Magicians were few and far between during my sordid youth, but I’ll never forget the magic spell they cast on me and the others in their audience. White rabbits were extracted from black hats. Some beautiful lady was sawn in half. A volunteer just disappeared right before our eyes. Slight of hands made card decks do wonders. It would take days to unscramble all that hocus pocus of the curious magician on our school stage. Certain human attributes are both helpful and hurtful. Like a magnet, they seem to have two poles: one positive and the other negative. Or, perhaps […]
The Summer of Our Discontent
Written in 1961, the title of John Steinbeck’s final novel, The Winter of Our Discontent, was based on a term from Shakespeare’s play about Richard III. The story mainly concerns Ethan Allen Hawley, a former member of Long Island‘s aristocratic class. Ethan’s late father lost the family fortune, and thus Ethan works as a grocery store clerk which is exactly what I was doing in my freshman year in college to make ends meet while reading the Steinbeck novel each evening. The continuous calamities within the book’s plot made my life seem more like Shangri-La and gave me a perspective on […]
A Prayer for Growing Older
I have always lived on a wing and a prayer without ever believing that prayer changes God’s mind or much of anything else. The first prayer I can remember was the “blessing” at every meal: “Bless this food to our use and us to Thy service. Amen” Never could figure out such words that were repeated each and every day no matter the menu. The scariest prayer I learned as a child was that bedtime ditty: “Now I lay me down to sleep; I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray […]