about something totally different. Either way, the words come through you BECAUSE of who you are, right here, right how. If duty calls and you’ve only put so many words down, stop, save what you’ve done and come back to it later. If not….

Let it all begin, now!

Every profession has given us great writers, educators, philosophers, poets. William Faulkner said that “good art can come out of thieves, bootleggers or horse swipes.” As another writer told me, “Whatever happens to you is all grist for the mill.”

Therefore, as Henry James advised, “Try to be one of those on whom nothing is lost.”

My father was a lawyer who was lucky if he read one book a year because he worked so hard practicing law. He wanted me to join his firm and write on the side. I went so far as to take the Law School Admission Test. I tend to get low scores on standardized tests (like most imaginative people, I overthink choices). The LSAT at that time delivered a score called Writing Ability. When my test results indicated my talent ranked somewhere at the bottom, I told myself that any institution that uses such a test to deny access to education, was not for me.

This was not empty bravado: When I took that test I was writing regularly, and publishing often, in newspapers and magazines. I was also working in a supermarket deli, a restaurant and a lamp store to support myself.

Later, when I taught novel-writing at the University of Pennsylvania and other impressive colleges, I’d always get at least one lawyer in the class who wanted to be the next John Grisham or Lisa Scottoline.

When I was a teenager, I wanted to be a science fiction writer. I sought out other writers to see how they lived. I met one who was living in a one-room saltbox-style house. I met another who drove a Cadillac, lived on key-hole shaped peninsula jutting into a Florida lake, in a sprawling house he designed himself with sweeping views of the water. 

I wanted to be that guy with the fancy house! I thought, if he can do it, so can I!

In nearly 45 years of writing professionally, I have yet to publish any science fiction. But I have lived in places with nice views. From my current window, I see trees and the houses of neighbors.

Dreams matter can be like seeds. Not every seed finds soil. Not every seed gets adequate sunlight and water. Not all of them grow or make more seeds.

But, somehow, enough of them do.

You’re a writer now.

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