What's in a name?...

last week...after the horrendous news of the December 13th weekend...Brown University...Bondi Beach...Rob and Michele Reiner...I really didn't think it could get worse...but who says Trump doesn't deliver?...his appointed Kennedy Center Board...which includes such luminaries in the art and entertainment world as Dan Scavino Jr....a former golf club manager...and Laura Ingraham...yes, this merry band of sycophants decided to rename the Kennedy Center...despite the fact, that as a living memorial to President Kennedy they cannot do that...only Congress can...but, oh well...and while many are still fuming...and throwing up from Trump's rant about Rob Reiner...boats are still being blown up in the Caribbean...illegally...and Bari Weiss...an Ellison puppet is squashing free speech at 60 Minutes...CBS...the network that gave us Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite...if you can't keep up with this...that is the point...news overload is the most successful form of distraction from what matters...just ask Al Jazeera...but back to the Kennedy Center...when that news broke, my heart broke for Caroline Kennedy...a woman who has suffered staggering heartbreak and loss, and now gets to watch her daughter, Tatiana Schlossberg, die...I believe Caroline should remove her family's name from the center...and let it be restored down the road...by itself...as the living memorial it was intended to be...when again it will showcase and celebrate the diverse and wonderful contributions of musicians, dancers, actors, artists...and not a reward for political campaign donors (sorry, Ms. Gaynor)...it is a bit obtuse of Trump to want his name up there when you really think about it...after all...Kennedy's legacy was cut short by bullets in Texas...just saying

Arrested development

for a few months I have been on the fence about whether to keep up with this blog...I started it in 2012 with the intention of holding myself accountable as a writer...to have a twice-a-month deadline to keep writing through writer's block...and to write through the minutia of life which can often interfere with the creative process...but the world has radically changed...so does your response to it as you age...in your sixties and beyond social media tries to convince you that you have reached an age when your response to all negativity around you should elicit one overriding response..."I don't give a shit"...and yet, I can't get there...and it comes at a cost...we have become a rather cruel society since Covid...the fear and isolation Covid created permeates our feelings to the core...in 2020 we were frozen in time...and when allowed to thaw, we were gaslighted...we are not allowed to remember how we felt...who we lost...what we lost...2025 is nearing an end when we think of Santa's lists and Epstein's lists...2026 looms...in the shadows of a fragile brokered peace in Gaza I am once again gaslighted...this time as an American Jew...I am held to a standard that no religious or ethnic group is held to in this country...I can choose to condemn Israel's response to Hamas's atrocities and modern-day declaration of war on October 7th...I can defend it...I can keep my mouth shut...I can ignore revisionist history textbooks throughout this country that condense the Holocaust to half a page if any...or I can say I don't give a shit...hands over my ears...and my eyes...so I can't see the swastikas on Yeshivas in Brooklyn...or hear modern day "kapos" laughing at my deep-rooted fear...that all evil is born of arrested development...and that these are not the times to not "give a shit"...

River of dreams...

Billy Joel...on Longgg Island he is our music god...(and yes, after living here for almost 33 years I suppose I can say "our")...I always laugh a little...whenever Newsday seems to struggle to fill the Sunday Arts section...there is another article about Billy Joel minutia...I have always liked his music...and those lyrics...the catalog is staggering...when I spent my freshman year at Binghamton and would ache for the dirty streets of Manhattan...it was his "New York State of Mind" I would hear in my head when that bus would pull into Port Authority...Mike and I used his song, "This is the Time" for our first dance at our wedding...I only saw him once in concert...Nassau Coliseum, New Year's Eve 1989...singing in a new decade...the 1990's...from the nosebleed section...and I loved it...I never saw his residency at Madison Square Garden...don't throw things at me...I have a theory about remembering artistic genius a certain way...so, I was more than a little curious about the HBO two-part documentary, "And So It Goes"...I have to say, it hit me in ways I hope I can articulate...being a writer...being a writer who still struggles to call myself a writer...and I do have to say it loudly and with conviction...I think I've earned it...nothing hit deeper than listening to Billy Joel talking about writing and composing...the primal need to push boundaries and not stay complacent...the utter loneliness when creating...the protectiveness he feels for his songs...like they are children...the ones that were his favorites, which audiences did not necessarily see the way he did...the hits that baffled him...the associations that brought him to times in his life that he might not want to have dwelled on...the harshness of reviews and critique...and ultimately...when to put down the pen...it is hard to watch the documentary knowing he is not well right now...and if you fall down the google search medical rabbit hole, you might wonder if the prognosis is really what he says...but you hope it is...and then I hope that he will pick up that pen again...let his fingers dance the piano keys...and sing us his new experiences...new lyrics that we will all know by heart...he always is reaching for something...like every one of us...the search keeps us going...keeps us creating...makes me think of this line from "River of Dreams"...oh, and Billy has the lines that's for sure..."we all end in the ocean, we all start in the streams, we're all carried along, by the river of dreams"...

Can you please spell Gabbana?

The devil wears Prada...but this weekend he, and his mistress, wore Dolce and Gabbana...Bezos and Sanchez...the wedding of the minute...we all know Venice is sinking...this past weekend should have sent it into the Venetian Lagoon...the weight of all those plastic boobs...I was thrilled to see the less than happy response from the local Venetians...the ludicrous amount of money...and media attention to what passes for A-listers these days...but we are all in on the joke...the grotesque joke...about the man that is worth roughly 237 billion dollars...whose workers need to pee into water bottles to make quota...did the guests pee into water bottles at the wedding?...me thinks not...I wonder how much all the seamstresses were paid for the 900 hours it took them to make Sanchez's gown, which at least was an upgrade from her high-end hooker outfit for this past January's inauguration...or were they merely given Amazon gift cards?...this criticism might seem mean-spirited...but here's the thing...I already lived through the accepted excess of the 80's...with breaks for the mea culpa of celebrity social conscience...We Are the World, anyone?...and guess what?...there are still many starving children...and people dying of preventable diseases...but there was Bezos...all 237 billion of him...having a second wedding that cost between 45 and 56 million...with gondolas flooding poor Venice...Venice is sinking...last weekend it was stinking...

good vibrations...

last week saw the deaths of two musical legends...Sly Stone and Brian Wilson...both 82...both responsible for pushing music into new and exciting stratospheres...and for me, both behind the quintessential sounds of summer...the Beach Boys are summer...light, breezy...then soul-searching and ethereal...sitting in traffic in the sixties...if one of their songs came on the radio...you were transported to a little convertible car...speeding the coastline in the sun...or the heartache in the lyrics could stop you in your tracks...Sly and the Family Stone...ground-breaking...and when I hear "Hot Fun in the Summertime"...well, I am back on the beaches of Brooklyn...sun beating on the sand...eating a cold plum or fudgsicle, chocolate dripping down my sunburnt neck...the transistor radios are blasting...moms are yelling not to wade in too deep...I don't have a care in the world...a world that is burning and changing and aching...but Sly is bringing the funk...slyly...we don't even realize it...both men didn't have an easy time of it...such is the true nature of creative genius...but as we celebrate the summer solstice today...take in the last crumbs of daylight tonight...I will think of Brian and Sly...and the gift of music that keeps giving eternally...if only in our memories...

Good luck, and good night...

I don't sleep well...I suppose doctors would blame it on my newly minted Medicare card...this happens at "your age"...our medical community is flooded with specialists, each playing their "instrument" with aplomb...but we have no maestros, we slip through the cracks...and count sheep...healthcare 2025...I could blame it on my knee or back...or mattress...but last night it was the look in George Clooney's eyes on the close-up shot at the end of CNN's live broadcast of Broadway's "Good Night, and Good Luck" that haunted me...did he know that the National Guard had hit the ground in California while on stage?...was he thinking, like Murrow or Friendly would have, about the magnitude of this breaking story?...a page out of Project 2025...could it be reported fairly?...without AI interference...without administrative interference...oh, the irony...CBS...was Clooney crying in character?...and do I even care what he thinks?...I toss and turn...and try and count sheep...but JD Vance has shot them all with his forward in the sequel to Project 2025...good night...and good luck...

Endings...and beginnings...

Pope Francis passed away yesterday...a day after Easter and after he summoned all his faith...and all his mortal strength...for one last appearance and prayer...he has been called the people's Pope...but maybe his ultimate greatness came from his humility...and love for humanity...still...on a lighter note...you have to wonder what was going through his head when briefly meeting with JD Vance...did he ask Christ to impart some humility to this man...a heartbeat from our presidency?...now Catholics around the globe await a new Pope...as people around this broken world claw for serenity...I am a 1960 baby...last month I got my Medicare card...cheap paper...not even durable plastic...to remind me of this transition this month...a new chapter...some will take a cheap shot and say the last chapter...it has been hard to wrap my brain around this...as I feel so much younger...in my head...my body...that's another story...but that's where Pope Francis comes in...because I need to remember that it was in his mid-seventies when a conclave chose him to lead the Catholic world...to give hope to the hopeless...restore faith to those adrift...and for this Jewish girl from Brooklyn...to remind me that there really are no final acts...just people trying to belt out their 11 o'clock number...to add their footnote to early 21st century mania...to say they were here...