In March of this year I celebrated my 80th birthday in the warm and welcome company of my wife, my son, brothers and one remaining sister. I had invited them all fearing that perhaps several would be unable to attend. But I was pleasantly surprised to see them all there, with spouses and a couple of my nephews, save my brother Robert who lives in Germany. We shared a dinner at a restaurant very special to Bobbie and me – Gertrude’s, located in a heavenly location in Phoenix, the Desert Botanical Garden. And the next morning, all were able to join Bobbie and me and son Conrad and his fiancee Tara at the Scottsdale house for breakfast.

Now that I’m 80 years old and breathing the rarified octogenarian air enjoyed by but approximately five percent of the US male population, I must pause a moment, reflect and take note.

Looking back on these 80 years, there is much to regret – I should have made a different decision here; I should have worked harder on that; I should have been a better politician there. But that’s all over and whatever happened I cannot change any more than I can change the character or personality traits that influenced these decisions. And one more regret, the manifestations of which I still wrestle with today – I wish I had stopped to smell the roses more often, taken the time to relax, enjoy myself, sleep late, linger over my morning coffee, sit and read poetry or a novel. But it seems that I’ve been locked into a duty and task-driven existence that has controlled me with its weight and momentum.

But on the other hand there is much to feel good about. I’ve had a reasonably successful career and, while certainly not wealthy, own a few assets and have earned and enjoy a decent retirement. I’ve worked in education all my professional life, a field that I have loved and a fact that I’m quite proud of. All of my experiences dealing with children, parents and teachers for every one of those 45 years in education have brought me much joy and fulfillment.

I am thankful to say that physically I feel pretty good for a guy in that five percent. All the organs seem to be still working okay. Recent tests have revealed persistent elevated levels of cholesterol which I am trying to bring down. Other numbers have revealed some potential kidney problems, not uncommon as we age. And I continue to deal with the BPH problem with which I have wrestled for a decade or so. Additionally, recent tests related to my heart function have been satisfactory.

The large joints, despite (or maybe because of?) years of running in my 30’s, 40’s and 50’s are working adequately. Yes, I am stiff from time to time and I still encounter pain in my left knee, on which I have had several surgeries over the years and now my right, which to now has never bothered me. The arthritis which assaulted me several years ago while in Vermont and to which I attributed to Lyme Disease is noticeable in several finger and toe joints and has likely affected the knees. Lyme tests (2) were negative but I am well aware of the capricious and inconsistent nature of Lyme test results and of Lyme disease itself, so I still have some lingering suspicion. At any rate, shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees (for the most part) and ankles seem to be functioning despite occasional pain.

Thankfully I have exercised for most of my life. During my 30’s I got into running through my association with a good friend and managed to continue, mixing it with hiking, gym visits and other exercise to a greater or lesser degree through my 40’s and 50’s and into my 60’s. That bad left knee forced running from my life in my 70’s but I have managed through gym membership while in Arizona and some dumbbells and an elliptical machine in the basement TV room here in Vermont to keep the exercise up. Yes, on some days it’s  absolutely the last thing I want to do but somehow I have forced myself to keep going and it’s been good for me. I do think that it’s an important reason for my relatively good health at this age now. As I enter the upper reaches of old age I have tried to heed the maxim promoted by a friend from my Scottsdale gym who, even while hobbling in three times a week on a cane, says, ”Ralph, at our age we just gotta keep moving”.

Weight is another thing entirely. Despite the exercise, I have always struggled with weight and have given in to a steady gain over the decades. Around 160 in my 20’s has grown to 170 in my 30’s, and given way to 180 plus in my 40’s to now, Presently I am striving to get down to 185 and it’s been tough going.

And one more thing about health at eighty. It could be my imagination but I really do discern a change in how doctors and other medical personnel deal with me. There appears to be a change in attitude – a reticence, resignation, nonchalance, disinterestedness, almost lackadaisicalness, when emerging or worsening health concerns appear. It’s rather like they are all thinking, “He’s 80 years old, what does he expect?” or “Improving this or that condition is unrealistic; things can only get worse – look at his age” “or “There’s little we can do about that – you’re 80 years old and your recuperative powers are limited”. Yes, it could be me thinking these thoughts and unfairly attributing them to the medical people but the feeling is unmistakably there, regardless of whom it is coming from.

A more positive aspect to dealing with medical problems at 80 is that my age gives me license to be more discerning and selective regarding the drugs that are prescribed for me. If the potential side effects of a particular drug, whether prescribed or over-the-counter, concern me, I can accept or reject the drug. I’ve made 80 already – that’s pretty good – I can accept the risk of taking or not taking that drug, or rejecting the drug entirely in favor of a more natural remedy that I think may work just as well. I mean, what can happen ? – I’ve already made 80.

And one more observation about turning 80. Decades ago, when certain frailties and concerning physical conditions first reared their heads, I worried about them perhaps developing into truly life altering or life threatening conditions as time went on. Well, it so happens that time did go on and the conditions did not get appreciably worse, nor did they seriously affect my quality of life, and (obviously) did not kill me. Here I’m talking about chronic conditions like Reynaud’s Disease, encounters with skin cancer (I’ve had two melanomas removed from my back), digestive problems, joint problems, heart concerns, clinical depression and others. Thank goodness, they’re all no worse or no greater concerns now at 80 than they were decades ago when first encountered. So basically, I’ve outlived the effects of those potentially life altering maladies.

And, when one turns 80 thoughts naturally turn to a radically diminished future and how many years of life remain. So of course, quite naturally, there are thoughts about death. A dear friend, also my age, mentioned that men turning 80 can generally look forward to about eight more years of life. He didn’t mention what the statistics say about the quality of that life – I would assume that a few of those additional eight years of “life” may consist of an inexorable spiral downward, rife with pain and deterioration of joints, organs and bodily functions. But after those eight years? Yes, death. 

And what about beyond death? Is there anything there? I don’t share the religious faith that so many friends and family members profess – that somehow we live on or our souls live on after we die. This is all reflected in an earlier article I wrote about life and death so I won’t add to it. But some recent articles I’ve read make a lot of sense and add some additional dimensions to what I wrote earlier.

One, composed by that brilliant writer who authors “The Marginalian”, formerly “Brain Pickings”, Maria Popova, offers some really sensible and reasonable explanations in her article “What Happens When We Die”. In her article, Ms Popova quotes extensively from the work of physicist/poet/novelist Alan Lightman. When we die, whether we are buried or cremated, our remains, composed of  the basic elements and their billions of atoms, are eventually scattered around the world and join the air, water, and plants which nurture further life. In that regard I guess, we are indeed immortal, but in a strikingly different way than theologians would have us believe. 

Philosopher George Yancy, in a February 2022 posting of Truthout discusses the complexity of death and its contemplation, in the context of the almost (then) one million covid deaths in the US. He laments the tragic extinguishing of the unique and singular lives of so many people killed in the pandemic and otherwise. No one has come back from death to explain its mysteries to us; we strive to understand death exclusively from this side and can understand only that death is an essential part of life. It can be said that death defines life. Everything we know that lives, also dies.  Yancy notes that all major religions are based on their own explanations of death: they attest to “our human capacity to be touched by the fact of death, to make sense of it, and to respond to its mystery in deep symbolic and discursively differential ways.” But despite its universality, death remains a mystery. And it’s interesting how, when we’re young, the notion of death rarely crosses our minds. It is only with the creeping infirmity and inevitability of old age that we begin to contemplate death, which is really the final phase of life.

I encountered the phrase, “what’s remembered lives” while watching the recent award winning movie “Nomadland” on a streaming channel and was affected by the notion. I was struck by the fact that my sister Barbara and my parents, and various close relatives and a few friends, though having passed away, are quite alive to me. I can hear their voices and their laughter, recognize their mannerisms and movements and enjoy their company and companionship….in my memory. But when I die, they die with me. Well, maybe not profound, but nevertheless interesting. They are alive to me in the individual idiosyncratic way in which I remember them. And they will live as long as my own capacity to recall them exists.

But most affecting for me are the memories of my parents’ personalities – their voices, their laughs, their casual banter with each other as my parents and much later as retirees in their home in Westminster, Colorado. Very alive for me too is the feeling of security and love I felt when I was visiting. Dad never showed the love as demonstratively as Mom. He always maintained a comfortable (for him) distance, unlike the tactile love Mom always showed – the hugs and the kisses which she bestowed so liberally on all of us children.

I cried myself to sleep last night. Well…not exactly, but I did get a bit choked up and shed some tears. For some reason, instead of sleeping, I had begun thinking about how I would like to die, and decided that I would like Conrad and Bobbie next to me, holding my hands and reminiscing about our lives together. And thinking about those years together – the high points and the lows of our shared lives – is what brought the tears (and is bringing a few now as I type).

With Conrad, I would mention and invite his recollection of throwing a football back and forth between us in the back yard of our home at 4919 E Altadena in Scottsdale. What a thrill it was to me to see him reach up and grab the ball while in full stride…if my throw was a good one and had led him sufficiently. I would also remember with Conrad, while at the same house, during one of our memorable Christmases, of his joyfully opening a gift I had wrapped for him – a huge Costco-sized box of Cheez-Its.

And so many of our father-son trips together between Colorado and Arizona are very pleasant to remember. Like the time we camped in Canyonlands, I think in the Ford Explorer, then made hot chocolate to warm us in the cold morning on a little stove we had brought along. Or the several times we traveled in the pickup/camper while little Conrad played “coins” in the back or on the front seat. And of course our wonderful ultimate father-son experience – hiking the Grand Canyon down to Phantom Ranch, staying two nights, then hiking back, both directions on the South Kaibab Trail. Then too, our shared car trip right before he turned 16 from Frankfurt, Germany to Vienna, Austria and back, during which we visited the sights in Nuremberg, Munich, Salzberg and Vienna, including the Belvedere Museum and its collection of famed paintings by Klimpt, Kokochka and Schiele. And later that summer spending time with various Friedlys in Missouri, seeing the gravestone of his namesake, the first Conrad Friedly in the US. And what a thrill it’s always been to work hand in hand on special projects with him – I would ask him to recall helping me with the new floor in Scottsdale, with the basement renovation in Vermont while he was in law school there, and me assisting him with the new floor in his Gallup, New Mexico house. And I could go on and on.

And while holding Bobbie’s warm little hand, I would invite her to join me in recalling some of the precious highlights of our lives together – our first date after I had called her home and asked her out, horrifying her little daughter Liza, then seven years old, who knew me only as her elementary school principal. Then we’d recall our first trip west together, meeting my parents and brothers in Colorado for the first time, and our trip to the Grand Canyon, where we befriended briefly a little puppy that we encountered outside our cabin and where I proposed to her on a now-inaccessible promontory below Yaki Point. We’d recall together our marriage ceremony in Duxbury, Massachusetts, her parents and my parents attending and the loading of a 26 foot U-Haul with what we deemed as “keepers” and necessities gleaned from our two households. Then our “honeymoon” driving the U-Haul across the country to Arizona, later to be joined by Bobbie’s daughters and the formation of our first family home together at 3152 West Kings in Phoenix. And certainly, we’d share memories of Conrad’s birth, our move to the “horse property” home at 6340 W. Surrey in Glendale. And we’d recall together other highlights like the move to Scottsdale, our foray overseas to work for the American School of Kuwait, and all the exciting travels emanating from that and other overseas ventures. And I could go on and on.

But perhaps I won’t be this fortunate. It’s much more likely that like so many people, I will die suddenly with a heart attack, or in the the crushed metal and flame of an auto accident or like yet many others, slowly in a hospital bed succumbing to the ravages of some disease or in a haze of numbing drugs to relieve the pain of failing organs and physical deterioration.

In addition to thoughts outlined above, another thing that I’ve noticed about myself lately is that I’m spending more and more time thinking about the past and recalling significant events in my life, also likely a symptom of old age. Much of my communication and correspondence with old friends and relatives consists of recollection of events from our shared pasts, sometimes complemented with old photos, and opinions and observations about common acquaintances or former colleagues. And if congruence of political opinion allows, we may discuss the current state of politics in the context of what politics used to be when we were younger and should be today. I have to say that these connections have become most meaningful, almost essential, at the age of 80, part of clinging to my identity, my place in the world and my importance as all slip away in old age.

And with a past that stretches back for decades and a steadily diminishing future for us, the same tendency permeates the discourse between my wife and myself. While we dwell on the developing lives of our children from time to time, it does appear that we also linger on the past – our own and the childhoods of our children more and more with advancing age. We have a few aims for the future but certainly many fewer than we had in our younger days. And most focus on the immediate future – this summer, this fall, next year, but not much further. Oh, and it seems that we talk about the weather more than ever.

Since we travel back and forth between Arizona and Vermont, we’ve attached a few goals to those trips, achieving several this past spring – sharing Zion and Bryce National Parks for the first time, then also finally getting to see and enjoy Yellowstone. We still intend to see Yosemite and the Redwoods and get to the Pacific northwest while we’re still physically able, perhaps on next spring’s trip from Arizona to Vermont. Also at some point it would be very pleasant to travel through southern Canada east or west on one of these trips.

My own personal goals, hopes and aspirations during a steadily diminishing future center on maintaining and perhaps even improving our lives in these two homes in which we live and on reading and writing. But maintaining two homes gets increasingly challenging. I don’t look forward to improvement projects the way I used to when I was younger. And everyday home maintenance – cleaning, washing windows, repairing broken faucets, fixing roofs or painting walls and ceilings, gets very dreary and tiresome. Maintaining our gardens and lawn in Vermont too is sometimes a grind – I do get tired of planting trees, mulching the gardens and mowing the lawn.

Other activities used to include music but my arthritis has taken much of the pleasure out of playing the guitar so mostly I just listen. But they still include writing and those goals keep me going each day. I have 30-40 articles in various stages of completion so finishing them one by one, plus adding a few on other topics along the way, give me some tangible and achievable aims for the future. I know I’ll never be the writer I want to be but whatever I can produce gives me pride and pleasure and some motivation for the next attempt. And although I write primarily for myself, along the way a few other readers have enjoyed some of what I’ve written.

So this is where I am at 80 years old – still plugging along and trying to live as full and as complete a life as I am able, living day to day, week by week and month by month until we move back to Arizona, then its the same there until we move back here, always trying to live as best we can, squeezing some pleasure out of our day to day tasks, our occasional sightseeing, communication with children and travels. We’ll see how long it all lasts.

And finally, there’s a wonderful Cheryl Wheeler song about an elderly couple that seems in many ways to reflect what and where we are today. These few lines from “Quarter Moon” summarize much of what I’ve written above and provide a fitting conclusion for this article:

“And they speak about their lives as almost gone
Waiting for the sunset
From an old and distant dawn.”

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We always knew when Dad and Mom had a fight. No one ever said anything, there were no raised voices, but the atmosphere in the house changed so that we all knew. It could be the heavy silence between them, or the silence of an otherwise gregarious father, or the concern and sadness in the face of a normally smiling mother. Or it could be big sister Barbara’s lowered voice and guarded conversation. Simply, we knew it was there.

Things were not going well financially. What little my father earned, he kept mostly for himself, and Mom did what she could to earn money for the family. Mostly, as I remember, she did this by raising chickens. Sometimes there were laying hens and we sold eggs door to door in the nearby towns. I must have cut a rather pathetic figure, meekly knocking on a stranger’s door and asking if they wanted to buy fresh eggs. Or sometimes there were chickens raised to sell for food, in which case strangers came to our door, responding to a sign at the end of the lane. Then we had to catch a couple of good looking pullets or roosters by the legs, tie them up and throw them in the customer’s car trunk. We never knew exactly what happened after that – only that a couple more chickens were sold and Mom had some money.

But to raise chickens required some limited capital investment, and Mom and Dad’s differences sometimes interfered with this. Before you could fatten the young ones to sell for meat or keep long enough to become laying hens, we needed to buy the chicken feed and ground oyster shells for calcium. If Mom had kept enough from egg or chicken sales, things were fine; if not, Dad was required to invest in the enterprise, often reluctantly. And if things were tough between them, he didn’t.

Once, we had gone through the entire process for raising chickens for sale – first ordering the chicks, which miraculously came in the mail straight to the local post office. Little fuzzy chirping, cheeping little creatures that had to be fed, watered and kept warm. Chicken mash was fed to them from flat containers, and they were watered from contrivances involving an inverted Mason jar full of water. They were kept warm by an electric light bulb and reflector dangling above them. Thus were they nurtured and fed and coaxed toward avian adolescence and adulthood to be sold as food or if kept long enough, as a source of food. There were the occasional casualties – the chick smaller than the rest, who gradually starved to death because of his inability to get close to the food, and, weakening, became further unable and finally expired. Or there was the chick which was different colored than the rest, who was picked on because of the difference and had to be clever to get the food he wanted, and who maybe became stronger doing so much running away from the rest. 

One such chicken, a black chick in a litter of yellow, actually became a pet of sorts. Hard to believe that that little bird brain could so be trained but he actually came when called. Hollering “Blackie” would cause him to emerge from the bushes and come toward you to get picked up and petted, or to receive a dish of more special food served in a protected area like under an overturned crate.

But once when a flock of chickens was on its way to adulthood, in that stage of growing feathers and shedding the fuzz, that dreadful time in our family came again and we could all feel it. The air was heavy with apprehension, fear and questioning. We whispered to each other as if afraid that the sound of our voices would make things worse. Gradually it became clear that Mom had no more money for feed and Dad wasn’t going to help. And there were fifty plus ravenous chickens out in the chicken house with no food.

Chickens are excitable creatures. Even in the best and most relaxed of circumstances, a suddenly opened door or sudden noise will cause them cackle excitedly and to flap excitedly into the air raising clouds of noxious chicken house bedding and manure dust. So an egg gatherer or chicken feeder or waterer had to move slowly and stealthily. Hungry chickens who had ran out of food were even more excitable and ran toward their feeding dishes as they were newly supplied. Thirsty chickens knew when the water came and crowded madly around the waterers to get it as well. 

But the behavior of our starving chickens was horrifying. A shadow on the window caused them to flock toward it and fly madly at the window and flap their wings against it. They ran wildly toward an opening door, in anticipation of feed. The slightest noise caused wild excitement of the expectation of food. The horror and the pity of this behavior in the face of hopelessness I never forgot. All of us felt helpless, afraid to get involved in why there was no feed, fearful of the fury of Dad, if challenged or questioned, or if sympathizing or taking sides with Mom. But there they were – chickens slowly starving to death and nothing offered for their relief. Whether there really was no money, or whether it just was refused for the purpose of feeding the chickens, we never knew. All we knew was that these creatures were starving to death.

Dad’s frequent absence at that time, and our collective pity and concern for the horrible plight of our chickens forced a decision. With Mom’s permission, I connected the garden hose to the exhaust pipe of our 51 Chevy pickup and ran it to the door of the chicken house. The mad activity of starving chickens at these signs of nearby movement, was quieted little by little as they succumbed to the poisonous exhaust and one by one flopped down to stillness. After an hour or so, a quick look inside revealed piles of prostrate, white feathered forms everywhere and no movement at all. 

The dead chickens then had to be buried and that was my job also. After digging several large holes in the nearby cornfield, I loaded these dead chicken carcasses into a wheelbarrow and trip by trip dumped them into the holes to be buried. Having lifted many healthy chickens, it was terrible to see how little these dead creatures weighed. To avoid touching them, I used a pitchfork to load them and was surprised to see how easily the tines passed through the pitiful thin bodies – feathers, skin and bones, little more.

The job finished, the next thing to do was to try to start over and put this dreadful incident in the past. The situation between Mom and Dad seemed to get better, now that the chickens were gone. Although the traumatic incident remained with us for many years, this remained the major means for Mom to make money. And we waited for another shipment of little chicks to arrive.

Faced recently with the need for a new jar of mayonnaise, the two opened containers in our refrigerator rejected by my spouse because of expiration dates (another questionable issue), I went to our local supermarket to pick up a few things which included that new jar of mayonnaise and also a box of Cheerios, for many years my favorite cold cereal. We try not to buy foods that have “added sugar” so I read the ingredients on each brand of mayonnaise, looking for one without sugar. Amazing, I could not find a single brand that did not have that unneeded and unacceptable ingredient.

So on to the breakfast cereals section where I grabbed a box of Cheerios and out of curiosity checked those ingredients also. I could not believe that sugar was one of the ingredients. I mean, when I was a kid, I was allowed that little spoonful of sugar sprinkled on the corn flakes or Cheerios before the milk and I presume that many people continue to sweeten their cold cereal in this way. So why is sugar already in the Cheerios rendering that teaspoonful redundant? And how long has General Mills been adding sugar to my Cheerios?

The same goes for so many breads in this supermarket. I usually buy the best bread I can here – La Brea Bakery whole grain loaf – brown, crisp crust, not packaged but in a simple bag and not sliced. I checked the ingredients – yes, whole wheat flour, millet, flaxseed, sunflower seed and all the other good things in a quality bread, and all non-GMO to boot, but then I blinked – there it was – sugar – in my otherwise very healthy bread. Why on earth is sugar needed in bread?

And have you ever tried to find peanut butter without sugar? It’s really difficult – all the major brands contain sugar. And, how interesting, when you do happen to locate a lesser known brand that contains no sugar, the ingredients are very simple – there’s only one – “peanuts”. Why on earth can’t all the major brands make peanut butter in this way? There is absolutely no need for sugar or any other added ingredients in something as simple and delicious all by itself as peanut butter.

Oh, and how about that bottle of salad dressing in your refrigerator? Check the ingredients and you will almost always find sugar. And really I can’t understand why. Normally on my salad I will simply use olive oil and lemon juice. The last thing I would want to add to a delicious and healthy salad is sugar, in whatever form or quantity. Same with the aforementioned mayonnaise. I usually have to go to Trader Joe’s to buy mayonnaise without sugar which I have tasted and compared with a little Hellman’s or Best Foods’ (both have sugar)  – I can’t really tell them apart – they all taste like mayonnaise. So why do food processors and packagers feel they have to add sugar to everything? Oh and let’s not even mention all the pasta sauces arranged on your supermarket shelves that contain sugar. 

And just today I was shocked to discover that the delicious multigrain snack chips I just brought home from Costco to enjoy with hummus or Vermont cheese, contained sugar. What a shame to discover that these otherwise nutritious chips – with flaxseed, sunflower seed, sesame seed and quinoa supplementing the stone ground corn – were contaminated with sugar. But wait, it says “cane sugar” to distinguish it from other sweeteners like high fructose corn syrup so it must be okay. Yeah, really?

Obviously it’s extremely difficult today to find any processed or packaged food (that’s the key, I guess) without added sugar in it. Genuine foods, unadulterated by added sugar, are mainly in the fresh fruits and vegetables section or in the dried or dehydrated state – dried fruits, beans and so on. But of course, even here we have to beware of GMO foods or foods contaminated with pesticide residue unless we buy bona fide organic foods.

I recently read a piece by the columnist and editor of the New York Times editorial page, David Leonhardt, that provided the impetus for this little article. Mr. Leonhardt had gone for a month without eating any “added sugar”. Why? Well, first he wanted to test the difficulty of finding foods without added sugar – very hard indeed – his guess was that about 75 percent of all packaged foods contain that dreaded ingredient. Also he wanted to test how he felt without that sugar in his diet and to see how he might change his eating habits. Mr. Leonhardt found that avoiding all the added sugar in our packaged and processed food was difficult but rewarding in terms of feeling better and reducing the craving for sweets. He also formed new habits – reading ingredient labels and accordingly striking some foods off his allowed list, adding others and generally eating more healthily, totally changing his breakfast and snack menus. As an example he draws a contrast between the snack crackers Triscuits and Wheat Thins, both made by Nabisco – the former containing simply wheat, oil and sea salt and the latter containing, as he put it, “an ingredient list that evokes high school chemistry class, including added sugars“.

The sugar industry over the years has done a masterful job of promoting its product – “only 18 calories  a teaspoon”, “‘pure’ cane sugar”, “sugar for quick energy” and so on. In the late 1960’s it even paid three Harvard researchers to review several cherry-picked studies which purported to absolve sugar of any responsibility for cardiovascular problems and shift the blame instead onto saturated fats. It also has come up with a dizzying array of euphemistic names for its sweeteners such as “evaporated cane juice “ or “brown rice syrup”. And as noted above it has managed to get sugars into a remarkable three-quarters of all packaged foods in American supermarkets.

I recall vividly as a child in the 1950’s hearing a brilliant gentleman from our church community, Reverend Wesley Gross, later to become my sister Barbara’s father-in-law, deliver a short lecture on the evils of refined sugar, which he labeled “white poison”. Mr. Gross was certainly prescient in warning of the harm that comes from eating sugar, decades before many contemporary nutritionists, doctors, scientists and journalists made a similar case. Appropriately, my sister and her husband Daniel carried on Mr. Gross’s battle against refined sugar as owners and managers of Gross’ Natural Foods in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a tradition now continued proudly by their daughter Sheila and husband Greg Henkel.

 And exactly what is that harm? Why is sugar bad for us? I finally got around to reading the seminal book on sugar, “Pure, White and Deadly: How Sugar is Killing Us and What We Can Do to Stop It” by British nutritionist John Yudkin, first published in 1972. After sketching its grim agricultural history starting with the cruel slave based production of sugar cane, he describes the detailed experiments he conducted which demonstrated that sugar is indeed related to various diseases, including caries (tooth decay), diabetes, cardiovascular disease and yes, even cancer. Yudkin’s methodology was soundly criticized by US nutritionist Ancel Keys, whose own research claimed that heart disease was caused by consumption of saturated fats. Virtually the entire medical and scientific community then sided with Keys, causing dietary fats to be largely accepted as the major contributor to cardiovascular disease. That pendulum of opinion has only recently swung back to sugar, not saturated fat, being a cause of heart trouble as well as many other health problems.

Many somewhat health conscious people, including myself, were caught up in dietary recommendations illustrated by the US Department of Agriculture’s food guides, which have evolved over the years along with scientific and medical opinion. And those recommendations in the 1980’s were responsible for thousands of people, including myself, eating processed foods that while “fat free” or “low fat” were loaded with sugar. I can clearly recall buying “low fat” brownies and cinnamon rolls from an Entenmann’s bakery outlet in Phoenix, close to my work, and taking them home for the family to eat. I couldn’t believe how good tasting they were, prepared with little or no shortening or butter. But of course they were delicious – they were packed with sugar. But the fact that fat was limited or absent allowed us to think that we were actually doing our bodies a favor.

And interestingly, John Yudkin also tied sugar to a condition with which I have been struggling since my teens – acne, or more specifically, sebaceous acne. Although he admitted that more research is needed, many studies he examined did in fact link sugar to this condition. In my twenties and thirties I endured the shame of occasional sebaceous cysts on my face and neck which often required dermatological surgery from which I still have the scars. I recall one such notable doctor in Boston, Kenneth Arndt MD, who treated me numerous times for this problem. I certainly wish that Dr. Arndt, as well as the many other dermatologists I have consulted over the years, had advised me that sugar could have been the cause of my chronic skin problems. 

While the medical and scientific communities have vacillated about the causes, the fact that our country has a serious obesity and related diabetes and cardiovascular diseaseproblem is unassailable. Presently about two thirds of American adults are overweight, and about half of those, yes, actually one whole third, are classified as obese. Approximately one in ten Americans has Type II diabetes, a huge number, accounting for billions of dollars in medical expenses. And over one third of adults and over half of adults over 60 have metabolic syndrome, a constellation of conditions occurring together which include increased blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist, and abnormal cholesterol or triglyceride levels, that is a precursor to diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

But is sugar really a “poison” as Mr. Gross called it way back in the 1950’s? And is it “deadly” as John Yudkin so boldly asserted in 1973? Well, based upon research described by one of the major journalistic critics of sugar, Gary Taubes, author of “The Case Against Sugar”, the answer is in short, yes. Here’s why – the way we metabolize  fructose in our digestive system is apparently responsible for the build-up of fatty deposits in the liver, followed by insulin resistance, then metabolic syndrome and from there, potential development of diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and yes, even cancer.

And no, becoming overweight and dealing with related conditions is not simply the result of “caloric imbalance”, as many nutritionists would have us believe. One hundred calories of glucose from potatoes or bread is metabolized quite differently than 100 calories of sugar, which is half glucose and half fructose. The fructose from sugar or from high fructose corn syrup is metabolized mostly by the liver while the glucose from sugar and starches is metabolized by every  cell in the body. Therefore consuming sugar (fructose and glucose), means more work for the liver, particularly if it is consumed rapidly, as in a sugared soft drinks or sweet fruit juice. An equivalent amount of fructose consumed by eating several apples also hits the liver but much more slowly. And if lots of fructose hits the liver quickly the liver will convert much of it to fat, eventually inducing insulin resistance. And this is the condition, one part of metabolic syndrome, that leads to obesity, heart disease and type II diabetes.

John Yudkin’s claim that sugar could be responsible for the development of several kinds of cancer was dismissed as a stretch of the data at the time. Yet, recent surveys and research do in fact support sugar being a cause of cancer. This occurs because insulin resistance causes the secretion of more insulin. And this additional insulin, plus a related hormone called “insulin-like growth factor”, according to Taubes, actually promotes tumor growth. How? Without the additional insulin and its accompanying “growth-factor” hormone pushing them to absorb more and more blood sugar, most pre-cancerous cells would never develop the mutations that turn them into malignant tumors. So if it’s sugar that causes insulin resistance, then the conclusion is hard to avoid that sugar causes cancer — some cancers at least, mainly those of breast and colon. In Taubes’ words – “The connection between obesity, diabetes and cancer was first reported in 2004 in large population studies by researchers from the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer. It is not controversial. What it means is that you are more likely to get cancer if you’re obese or diabetic than if you’re not, and you’re more likely to get cancer if you have metabolic syndrome than if you don’t. “

Another of the notable warriors against sugar today is Dr. Robert Lustig. He continues his battle with a variety of videos about sugar, including a Ted Talk, and has written polemics about its harm. His YouTube video, “Sugar: the Bitter Truth”, has been viewed millions of times. And Dr. Lustig has also provided the introduction for the recent  edition of John Yudkin’s book that I just finished. His own best selling book “Fat Chance: The Hidden Truth About Sugar, Obesity and Disease” joins the Taubes book as the two most popular and authoritative accounts of the dangers of sugar and its relationship to obesity and disease.

It is very important to note that these sobering truths about sugar do not apply to sugar found naturally in fruits and vegetables. Even though the naturally occurring sugar in an apple or orange contains the same ratio of fructose and glucose as simple refined table sugar, it is wrapped in water, fiber and a variety of other nutrients so the fructose component is metabolized in the liver and the glucose in the rest of the body, much more slowly. I don’t think that anybody ever got fat from eating too many bananas, although they contain significant sugar. Nor has anyone developed diabetes from eating too many oranges and tangerines. And to my knowledge apples have never rotted anyone’s teeth.

As if all the above problems with sugar are not enough, sugar may also be addictive. We’ve all had or at least heard of that proverbial “sweet tooth” when that one can of Coke wasn’t quite enough, one cookie has to be followed by another and another until they’re gone or one Reese’s peanut butter cup creates a desire for many more. Or that leftover Halloween candy gets quickly eaten up. There definitely is something real in that “sugar high” that feels so good when you finish off that ice cold Sprite. Yes, all that sugar or the more concentrated high fructose corn syrup from that sugary drink not only gives the liver a jolt but the brain as well, by activating the pleasure center and dumping some of that feel-good neurotransmitter, dopamine. And it seems that after a meal we often crave something sweet – thus the tradition and habit of dessert after a meal. 

But the issue of whether sugar is truly additive is still being debated. Certainly it is not in the class of truly addictive drugs like cocaine or heroin. And thankfully whatever addictive powers it does exert on us can be thrown off far more readily than that of real drugs. The desire for something sweet, more a craving than an addiction, can be controlled and ultimately erased by employing a little will power. And this craving for sugar is not dissimilar to the general craving for carbohydrates generally that many of us possess or have experienced that is also diminished and controlled by adherence to a low carbohydrate diet.

So where are we as a country, as a population, on the sugar issue? Per capita consumption of sugar in the United States, at approximately 100 pounds per year, continues to be startlingly well above the level of the other major sugar consuming countries. And interestingly the United States also leads the world’s developed countries in obesity. Shouldn’t this tell us something about the relationship of sugar to obesity? Actually if you compared a table of the most obese developed countries to the table below, there will be a surprisingly accurate correspondence to the rate of sugar consumption to the rate of obesity.

And also, if we take a look at the graph of the growth of sugar consumption in the United States during the last couple of centuries, I am sure we could superimpose a graph of the growth of obesity or the growth of the incidence of Type II diabetes over the same time period and again obtain a reasonably accurate correspondence.

Why are we a leader in these dubious categories? One reason has to be, as described early in this article, the inclusion of “added sugar” in so very many of the foods we regularly purchase at the super market and consume in the home. The other has to be the huge consumption of sugary beverages in the US. Stop at any convenience shop and take a look at literally walls of shelves of sugary carbonated beverages and sugary so-called sports drinks. And incidentally, Gatorade or Powerade or any of the other sports beverages, which are consumed by many teenagers as healthy alternatives, are as full of sugar as most other sugared beverages. And the sugar contest of these popular beverages is truly astonishing, ranging a little above or below 10 teaspoons per 12 ounce container.

So how can we reduce the sugar in our diets and limit the diseases that are obviously caused by sugar. One way is to tax sugary beverages to reduce their consumption but these efforts have been beaten down by the beverage corporations and the sugar industry and their well paid lobbyists. And, need I mention it – our Congress has been totally unresponsive to the public health threat posed by sugar. So it is up to each of us to dramatically reduce the amount of sugar in our diets and most who have done so, like Times columnist Leonhardt, mentioned earlier in this article, have been rewarded by significantly improved weight control and vastly improved overall health.

So was Mr Gross right decades ago when he called sugar “white poison” or was the term too cynical, too hyperbolic or too pejorative? Absolutely not. As shown above, he was incredibly prescient and, along with Yudkin, Taubes and Lustig, he was right on the money. If a “poison”, defined in my Apple computer dictionary is “a substance that is capable of causing the illness or death of a living organism when introduced or absorbed”, refined sugar definitely meets that definition.

And one final note – if the dangerous qualities of sugar and what it does to our waistlines and our metabolic systems isn’t enough, one might also consider the cruel history of its agriculture and harvesting to be enough alone to reject it. Slavery and the slave trade were strongly linked to the sugar industry in its infancy as illustrated in a current New York Times article and conditions today relating to its production aren’t a whole lot better.

Our country has lost so much since the election of Donald Trump. There has been a flood and a whirlwind of information about him which has obliterated almost everything else. And this is causing numbness. We are dazed, stunned and paralyzed by this torrent of scandal, lies, fabrications and exaggerations emanating from this dreadful administration. We are dumbfounded by the miserable quality of the people appointed (and approved by our useless Republican controlled Congress) to run the departments of our government. Where I used to read the Washington Post or the New York Times for the latest news and opinions about important issues, now almost everything written by their brilliant columnists, liberal, conservative or in-between, is about Trump or one of his advisors or appointees. The valuable emails I receive periodically from Salon, Huffington Post, the Real News, Alternet, Truthout, Truthdig and so on, are now mostly full of Trump stuff. We’re rapidly losing sight of what’s important and drowning in the sea of Trump trash that gets deeper by the day.  Not only the print media is full of this stuff but also cable news: Virtually every show on MSNBC, CNN and Fox are devoted to Trump or something related to his administration. Regrettably and disastrously, we have become inured to the daily transgressions and insults from this president.

One of my favorite members of team on “Morning Joe”, which I watch some of on most weekdays while I’m working out, is former Boston Globe columnist Mike Barnacle. Mike’s comments on almost any subject are memorable, but most consequential were his comments on Friday May 4 of this year regarding the flood of Trump nonsense in which we are drowning and which has blocked important concerns and issues from our senses.

“We talk about this every day, multiple times a day – just a literal tsunami, a fire hydrant of false information coming from this White House every day. But it’s larger than that and the problem and the threat and the danger is much larger than the White House and us talking about it. It’s what’s happening out in the country every day, people dealing every day – the normalization of lies and deception coming the the president of the United States and those who represent the president. And people get used to it and people slowly turn off and it doesn’t impact people and they are not really caring about the fact that the President of the United States is a liar and that people who represent him lie on a daily basis. This is how democracies die right in front of us every single day – deception and lies become normal.”

Thank you, Mr. Barnacle – I agree completely. Let me add that I myself have had a dreadful struggle with the dissonance of those two words – “president” and “Trump” and am somewhat upset that the two words in tandem now seem to go together, having now heard them hundreds, maybe thousands of times. But please, for the sake of our country, let’s not get used to the rest.

When one takes the time to slow down, pause, think and tabulate the changes in our government, the office of president, the departments of government, to our political awareness resulting from the Trump election, the list is astonishing….and long…..and far too important to  ignore. Let’s take a look for ourselves and then maybe we can put all this aside and concentrate on something else for a change. Here is the list of outrages, significant departures from past practice and procedure, which confound expectations and are in danger of becoming the norm. These are what we have become used to and what is becoming commonplace.

• Hiding personal finances. No president in recent memory has dared to hide his tax returns from voters and citizens. Yet Trump has done exactly this – and we elected him anyhow and we’ve rolled over and acquiesced. If the next president chooses to hide his personal financial dealings from voters, what’s to stop him (or her)? And who knows what these tax returns may reveal? Our president may be a far more egregious money concealer and launderer than his former lieutenant, Paul Mannafort. After all if, as Nomi Prins speculates in her recent article for the Nation –  “There are more than 500 companies in over two dozen countries, mostly with few to no employees or real offices, that feature him (Trump) as their ‘president’”. Why, if money is not being hidden or laundered? 
• Retained control of personal businesses. Donald Trump has not divested himself of his businesses but instead asserts that his children are running them and he’s not involved. Oh sure, we all know that’s not the case, yet he has gotten away with it. He’s first president to do this and there will be more. The door has been opened and will likely never close. Another violation of rules and norms that we have become used to. Oh, and the Trump Foundation is being sued by the New York Attorney General’s office for multiple violations of the law, alleging that the president and his adult children illegally used the private foundation for personal, business, and political expenses.
• Blatant nepotism. Trump has felt absolutely free to hire relatives and assign them to important posts. Not since President Kennedy hired his brother Robert as Attorney General has any president dared to do this. At least Robert Kennedy had some training and ability for his family assignment, unlike Ivanka and Jared. 

• Unfit, incompetent cabinet members. Appointing cabinet members who are totally unsuited for the job – this list is huge – and most were approved by the Senate. Betsy DeVos, enemy of public education and friend of vouchers and exploitative for-profit colleges; Scott Pruitt, enemy of the environment and friend of polluters (now thankfully departed but succeeded by Andrew Wheeler who thinks exactly like him); Wilbur Ross, now fighting accusations of corruption and described by Forbes magazine as “one of the biggest grifters in history”; Jeff Sessions, racist and the first Senator to openly endorse Trump; Ryan Zinke, no friend of National Parks, wildlife refuges, nature preserves or wildernesses but friend of drilling and mining interests; frightening, unstable and excitable specter John Bolton; ignorant Rick Perry and Ben Carson….and the list goes on. These are the “best people” Trump promised. It truly appears that each cabinet member has been given a dual assignment : 1) Undo every rule, every protection that previous administrations have instituted and 2) Do everything that corporations and rich donors want you to do, not what the American people want you to do. This has been illustrated in every single department run by the Federal Government. The Trump cabinet is a wrecking crew, which is tearing apart the edifice called the Federal Government and torching cherished values and beliefs in the process. And not only cabinet members but their lieutenants as well. Guess who at the Department of Interior decides on the efficacy of proposed climate research projects – Steve Howke, a Whitefish, Montana Kindergarten through high school classmate and varsity football teammate of Ryan Zinke, who majored in business, has spent his life working for credit unions and has absolutely no scientific background. The “swamp” is murkier and slimier than ever.

• Violation of security requirements. Required security clearances were not required and conducted for key advisors in important positions – how did this happen? How did they finally get them? What lies and subterfuges were provided by Jared Kushner and others previously denied such clearances? And how about the latest violation of national trust – Tump’s order to declassify confidential communications involving FBI and Justice Department, now withdrawn but likely resurrected in the future.

• Governing by tweet. This is absolutely unprecedented – that a sitting president churns out impulsive insults and outrages replete with misspellings and infantile emphatic capitalizations – and the corporate press excitedly awaits the day’s tweets so that this collection of schoolyard insults and name calling is given legitimacy. For example – “Special Council is told to find crimes wether crimes exist or not. I was opposed to the the selection of Mueller to be Special Council, I still am opposed to it. I think President Trump was right when he said there never should have bee a Special Council appointed because…..,” or the infantile “Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria. Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and “smart!” You shouldn’t be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it!” – yes, actually from the President of the United States. And hundreds, maybe thousands more that are equally or far more embarrassing.

• Ignorance. There has never been a president who has exhibited more incredible ignorance of government than Donald Trump. He has been not only clueless about the duties he was elected to perform but ignorant of history, geography, culture, the arts, literature and the list could go on. And this president has also demonstrated a singular lack of curiosity that makes George W. Bush look like a college professor. At a Black History Month event he commented, “Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I notice.” Yes, I know – Mr. Trump has recently appointed Mr. Douglass to the National Security Council but because of criticism, has threatened to remove his security clearance.

• Lies, falsehoods. Yes, all presidents have lied at one time or another when it was politically advantageous. But we have never seen anything like this flood of falsehoods flowing from this White House. From a recent Washington Post – “As of day 558, he’s made 4,229 Trumpian claims — an increase of 978 in just two months.That’s an overall average of nearly 7.6 claims a day. When we first started this project for the president’s first 100 days, he averaged 4.9 claims a day. But the average number of claims per day keeps climbing the longer Trump stays in office. In fact, in June and July, the president averaged 16 claims a day.” With a president like this, lying and other unethical conduct become second nature in the White House and Cabinet. Oh, and Trump just the other day broke the 5000 mark in lies, exaggerations and untruths. And equally as bad – Trump’s lying has provided license for other White House advisors, cabinet members and government administrators to lie whenever they find it convenient. But perhaps most important, we’re getting so used to this stream of falsehoods, what happens when we have a serious crisis and we need the truth – Trump will have no credibility in crisis, which is so essential in a president.

• Laziness. This president is lazy too. He makes sure that he is not scheduled for anything public before 11:00 each day. In late night and morning hours he is watching Fox News and tweeting.

• State television. Speaking of Fox News, this is the first time that we’ve actually had a state television network to telecast sycophants fawning over the president and who actually advise the president. Fox’s `Sean Hannity attends dinner with our President; Fox and Friends’ Ainsley Earhardt, Steve Doocy & Brian Kilmeade are regularly consulted and confided in – Sean, Ainsley, Steve and Brian actually should be listed as cabinet members and approved by Congress.

• Egotism and boastfulness. Yes, all president have to be a bit self-centered, or they never could have generated the necessary support for election, but we’ve never seen anything like this – from one of Trump’s tweets: “….Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart. Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star…..to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that I would qualify as no smart, but genius….and a very stable genius at that!”

• And, related to this, Trump is the only president in my memory who needs, seeks and feeds on flattery and praise, no matter how false or outrageous.  I am sure we all remember the grossly obsequious behavior of those present at his first cabinet meeting which he obviously enjoyed. And the highly dubious statement made by Trump sycophant, bona fide liar, perjurer, teenage drunk and sexual assailant and now Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh at his nomination introduction – “No president has ever consulted more widely, or talked with more people from more backgrounds, to seek input about a Supreme Court nomination”. Oh, brilliant observation, Brett.

• Unprecedented huge turnover of cabinet members and other key personnel. In just 19 months on the job, Trump had more Cabinet turnover than 16 of his predecessors had in their first two full years. The latest score and comment from an August The New Yorker: “Other metrics make clear the significant changes in Trump’s approach to the Presidency in recent months, as he has become more confident, less willing to tolerate advisers who challenge him, and increasingly obsessed with the threats to his Presidency posed by the ongoing special-counsel investigation. One is the epic turnover rate of Trump’s White House staff, which as of June already stood at the unprecedented level of sixty-one per cent among the President’s top advisers.” And maybe more important, such turnover represents a wholesale decimation of expertise and experience in Federal Government posts.

• Careless and inappropriate personal appearance. This is a first among our presidents. At formal meetings, while other prime ministers, presidents, and officials look neat and statesmanly, with jackets and coats neatly buttoned, take a look at our president – jacket (or overcoat) hanging open, long tie flapping in the breeze. Why? Too difficult to button the jacket across his steadily expanding girth? Don’t know but it looks incredibly sloppy and inappropriate….SAD. And let’s not even count that ludicrous hair, that exaggerated comb-over, not only without precedent among presidents, but probably without precedent, period. Actually, as I mentioned in my article on the subject this preposterous attempt to hide a bald pate is a “comb-up-over-and-back”. And why the fake clenched jaw – protruding lips facial appearance, an obvious effort to appear tough, resolute and decisive? White House personnel tell us that he’s admitted that it’s an effort to emulate Winston Churchill.  Churchill? A bridge way too far, Mr. Trump, give it up!

• Inventing his own medical records. In addition to the glowing and likely spurious report penned by former White House physician Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson, we have the written word also  of Trump’s former personal physician Dr. Harold Bornstein – “His physical strength and stamina are extraordinary. If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” Not exactly your typical medical jargon, is it? Well that’s because, according to Dr. Bornstein, Trump dictated the letter himself. And unfortunately, we still really don’t know anything factual about the president’s health.

• Criticism, defamation and delegitimization and politicization of Federal law enforcement, essential for national security. This president stands alone, completely apart from any of his predecessors, even Nixon, in his disdain for the Justice Department and the FBI. This is extremely dangerous, when these agencies have always been largely depoliticized and worthy of considerable trust, even in the days of J. Edgar Hoover. What could be his most damaging attack on Federal law enforcement and national security is his recent order for declassification of documents related to the Russia investigation. This kind of action by a US president is not only totally unconciouasionable but absolutely unprecedented but in his words, “I have been asked by many people in Congress as you know to release them. I have watched commentators that I respect begging the president of the United States to release them….I have been asked by so many people that I respect, please — the great Lou Dobbs, the great Sean Hannity, the wonderful great Jeanie Pirro.” As noted above, after considerable outcry, this order has been rescinded. But his overall carelessness is still very much there.

• Criticism, ridicule and delegitimization of the press. A free press is absolutely necessary to the functioning of a democracy and the fourth estate in the US, already gagged and muffled by its corporate and capitalist loyalties, was in bad shape even before Trump. His constant use of the term “fake news” has done irreparable harm to the press and we need to be concerned when Trump says, “Just remember, what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.” And a tweet from August 6, 2018 says it all – “The Fake News hates me saying that they are the Enemy of the People only because they know it’s TRUE. I am providing a great service by explaining this to the American People. They purposely cause great division & distrust. They can also cause War! They are very dangerous & sick!”

• First president with total support from a notorious tabloid, the National Enquirer. This checkout line rag and its parent company AMI did a reliable job of trashing Hillary Clinton and extolling the limited virtues of Donald Trump during the election. Recent revelation of publisher David Pecker’s involvement in buying and quashing select stories is now the subject of investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

• An unorthodox presidency in which emotion, impulse and ego often drive events. For example his roiling feud of playground insults with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, his recent virtually ignoring the death of John McCain and his legacy and not displaying the White House flag at half staff, or his petulant removal of security clearances for former CIA Director John Brennan because he had dared be critical of the president.

• The only president in memory who has relied upon personal attacks, name calling and ridicule. He began his campaign denigrating his primary opponents with such nicknames as “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz, “Little Marco” Rubio and “Low Energy” Jeb Bush and went into the general election with  “Crooked Hillary”, and the refrain which still reverberates at his rallies today -“Lock Her Up”. He has quite unfairly tagged Senator Elizabeth Warren with “Pocahontas” and on and on. His deny, deny, then attack, attack response to his own implications certainly influenced the disgusting final performance of Brett Kavanaugh before the Senate Judiciary Committee and Trump did not hesitate to mock the sober, brave, forthright and heart-rending appearance of Christine Blasey Ford. And as if these epithets and insults weren’t enough, this president enjoys calling others “stupid”. His attacks against women have been especially virulent – from criticizing the looks of Republican primary competitor Carly Fiorina, to referring to former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman as a “dog” on through to his latest epithet for former paramour Stormy Daniels – “horseface”. We have never seen such behavior from any president in our history but we have come to countenance and even expect it from this president.

• Divisive “weaponization” of the National Anthem and the American flag and of patriotism itself. And he didn’t know the words to either God Bless America or the Star Spangled Banner.  From the Washington Post – “At least four times since becoming president, Trump started to sing — but didn’t finish — songs like the national anthem and ‘God Bless America.’ At the White House ‘Celebration of America’ event….he again sang only a few verses of ‘God Bless America’ before nodding his head to the beat of the United States Marine Band and the Army Chorus. In January, Trump mouthed only parts of the national anthem during the college football national championship.” And of course this has extended into Trump’s condemnation of free speech rights of NFL football players who choose to take a knee during the national anthem prior to their games. NFL owners’ responses indicate ignorance  that this compulsory patriotism called for by Trump is a hallmark of dictatorships. Perhaps we should all view the dramatic, eloquent and totally unifying response made recently by Texas Senate candidate Beto O’Rourk.

• Rallies. Donald Trump is the only US president in recent memory, perhaps ever, who has continued to hold campaign style rallies periodically across the country during his term. These are unnecessary and only serve to pump up his ego and the fervor of his base. He also wanted a military parade in Washington, a first for a modern president, but perhaps has been dissuaded because of the inordinate expense.

• For the first time, presidential admiration and embrace rather than shunning and disregard for the the world’s autocrats. These include Viktor Orban of Hungary, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and of course, his apparent  favorite, Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Rather shocking, don’t you think, for our “leader of the free world”?

• Unconventional and dangerous disdain for traditional European alliances and international norms. Thumbing his nose at NATO and existing treaties and agreements; abrogation of the Iran Nuclear Agreement, disregarding other signatories, and sowing distrust among our traditional allies; and withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords, all the while prostrating himself and his administration in front of Netanyahu and his AIPAC agents and violating the long honored international status of Jerusalem by moving the US Embassy there. The Trump administration also withdrew the US from the UN Human Rights Council because of “prejudice against Israel”, joining North Korea, Iran, and Eritrea as the only nations not members of this crucial world deliberative body.

• Embrace of conspiracy theories which include assertion that President Obama was not a US citizen, belief in a “criminal deep state” conspiracy in Obama’s administration that planted a spy inside his presidential campaign to help Hillary Clinton, his long held belief in the guilt of the “Central Park Five” despite their now proven innocence, Ted Cruz’s father involved in the Kennedy assassination, to mention a few, all very dangerous since “if the president believes it there must some truth to it.”

• Selection and retention of cabinet members and advisors on the basis of personal loyalty to him, rather than on competence and experience. This is especially obvious in the case of Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Trump has tweeted repeatedly about the necessity of Sessions’ protection of him and how his recusal from the Russia investigation has hampered this role. Members of Congress and candidates for office are now treated that way as well, with Trump’s support dependent on their loyalty to him.

• Only president to require non-disclosure agreements. Trump is alone among presidents for requiring White House staff and advisors to sign NDA’s before accepting a position. Why – is there something to hide about White House operations and about presidential day to day behavior?

• Weaponizing presidential pardons. Usually this presidential privilege is exercised when there may be some doubt regarding guilt or a spurious quality to the laws being enforced. Yet Trump has pardoned Sheriff Joe Arpaio who was tried in a court of law and found guilty of criminal contempt. And to compound this insult to justice, Vice President Pence called Arpaio a “guardian of justice”. Also Trump undermined the rule of law by pardoning political supporter and notorious right wing author and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza, an unapologetic felon convicted of campaign finance crimes. And now, his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, already found guilty in six of the 12 counts against him, has rejected a deal from the prosecutors, obviously relying on the prospect of another egregious presidential pardon.Trump’s pardon announcement about Arpaio and D’Souza was sharply criticized by New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood, who said it “makes crystal clear his willingness to use his pardon power to thwart the cause of justice, rather than advance it.”

• Disdain for the rule of law. Trump really does view the law as a weapon to protect his allies and strike his enemies. An incomplete list includes suggesting an end to the prosecution of someone he likes, such as Joe Arpaio and the commencement of prosecutions of people he hates like James Comey and Hillary Clinton. Trump defended his indicted personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, by claiming that the government regularly fabricates evidence. Trump has tried to politicize federal prosecutors, firing US Attorney Preet Bharara, and  bringing another, John Huber, Utah’s top federal prosecutor, to the White House to give a speech lobbying for new immigration laws. 

• Open violation of the US Constitution. This corrupt president has violated the emoluments clause which reads as follows: “No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” Unlike any previous president he has retained ownership of his assets but claims he is not involved because he has turned over management of them to his children. His companies continue to make money for him while he is president – his hotels and golf courses are frequented by foreign entities wishing to ingratiate themselves with him. And daughter Ivanka has received 13 Chinese trademarks and provisional approval for eight more for her products since Trump became president. Several lawsuits are underway which should prove without any doubt that this constitutional provision is being violated.

• Only president to be not invited, or “disinvited”, if you wish, to a notable Congressman’s funeral. Before his death, Senator John McCain, expressly requested that the president not be invited to either speak or even merely be present at his funeral.

• The only president who made his money through dubious tax schemes and some instances of outright fraud. Although other presidential fortunes have had rather dubious origins, for example, the Kennedy and the Bush wealth, the revelations in the recent very extensive New York Times investigation about how his father Fred C. Trump managed to pass along close to a half billion dollars to Trump, starting when he was a toddler, demonstrate that the Trump fortune was obtained and transferred using very questionable, even illegal practices.

• Violation of basic humanitarian norms and practices and even condoning child abuse. Trump’s treatment of immigrants at our southern borders is distinguished by the singular cruelty of the separation of hundreds of children from their parents. And true to form, he had to lie about it -the administration was insisting that “it didn’t have a policy of separating families (false), that several laws and court rulings were forcing these separations (false), that Democrats were to blame (false), that only Congress could stop family separations (false) and that an executive order wouldn’t get the job done (also false).” This practice, along with other aspects of dealing with thousands of people seeking to escape violence and death in their home countries, has forever shamed our country. The latest insult to poor immigrants trying to make new lives in the United States is the snatching of green cards if they are receiving any kind of governmental support, including food stamps, Medicaid or children’s health insurance.

• Only president that I know of to be embraced passionately by evangelicals even though he violates almost all of the personal characteristics traditionally valued by people with religious convictions. Multiple marital infidelities, blatant lying, abject dishonesty, total lack of empathy, disdain for the less fortunate, racist, and the list could go on. Trump is a self centered, selfish and evil man. Come on, do the evangelicals consider him “converted” or “saved” or “repentant”? What on earth do they use to rationalize their support of this man? Maybe that Supreme Court majority? Maybe moving the American Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem perhaps signifying the beginning of “the rapture”?

• Only president to not only disavow scientific findings but to actually take action against them. The grim facts about climate change have not only been repudiated but ridiculed by Trump, whose administration under his direction has rolled back Obama era measures and goals to mitigate its effect, including NASA’s carbon monitoring research program and actually suspending and cancelling climate change research. And of course, Mr. Trump supports drilling for more oil and gas and mining for more coal to burn and dump more deadly carbon into the atmosphere.

• Appears to be totally lacking in compassion and empathy, totally unable to demonstrate any credible understanding of how others feel. These traits were on full display on his visit to hurricane ravaged Puerto Rico where the best he could do is boast about the (poor) US response to the devastation and to toss rolls of paper towels (what the hell were the paper towels for anyway?). More recently this emptiness was on display for the whole world to see during his visits to Hurricane Florence flooded and battered North and South Carolina – “This is a tough hurricane — one of the wettest we’ve ever seen. From the standpoint of water, rarely have we had an experience like it,” Trump said. Trump was handing out meals to hurricane victims and told one person in a car, “Have a good time” as if they were going on a picnic.

Looking back over this article, my fourth about Trump and his administration since he was elected, I find myself consumed by two great fears. Echoing Mike Barnacle’s thoughts quoted in an early paragraph, I am fearful that we are getting so used to the breaking of rules and shattering of norms by this dreadful president that neither the presidency nor our federal government will ever be the same again. Has the embrace of rules and norms been permanently broken? Has the trust in Federal agencies been forever compromised? Has the our press been forever discredited? Have we become so inured to lies and contradictions pouring from the White House that we will not believe or care at all anymore, no matter who is the occupant? The formerly somewhat reliable and steady edifice of the Federal government is now full of holes and is tottering. Can it ever be rebuilt? Will things ever get back to normal? New York Times columnist David Brooks fears that conditions may never be the same. In his words: “The best indicator we have so far is the example of Italy since the reign of Silvio Berlusconi. And the main lesson there is that once the norms of acceptable behavior are violated and once the institutions of government are weakened, it is very hard to re-establish them. Instead, you get this cycle of ever more extreme behavior, as politicians compete to be the most radical outsider. The political center collapses, the normal left/right political categories cease to apply…”

The second fear is that the excesses of Trump and his administration will result in the loss of democratic government, not really very far-fetched if we read Madeleine Albright’s new book, the recent work of historian Timothy Snyder, Zigblatt and Levitsky’s “How Democracies Die” or the recent piece by the Times columnist Paul Krugman. Our already weak democracy, barely on life support, has been further weakened by recent Supreme Court decisions on voting and campaign finance (which, incidentally have done far more harm than anything accomplished or even contemplated by Russia), hobbled by a totally ineffectual legislative branch, and further enfeebled by Trump’s daily assault on the press and the rules and norms essential for democratic function. When you add the blind devotion of Trump’s base, the militarization of police, the glorification of the military and the erosion of trust from steady attacks on the Justice Department and the FBI, it’s not too difficult to imagine the end of what little is left of our democracy. As noted by aforementioned professors Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky – “Because there is no single moment—no coup, declaration of martial law, or suspension of the constitution—in which the regime obviously ‘crosses the line’ into dictatorship, nothing may set off society’s alarm bells. Those who denounce government abuse may be dismissed as exaggerating or crying wolf. Democracy’s erosion is, for many, almost imperceptible.” Neither can we discount the nefarious and dangerous influence of money in our drift toward autocracy. The influence of Koch, Adelson, et al, is not dissimilar to the influence of Germany’s big industrialists in the 1930’s which enabled Hitler’s ascent to power.

If our country somehow survives the onslaught on democracy by this president and the Republican Party, one has to consider what will happen or what has to happen when this nightmare ends and Trump finally goes away. What safeguards can we erect to prevent another Trump from happening? How can we “de-Trumpify” the presidency and our federal government? Certainly, if the Democratic Party reclaims the House this November, this work  can begin with investigations into violations of the emoluments clause, long overdue exposure of his tax returns and multiple investigations into the overall corruption of this administration. 

New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg recently devoted an entire column to the subject of “de-Trumpification”. In addition to echoing the above, she also reports that the process has already in a way begun, with Christine Todd Whitman, the Republican former governor of New Jersey, and Preet Bharara, the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, announcing that they’d be leading a task force on the rule of law and democracy at the Brennan Center for Justice. “The idea is to figure out which of the norms that Trump has blithely discarded can be written into law or otherwise codified”, Whitman told Goldberg.

“We know we want to take on financial and ethical conflicts. We’re going to take on political interference with law enforcement and the courts, the protection of a free and independent press.” The task force will also look into how Trump’s administration “uses or misuses data and science and how candidates are chosen for government jobs”.

Dr. Brian Klaas, Assistant Professor/Lecturer in Global Politics at University College London and columnist for The Washington Post, in a recent column, suggests the following: 

“Congress should codify countless broken norms into unbreakable laws. For example, it should be illegal for presidents to fire law enforcement officials who are investigating them (absent an independent assessment of professional misconduct). Special counsels should also be legally protected from presidential interference. We also need two new constitutional amendments. First, to declare that the president is not above the law and can therefore be indicted while in office; and second, to ensure that a president cannot pardon anyone that is involved in an ongoing investigation related to the president, their family, their campaign or their business interests. Future presidential candidates should be legally required not only to release their tax returns, but also to fully divest from businesses that pose a significant conflict of interest. Klaas adds that the disgrace of having Trump’s unqualified son-in-law and daughter overseeing huge, consequential portfolios cries out for stronger anti-nepotism laws.”

I certainly agree with the suggestions of Goldberg and Klaas for they do give me some hope, however scant.  But as Americans we need also to consider carefully that if our government is supposed to emanate from the people and represent the people, we have to ask ourselves what kind of people we have become. After all, the Republican Party nominated Mr. Trump and the American people voted for him and elected him. So if we survive Trump and Trumpism, in addition to new laws and new rules to prevent another such political calamity, we really need some serious introspection as Americans. Do we truly believe in democracy? Can we get our noses out of Facebook and our iPhones long enough to thoughtfully consider what democracy requires of us as citizens and whether we are fulfilling those requirements? We have to recover what we have lost with the election of Donald Trump and approve necessary laws and rules and reestablish previously embraced democratic behavioral norms so that electing another president like this will be impossible.

Over the past year or so, I have been consumed with thoughts of death. These have not been fearful thoughts, nor necessarily sad thoughts, although life has to be sweeter by far than death. But we all live and die. This is the way of living things – we are born, we live and we die. From the simplest of life forms to the most complex, this is the inevitable progression. And if life is a continuum, a straight line from birth to death, I hope mine is reasonably long, I don’t want it cut short. And if life is a course between two points, birth and death, I am thankfully still on the minus side of that course, still alive, though headed inexorably toward that end point.

I guess that these thoughts hit me for the first time when I was reading “Colossus” a biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father” of the atomic bomb last year. Halfway though the book I was struck by the thought that these remarkable people – the brilliant theoreticians and scientists, the skilled administrators, the talented fabricators, the president who made it all happen, are not with us anymore. Their lives, if notable, have been chronicled, their material achievements are listed for us to see, but they themselves are gone…forever. 

I have been reading biographies of famous people for many years but I have not necessarily thought of them as dying, or dead and gone. I was content to read about them and their lives and achievements but never was struck by the obvious fact that they are no longer with us. Why? I don’t know – maybe because I rarely thought about death itself – for me it was still such a long way off. I suppose that this change relates to my own old age and the now perceptible finiteness of my life. I was born, I grew, I was educated by school and experience. I lived and loved and became a father myself. But I will die – maybe sooner, maybe later…but I will die. In my younger days these thoughts rarely crossed my mind.

Another source for these thoughts and this piece of writing is the passing of a very close friend of ours, whose remarkable intellect, loving manner and vibrant personality are unforgettable. Even now, many months later, it is hard to imagine her gone. But is she really gone? Her appearance, her voice and her mannerisms are so alive in our memories, the memories of our children, who had the good fortune to know her, and in the memories of everyone else who knew her, that her absence is impossible to realize or accept.

In my mid-seventies now, I am grateful for my health. I am a trifle overweight, true, but I do still faithfully exercise on most mornings of the week. I watch what I eat, minimize the sugar and maximize the eggs and fresh (or frozen) vegetables and fruit. Foolishly, to treat a persistent sweet tooth, I still occasionally mix up and bake my favorite cookies, but amend the recipe by reducing the sugar and making it all dark brown, cancelling the chocolate bar and reducing the chocolate chips, using whole wheat flour and increasing the chopped nuts, while including almonds and hazelnuts. Then I ration my consumption by baking them small and keeping them frozen. Or if I’m feeling wiser, I’ll have an apple or some dried fruit if I am craving something sweet. And of course, likely not good for my health, l still have that scotch or red wine in the late afternoon.

And thank God, most of my body still works like it should. Yes the threat of personal embarrassment does rush me to the bathroom once in awhile and accordingly on long drives I consciously keep myself a bit dehydrated to minimize stops. I seem to be treating my hypothyroidism successfully and also treat a previously unknown bone density problem caused by that lazy thyroid gland with the necessary doses of minerals. I also am experiencing some lower back pain resulting from, I am told, deterioration of several vertebrae and a disc or two and some arthritis. Arthritis has also singled out a few key hand joints so I have tried to control inflammation by choosing certain foods and avoiding others. But on the whole, I think I’m doing ok. Those  organs and functions without which I cannot live – my brain, heart, lungs and digestive system, seem to be functioning quite well.

I have a  good friend back in our Arizona community who is about ten years older than I who tells me that while his seventies were okay, his 80’s have been quite different. He can really feel his  body giving out and maintaining this aging machine has become much more time and energy intensive in terms of doctor visits, scheduled medications, painstaking food shopping and preparation, and pursuit of required exercise. 

One thing that bothers me a great deal as I have grown old is that time passes so much more quickly than I thought it would. When I was young, it seemed that Christmas or the end of the school year and summer would never come. My high school and college years dragged on interminably as did my twenties and thirties. And now since I am retired I thought time would really drag and these ”golden years” would really stretch out, but surprisingly it been just the opposite. I have never experienced the hours turning into days, the days to weeks, the weeks into months and then years more quickly than now, exactly when I want things to slow down. 

I did a little research on this phenomenon and surprisingly the passage of time apparently speeds up with routine and sameness and slows down during growth and the acquisition of new experiences and learning. When you’re young every day brings something new and time stretches out. For example, think of how time seemed extended on that special vacation when you encountered new cultures, people, places and activities. And now during retirement when every day is more or less the same time passes more quickly. The new understandings, growth and learning acquired vicariously through movies and books, don’t have the same effect as real ones. I guess if I were wealthy enough to spend my retirement traveling and having those new experiences, these so-called “golden years” might pass much more slowly. But I’m not so I can’t and they don’t.

Some other thoughts and questions about my inexorable drift toward that final point on the continuum of life have occurred to me. What will I leave behind? Who will know that I’m gone? Who will grieve? What’s it all for? Will I be born again or just sleep forever, like I did before I was born and became conscious. 

One thing for sure, I don’t want to leave a mess behind me. I don’t want a spouse, child, sibling or friend sifting through a pile of my possessions rolling their eyes and saying – “Why did he keep this? What in hell was he planning to do with these? Why so many books – did he really read them all or just collect them thinking he would eventually find the time? And these jeans and sneakers – did he really think he would live long enough to wear them out? Why didn’t he get rid of things instead of just letting  them accumulate?” 

I really want to clean up my life like my Swedish kinsfolk recommend and make things easier for those I leave behind. Margareta Magnusson’s book, “The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter”, tells us what we need to do. I just hope that I can summon the energy and willpower sufficient to accomplish these recommended tasks when the time comes. But until then, I still have dreams of utilizing lots of my “stuff”, even now. But it’s so true – in recent months I am looking at certain possessions  and asking myself why I keep them. I’m never going to use them so why are they here? Having moved so many times we took advantage of each move to thin out our possessions and make ourselves a little lighter and more portable. But here we are – two houses, Vermont and Arizona, both full to overflowing. So clearly there is work to be done before I reach the end of that line.

And what am I leaving behind in terms of a legacy of some sort? I don’t mean money or wealth – there’s precious little of either to leave to anyone anyhow. What I mean is a legacy of good works, good deeds that some people will remember, at least for a little while. I hope my career in education has enhanced many lives – I’ll never really know.  But I hope that somewhere, somebody still remembers me and that my work on their behalf meant something in their lives. I was overjoyed to find that a few of my students from my first teaching job stumbled onto my article about them  and still remembered me fondly, but surely there are many more from subsequent experiences, at least I hope so. And once in a great while I hear of someone I once supervised saying some good things about me as a school principal or superintendent. Well, as the Mac Wiseman song says, “’Tis Sweet to Be Remembered”

And then there’s the question of who will grieve my passing. In addition to my wife and son and my brothers and remaining sister, whom I hope will have retained at least a few fond memories and perhaps mourn my absence, there may be a treasured friend or two who may feel the same. Because of bouncing around the world and the country so much and thus scattering my friends and acquaintances, I don’t think that my survivors will have to worry about an overflow crowd at the funeral, if they even bother to schedule one. And I have requested that my body be cremated and my ashes thrown to the breeze from Yaki Point at the Grand Canyon. So that part of the end promises to be simple and quick as well.

And as it winds down, I cannot escape wondering what it was all for – life I mean. What is our purpose here, other than survival and procreation? What happens when I stop breathing and lose consciousness forever? Will I be “born again” or will I just sleep forever. It certainly is difficult to accept that my life will end – bang, just like that – and there is nothing afterward. But in fact there was nothing before it so why should there be something after? Jim Holt, who pondered the question of “why does the world exist” in his book of the same name, wonders why there is “something rather than nothing”, and suggests that “the life of the universe, like each of our lives, may be a mere interlude between two nothings.”

I envy my sister and brothers and my loving wife, who because of their religious faith, do not have to ponder these questions. They are secure in the knowledge and conviction that our purpose here on earth is to “glorify God” and that they will joyfully be greeted by loved ones on the “other side” after their death. Yes, Mom and Dad, and sister Barbara will be there, healthy and whole – I would love to believe this, but simply cannot. My religious faith has never been that strong. I mean will our loved and treasured pets be there too? And how about that rotten, worthless relative or that duplicitous subordinate who stabbed me in the back? Do I have to put up with them again on the “other side”? No, I think life might indeed just be a lovely experience with nothing before birth and nothing after death. 

Well actually there is a little  built-in immortality associated with my life. Because I have a son, parts of me, my DNA, my genes will go on living. I won’t know it but parts of me already present in my son will go on living in him and his children and in their children. This is wonderful to contemplate, but is this the purpose of life? 

My parents are gone, their parents are gone . They live on my my life now and the lives of my brothers and surviving sister. But after we are gone, do our children remember them and keep them alive in their minds? My dear sister Barbara is gone  but I can see her mannerisms and hear her voice in the movements and voices of her children. But how much of Barb will be left in her children’s children and in their children? And indeed, my wife’s recent addiction to discovering a multitude of previously unknown ancestors does make us wonder what fragments of their appearance and personality we display in our own.

I know I will die but I don’t know when or how. One often hears regarding someone’s sudden death – maybe a sudden fatal heart attack, perhaps a fatal auto accident or some type of dreadful explosion – “well, at least he didn’t suffer…” This I have taken to heart. I really don’t want to suffer. I’d like to die suddenly, instantaneously or perhaps in my sleep. I’ve gone to sleep, I’ve lost consciousness, I just don’t ever wake up. Easy and painless. But I don’t want to suffer the pain of illness and slow inexorable deterioration of my body or my mind. If I’m in pain, let me float into death on the soft clouds of psychotropic drugs. Or if I have my wits about me, please let me decide when I should die and allow those I love to do me this favor. They can hold my hand and kiss my cheek when I expire and before I go I can imagine them doing it. Also, I can tell them goodbye and tell them I love them. This is dying in dignity, enveloped by love and sweet memory: This is the way it should be.

I certainly don’t want to die struggling for life – fighting madly for a breath of air as I am drowning somewhere, or straining for oxygen as my lungs fail. Nor do I want to contend with the indignity of incontinence as I stumble toward death. When those senses and controls fail, I want my whole body, my heart, breathing apparatus and brain to fail as well. I certainly hope that our entire country permits assisted suicide eventually, as do most western European countries and several of our states. As our bodies deteriorate and we are engulfed in dreadful pain or our minds fail, I think that we or our loved ones should be able to decide when we die. 

I suppose that it will be difficult for someone who has thrived on strength, order and “being in control” to relinquish control to someone else, even a loved one. But we all do, I guess, as we drift toward the inevitable end of our lives. Yet there may be some comfort in finally admitting that I can no longer continue being strong and in control. At some point it will be impossible and perhaps it will be a relief and a comfort to turn myself over to someone who is younger and stronger and can care for me. But I dread the day that they take the keys to the car away from me. I hope I have the good sense to realize that I can no longer drive safely and relinquish them voluntarily.

Hopes and dreams are necessary to life so no matter how old we get so we need to keep them alive. We should always have a must-read book at our side and a must-do project in front of us. When we stop striving and stop dreaming, we’re done. We dream all our lives – we dream of perfect love and perfect happiness; we dream of having enough money to do anything we want; we dream of the perfect house, that perfect place; we dream of  finding answers to life’s eternal questions – why are we here? Where do we go when we die? And I hope at age 76 that I can and will still dream. I think when we stop dreaming, stop hoping, stop trying, then we are really finished, even if our bodies keep going.

I have had my little set of dreams, yes. And I am happy to say that some have been realized, but so many have not and I know now, will not. I’ve hiked the Grand Canyon rim to rim to rim (see upcoming article “The Grand Canyon and Me”); I’ve stood on the highest mountain in Arizona – Mount Humphries in the San Francisco Peaks; I’ve traveled to Ireland twice, Germany several times, driven from Frankfurt to Vienna…and back, seen so many historical sites in Turkey, seen the pyramids, the sphinx, Luxor and the Valley of Kings in Egypt, been on a safari in Africa, walked the streets of Dublin, London, Paris, Prague, Budapest, Cairo, Isdtanbul, Delhi, Bangkok and Katmandu. Thank God, thank God for all this. But many dreams still remain.

Some of those dreams yet unfulfilled – camping for weeks among the red rocks of Canyonlands, Sedona and southern Utah; camping in a wheat field in Kansas or North Dakota on a windy night; taking a “blue cruise” – sailing on the beautiful warm blue Aegean off the coasts of Turkey and Greece; traveling to certain other countries that have fascinated me – like Russia or the country of my kin, Sweden; art museums that I’ve missed – the Prado in Madrid, the Hermitage in St Petersburg, to name a couple. I’ve seen virtually nothing of other countries in my own hemisphere – I would love to explore Mexico and Central and South America. I’ve never seen the Redwoods, Seattle, or Yellowstone. I have never lived by the sea, even for a little while, not even in a trailer. To listen to the waves constantly, have them wake you up and put you to sleep would be such a thrill. And to daily see the water stretching out to the horizon to meet the sky would be so liberating and inspiring. 

One of the tragedies of death is the disappearance forever of the knowledge and experience accumulated. We indeed are lifelong learners, absorbing new information, new facts and valuable lessons our whole life. And then when we die it’s all gone. So I guess that’s what all this is – a legacy of some kind, certainly not one as rich and as lasting as those left by many a scientist, novelist, poet or composer but the best I can do – some reflections on family, life, politics, and the world. I write so that some of my experiences and therefore some of me might live on. My son, who’s very busy and involved in his own life and career, reads little of this now. But I hope when I am gone, that he will hold me close once in awhile by choosing to read some more of what I’ve written. And perhaps he will choose to share it with his children.

In spite of accounts of “near death” experiences, death itself continues to be a mystery. Perhaps reviewing Socrates’ opinion on death would be an appropriate way to end this piece: ”To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they knew quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?”

Today I noted in the NYTimes that two of my heroes have passed away. One of my favorite novelists, Philip Roth, author of so many great novels, including my favorite of his, “The Human Stain”, died yesterday. And Richard Goodwin, liberal speechwriter extraordinaire, whose golden words spoken by the Kennedys, Johnson and so many others also passed away. Yes, we all die, but what a legacy both of these people left. Read their work and you will agree.

I have recently read a very interesting book with which I first became acquainted through reviews in the NY Times and the NY Review of Books – Robert J. Gordon’s “The Rise and Fall of American Growth: the US Standard of Living Since the Civil War”.

Mr. Gordon’s book is a fascinating mixture of economics and history which describes in great detail through prose, numbers and graphs the growth of the economy and the corresponding improvement in the standard of living in mainly what he calls the “special century” from 1870 to 1970. The main point of the book is to demonstrate that the improvement in the standard of living since the Civil War until about 1970 was huge and, despite our faith in continued progress through the benefits of technology, neither can nor will ever happen again. Gordon names “five great inventions” of this particular century – electricity, urban sanitation, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, the internal combustion engine and modern communication – any one of which, he asserts, had a far greater impact on our standard of living than the recent IT revolution.

Professor Gordon sketches for us what life was like right after the civil war and compares this to life in 1970. By that year homes had central heating, electric lighting, toilets and electrical appliances to assist with household chores. We had automobiles, paved roads and telephones and performed our work in comfortable environments. We dressed in clothing that we bought from stores and ate fresh or well preserved food from supermarkets. If you could take people living then back to 1870, they would find city streets knee deep in horse manure, extensive travel very difficult or almost impossible, homes dark and cold. If you were a man you did backbreaking manual labor for a living; if a woman, you worked dawn to dusk washing clothes with a washboard in water you carried and cooked over a wood or coal stove. You had no fruit or vegetables in the winter and the meat and milk you bought could be bad. Your children were often ill or died of disease because there were no medicines to make them well. You carried in water to be heated for bathing in a tub. Your bathroom was a cold outhouse or a chamber pots emptied outside into the streets or fields. The contrast between 1870 and 1970 was quite stark, almost black and white, in terms of how people lived.

In reading this fascinating book and its descriptions of what life was like before the “five great inventions”, I couldn’t help but think of my parents and grandparents and what they experienced growing up. My Dad and Mom were both born in 1915, pretty much right in the middle of this “special century”, both into large farming families – Dad one of six children in Missouri and Colorado and Mom one of seven in North Dakota. I certainly wish Dad and Mom were alive today so that I could develop a more complete picture of what their lives were like as children and through them, what their parents’ lives had been like growing up.

Ralph and Ida Friedly wedding day, both  21

I remember my father telling us children that he walked three miles to school every day when he was young. I’d like to know – on what kind of roads? Did anyone have automobiles or were his neighbors limited to horses and carriages? I do know that as a boy on the farm in Versailles, Missouri, he plowed fields and planted and cultivated crops with teams of horses or mules. Also I remember visiting the Missouri farm as a child and, looking back, I don’t remember the house having bathrooms. There was a primitive outhouse with an old Sears catalogue hanging on the wall from which you could rip a few pages to clean yourself up. Instead of a bath or shower, you cleaned up with a sponge bath in a protected area of the kitchen.

Audra Frances (Arnold) 15 and Conrad Adam Friedly 26 in 1913

I wonder when my father’s family got electricity and how they lived without it when he was a child. I presume kerosene lamps provided the light and a wood cooking stove or a pot bellied stove provided some heat in the wintertime. And I presume that one’s body on top of and beneath a featherbed, with the bodies of brothers and sisters close by, was enough to keep warm in the unheated bedrooms of that day.

My grandfather, Conrad Adam Friedly, lost his farm in Versailles, Missouri in 1927 and moved the family to a farm on the plains of Colorado, east of Denver where the family tried again to make a go of it. I know little of these circumstances – if the farm in Missouri was lost, what means did the family have to buy a farm in Colorado? Or did they rent the farm or just work on a farm? My grandfather later moved back to Missouri with what remained of his family to the farm he used to own. How and when did that happen?

Friedly family circa 1926 Dad second from right

More to the point and considering the book I read which raised all the questions, what was life like for them in Missouri, then Colorado, then Missouri again? Professor Gordon stresses that even while cities and towns across the country were making progress with electric lighting, bathrooms, sewage and running water, farms, especially in the rural south, lagged far behind the rest of the country. Looking at my father’s situation, I would have to assume that outhouses, carrying cooking and cleaning water, bathing in the kitchen, kerosene lamps, wood or coal stoves for cooking and heating were exactly what he had in his youth.

Dad at Belleview, Pillar of Fire church,  15 or so

Gordon points out that there were differences between rural areas and suburban/city areas in how quickly these modern conveniences were provided. I would have liked to compare Dad’s primitive, hard-scrabble farm life in Missouri, which indeed was the south, to Mom’s prairie farming life in North Dakota, on the northern plains when they were both little children in the 1920’s. What do they remember about how their houses were heated, about bathing? Going to the bathroom? Running water? When did their families obtain their first tractor and put the mules and horses out to pasture? When did each family obtain their first automobile? How were their crops harvested? What were their dietary staples and how was most of their food preserved? I do remember Dad talking about butchering hogs and hams hanging in the smokehouse. And I know that farm families at that time “canned” food in the summer for consumption in the winter, filling and sealing mason jars, then “cooking” the sealed jars in huge pots of boiling water on top of a wood stove. Wait a minute, there was no wood on the treeless prairie plains of North Dakota. What was the fuel they used for heating and cooking?

Four generations 1941: Standing Dad, Mom and Dad’s parents, Audra and Conrad; seated George and Ida Arnold, Fred and Donnie Friedly with Barbara, 3 years old.

What was school like for Mom and Dad when they were children? What memorable teachers did they have? Did they obtain their respective love of reading and desire for learning from them or from their parents? Mom’s parents were not educated but nevertheless obviously instilled a love of learning in their children. I know Uncle Arnold had a college degree and of course Uncle Emil, and finally Mom. Who else?

Nels and Anna Baxstrom, Mom’s parents

I would love to ask the same questions of my father, were he still alive today. What do you remember of your teachers when you were a child? Does any one remain in your mind as a special inspiration? I suspect that Dad would claim that his love of learning began when, as a youth of 14, he left his family home and cast his lot with the Pillar of Fire church. And I know that Dad would eagerly tell me about one teacher in his Pillar of Fire experience as a high school student who inspired him – Agnes Kubitz, whom I remember too as a gentle, soft spoken, dignified, white haired teacher. I believe that she may have still been teaching at Zarephath when our sister Barbara was in high school.

Gordon makes a point of describing how clothing was sewn by hand in many families. Did both my Dad’s and Mom’s families have to purchase cloth from local stores and then sew their own clothing? Mom was an accomplished seamstress, perhaps this is why. When exactly did they begin to buy ready made clothing from department stores or from mail order catalogs? I certainly wish Mom and Dad were alive so that I could better understand this and so many other aspects of their childhoods and through that knowledge better understand them and  myself.

Baxstrom family circa 1928, Ida (mom) second from left

I miss my parents for other reasons as well. Charles Ralph Friedly, my father, and Ida Marie Baxstrom, my mother, were not perfect people by any means. As noted in my article about him, Dad was rarely home when I was little. He fled family responsibilities by being busy teaching school in the Pillar of Fire Church’s Alma Preparatory School, or taking taking courses at Alma White College, both at nearby Zarephath. As noted in that article, Dad also pursued several part time vocations – such as serving as the community barber, with his faithful Oster hair clipper at hand, by serving as pastor at other nearby Pillar of Fire churches, like the one in Brooklyn, New York and by farming and selling his produce. But Dad had an awesome intellect that I never properly appreciated, my perception being clouded by my bitterness and resentment caused by his frequent absences. I wish he were here now so I could get his take on for example, today’s Republican Party. Even though a faithful member and supporter of the Republican Party (he even attended the 1952 Republican Convention in Chicago), I would fancy that Dad had a great deal of sympathy for the less fortunate and for the common working man. What would he think of the Republican Party today compared to that of his day, exemplified by these provisions in the Republican platform of 1956:

1. Provide federal assistance to low-income communities;
2. Protect Social Security;
3. Provide asylum for refugees;
4. Extend minimum wage;
5. Improve unemployment benefit system so it covers more people;
6. Strengthen labor laws so workers can more easily join a union;
7. Assure equal pay for equal work regardless of sex.

What would he think about the perennial Republican tax cuts for the wealthy and attacks on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid? I know that he was constantly surprised and pleased by his own Social Security check which, though small, arrived faithfully every month, from that same Federal government that his political party liked to condemn.

Emil, Elma and Ida Baxstrom circa 1932

I would love to ask my mother more about how her family came to send virtually all of its children at one time or another to the Pillar of Fire schools in Denver, where Mom and Dad eventually met in high school. I know that Mr. Clarence Yoder, somehow a church member, owned a quarter of land adjacent to the Baxstrom farm in North Dakota. But why and how exactly did Mr. Yoder wield such influence on Mom’s family? And who was primarily responsible for the final decision – her mother or her father? I know one brother, her youngest, Uncle Emil, left the Pillar of Fire in disgust after a few months there, calling the church a “cult”. How did the others feel? How did my mom really feel about the church? I do know that Dad’s parents adamantly disagreed about the church – his mother embracing it and backing Dad’s decision to leave his family for the church at 14. I wonder if Mom’s parents had conflicting opinions as well.

Baxstrom women Ruth, Elma, Ida (mom) and their mother Anna, maybe 1930

And I would like to ask my mother about how she developed her affinity for music which exerted such a pervasive influence on all of us children? Did they sing a lot in her little Mylo school? In her Lutheran church when she was a child? Did her parents also enjoy music at home? Did they have a piano in the house? Who played it? How did she learn “Star of the East”, that song on the piano which became her trademark? Incidentally, thanks to the magic of Google, I was surprised to learn that this song was actually a Christmas carol, has beautiful lyrics and was recorded on the B-side of a Christmas record by Judy Garland.

And Dad, too, enjoyed music, enjoyed singing, which surely influenced all of us as well. Where did that come from? What church did he and his family attend when he was a child in Missouri and in Colorado? I know I could have asked many of these questions to some of Dad’s siblings when they were alive. But they are all gone now too and I didn’t ask. So I will never find out.

All the questions outlined above could have been extended to what Mom and Dad knew of their own parents’ childhood. What Mom knew about the difficulties of everyday life faced by her Swedish parents, Nels Baxstrom and Anna Jonsson, when they were children would have been very interesting. Also, I would like to have known what Dad knew of the daily challenges faced by his parents, Conrad Adam Friedly and Audra Arnold and their respective families when they were growing up. I just didn’t ask Mom and Dad these questions and regret it very much today.

So I miss my parents more than ever and at age 75 I’m wondering why. Right now I’m attempting to prepare a huge page of the Friedly Family with Mom and Dad, their birthdates and birthplaces on top and their children and progeny listed in order below, replete with birth dates, occupations and so on. Ralph and Ida Friedly would have been so pleased and proud to see this extensive list of individuals who, with an assist from the infusion of other rich blood, descended directly from them, and have pursued such a huge variety of careers and vocations.

It hit me the other day, during one of my early morning reveries, during which I seem to think most clearly and write most fluently, that perhaps the reason I miss my parents so much now, is that I’m getting on in years myself and have a clearer sense of my own mortality. Mom and Dad did indeed pass away but they continue to live richly in my mind.  With the inevitable end of my consciousness, they will finally fade away completely for me. So along with a final goodby to my own loved ones, it will be a final farewell to Mom and Dad as well. They are missed.

“What’s the difference between males and females?” Kenneth asked his wife Barbara one evening.

“What kind of a question is that?” Barbara responded. “Everyone knows the difference. Men have equipment that women don’t have, women have what men don’t have. Women are smaller, rounder, more delicate, softer. Men are bigger, stronger, faster, more angular. Men act rashly and impulsively. Women are more thoughtful and contemplative. Men are loud, women are quiet. Men are on time, women are late. Men never ask directions, women do. I like most of these things about men and I assume you feel the same about women. Okay, does that answer your question? What else is there?”

“Well,” Kenneth replied, “Those differences are obvious although some might be arguable. But what strikes me, what provokes the question, was thinking of more subtle differences. Take our granddaughter for instance. Even at four years old, she walks like a girl – a sweet, mincing gait, occasionally carrying her weight on her toes. She could be shorn of her long locks and dressed as a boy, but she would still very obviously be a girl. A little boy her age generally has a distinctly different gait and physical presence. Even disguised with long hair and a dress, that child would still walk like a boy, handle things like a boy and simply behave like a boy.”

“Boy (pardon the pun), you’re really getting into it, really figuring things out. Tell me more about your observations.”

“Okay, something else – even at the tender age of four, our little granddaughter holds her little tea cup differently, more delicately, with her little finger out. Her mother did not teach her to hold her cup this way, she simply does because something deep inside her tells her this is the way she should hold a cup. I don’t hold a cup this way, neither does our son, nor did he when he was four. Most fingers were utilized and that little finger was tucked in, touching the heal of the hand with the rest of them. Nobody taught him how to hold a cup either. Something deep inside him told him to hold a cup the way he did and our granddaughter does not.”

“How interesting, how analytical”, Barbara responded. “But I think you are behaving like a man – rather than simply accepting things, you have to analyze them, figure them out. I have observed these behaviors too I am sure, but never stopped to think about them, just accepted them and went on. Let’s hear some more analysis, professor. What else, what other behaviors, have you catalogued in that compartmentalized list of things that you call your mind?”

“Well, now that you asked”, Kenneth replied. “I do have a few more observations about males and females, men and women. How about the enunciation of the ’s’ sound? There is usually a distinct difference between the genders in the production of this common sound in our speech. The male ’s’ sound is rendered with the tongue farther back on the roof of the mouth behind the front teeth allowing more air to pass through for the ’s’ while the woman’s enunciation is made with the tongue closer to the front teeth and more pursed to let less air through. Try it – you’ll see what I mean. Hearing a man say his s’s more like a woman heightens the listener’s attention and awareness and immediately the man’s essential “maleness” becomes somewhat suspect and less complete. And when a woman’s enunciation of the ’s’ is male, her femaleness becomes somewhat reduced. And interestingly, I have noticed that this distinction of the pronunciation of the ’s’ sound as a sign of maleness or femaleness applies across many other languages and cultures.”

“Really, tell me more”, implored Barbara.

“Well, here’s an example – I have enjoyed seeing actress Jody Foster in many movies, among them, a couple of my all time favorites – “Silence of the Lambs” and “Contact”. And while Ms. Foster is small, delicate, shapely and beautiful, really quite feminine, there were always her ’s’ sounds, which made me wince and wonder. And then, sure enough, just in the last couple of years, Ms. Foster emerges from the closet and confirms my long standing suspicion. And then there is tennis announcer Mary Carillo, whose very masculine s-sound is quite striking and whose sexual orientation consequently has been a source of media speculation.”

“Come on now. That observation about the s-sound is quite interesting, but I wouldn’t paint everybody with that brush – the rule doesn’t always apply”, Barbara retorted.

“I agree”, Ken continued. “Certainly there are scores of gay females who are feminine in every respect, from their general overall appearance to the feminine pronunciation of the s-sound. And there are certainly many gay men who are masculine in every respect, including their s’s. A perfect example is Thomas Roberts, the MSNBC anchor, over whose incredible good looks and perfectly matched attire you have always swooned. I must say – I was surprised too when I read his interview account of love at first sight – falling in love with a man he met at a party, and later married. For Mr. Roberts appears heterosexual in every respect, including the pronunciation of his s’s.”

“Well,” Barbara admitted. “You’re right about that. I actually was a bit crushed and deflated when I learned that Mr. Roberts was gay. But in relation to what you mentioned before about females’ s-sounds, isn’t the pitch of a female voice more important, I mean doesn’t a low female voice sound masculine?”

“Hmmm, interesting question….I would say no. Some examples are the low voices of actresses like Marlene Dietrich or Lauren Bacall. Yes, low voices but distinctly feminine because of the feminine s-sound. Also some low female voices from popular music. Listen to Swedish singer Monica Tornell’s voice singing the Dylan classic “When I Paint My Masterpiece”, or Marianne Faithfull, her voice lowered significantly over the years by illness and lifestyle, sing “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan”. Both voices as low as a man’s yet clearly feminine – the old s-sound again.”

“Yes”, Barbara replied. “I have heard both of those songs by those artists and you’re right – voices pitched much more like a man’s yet I never doubted that they were women’s voices. What other examples have you taken note of?”

“Well then there are female athletes, especially tennis players, whose exhibition of these characteristics is quite striking. I don’t happen to have knowledge of the sexual orientation of any of them, save the long-public same-sex orientation of Billie Jean King and of Martina Navratalova. But there are female tennis players who, despite their height, strength, speed and hitting power, are still very feminine. Chrissy Evert comes to mind as a prime example, Martina Hingis is another. Some female players who are otherwise feminine in every respect, have a very masculine gait, almost a swagger, which to me calls their orientation into question. The very beautiful and otherwise feminine Canadian professional, Eugenie Bouchard, is an example – beautiful face, lovely blond hair, slim shapely body, even a spread in the annual Sports Illustrated bathing suit issue, but when she walks and talks (yes, listen to those s’s) I begin to wonder.”

“OK, if what you are saying is true…but it does seem to be a bit stretched and twisted to fit your preconceptions – how did we get this way?”

“Well, again, these characteristics seem to be innate”, Kenneth responded. “I don’t think that mothers teach their little girls how to walk daintily or to crook their little fingers when holding a teacup or that dads teach their sons to grip a cup handle or to walk a certain way. And I certainly don’t think that mothers or fathers ever correct their little girls’ or little boys’ enunciation of the “s” sound. In short, I know that parents can’t and therefore don’t teach their children how to behave to reflect their gender. It just naturally happens.”

“My God, your analysis is so detailed. And it’s so weird that you take the time to think about all this? What else is on your list?”

“Well, I’m so glad you asked. You’re a teacher and I’m a teacher. I’ve graded lots of writing papers – not as many as you, I admit, but certainly enough to notice that generally speaking, boys have different handwriting than girls. I can look back at those goodbye letters my kids at Irwin School wrote for me back in 1968, cover the names and still tell whether they were written by boys or girls. And I still have many handwritten letters from my father and from my mother. Both wrote very legibly but there’s a difference – Mom’s handwriting is more delicate and artistic – more curves and swirls; Dad’s is more harsh, linear and definite. Also, take a look at our writing – both quite different. When I’ve been in a bind and I’ve had to forge your signature on something – it’s been really difficult – I’ve had to hold the pen more loosely and concentrate on the swirls, the wider verticals in the l’s, h’s and g’s. And I am sure when you’ve had to forge mine, you’ve done just the opposite – really grip that pen, press more firmly, write more heavily and jaggedly. So think about it – you can’t deny that there are gender differences in handwriting. And our moms and dads or teachers didn’t teach us to write differently, we just did, because something deep inside us was guiding those pens and pencils.”

“OK so there’s handwriting differences. I can’t disagree but perhaps girls’ and women’s hands are not as strong as a boy’s or a man’s hands are, so of course the writing is different.”

“Nonsense, even if a woman’s hands are bigger, stronger, more mature than any given man’s or boy’s hands, you still get this swirly, circular, artistic and expansive kind of writing from females and a much more thrifty, spare, choppy and angular writing from a male hand. Strength, age, maturity and coordination have little to do with writing style. Gender has everything to do with it.”

“My God, anything else?”

“Indeed there is. Surely you’ve noticed how women and girls, even little girls, punctuate their conversation and provide emphasis with their hands. Think about it. And most of that hand and finger flavor for a conversation is done daintily and delicately with a flexible wrist. Yes, there are boys and men that often use their hands when they talk but this activity is much more limited and the wrist is usually rigid. And rather than two hands, a man might use the fist or a finger for emphasis. Remember the incredible job that the late Philip Seymour Hoffman did in portraying Truman Capote in the 2005 movie “Capote”? Let me tell you, he had those s-sounds and the flexible wrist and delicate hand and finger movements down perfectly”.

“Well, ok, maybe you’re right. I’m not going to argue with you about your observations. But where does all this get us? What’s the point? And don’t you think that you’re being quite sexist, pasting these kinds of labels on people? People simply are who they are and they are that way through no fault of their own. They didn’t choose their parents or the genes that determine and regulate the way they behave. I mean who cares about the masculine or feminine qualities of men and woman? Why do you spend your time cogitating about such things?”

“Well, there’s no point really. Maybe in my need to organize and categorize to better understand, I just loosely divide people, men and women, boys and girls, into groups, actually continua – one for females and one for males. At end of one are clustered all the characteristics that we commonly accept for extreme femininity and on the other are those that represent extreme masculinity. And along these continua are males with greater or lesser of the characteristics described and females with more or less of the characters defined as female. Also somewhere along those continua are gay men and gay women who perhaps exhibit some characteristics of the opposite sex, like that key s-sound or a distinctive walk. And I don’t really think that noticing things about people and thinking about them is at all sexist. I think that I’m just interested in those things and find that maybe I notice them more than other people. There’s nothing wrong with that – I’m not making a value judgement, just an observation.”

But before I stop talking, I have to mention one more thing, Barbara, please don’t roll your eyes, about the s-sound in one’s speech. Have you ever noticed the peculiar ’s’ sound that is exhibited primarily by some men from the southwest, especially Texas, that is more an ‘sh’ sound than an ’s’, like an exaggerated or ultra masculine male s-sound? They tend to pronounce the name of their state “Tekshesh”, pretty much like President Johnson did. Do you know what I mean? “Yesh, we live in the United Shtaytsh of America”. I mean it’s not a complete ‘sh’ sound but it’s close and definitely not really the commonly heard s-sound. You hear it from some of those retired generals that serve as the “military experts” or “ekshpertsh” as they would “shay” it, on cable news, excuse me, cable “newsh”

“Ken, really, that quite enough”, Barbara said. “You’ve ’s’ sounded me to death. I’m going to miss important words and phrases in conversations and newscasts now because I’ll be focused on peoples’ s-sounds. And don’t you think you’ve missed lots of important information yourself as your ears have strained to focus on these distinctions? Enough already.”

“Barbara, you’re really shomething elsh.”

Barbara shakes her head, rolls her eyes and goes back to the book she was reading before this conversation began.

“Home is where the heart is”; “there’s no place like home”; “it’s so good to be home”. Yes, a home is important. In the words of George Carlin, it’s also a place to hold our “stuff”. And it’s also a place to sleep, to eat, to keep you out of the rain and cold, a place in which to feel secure, a space to share with loved ones, a place to enjoy and love. A home is cozy and comfortable.

Over my 75 years I’ve lived in many homes and looking back on them each place had an influence on me and was significant for me. And each home in which I have lived has provided indelible memories, mostly good. And when I visualize each place where I have lived I realize that it has provided something special to me – the unique experiences, the people with whom I lived, the feelings generated by daily life in that home. As such, the homes in which all of us have lived form an important biographical thread in the fabric of our lives. What follows is that thread for me, a narrative of places where I have lived, divided into three parts: Part I 1942 to 1972, Part II 1972 to 1983 and Part III 1983 until now. Here’s the first part.

Part I

Barbara and I at Sunset Farm 1942

I was born in Somerset Hospital in Somerville, New Jersey and as an infant lived on Sunset Farm, a residence and farm buildings owned by the church of which my parents were members. This place preceded my memory but visiting it as a young adult and seeing pictures taken there when I was very young enables me to speculate on what life was like there for my mother, already caring for four year old Barbara, with infant me and shortly after, another pregnancy and my sister Elaine, to be born while we lived there also.

Barbara, Elaine and I 1945 (note the wartime wood construction of the stroller and wheelbarrow)

In 1945 or so my family was assigned by church authorities to live at a church home in Oakland, California, where my brother Robert was born. At this house my memories began, with hazy impressions of a trip on the Oakland Bay Bridge with its multiple suspension spans, a tunnel and then multiple truss spans. I recall seeing somewhere from this bridge a Sherwin Williams sign with neon animation spilling paint down over a neon globe.

Elaine and I, 1946 or so

And at our house I recall spotlights filling the sky, maybe having something to do with the war with Japan. And I remember looking for pretty stones in an area between the rungs of a ladder lying where rain fell from the roof. I also recall as a little boy marching around an oval rug chanting “round round Hitler’s grave”. Apparently this ditty came from an Almanac Singers song in 1942 but I don’t remember how I came to know it. I also have a memory of clouds of fighter planes flying overhead, probably from a nearby Air Force base.

Barb, Elaine and I

The next home to which my family moved in 1946 or ’47 was a church home called “Lock Haven”, on Canal Road about a mile east of the little church community town called Zarephath, between the towns of Bound Brook and Manville, New Jersey. We shared this large rather ramshackle house of graying and peeling white wood siding with several others – an elderly couple, the Schisslers, and an elderly single man, Mr. Wittekind. We occupied the two floors in the main part of the house, with the Schisslers in the lower floor of an addition and Mr. Wittekind in a single room above.

Me, Rob, Barb and Elaine, forsythia and swings in background 1947 or so

Outside was a long cinder driveway meeting a gravel main driveway that went left to the barnyard of a large gray barn and to the “bee house” where Mr. Wittekind kept his bee equipment: some “smokers”, extra hives, beeswax frames and a large centrifuge. (I knew about this paraphernalia because after Mr. Wittekind’s passing, my Dad tried to take over and learn the bee business.) The gravel driveway to the right went downhill to Canal Road which to the left took you to Zarephath and beyond to Weston, Manville and Somerville or to the right to Bound Brook, South Bound Brook and towns beyond, like Dunellen, Plainfield or New Brunswick.

Robert outside the Lock Haven house with the forsythia

Around the house were maple trees, forsythia bushes, grass lawns and a large lilac bush, which you could actually enter and navigate little paths among the stems and branches. Adjacent to some large forsythias was a rusty and old but still serviceable set of swings which we kids enjoyed. There was also an incongruous small hexagonal building with maroon shingles on its exterior which my sister Barb used to raise her flock of ducks. The big barn was used for storing some church farm implements and stacks of bales of hay in the haymow. The haymow had that wonderful unique smell of old wood and hay, not readily describable but instantly recognizable and known only to people who have experienced barns in their lives.

Charlie and Elaine, Lock Haven barn in background

The driveway left extended beyond the beehives and bee house and eventually met a dirt road which left would take you to the Tabor (another church home which anchored the farm operations) peach and apple orchards and right would take you to past some hayfields on to Zarephath, our “church town” which I will describe elsewhere. That right turn would first take you over a culvert containing our little creek, in which I occasionally “fished” for non existent fish with a stick, a string and a piece of wire “hook”, while letting my mind run on about fishing and a thousand other things.

Me, Columbia bicycle and our ’49 Chevy

Across Canal Road from the house was “the canal”, our simple colloquialism for the Delaware and Raritan Canal, an old formerly important transportation artery constructed in the 1830’s connecting the Delaware River and the Raritan River and used for about a hundred years to transport cargo between Philadelphia and New York City. It was only later that I realized that the path on the canal bank that I knew as the “toe path” was really “tow path”, the path worn by the horses and mules that had towed barges on the canal. “The canal” played an important role in our lives during those years in Zarephath. I learned to swim in the canal, as well as doing my first real fishing. And in the winter, when the canal froze, you could ice skate all the way to Princeton, getting off the ice to walk around the bridges and locks between.

Elaine, Rob, me and Charlie, lilac bush in background

It was at Lock Haven that big sister Barbara raised her flock of ducks  and Dad and Mom raised several flocks of chickens to sell. For some reason both Mom and Dad frowned on pets so there were never any dogs or cats to pet, love and take care of. But one time when Dad had a flock of speckled  Plymouth Rock chickens there was one all-black chicken among them that got picked on all the time by the others for being different. I used to protect this chicken, put him under a crate to keep him safe and gave him his own food and water and he became, believe it or not, my pet, even coming to me when I called his name, “Blackie”. So, Tommy Smothers, you weren’t the only kid who had a pet chicken!

Me, Blackie,  Elaine

The tall chimney over the kitchen and dining room of the Lock Haven house went down during Hurricane Hazel in 1955, thankfully not penetrating the roof, which likely accelerated our move to another church residence – “Morningside”, about a mile west of Zarephath. This house, which also served as the home of another family, the Chambers, was located among some flat, fertile fields, the floodplain between the Canal and the Millstone River, a tributary of the Raritan River.

This house was small for a family of our size. At Lock Haven Charlie had arrived, born at home and Richard also, right before we moved, making eight of us to fit into three upstairs bedrooms. Later an addition was built onto the house and Mom and Dad’s bedroom moved downstairs, making it a bit more tolerable for us six kids upstairs. Of course, while in this house, Glenn and Stan were added to the family making the final eight, so it was always crowded. I initially shared a bedroom with Robert and Charlie so the three of us became quite territorial, in order to share the space and the drawers of one dresser. Barbara and Elaine were in another bedroom.

Richard, Stan and Glenn at Morningside

The childhood memories that accumulated in this house were many, and included assembling serviceable bicycles from the pile of accumulated parts in the garage each spring and riding them on the many dirt roads in the immediate area, to participating in Dad’s truck farming operation, which blossomed into running a roadside stand on the “Weston Causeway”, the road between Canal Road and Weston Road into Manville. The stand was run by the younger kids, namely Charlie and Richard, while Rob and I and sometimes the girls helped with the planting, cultivation and harvesting of strawberries, sweet corn, tomatoes, and other vegetables.

Elaine outside, Millwood across the fields

Another fond memory was rocking my little brother Richard asleep in his wheeled baby basket while I listened to The Lone Ranger, Jack Benny and other popular radio shows from the 1950’s. Also I remember my Dad’s “It’s a girl!” joke when my brother Stan was born. After four boys in a row, all of us older kids had hoped for a little sister. But it was not to be, it was our last sibling, dear brother Stan instead.

Rob in back, Glenn, neighbor Celeste Chambers, Richard and Stan in front

While living at Morningside I made my first foray into radio and sound reproduction. It was there that I assembled a mail order crystal set, a rudimentary radio that picked up a signal from a connected bedspring antenna and was listened to on a set of headphones. I could not believe at the time that this little gadget actually picked up WOR from New York City as well as our local religious station, WAWZ. It was also at this house where as a teenager I assembled my first really good sound system – an Eico amplifier I built from a kit, a 15 inch Jensen coaxial speaker that I mounted in an old wooden radio cabinet, and an old Garrard turntable. It was on this system that I used to blast Rossinni’s William Tell Overture and Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture as well as Fats Domino and Little Richard.

Elaine and Charlie in front of Morningside house

The yard of this house also contained several symmetrical and eminently climbable maple trees, in one of which I fashioned a nice seat-back from baling twine in a fork of three branches high up in the tree. This became my redoubt in which to escape from the noise and chaos of my little brothers. Today looking back I can think of nothing more relaxing than climbing that tree with a sack of tomato sandwiches in my belt and a good book in my hand and settling back in that comfortable seat, reading my book, eating my sandwiches, feeling the tree gently sway and hearing the leaves rustle from a warm summer breeze, above it all, away from it all, in total privacy and relaxation. Yes, I could still hear the noise but I was above it all and thus quite removed.

Glenn, Richard, Stan, Murphys’ house in background

Other memories I associate with this house are a unreliable heating system which allowed the glass of water by my bed to freeze one winter night, and the several early spring floods we had. Being in the floodplain of the Millstone River, the area was vulnerable to flooding and we did experience a couple of these, when water ran down the cellar steps in a waterfall, causing havoc with Mom’s jars of canned fruit and vegetables and presenting a huge cleanup job when the flood subsided and water was pumped out. The house looked like an island in the middle of a huge lake and it was exciting to work with my brothers making rafts and then floating out into the deeper water.

Charlie among the maple trees 1960

“Morningside” was located about a mile away from the church headquarters town, Zarephath, and was conveniently reached on the Weston Canal Road or on the “back road” a road past “Millwood”, another church home, through the woods and over the dike (an earthen structure to protect Zarephath from the occasional Millstone River flooding and down into our little church “town”. And halfway along our long cinder driveway from the Weston Causeway was the home of the Murphy’s, another church family.

All six Friedly boys at the Morningside house, ’56 or ’57

In the fall of 1958 I was sent to the church school in Westminster, Colorado for my senior year of high school, got into some trouble there and in November was sent to live with my Aunt Margaret and Uncle Emil in Wooster, Ohio. The Wooster High School chapter of my life will be discussed elsewhere on this blog but in terms of a home, I lived in a really nice house, the first family home that my uncle, a general contractor, had built for his family. Built on a hillside in the farmland outside of Wooster, the basement of this beautiful house with real redwood siding was exposed in the back where you could enter and exit through a basement door. It also had a two car garage attached to the house by a breezeway. While there I lived in a comfortable basement bedroom with access to my own bathroom. I was with my Aunt and Uncle through my graduation and into most of July when my parents picked me up to return home to New Jersey and start college at Rutgers University in nearby New Brunswick. Before I left that summer I was able to work for Uncle Emil and receive firsthand a valuable introduction to basic carpentry skills, which I have used my whole life. I also painted, actually stained, the entire house before I left in August. I could not find a picture of this 1958 – 1959 home in my files.

During my first two years of college I again lived at home but obviously spent little time there since conditions were never appropriate to promote study and deep thought. I loved my little brothers but study there was impossible, so I spent most of the day and evening at Rutgers (see “Chaos: My Undergraduate Education”, to be published soon).

After my second year at Rutgers and after some disagreement with my father, I moved to Denver, Colorado and lived in several different apartments at 3001 Umatilla St. From here I could easily get on Speer Boulevard and then on Interstate 25 to get to my job at Navajo Freight Lines on South Santa Fe Drive. I began living there in a one room efficiency apartment where I slept on what was my couch during the day. After a couple of months I moved to a one bedroom unit with a roommate, John Griego. Later, having befriended a couple of Regis College students, Rich Byrne and Ken Adams, I moved into a three bedroom unit with them, all the while working at Navajo. Later that year, a couple of girls in another apartment whom we had befriended, Jerrilyn Rickey and Janice Goddard, joined me in deciding to leave the apartments and rent a furnished house. We did so in south Denver. I cannot remember the address but the experience of being in an actual house with these roommates was rather pleasant. Janice had a little baby girl so Janice, Jerrilyn and I seemed like an interesting little family. Eventually Janice and her little girl moved back to Alaska, Jerrilyn back to Montrose, Colorado and I rented my fourth residence during that year and a half in Denver, a small furnished apartment in central Denver. I don’t remember too much about this little place except that it was comfortable, furnished and conveniently located. Nor could I locate a picture of it in my files or elsewhere.

3001 Umatilla, Denver, Colorado

I returned from Denver in 1962 to live at home for awhile, found a job and resumed my education at Rutgers at night. After getting married in 1963, my wife Elaine and I lived in a one bedroom apartment adjacent to the Rutgers New Brunswick campus – 85 Easton Avenue. A half block away was a Rutgers gathering place called Olde Queens Tavern, very convenient for a quick hamburger or a take-out pizza. Adjusting to marriage, Elaine and I had some loud differences of opinion while in this apartment and I remember being shocked once, when lying on the bed during the day, that I could hear a phone being dialed by my next door neighbor – yes, the walls were that thin and I am sure my poor neighbor had heard all the anger and profanity that had passed between us. For awhile, my brother Robert, who had just started at Rutgers, lived around the corner from us in a small empty store-front that had been turned into a small apartment.

85 Easton Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ

About the time I graduated and began teaching, we moved into a new apartment complex at the junction of Route 18 and US 1 in New Brunswick – 200 Hoffman Boulevard. This apartment was convenient to my job at Irwin School in nearby East Brunswick but also convenient to a number of part time jobs I held at that time. Elaine had started work for a pediatrician, Dr. Hyman Gelbard, at about this time, whose office was also readily accessible. The apartment complex had a swimming pool perched right above the noise and exhaust from US Highway 1 which we used to enjoy, despite the fumes. I have not seen these apartments in many years but we entertained many guests while there, both friends and family.

While staying in the same complex, we later moved from our apartment in order to escape the noise from college student neighbors underneath us to another in the next building, only to find the same problem, this from the neighbor above us, forever fixing a powerful aversion to living next to, above or below anyone at all in an apartment house. It was at this time too when through Elaine and her contact with drug detail men, I began to take pills to sleep or pills to keep me alert (see “My World of Work”) as I worked a number of part time jobs, in addition to my full time job of teaching, to help make ends meet.

In 1968, after obtaining the job with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, we moved to Pinon Boarding School in Pinon, Arizona, a million miles from nowhere, right smack in the middle of the vast Navajo Reservation at the end of a 45 mile paved road west from Chinle. I recall vividly the Mayflower truck drivers’ comments when delivering our furniture to our primitive cinder block duplex on a mud-filled alley (can’t call it a “street”) in Pinon – “Are you guys out of your minds?” These were the same drivers who had picked up our furniture from our significantly more luxurious apartment home in New Jersey.

Pinon Trading Post 1969

One of the Navajo Reservation school complexes that one passed on the way from Chinle to Pinon was a new day school called Cottonwood, which had, in addition to new school buildings, a dozen or so brand new individual houses for teachers. Actually I had initially thought that this was our Pinon destination on the road from Chinle; it was disappointing that it was not and we had to go on – to old Pinon Boarding School, with the main school building a WPA – built structure and other buildings – the dormitories and residences – painted cinderblock. But our time in Pinon was indeed exciting and memorable. It was at Pinon Mercantile, the local trading post where I met a lifelong friend, Bill Malone, his lovely Navajo wife, Minnie, his stepson and his three little girls.

Bill Malone and daughters 1968

I had read about and finally got to meet the notable BIA school administrator, Wayne Holm, who at his school, Rock Point Boarding School, had formed the first functioning Navajo School Board and had instituted a number of innovative instructional strategies so I applied to be transferred to his school, close to a hundred miles from Pinon. Wayne said he wanted me so we packed up and moved again, this time at our expense and this time in a U-haul truck or a borrowed pickup truck. We moved to a nice single family 3-bedroom house, similar to those I had noticed at Cottonwood, in the residential area of Rock Point School, which cost us, as I recall, about $24 per bi-weekly paycheck. We paid for the utilities.

Rock Point School, housing in background

We were at Rock Rock Point for just one year, since I had applied for and was admitted to a post-masters program at Harvard Graduate School of Education. So we sold all of our furniture that had been carefully transported from New Jersey to Pinon and less carefully transported a year later from Pinon to Rock Point, packed what was left in our new VW Kombi and headed to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where we had been fortunate enough to get into Harvard married student housing, a high-rise near the Charles River called Peabody Terrace.

Peabody Terrace, Harvard married student housing

Our home here for one year, 11 Peabody Terrace, apartment 412, was a partially furnished studio apartment on one of the upper floors, where we had a table and chairs, a mattress on the floor, stereo equipment, LP records and books in a brick and board bookcase, a couch and a desk. I can’t really remember what we brought with us in our VW but it could not have been much – we certainly had stripped ourselves down to the bare essentials – maybe the desk and the table and chairs since we had sold our living room sectional couch, coffee and end tables to my friend Bill at Pinon and sold our beautiful Spanish “distressed finish” dark wood bedroom set to someone at Rock Point. Everything that mattered to us at that time was packed into our vehicle – essentially clothes, music and books. Also, our dog, Seymour, from the Rez, must have come with us because he was with us in Marshfield and Plympton, our next two residences, but I don’t remember traveling with him at all – must have been because he was such a good dog. Nor do I remember him in Cambridge. Maybe he was somewhere else at that time? But where? Did someone take care of him for us? I simply do not remember.

Finishing my year of school, I obtained my first school administrative job as Assistant Principal at Duxbury Elementary School in the south shore community of Duxbury, about 30 miles south of Boston. Our first move to this area was to a small furnished rental a couple of blocks from the beach in Marshfield, the next community north from Duxbury. A small two bedroom house without a garage, this place was ideal as we tried to settle down after the year of school in Cambridge.

After my first year in Duxbury, we bought our first house at 69 Ring Road in Plympton, Massachusetts, about a twenty minute drive to my job in Duxbury. The house was built by a local contractor and landowner who also sold building lots. It was quite modest sized, three bedrooms and one bath with attached two car garage, although to us it seemed very spacious. It was basically a ranch style and was covered with attractive New England style cedar shingle siding. We enjoyed this, our first real house, the first home that we actually owned. It was built on a two acre wooded lot and was located well off the road, hidden back among the trees. I recall a pleasant walk behind the house among some lovely hemlock trees, especially beautiful after a winter snowfall had decorated the branches. It was here that we replenished our furniture, buying much of it from Jordan Marsh warehouse in Quincy. Having built my first stereo amplifier made by Heathkit and the pair of KLH speakers bought while at 85 Easton Avenue in New Brunswick, it was at this house that I finally assembled and finished a beautifully designed music component console made by Furn-a-kit which held the amplifier, tuner and turntable with shelves and sliding enclosures for our LP records on each side.

Our house at 69 Ring Road, Plympton, Massachusetts

It was at this house where my brother Robert visited us from Germany, where he had made his home after serving as an officer in the Army. Accompanied by his girlfriend Helma, we enjoyed his visit very much. Rob also pitched in to assist in some landscaping outside and uphill from the house. As I remember it was a sort of rock retaining wall by the garage. Another memorable occasion was a surprise visit was from my cousin Sandy. We took him into Boston for a superb club concert by the incredibly rich-voiced blues singer Tracy Nelson.

This concludes the first section of “Home Sweet Home”. My memory, though pretty good for a guy my age, may have provided some inaccurate information, so please don’t hesitate to let me know if something needs to be corrected. All articles on this blog are really works in progress, anyhow. My second and third sections are written and will be published as soon as they can be illustrated.