Midlife Meditation

The Taj Mahal, Atlantic City Huge, gaudy, ugly, impossible to ignore, bankrupt, empty, squatting on several blocks of Atlantic City's fabled Boardwalk: the Taj Mahal is the perfect memorial to the Trump regime. If only he'd taken up residence there, instead of on Pennsylvania Avenue. Trump financed construction of this enormous eyesore with junk bonds. A year after it opened, he put it through bankruptcy. It subsequently reopened, thrived for a time, then closed its doors last October, a month before the election that elevated Trump to the Presidency. I was in Atlantic City shortly before the election, attending a music educators conference. From my hotel room, I could see brightly lit casinos extending up the Boardwalk for miles. In their midst stood the dark hulk of the Taj Mahal's hotel tower, its huge TRUMP sign turned off. Strolling on the Boardwalk, I paused to photograph the shiny hulk, thinking it was a fitting metaphor for the Trump campaign. Thr...

I listened to this album once, then traded it in. I remember the moment Steve Martin got bored with being a standup comedian. It's immortalized on the third of his four comedy albums, the title of which is the punchline to the joke. I don't remember the joke at all, but I do remember the audience expressing outrage at where it went. There was a long, uncomfortable pause, filled with the sounds audiences make as comedians milk their unappreciation for effect, followed at least by the line, delivered with all the self-important irony of his first famous catchphrase ("Excuuuuuuuuuusssee meeeeee," just in case you're under the age of 50): "Comedy is not pretty!" They were the words of a comedian who'd outgrown his schtick, who was ready to move on to something kinder, gentler, and better-respected. In the case of Steve Martin, it was his burgeoning career as an actor in screwball comedies that toned down the Dadaism of his onstage persona, enhan...

It was just a marble: a small sphere of glass with a ribbon of color in its center. ToysRUs will sell you 160 of them for $4.99. I had bags of them when I was a kid. And when Abel put it in my hand, it felt like the Nobel Prize. I first met Abel as a feral kindergartner. Kinders are developmentally puppy-like: inquisitive, cuddly, playful, unhousebroken. For no reason at all, they will pile on top of each other. They will also hug anything: each other, a teacher's leg, a post. Abel had all these qualities, plus two more: he had the body and face of an anime version of a Mexican child, round eyes, round face, a shock of black hair, a teddy bear physique; and he spoke no English. I assume that was the case, because in the five months I taught at Margaret Scott that year, I never heard him say a word. He also seemed not to understand anything I said to him--or perhaps he chose not to. He'd run across the gym on a whim, forcing me to stop the music lesson entirely and...

Terror is a wonderful aid to memory. I mostly loved eighth grade US History. On day one of the class, Mr. LaFordge introduced himself with a clever current events joke, pointing out his name should be easy to remember, since it contained (and after writing it on the board, he underlined) "Ford," the name of our brand new (he'd been sworn in, following Nixon's resignation, just two weeks earlier) President. He then passed out our brand new textbooks, and I had the delightful experience of being the first person to crack mine open, luxuriating in the smell of virgin paper and ink. It was going to be a wonderful year, I thought. That feeling lasted--in this class, anyway--until we wrapped up the unit on the Revolutionary War, and began learning about the Constitution. The final exam on this unit was to be an oral recitation, from memory, in front of the entire class, of the Preamble. Yes, that's the same text that Oprah Winfrey's character recites at...

I was driving my step-daughter to the gym yesterday when she spotted this bumper sticker: It was the first time either of us had seen this particular graphic, but it instantly reminded us both of another that's been around for awhile: Tolerance, coexistence--these words are commonly interpreted as societal ideals, the next stage in the evolution of Western culture, a Utopian paradise of peace and good will. I'm sympathetic with that hope, but I'm of the opinion it falls far short of what our society should really be striving for. Starting in the early 1990s, when I was pastor of a Reconciling Congregation (a United Methodist Church that seeks full inclusion of gays and lesbians in its ministry), I have been working for on what educators call a "scope and sequence" of accepting diversity. It's a framework for understanding the historical development of cultures both toward and away from being at peace with minorities. This morning, I finally put this fr...

I finally did it: I took the Autism Spectrum Quotient test. I've heard for most of my life that there's something not quite right about how I relate to other people. I don't pick up on nonverbal cues, I struggle and lose patience with small talk, I'm sensitive to clothing tags and repetitive noises in my environment, and I can have a powerful focus on something that interests me, to the exclusion of everything and everyone around me. And yes, I meant to say "not right," because that is how others around me have presented these personality traits when they've assessed me. I've responded in several different ways to this assessment. At times I've been hurt by it, humiliated to be seen as somehow deficient, lacking in essential survival traits. At other times, I've become angry, insisting that this is who I am, damn it, and I have every right to be myself. Anger like this can lead me to dismiss the person making the assessment: What does he...