While listening to a recorded lecture of Yale University Professor Ian Shapiro’s course on the Moral Foundations of Politics (http://oyc.yale.edu/political-science/plsc-118) I was intrigued with a thought experiment he offered about what John Stuart Mill may have thought was a fair way to arrive at the truth about something.

Mill, Prof. Shapiro emphasized, believed that free speech was a path to a truth that was “corrigible,” that is, can change, be discredited or replaced with a more accurate version over time, and that people should be permitted to argue their way to a just determination.

But how should we arrive at this determination? Let’s say we’re standing at the edge of a field and we see a cow in it. Someone asks, how much does that cow weigh? We can’t bring a scale to the field, so we’re going to have to guess. Whose guess will determine the truth?

Should we listen to everyone (and thereby compel people who have no opinion to join in?), or just those who pipe up with a guess?

When we’re finished gathering opinions, should we take an average of the guesses and hold that as to be the best version for the moment?

Should we vote on which opinion we like the most? If all opinions were honestly given, and every opinion was substantially different, we’d never get a useful determination.

Should we give special consideration to those who say they have expert knowledge–guy who has lived on a farm and says he “knows” cows.

What about the loudmouth who says he’s right and everybody else is wrong and tries to end the discussion? Mill would probably not like that because the loudmouth is limiting free speech. At the same time, what about the person who is in love with the sound of his own voice, who goes on and on and on? Should we give that person a three minute warning? And if that person disregards that warning, should we shut him down?

Of course, someone is going to say who cares how much the cow weighs? It’s a cow. It’s in a field. There are a lot of cows and a lot of fields. Why bother?

I’m extrapolating this now: what if we’re trying to arrive at a determination about how to deal with poor people. Or how to “create” jobs?  Or how to permit the free and open practice of  religion? These are issues that many people have opinions about, and none of them can be answered in a purely instrumental (i.e., get a scale, weigh the cow, believe the number you get). How do we determine “the right thing to do”?

I don’t have the answers but I feel it’s good to think about them.

So I let a few days of non-blogging go by and what happened?

I didn’t check the numbers that tell me how many people glance at my page. To take a line from the legal profession, you never ask a question whose answer you don’t want to know.

I had many ideas of blogs I could write, ranging from daily observations (how ideas pop up when I’m running, but not when I’m in front of the word processor), what I did on my Labor Day vacation (stayed in the general area, tried to appreciate how beautiful the weather was, helped make other people happy, especially when I was incapable of being happy myself), advice about writing (which I found is too plentiful on the Internet) and simultaneous embarrassment at how awful this blog looks while being loath to read or watch the tutorials, or blunder about in an attempt to improve things.

I did notice that blogging can dip into “the well,” my metaphor for the varying amount of creative energy any of us has in a day. When I didn’t blog, more ideas came, and more writing on my novels (I have two in progress right now) occurred.

Then there some other, more troublesome thoughts about a very difficult thing that others have done but I can’t seem to do for any length of time: forgive myself for all the mistakes made, faux pas foisted, marks missed, rare but regretted moments of outright nastiness and belligerence and–this is the most difficult-stuff that hurt a great deal but wasn’t my fault.

The list of this last category is quite long. I can, but won’t mention specifically so many instances when I worked really hard, played by the rules, was respectful of my superiors, was selflessly kind, strove to make a positive difference in peoples lives, EXERCISED DAILY AND ATE THE RIGHT FOOD, and what happened?

The hard work didn’t “pay off,” I lost out  to people who didn’t car about the rules, my superiors exploited me or treated me badly, my kindness was dismissed as a character flaw or a weakness, my efforts failed to make any difference, I had one of those work outs when everything felt awful and I STILL have a layer of flab hanging on me like a piece of clothing that won’t come off.

The typical response to such whining ranges from exhortations that important things take time and I shouldn’t give up, or that I shouldn’t dwell on “negativity” and just put the stuff out of my mind as if it never happened, as well as the finger wagging that maybe I could have done more of this or less of that and my results would have been different. Oh–and then there are the tough folks who say that life is filled with disappointment, mine are trivial and the time whining doesn’t make anything any better so I should just shut up and move on.

This last retort isn’t precisely true. Comedians have turned whining into an art form. Laughing at our misfortunes doesn’t make them go away, but it resonates with a quote from Henry James that has haunted me for most of my life.

“To an artist, nothing is wasted.”

If I had my druthers, I would rather not have had so much…raw material. But it is mine, to the extent that it happened (or failed to happen) to me, and I have turned some of it into stories that–I hope–have their own beauty.

And that can inspire a return to the writing, to taking sustenance from a well that never seems to run dry, no matter how bitter, or sweet, the contents may be.

Some writers who like to posture complain of people who ask them, “Where do you get your ideas from?” Though I have never been hit with this, I understand why they find this painful. The question tends to lead to another question: why don’t you write about this? Or that? Or (worse), “I have an idea for a novel but I’m no writer. If I tell you, maybe we could work something out?”

I’ve had such offers a few times and, I’ll admit, I’m not afraid of the lawsuits George Lucas got when everybody who doodled spaceships in their college notebooks claimed he stole their designs. You don’t need a degree in popular culture to notice that the first Star Wars movie resembled a PILE of previous works, including E.E. Smith’s Skylark series, Japanese Samurai movies (Lucas admitted he wanted to do a version of The Hidden Fortress), Laurence of Arabia, World War Two combat motifs (the strangely impractical, human operated guns emplacements at opposite poles of the Millenium Falcon), etc.

But popularity can do strange things. What was first seen as a giddy, low-budget borrowing from so many previous sources has become an icon. More people “quote” Star Wars in some way than all the sources combined.

This shouldn’t surprise creative types. They point out, correctly, that–with fiction, at least–the thing that inspires you to write is not as important as the writing itself. Most creative people get too many ideas, or never enough. We rarely find a balance of inspiration.

In non-fiction, where content still has some relevance, ideas are important enough to be stolen. One editor told me that he liked an idea I had pitched him for an article, but he wanted to give it to someone else, and would I mind? No, I lied.

People read non-fiction for what they presume will be in it. They may be teased by a title, or they know the writer from some other work, but what brings them to the bottom of the page is usually how much they got of what they wanted.

Regardless of the result, ideas for creative work are valuable. It took me many years to discover that other people–MOST other people–don’t get them. They’re content to let other people do their dreaming for them. That isn’t a bad thing: I go to movies, I watch TV, I read a book a week.

But the best ideas are my own. They’re like seeds. Not every one finds fertile ground. Not every one grows. And, of those that grow, how many survive the lawnmower of indifference, or those people who say, “This is good but…are you sure this what you want to do with your life?”

With me, ideas come unexpectedly, generally when I’m nowhere near a place to write them down.I get some when I’m exercising and let my mind wander. I get some when I’m in “between” places–waiting to board a plane in an airport, stuck in traffic, or on vacation someplace.

I try to remember them. Comedian Steve Allen told me that he dictated his thoughts into a what were then tape recorders. Other writers keep pocket notebooks, or have a place on their cell phones where they store their nuggets.One writer I know got so many ideas while in the shower that he bought a special marking board with pens so he could record them. I just try to remember them.

The more they stay in my head, the more elaborate they become. When I write them down, and add to them, they can grow into scenes in a novel.

I used to try to write novels in order: start at what I imagined was a beginning and go straight to the end. With practice, I hoped to make the writing like a samurai sword cut: one clean slice.

But it never works out that way. What is the beginning for me typically is in the middle of the book, with stuff added before and after. I may not know how it’s all going to end, and then get an idea for an ending, write it, and change the ending.

Or I may hit a wall and go for a run or cook some elaborate feast and come up with a new idea that only requires rewriting a hundred or so pages.

If anybody out there doesn’t know it already, permit me to be the first to say it: creative accomplishments are NEVER sword cuts, they’re never a straight line, they never go smoothly from start to finish.

But they begin with an idea. In a world where so many people are bemoaning the end of this and that, it’s nice to get the kind of idea that says, “you ain’t seen nothing yet!”

The distinctions between “high” and low art no longer exist.

Concert halls that once featured solemn performances of the works of dead European composers also host pop singers. The contemporary wings of art museums show pieces that look like toys (Jeff Koons), junk (Marcel Duchamp, Robert Rauchenberg and others), pieces of metal (numerous sculptors, including the Minimalists), construction debris, rotting food, cartoons, boxes, neon signs.

Our most prestigious academies grant doctoral degrees to studies of popular culture, which was once dismissed as ephemeral, disposable trash of now lasting value or significance. This last bit I find amusing, because I adore science fiction and fantasy, and once lent a book of R.A. Lafferty stories to a professor enthralled by the South American magical realists (Borges, Marquez, et. al.). He dismissed the book as inferior literature that should not be mentioned in the same breath as his favorites.

This is no longer true, for many reasons, some of which have to do with the predominance of science fiction in mass culture–the established entertainment industrial complex that has now globalized itself until it has become a standard by which other works are measured. What another professor called “illegitimate” theater (vaudeville, “Las Vegas style” revues that I once had to review when I covered Atlantic City, magic shows, the circus) is now legitimate live entertainment, with marketing campaigns intended to capture specific demographics and “niche” market.

What about the stuff people are doing all by themselves and uploading on the Internet? No human being, no aggregator, no critic can possibly take this in, enjoy it and make an inclusive, qualitative judgement about it.

With so much stuff out there, you’d think the role of a critic, or just some culture vulture pointing the way, would be even more important.

But the American global culture is so vast that getting attention has become an art in itself. Sensationalism used to mean the distorted reporting of a shocking incidents or statements. “Yellow journalism,” named for a comic strip called the “Yellow Kid” that appeared in some tabloids, flourished when cities had numerous competing newspapers. These same newspapers invented other attention getting devices that, they hoped, would get and keep an audience. The New York Times Best Seller list was such an invention.

I used to write for the Times. Long before I got that gig,  and, I harbored a fantasy of becoming a “New York Times Best Selling Author.”  To earn that distinction, you had to have a book make what was once the most famous sales list in the world that is losing its relevance against other book rankings.

I worked very, very hard on my novels, and still do. Yes, the ones published  were genre works because I couldn’t interest agents and editors in anything else. I wrote them with a serious respect for the genre conventions and a faith that it was possible to write really good stuff that either fulfilled or exceeded the expectations of the gatekeepers who only wanted to keep their jobs while publishing books they liked, and the readers who, like me, loved a great story.

Then I found myself working for the New York Times. It started with a phone call. They called me.

I had started doing reviews for the Book Review, a publication I grew up reading. Then the New Jersey section editors asked me to cover Atlantic City, the Jersey shore and New Jersey in general.

My stuff appeared in the New Jersey section. Sometimes it ran in other regionals.Editors and staffers at Philadelphia publications that used to ignore me began to ask me if I could get them jobs at the Times.

If I think about the circulation figures of the newspaper way back then, I can guess that more people had the potential to read my stuff than most books that appeared on the list.

I was paid very little. I was occasionally edited to death. Though I had some very good editors, I had to put up with editors who were paid to know more about what I was writing than I did, which, as all of us know, is the perennial conflict that isolates labor from management, manufacturing from sales, generals from troops in the trenches.

People bought the paper. My stuff “sold.”

Did a dream come true?

Sometimes, you can be grateful for ambiguities.

So I’ve used this blog as a place for thoughts, essays, trips down a rutted, pitted and potholed Memory Lane, and I’ve discovered that these entries, as causal or deliberately thought-out as they’ve been, take something from me.

I can liken my imagination, and the energy I have to act from it,  to a well. The extended metaphor works as a way to understand the enticement, risks and rewards of creative behavior.

1. Look down, and, most of the time, you see your reflection distantly in the water (or, more accurately, you see yourself looking). To look down a well is to be intrigued by places that may lead someplace else.
2. A good question to ask is, Could the water be safe to drink? Even if there is no bucket by which you could fetch a drink, you are curious.
3. If there is a bucket, you’ll want to take the drink anyway, even if you’re not thirsty. Novelty and, for some of us, action that brings us back to an earlier time, ritual or compulsion, are enticing.
4. If you can manage the bucket (for some, this may take practice), you can have your drink. The taste may be odd, refreshing, awkward or so unusual that you drop the bucket. You may assume that everybody needs a drink, but, in truth, taking from the well is not for everybody. Until a few years ago, most people wanted it from a tap. Then bottled water became fashionable, both as a convenience you could carry, and as a branded product that, like a Starbucks coffee cup, said something about you, your affluence and your taste.
5. You may look around and ask yourself if you’re allowed to do this. After all, the water comes from someplace, right? Somebody put this well here. Does it belong to anyone? In the words of parental concern, will there be a consequence?
6. In the same way you avoided Question 2, you avoid Question 5 by taking another drink. This time you may get better at handling the bucket and bring up more water.
7. You find you like the taste. You may even presume that, because well water is closer to a “natural” source, it may be good for you and, possibly good for everyone! From here, you wonder, could I make a living at this? You remember the water you drank as a kid. There might be people who have become rich ‘n’ famous providing water for the thirsty. A few have founded entire utility companies! Some went bankrupt and are now making a comeback. Their water regularly gets top ratings, though a few critics feel that their new output isn’t was good as their old. But who drinks “old” water these days?
8. You drink some more and come back the next day and the water level is at the same height! You assume you’ve found an infinite resource. You buy a case of bottles, or, if you’re really dexterous, you procure a pump and drain the well dry.
9. Alas, you discover that taking too much from the well has a consequence. The water at the closest to the bottom has gritty stuff in it–it’s not as good as the stuff at the top. Also, the time you spend pumping and filling bottles makes you thirsty. You wish you could just drink the stuff, instead of worrying about fill lines, distribution networks and what other people will think when they see you with all this water.
10. You get a day when the well is dry. The very thing you depended on, has let you down. Worse than that, you’re thirsty! You look for something to take away your frustration. You waste a lot of time, effort and energy to generate a distraction. Indulging in distractions may become habitual–addictive! And, when the distraction fades, you’re still thirsty.
11. The next day, the water is back! You drink deep (subtle reference to a couplet by Alexander Pope) and you are certain that this is the water for you. As soon as you reach your epiphany, other people demand your attention. “What are you doing hanging out by that well? We need you here!” “If you don’t help us out, we’ll get very mad!” “Who needs a well? If you do what we want, we’ll fix it so you can borrow money and buy bottled water!”
12. You slowly come to realize that you and the well have a…relationship. The well “needs” you to take water, or its contents become stagnant. At the same time, the well gives you a special kind of water that, despite all the utility companies and water bottlers, is important to you. Even if other people don’t understand why you like this water, it IS part of your life. You DO depend on it. And, on days when nothing comes out right, it still tastes very, very good.

When I don’t understand something, I try to learn as much as I can about it. This doesn’t always make it easier for me–sometimes I metaphorically throw up my hands, give up and listen to pleasant music, as I did when I tried to make sense of the Nazi racial cleansing against Jews, ethnic minorities, Communists and people they considered physically or mentally “defective.” About the best I could see into that mess was that ordinary German people (some of whom I am distantly related) believed that they were so different from their victims, or, conversely, that they so much wanted to be part of awakening of the Third Reich, that they could not see the suffering and outright horror they were causing.

This idea of “the other” has had a peculiar and ironic place in our contemporary society, with too many people saying that things would be so much better if we only got rid of _________________,   stopped ________________ from coming into the neighborhood. or forced ____________ to do what we want.

When Congress shut down the Federal government for three weeks a few years ago, I saw many families–already strapped because of previous budget cuts,  struggling to pay bills. Kids came to school hungry. I heard of people losing their cars and their homes. The parents of kids in college couldn’t pay their tuition. Some people got seriously sick because they couldn’t afford insurance co-pays. to pay for medical care.

The proponents of this spiteful tactic wanted to “send a message” to the Federal government. They thought this would teach those in what they characterized as an imperious, impractical and intransigent bureaucracy a “lesson.”

All it did was hurt a lot of people, especially in Northern Virginia, where everybody knows somebody who works for the government, or works for somebody who works for the government.

One of the big unsolved debates in philosophy is how we act. Are our emotions the relics of a prehistorical struggle that is now ruled by rational thinking? Or do we remain people of passion who use rationality to explain why we boiled over and did that thing we regret but would rather not apologize for?

A few centuries ago, “enlightened” thinkers believed that science would save us from ourselves. It would vanquish superstition and replace untenable traditions with practical, pragmatic strategies and, most significantly, eliminate the suffering and horror inspired by religion.

While I have a great deal of respect for the Enlightenment characters (Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin are favorites favorite), I do believe that this ideal continues to cause suffering, especially in the dismal science, also known as economics.

The 18th century enlightenment whiz credited with founding modern economics is Adam Smith. Seeking to identify the moral heart in British capitalism, he suggested that people (or businesses) acting selfishly in a market will ultimately derive uniform benefit from what happens in that market. In a way that approaches religion, Smith described an “invisible hand” that will act to organize the market, drive out the cheaters and hawkers of shoddy goods, identify and further those who offer the best goods, foster competition that will lower or stabilize prices, defeat those who come with prejudices or preconceived notions, and ultimately make society based on trade, stronger, more honest and open.

It should be pointed out that Smith was not against regulating markets, and that he was aware of the tendency of self-interest to dominate and manipulate. At the time, most economic markets were small. People knew each other personally, or were close enough to suppliers and financiers to influence them directly.

Like many ideals, this simplification feels good emotionally. Though Smith had his reservations about the goodness in human nature, he thought that the things that brought people to a market (exchange of goods in a fair, open and efficient manner) would float everyone’s boat.

What alarms me is that Smith’s ideal, as well as all the economic “laws” that have come up since then, cannot be proven as true. Yes, you can build mathematical models. You can create charts. You can use game theory to systematize and prioritize possible responses. And, by golly, you’ll come up with facts and figures that will impress the people that pay your salary.

You might even make a killing in the market!

But we can never be sure if  such ideas as “trickle down” economics–lowering taxes on the wealthy–will have a direct and certain beneficial effect on society as a whole.

And its clear to me that market analytics airline transportation, into an irritating, anxiety ridden mess. The seat sizes, the hidden fees, the baggage penalties, the way the airlines won’t issue refunds or provide adequate compensation when they screw up,  have inspired my wife and I, who love to travel, to do whatever we can not to fly.

I want to understand why, and how, we’ve let economic presumptions destroy the moral and material quality of our lives.

Wish me luck.

Here is another column I did for the New York Times, with a mea culpa following. It is an example of the peculiar power that journalists can use, not just to influence a subject, but also, to make things a little bit better.

First, the story:

A Jazz-Age Survivor

(end)

When covering Atlantic City for some 23 years for numerous publications, I discovered the city’s past was far more interesting than its present. Older generations had lively stories of what Enoch “Nucky” Johnson (fictionalized as Nucky Thompson in Boardwalk Empire) called a “wide open town.” I heard many stories from people who worked the nightclubs, especially those on Kentucky Avenue.

Atlantic City remains the only town in New Jersey that can serve alcohol 24 hours a day. This was supposed to make the resort attractive to conventions, but, in truth, was a boon to the city’s saloons and nightclubs, nearly all of which had some kind of backroom, illegal gambling.

The most famous white nightclub was the 500 Club (torn down to provide parking for the former Trump Plaza casino hotel’s stretch limos), where Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis became famous as a duo. A disgraced Frank Sinatra performed there after he had left his Catholic wife for Ava Gardner. A depressed baseball legend Joe DiMaggio became a greeter to at the “5” after Marilyn Monroe him.

Live music stopped at the “5” at 11 p.m., because of strict rules from the white musician’s union.

Black musicians also had a union. The union had no rules for how long musicians could play in the black nightclubs on Kentucky Avenue. The Club Harlem, the most famous of these clubs (Atlantic City’s first black mayor, James L. “Big Jim” Usry, was a doorman there), had “Breakfast” shows that ended at 6 a.m. Nearly every black entertainer of the mid-20th century performed there, including Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis Jr., Cab Calloway and Sarah Vaughn, who, when asked at a press conference that I attended before her Atlantic City casino debut, if there was a difference between American and European audiences, replied, “they don’t speak English, that’s all.”

Kentucky Avenue was one of the few places in the city where blacks and whites enjoyed themselves together. At other times, a de facto segregation ruled, with black workers in restaurants and hotels (the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.’s father was employed in one) who were not permitted on most sections of the Boardwalk. They had to stay off every beach except one, at Missouri Avenue, derisively known as “Chicken Bone Beach.”

Sid Trusty, a retired drummer and Atlantic City cab driver, told me he had no bitterness about those days because, as he remembered it, Atlantic City people knew how to get along, take care of each other and hang out together on Kentucky Avenue. I mentioned that “Jim Crow” segregation also caused much injustice. Trusty, who was black, knew Sarah Spencer Washington, a black businesswoman who became so angry when black people weren’t permitted to join the Boardwalk Easter Parade that she had sponsored her own, shaming the city and opening the parade, and the Boardwalk, to everyone.

“There was plenty of injustice,” Sid admitted to me. “And there still is. But you have to see that we were capable of solving a lot of our difficulties here before they became problems. Black and white. We came together and we made changes. We didn’t have the riots in Chicago and LA. We didn’t have the police brutality in Philadelphia and Birmingham.

By the time of that interview, all the Kentucky Avenue nightclubs had closed. An attempt at starting a Kentucky Avenue museum had failed.

And most musicians, black and white, were out of work.

Legalized gambling was intended to bring jobs back to the city. The first casinos had to hire local musicians and provide “live” entertainment in showrooms and lounges. For about a year, musicians got employment. But, within two years, the casinos argued that recorded music was more effective in the gambling areas and the many musicians (one of whom went to high school with me) had to leave town for work.

Then the Casino Investment and Redevelopment Authority, charged with spending tax money accrued from gambling on improvements in Atlantic City and throughout the state, decided to bring a supermarket to Atlantic City and locate it on Kentucky Avenue. All the nightclubs were torn down, and, as a gesture to those who felt a valuable part of the city’s past might be forgotten, a mural was put up on a wall behind the market of some of the city’s black musicians and famous entertainers who played on Kentucky Avenue.

That’s when I heard that Chris Columbo, one of the city’s most famous black drummers, was living at a city-owned senior citizen complex as a shut-in. I got his phone number, called him up and he agreed to do the interview. When I asked him if he had seen the mural, on which he is the only musician portrayed twice, he became bitter, telling me how he had refused to be at the dedication ceremony because of what the city had done to Kentucky Avenue.

I told him that I agreed, but that he had to see the mural. My photographer had a car and we were going to take him there.

There are important ethical question that journalist’s must ask about to what extent their conduct during an interview, and their reporting, makes news. We like to imagine ourselves as essentially passive people who show our readers, viewers and listeners what is happening in the world in an unbiased manner, even when biases creep in.

Passive journalists become active when we go into truth-seeking mode. The claims of politicians, businesses, government organizations, celebrities–anyone who wants to protect a reputation, manipulate public opinion, or persuade people to buy stuff or vote a certain way, must be examined critically and dispassionately so that readers, listeners and viewers can make up their own minds.It is too the credit of the rapidly vanishing breed of investigative journalists have changed history in important way, but they have done so by bringing facts and circumstances to public attention.

But we’re not supposed to “make” the news, that is, influence what is happening to get a better story, wider readership, higher ratings, more clicks on a webpage.

Alas, that’s happening too much these days, as “scientific” studies and public opinion polls, many of them sponsored by news organizations, use methods that may not stand up to close scrutiny, to get numbers, tendencies or likelihoods that may not be representative of anything that should be called truth. These numbers become news. The response to these numbers become news. The result of the responses become news.

And we, the public that is supposed to be informed, are distracted.

I should have ended my story with Chris Columbo’s bitter, angry refusal to see the mural. Even though the Kentucky Avenue nightclub district had passed the point at which it could be revived, most people would agree that tearing those clubs down and replacing them with a supermarket did not honor the city’s past, and his.

Instead I told him that he should see that mural because the people who made that mural wanted him on it. I said my photographer had a car and we would drive him to see it.

And we did. After he made the statement about hoping the mural stays there, he thanked me.

I felt then, and still do now, that  I did a good thing.

Books have been written, movies have been made about the relationship between dogs and their human caretakers. I’m not about to do that right now. Suffice to say I have a dog that is walked two to three times a day.

I didn’t have a dog when I was a child. My mother thought (correctly) that a mobile pet would ruin the carpet and the upholstery. So I had tropical fish, a few of which would inexplicably jump out of the water and be found, dried to a mummified crispness, on the living room carpet.

For a while my brother and I had hamsters. They smelled bad and made noise when they ran on their squeaky exercise wheel. They were delightfully cute and would poop or pee anywhere, without much provocation. One summer when we went to camp, we gave our hamsters to my cousin Seth to look after until we came back. When the dog days of August arrived, Seth told us that our hamsters no longer existed, because they “ate each other.”

I’ve never been able to figure out how that happened. Seth has grown into a good, forthright guy and, more importantly, as an adult (and son of a lawyer), I’ve learned that you never want to ask a question whose answer you’d rather not here.

My son wanted a cat, so we got one and I learned the peculiar mix of arrogant selfishness and abject love that cats bring.

My wife had two dogs that died–one in her arms. We walked past a pet shop one day and she looked in on the puppies. A few days later, we had one, a westy (West Highland Terrier) that she named Daisy.

I won’t write about the housebreaking period, or when she chomped on my glasses, buried my wife’s cell phone in the backyard and other awkward transitions. One day I’ll write about how having a dog makes you a part of the community of dog lovers, even if your dogs don’t get along.

But I will say I have a hat that I wear when I walk her. It’s a gold trilby made of woven paper, with a blue sweatband. It dates from that brief time when wearing a brimmed hat meant you were hip. My wife bought it for me, and it’s become my “I don’t care” hat. I put it on and I don’t care how I’m dressed, what people think of me, all the rejections I’ve had (I’ve had acceptances, too, probably far more when I consider thousands of published newspaper and magazine articles, but the rejections still plague me), what’s wrong with contemporary education, the cultural clamor of the aggressively stupid and other annoyances. I step outside, when the weather is nice, indifferent or brutal, and Daisy and I go for a walk.

Sometimes that walk can be rushed–it’s the morning and we have things to do, or the evening when I’m tired. In the colder months, the walk can be in darkness: Daisy is tugging on the leash, wanting to sniff this place and that, and my head is filled with a million things, when the faint glow of the dawn breaks over the eastern sky.

No matter where you are, no matter why you woke up early or couldn’t sleep, please notice the dawn. It means so much, regardless of what hat you wear.

I’m still amazed that some of my stuff remains on the Internet. This is one of my weekly columns that ran in the New York Times New Jersey Section. As with all journalism, there’s the story read, and the story behind the story. First, the article itself:

Happy (Yikes!) New Year

MY first worry when I was offered a chance to plunge myself into the freezing surf on New Year’s Day was that I have never looked good in a bathing suit.

”That is not an obstacle,” Henry Dorsey, past president of the Atlantic City Polar Bear Club, assured me. ”We have a lot of portly people doing it. A couple of women will be showing their tattoos. Your figure is not a factor.”

What about dropping dead of heart failure or hypothermia? ”In seven years, none of us have had any illnesses whatsoever because of this,” said Mr. Dorsey, 43. ”Since I started this, I don’t get colds.”

In 1989, Mr. Dorsey started the annual New Year’s Day dip when he bet a colleague at the FAA Tech Center in Pomona, Gene Peters, that neither would have the guts to just do it.

”The water temperature was 28 degrees,” Mr. Dorsey said. ”Air temperature was 15 degrees with 18-mile-an-hour winds, with snow on the beach. It was too cold to stand around thinking about it. We went right in, and we felt things we’d never felt before. It was — ” he paused — ”a mouthwash for the brain.”

Word spread until he founded this latest, and largest, Atlantic City chapter of the Polar Bear Club. The 70 members’ annual ocean plunge raises about $1,000 for charities through sponsorships and sales of the club’s ”I Survived” T-shirts and caps.

The offer of a free hot shower by the health spa at Merv Griffin’s Resorts encouraged me to shed my ski jacket, sweatshirt, sweat pants, socks and sneakers and join the beachside throng of swimsuit-and-goosebump-clad Polar Bears in applauding the arrival of Mr. Dorsey, who marched onto the Atlantic City beach at 11:25 A.M. on New Year’s Day wearing shorts, T-shirt and a Santa Claus cap.

According to a large thermometer he had brought, the air temperature was 32 degrees. The water temperature was a balmy 38. ”There’s almost no wind,” he exulted.

Michael Kahlenberg, a shoe store owner who is the local Polar Bears’ current president, handed me a plastic cup of champagne. His skin was glowing cherry red in the cold. ”When you’re in retail,” Mr. Kahlenberg confided, ”this is nothing.”

Mr. Dorsey gave a short welcoming speech, advising newcomers to scream when they hit the water.

”No problem,” I replied timidly, eyeing the pale gray surf.

The Bears shouted a countdown, and we ran toward the sea. For a moment I wondered what would happen if I stepped on a clam shell. I stopped caring when the first splash of chilled water hit my toes. The running, screaming mob of mostly 40-something men (there were about 10 women) around me had cut off all avenues of escape. A fiery tingle spread along my legs, hips and waistline. Then, to my surprise, I couldn’t feel a thing.

It was as if the nerves in my skin had shut down. I saw a wave coming toward me, closed my eyes, ducked and felt it pass over my head.

I surfaced and realized I had forgotten to scream. I was gripped with a giddy fearlessness. I came up from under a second wave and saw the Bears heading back to the beach. Most of them had spent less than 30 seconds in the ocean. I lingered, waded toward the shallows and felt a gust of wind, and that’s when I felt cold. I was about to leave when I was almost trampled by a wall of bellowing, ruddy, red-skinned Polar Bears coming in for a second plunge.

My skin began to tingle again as I staggered out. I wrapped myself in a terry cloth bathrobe, shoved my reddened feet into my sneakers and became suddenly, unnaturally warm. Mr. Dorsey handed me a frozen orange pop.

”Hits the spot,” he said.

Mr. Kahlenberg gave me an ”I Survived” certificate. I asked if he kept in touch with his fellow Bears.

”Most of these people I see once a year,” he said. ”We say hello, go in, and then go back to our homes and watch football games and don’t see each other until next year.”

Among the crowd of dripping, hooting, hollering Bears frantically putting on as much clothing as their numbed limbs would permit was a scowling 10-year-old Kevin Storjohann. He had accompanied his father, Warren, a veteran Bear, into the surf for the first time. He did not approve of this aspect of adult life and would never, ever do this again.

I licked my popsicle stick and told him, ”Some things you get used to.”

(end)

Now the story behind the story.

I had been taking aikido at the Jersey Shore for a few years when I learned of the misogi, a Japanese cleansing ritual that required you to immerse yourself in very cold water, usually in a stream or river. My aikido teacher suggested the class do this one day, in the Atlantic Ocean, during winter. I was one of two people who showed up.

Yes, the water was very cold but I was prepared for the shock because I had done Swedish sauna ritual back in college. Oberlin was a very liberal school with a Natural Foods dining hall that served yogurt and peanut butter with every meal. I became friendly with kids who thought that the things that were good for you

1. Would annoyed your parents if they found you did them.
2. Were rude tasting or shocking when you first try them, only because you spent a lifetime eating and doing things that weren’t good for you.
3. Were just about anything that was green or brown.

It is in such company that I would sit in the gym’s sauna in winter until I was the color of steamed lobster. Then we’d run out of the sauna, down a short corridor and through a door and jump on a snow drift. This was supposed to do all kinds of good things. As far as I know, it also tracked dirty snow into the gym.

When I got the approval for the story from my excellent editor at the New York Times, Diane Nottle (who has since left the newspaper), I was living in Philadelphia. I drove down to Atlantic City with my son, who was five years old then and aware that his father wasn’t like ordinary men, but not exactly sure how and why. He saw me take off my bathrobe and join the crowd, but didn’t think I was that odd because so many others had gone in with me.

He stood somewhat far from the surf, bundled up in winter gear. When I came out, and Henry Dorsey handed me my Popsicle, my son asked, “Hey Dad, can I have like of your Popsicle?”

I gave it to him. Later, after I showered and changed into warm clothes, we went to the seafood buffet at Harrah’s, where my son thought it was really cool to be able to eat all you want in a restaurant with big fish tanks.

Having had a tropical fish collection when I was his age, I decided to interview the people who have to take care of those tanks, but that was another story.

When I start a session of my writers group, I offer a page or two of quotations from other writers that are meant to inspire, provoke discussion or help us feel that we are not so alone; that the problems and peccadilloes that plague us (oooh! alliteration!) are, usually, shared symptoms of a creative life.

Here are this sessions quotes:

It was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.      –Socrates

When you’re writing, you’re conjuring. It’s a ritual and you need to be brave and respectful and sometimes get out of the way of whatever it is that you’re inviting into the room.                                                                                 –Tom Waits

The narrative of life is most beautiful when told truthfully and without boundaries. Boundaries don’t keep other people out. They fence you in.

                                                                        –Shondra Rhimes

A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it to be God.

                                                                        – Sidney Sheldon

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

                                                                        –Truman Capote

Satire is people as they are; romanticism people as they would like to be; realism people as they seem with their insides left out.        –Dawn Powell

Eavesdrop. Listen to the way people speak, but pay special attention to their silence.

                                                                        –Virginia Woolf

My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world, and exiles me from it.                                               –Ursula K. LeGuin

Let your performance do the thinking.      –Charlotte Bronte

I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.

                                                                        –Jorge Luis Borges

This is my letter to the world that never wrote to me.

                                                                        –Emily Dickinson

Teach yourself to work in uncertainty. If the stories come, you get them written, you’re on the right track. Eventually everyone learns his or her own best way. The real mystery to crack is you.                                        –Bernard Malamud

Learn to love yourself, be gentle with yourself, to forgive yourself, for only as we have the right attitude towards ourselves can we have the right attitudes towards others.                                                                        – Wilfred Peterson, author of The Art of  Living (suggested by Kevin Stokker) 

 It is perfectly okay to write garbage—as long as you edit brilliantly.

                                                                        –C.J. Cherryh

To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow.  So do it.                                                                         –Kurt Vonnegut               

In creating this list, I intentionally cast a wide net. I want to include writers who are among my personal favorites (you can do this when you’re in charge), those who may be familiar to the group and a few whose words are marvelously apt.

I find these quotes in my reading, as well as on the Internet. I’m aware that these statements may be out of context, or, possibly, misattributed.

But the words work.