AD's Journal 2024

  The death of Jimmy Carter struck me harder than I might have expected, especially considering most people believed he had been on death’s door for years. Some people call him one of the most ineffective presidents in history, an unfair assessment considering all that he had to deal with in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, and Nixon’s forced resignation. I call him the accidental president because he might not have been elected without a number of other factors. Gerald Ford had pardoned Nixon, guaranteeing he would get no progressive vote. Ronald Reagan had come close to unseating Ford as the candidate and divided the GOP. On top of all that the United States had fled Vietnam, something that would be repeated in Afghanistan under Biden four decades later. People seemed unwilling to vote for an inside the beltway candidate, and so found in Carter the ultimate outsider, a nice man, who media mocked as a peanut farmer, and whose brother Billy came across as a country...

   Burger King John is dead – I think How long ago, I don’t know. My last conversation with him was about a month ago; He was in too big a hurry to get his meal at the nursing home to speak for more than a moment. From a previous call a month or so previously to that, I learned about his dire circumstances. He and his common-law wife, Elaine, had settled into separate nursing homes after John became too ill to continue caring for her. She had a debilitating disease that caused her to blow up like a balloon. In the end, she could not leave her bed and John attended to her needs as if a nurse until diabetes caused him to lose one of his legs. During that conversation, he told me they were outfitting him with an artificial limb, although he also indicated his overall health was failing, forcing him into a less-than-adequate nursing home, while Elaine, a former teacher in Newark, had ended up in an upscale facility elsewhere. The two continued to communicate via cellph...

     Went back to Seaside Heights for the first time since just after Sandy, reliving a series of memories that go back far into my childhood. My grandfather built many of the bungalows in Toms River, which became a regular summer retreat, and we often crossed the bridge over the bay to take in the carnival like offerings Seaside offered. In the 1940s, my aunt, Alice, worked as a hostess at the Stewarts Root Beer stand on Route 37, which was still standing in 2012, but gone during this trip. There are two such resorts side by side, Seaside Heights – a mecca for teenagers, and Seaside Park, a more affluent community. While my family went to Seaside Heights, the family of the local doctor took up summer residence in Seaside Park, something my childhood friend at the time (the son of the doctor) never let me forget (nor did he let me forget the private school he attended while I went to a more mundane Catholic school). I actually made two trips to both seaside comm...

   Today is Garrick’s birthday, the last of three best friends with whom I’ve shared a majority of my life, all born the December, although in different years. Garrick, born in 1949, was Pauly’s earliest friend, having met him as kids in what was then called West Paterson, a love-hate relationship that continued right up until Pauly’s death in 2020. Garrick, a burly, somewhat laid back character, whose family moved around a lot when he was a kid, used to brag about that moment at midnight when he and Pauly were the same age – Pauly born on Dec. 28, 1948, and Garrick, Dec. 27, 1949. The two boys met on the street the bordered West Paterson and Paterson, when Garrick found Pauly sitting on the curb playing with toy soldiers. It was a moment that would define the rest of their lives since Pauly soon learned that Garrick had a portable radio and a full set of Hardy Boys books, both of which Pauly borrowed, returning the radio later broken. He never returned the books. ...

   I'm at our office in Hometown, not the same building or even the same company as in the past, but a word space where we all crowd into a small room slightly larger than a phone booth or shower, and share access to decks and internet. Located four light rail stops from where I live, this not a burden to get to, as in the past, I either had to drive to the Hometown office (risking tickets or worse) or walk. This being the day after Christmas almost nobody is here, except the woman who serves as office manager. Even the front door is locked and I got let in by someone seated in the lobby, and then by the office manager when I reached our work space. One of the fringe benefits is usually the free coffee, only the operators of the facility are not on premise to make the coffee. Using the little used expresso machine I managed to get enough caffine to remain alert. At home, I have plenty of coffee, but an equal number of distractions and coming to the office like this h...

    On the verge of breaching the quarter mark of the 21st Century, I’m somewhat depressed this Christmas. Not just by the fact that the most intimate members of my family have passed as have my closest friends, but also by the realization that what we thought would occur this far into the future did not. Our dreams, the high hopes of living as artists or songwriters or poets or such, never materialized, dissipated like smoke. Unlike my closest friends, I never hoped for fame or glory (although I might have settled for fortune), and so, I’m less disappointed in how my life turned out than I am with the failed expectations I had for my friends, each of whom had much more talent than I ever had, and so had more of a chance to achieve. They say don’t put all of your eggs in one basket, meaning if you have multiple talents, the more likely you are to achieve success. A fallacy when it comes to my friends, each of whom had potential in music, art and other fields, while...