I’ve written about Uncle Milton before, my favorite uncle, who lived at 220 Sullivan Street, Greenwich Village, NY. This was in the fifties. He was my mother’s favorite and she his although that didn’t keep her from haranguing him mercilessly, just as she did the rest of us. He visited us often, and we often visited him, but always as a family, never solo, so that’s what I decided I was going to do - go to New York and see Uncle Milton. By myself. He’d take care of me for sure. I had just enough coins for a bus ticket. Just enough. I hid my bike in some bushes, took a streetcar to the Greyhound station, and six hours later landed at Port Authority. Alone. Without a cent. A few hours of daylight left. Better find Uncle Milton fast.

Fortunately, he worked at Willoughby’s, the camera emporium, only a few blocks away. I don’t remember how I made it there but I did. My mother’s advice: “You’ve got a mouth. Use it.” No doubt I did because I got there. But uh, oh. Uncle Milton’s office was empty. He’d taken the week-end off to visit us in Baltimore, which is where he was at that moment. Baltimore. My home town. From which I’d just escaped. On my mother’s phone. Wanting to know what I was doing there? 1951. Eleven years old. Alone. In New York City. Without a dime. Oops. Now what?

Now, my Uncle Milton was a well liked guy. A gaggle of his friends took me to dinner, got me a bed, and, next morning, put me on the bus back. I retrieved my bike and rode home to the calmest I’d ever seen our house. Mom was on her best behavior, made me a roast beef sandwich, and nobody said a word about where I’d been.

Since he got married I don’t see him so much, but it wasn’t that long ago that we sat on the porch and spent an hour trying to out bullshit each other. Max had been sober for forty years now, but he loved to talk about the good old days, particularly drunken slug fests at the Mountain Brook bar and grill after which everybody fell all over each other, slapping each other on the back, laughing their asses off. Max doesn’t laugh. He brays. You’d hear him in the midst of a super bowl crowd.

Enough about Max, at least, for the time being. We will be friends for all our days. He will mosy by again, and we will laugh and hoot and tell the same stories we always tell. Who da thunk it? Me’n’Max.

Outside my window what leaves are left have shrunk from lush green to parchment. Soon they will be gone altogether, and the trees will take on that Arthur Rackham look, beautiful but frightening, sinister but very human. It’s too chilly to relax in the garden, but the air is clean and clear like crystal. To breathe it in is rejuvenating. We figure peak to be this week-end. Right now I’m waiting for a neighbor to pick me up in his four wheeler and take me to a campsite I rent out. It’s in the middle of nowhere which is its charm. Folks renting this week-end are in for a treat. It’s as if they’ll be in the middle of an impressionist painting.

To be in the midst of an Autumn wood at its peak with the mid-afternoon sun shining through the leaves and upon them, color everywhere, it’s as close to a miracle on this earth as I can fathom.

“Go on. Give it to him,” Alex prodded Mike. Mike dug deep in his pocket and pulled out…A Harmonica! Alex went on. “I read your blog this morning, called Mike, and said we gotta get this guy a harmonica.” So, there they were, 10pm on a Sunday evening, bearing the gift of a harmonica to a neighbor who always wanted to play one. They even showed me a couple of cords, and I was off and running.

It just goes to show you.

I write the words and send them out there, never knowing where they’ll land or when or even if. Yet, every once in a while, every great once in a while, I hear from someone who years ago saw something I’d done or read something I’d written, and a lifetime later wrote to tell me how much my story meant to them. I still try to write every day even though no one makes me or, God forbid, pays me any more. But, I have faith that my words, like seed pods, will somehow be carried by a soft wind to someone who will care for them and carry them all their days. It doesn’t happen often but often enough to keep my fingers nimble.

PS

“Good Googa mooga” as Little Richard used to wail. Well, it’s good googa mooga here at Spruceton because it’s raining harmonicas! Whoever thought my words would have such an impact? Amazon delivered yet another one all the way from China, ordered by my buddy, Blum, a friendship of 70 going on 71 years. Right on, Bro’! I’ve almost got “She’ll be comin’ round the mountain” down cold. The Marine Corps Hymn is next.

Still, the sadness remains.

It seems as if people are walking away from me rather than towards me. I see them from behind. Some are from so long ago. I’ve tried to track them down but to no avail. The phone is a poor substitute. “Hi. How are you? I’m fine. You?” Except how much deeper can you go? Some of these folks I ache to see again. Tears come when I think I won’t. I had a girlfriend in kindergarten. Her name was Barbara Herman. I haven’t seen her since the sixth grade. Seventy-six years! Still, how is she, I wonder? How are the other ones I’ve loved, and how are the ones I haven’t? How ‘bout the kid who punched me in the stomach when I was seven years old causing me to panic, run away into the street where I got creamed and nearly demolished by a car. I swore that would never happen to me again. Where is that kid now? Is he even alive? Who is? And what about my brother? Eighty three. A fine lad, in my opinion. There are so many what-abouts! People I would like to see again if only for a minute, people to whom I might like to apologize or tell them how much I savored their company or how much I enjoyed that meal they cooked. I knew a guy in Italy who gave two feasts per year, each feast modeled after an ancient one, like Mandarin Chinese, for example, something like fifteen servings. Or Aztec. Oh, Lord. Is he still cooking? He was mysterious then, but now?

As an octogenarian, I live with a certain amount of apprehension that I’ve never lived with before. I’ve been close to death, but never this close. I’ve beaten the odds a few times, but, still, I’m in range. I’ve never had to put a cap on things until now. I can no longer walk in the woods by myself; I can no longer drive; my children caution me all the time:“Don’t take risks, Dad.” I won’t, guys, because I want to go on, to see you grow, to plant another tree, to eat from next year’s garden. It’s been a bountiful life of people and places. My office is filled with mementos - chotchkies - but, more importantly, so is my mind. Like great Greek drama, we know the ending; it’s how you get there that matters.

Oedipus cannot avoid his fate, but a whirlwind of events precedes its arrival. Each chotchke delves a person and the place where I met them. That Apache tomahawk delivers the aroma of the Superstition Wilderness. I traded an old prospector for it. That ancient dog tag hearkens the drill field chants of the DI’s on Parris Island. “One, two, three, look to your left, look to your left, look to your left, your left, your left…” Check out that photo of me on the Yukon - stern eyed, bearded. You wouldn’t know the feet of this guy were blistered and bloodied. There’s a dinosaur bone with the pebbles from its gullet when it roamed the wilds of Utah. What about the guide who pointed them out? How is she? A tiny ceramic shoe with a place for a candle sat upon my first birthday cake. It’s the only pic I have of my maternal grandmother. A switchblade from Italy. Pottery from Acoma. A silver wine goblet from my Bar Mitzvah. And more. Let’s not forget the books. So many. Most read. I began as a Jewish kid in Baltimore aching to write but not having a clue as to what to write about. My personal angst did not interest me in the least, probably because I was so bored with myself. I wanted Lawrence of Arabia, Gordon of Khartoum, Van Der Post of the Bushmen. I wanted whirling Dervishes, charging rhinos, ancient cities overgrown by jungle, a decent machete. That hitch in the Marines began it all. I am inclined to say there is not much left undone. And yet. I’ve always wanted to play the harmonica.

Was it worth being two days in a car? Sure was. Surrounded by folks you love dearly in a party mood? Why not? Bombarded with treats you wouldn’t let in the house? Yeah. Watching my grandson clamber around a dripping tide pool? Oh, yeah. Gorging on lobster?Come on.Fried clams? Please.

Now, as far as medical stuff goes, good news. Had an oncology appointment just before vacating, and my numbers couldn’t be more perfect. It will never go away, however, as long as the stats stay put, it won’t be the cancer that kills me.

Stay tuned.

I have a major decision to make. The family is going on a vacation to Maine next week. My son has graciously consented to stay home with the dogs, although I expect his graciousness is at least in part due to his desire to have the entire house just for himself and his girlfriend. An innocent enough transaction. So what’s this big deal decision I need to make?

To take my computer or not to take my computer!

I don’t need to go through all the pluses and minuses. You all know them. Take it and keep my face buried in the screen rather than the sand? Or keep it home and wonder 24/7 what’s on it? Of course, I’m rather an anomaly since I don’t even have a telephone. As far as I’m concerned, it’s just another thing to run out of or lose or drop or break or trade up…A phone at my desk is enough. I can reach you, and you can reach me, but when I am in my grove we can’t, and that’s the way it should be.

It’s peaceful and quiet in my grove. The apples are bearing, the peaches are blooming, and all the new trees we planted this past Spring are doing well. Hopefully, the peaches will survive the deer, and Dorian’s tree will one day tower over all the others. Why we’re not getting pears this year is another mystery? Things come and go in cycles to which we must adapt as well. No pears. No brie cheese. Easy.

My daughter took me by the arm on Father’s Day and led me to the grove where, lo and behold,a brand new bench which she had put together herself, sat between the pear and a now elderly apple. To sit there in the shade and still look out over a sun flushed meadow is a kind of heaven. No phones allowed. You might see deer or bear or turkey. If you’re truly lucky you might see mink or marmot. None of them has a phone, yet all of them - as Professor Harold Hill said in The Music Man - know the territory.

I take solace where I always do. Our house has a wrap-around screen porch that both protects us from the elements and plops us in the midst of them. The other day I was cooking on the porch - my ancient kettle cooker battered but still operative - awaiting the advent of heavy winds. They came on, banshees screaming. I was not prepared for their power, was certain ancient trees would be uprooted. Their massive crowns whipped back and forth. I was mesmerized. Riveted. Rapt. It lasted long enough to make me wonder when it would ever stop, long enough to take my mind off the meat and burn the steaks but good. Burnt steaks? Solace? For the entirety of the storm my mind was on nothing but that storm - my mind, my senses, the entirety of my attention - I felt no pain. I didn’t know I felt no pain. I just didn’t. Whatever clicks off pain clicked it off. I was enthralled. Wherever pain goes when you don’t feel it, it went there. Much obliged.

The Magnificent Seven.

Yul Brynner is hired by an impoverished Mexican village to protect them from marauding bandidos led by Eli Wallach. Yul scours the territory for the best gunfighters available and interviews each one for the job - guys like Charles Bronson, James Coburn, and Steve McQueen. He interviews Robert Vaughn at a table in a cantina. Vaughn is the slickest of the group, a fastidious dresser with black gloves. Three flies are crawling across the table. Vaughn stares at them for a second or two then his gun hand whips out and snatches them. Both men stare at his closed fist a minute then, ceremoniously, Vaughn opens it and releases two flies into the air. Two flies. Then Vaughn forlornly utters my line, “Was a time I’d’ve gotten all three.”

Now, everybody who knows me knows I’m a peaceable guy, nowhere near said gunfighters. But, I’m getting older. Hold on. I am older. Whoa. I am old. And there was a time - metaphorically speaking - when I might well have gotten all three.

What else?

June 20, 2026

Today was one of my best days in a long life replete with best days. Nothing special. Everything special. Spent most of it in one of my two most favorite places on earth: a full bloom nursery on a bright June day being one of them; a library on a rainy day being the other. The rhododendrons are gone as are the lilacs, but the day lilly’s are blooming plus wild daisies and columbine, and marigolds made the jump from our garden to the front lawn. We brought fuschia and geraniums and pansies and lavender and a lot of other stuff to fill in for those that passed. The story I’m telling today is a simple one:nothing special. Years ago I read a book called, Chop Wood, Carry Water,that talked about living with intention, that intention being attention paid to every action one takes, every breath, every morsel, everything one does having a kind of sacrament to it. Why not? I’m alive. And that in itself is a miracle. I spent today with my wife and daughter, and that is another.

June 9, 2026

I try to learn something new each day, and yesterday was no different. What follows may not be of interest to you (though, of course, I hope it is), but it sure is to me because I’ve been disseminating some misinformation for years. No big deal, but now I know different. It’s about bumblebees and how they ought to be incapable of flight due to the bulk of their bodies and the flimsiness of their wings. I’ve been under the impression for years that the reason they fly so close to the ground was because the heavier air pressure helped to support them while at greater heights the air becomes too thin. Wrong. They are capable of reaching great heights if necessary due to the mechanics of their wings. Instead of beating up and down they are capable of changing direction, changing angles, sweeping instead of flapping, more like a helicopter. Why do we see them flying so close to the ground most of the time? The higher they go the more susceptible they are to the cold. Bulky as they are, their bodies just can’t take it, although one experiment had them at about 29,000 feet. But, as always, there’s a simpler explanation: low to the ground, that’s where the food is.

The morning of

June 13, 2026

So I’m sitting on the front porch taking in the early morning sun and thinking how wonderfully orchestrated this all is: an eagle in the deep blue sky,pure white clouds in a slow drift wind, chipmunks on the woodpile, bird calls from the forest, each tree primed for the months ahead, so many flowers in their turn - everything so coordinated, so calm, so right. And then, into the midst, comes this bear, a big old black one scampering from Ron’s bridge through Potter’s meadow then across the creek. It’s always exciting to spot a wild animal. They’re around, of course, you just don’t see them. But, when you do! Be it fox, deer, garter snake, even a robin or a blue jay - always exciting. That bear, however, that bear, spotting him is something special. An extra spurt of adrenalin cuts loose when ursus major lopes into view. As with all the others, you hardly ever see them but, good Godamighty when you do! In “Toehold”, my first novel, I described what it looks like when a bear is skinned out.“Looks just like a man.” Whoa.

This week was for planting trees, and my daughter and I planted three new ones: two weeping willows and one white oak. The willows are designed to sop up the excess water in a back meadow come Spring. The white oak, planted in honor of my grandson, joins a grove of trees dedicated to our family: a pear tree for me and J, apple trees for the children, random others, peach and birch among them. That oak will one day tower over them all, just as I hope he will.

I’ve said this before: a person who plants trees is an optimist. I won’t get to see them in their glory, but someone will, some one will some day sit in the shade of that oak tree, some one will some day have the juice of those peaches running down their chin, some one will some day bite into a crisp apple, in fact, someone already has. Apples and pears I planted years ago are ready for a bountiful harvest now. We will eat them and remember and be happy.

You’ve heard me talk about this before, what it takes, the moments of focus after months of stalking the woods. I don’t remember exactly how cold the day was, but it was a day in December, and, when I visualize back to that day, I see myself in a goose down jump suit, which means it must’ve been plenty cold. I see snow as well. I see my own tracks kicking snow aside as I approach a wild apple tree. It sits at the base of a hill that borders a neighbor’s property. Now, a word about this neighbor: excuse my French, but he was a royal prick. When we adopted our children from Colombia he made it a point to tell us that kind weren’t welcome here. Yeah. A real prick.

Back to the hunt. It’s a small hill and not too bad to climb, so climb I did to the base of an old ash tree near the top, a few yards down from a rusty barbed wire fence, the boundary between our two properties. I sit down and settle back against the trunk of the ash tree, eyes glued to the apple tree below, and hope for a hungry young buck to get careless. I don’t know how long I sat there - it takes a lot of patience - I sat and I sat. No deer but a strange gnawing, a subtle point of annoyance, between my shoulder blades. I actually felt a pressure, a heat, a sense of discomfort maybe even danger. I don’t know exactly what it was that caused me to look behind me, but, finally, I did, and there he was, that son-of-a-bitch, on the other side of that barbed wire fence - my neighbor, standing there, rifle in hand, staring at me. Staring at me, for God’s sake! Staring with such hatred that given the distance, the trees, the snow, the rocks I actually felt it, actually physically felt him boring into me like a death ray. Yet, there was no physical contact. There didn’t need to be. The hatred bored between my blades as surely as a bullet. I stared back until he turned away. I backed out of the woods that day, wondering every step if he were lurking somewhere behind me. It felt like a retreat.

I don’t like this getting older one bit. A lifetime of Zen and, still, I see no advantage to it. A small coffee free from Macdonald’s as long as I’m there by 6am, Tuesday? Big deal. Discount bus rides to some tawdry casino with a bunch of geezers? No thanks. Golden years? More like the rust belt. Used to be I’d rise up out of bed in the morning and do push-ups. Now, I figure I’m lucky to rise up period. We fancy dying in one’s sleep is the ideal. One goes to sleep like one always does except one doesn’t wake up, like an afternoon nap, kind of. But, is it really so? How do we know what happens in one’s sleep, really? Maybe the Grim Reaper with his scythe swoops down from somewhere, and that’s it. No fuss. No muss. On the other hand, maybe it’s a horror with one’s mouth clamped shut unable to even scream? Maybe something is bearing down on us and we can’t get away until we do, until the screen goes black? Fade out but forget the final credits. They’ve already been run. Oy.

I just got a call from a fella I know. He’s a few years younger than I am. It’s turkey season. Mating season. We’re over-run with birds strutting their stuff, and he wanted to come down here and hunt. I couldn’t and wouldn’t deny him because he grew up in this house on this land, and probably knows it better than I do. Also, turkey hunting takes a skill that most hunters don’t have: you need to be able to “talk turkey”,literally, to coax them in. There are all kinds of calls one can buy, but the old timers used to simply suck on a wing bone. One’s heart thumps when from somewhere in the forest that big bird answers back. It’s really quite astonishing to see them all fluffed out as they break into a clearing to prance and dance. When that tail fans out it’s a thing of wonder.

I don’t know the reason, but its importance is visceral: I’ve always had a strong sense of survival. I like to think it began with the Marine Corps although I suspect it started before that. My ideal was to be able to survive alone in the wilderness with only a knife. At my peak I came close. Hunting was a big part of the equation because to survive you need to eat, right? And so I have no quarrel with the notion of ethical hunting, that is, you eat what you take. Those guys who come up from Brooklyn for the season are the ones who worry me. Shootin’ irons on their hips. I mean, who the hell do they think they are? But the locals who hunt span generations, so hunting takes on a different aspect. There is no need to squeeze the trigger until it’s time. There is no need to worry you won’t get yours. You’ve got all day. Actually, you’ve got all year, for a good hunter really never stops hunting. Way before the season opens there are so many signs to consider: where they sleep, where they water…The air actually smells different when they’re around. Your footsteps are different, too, carefully placed flat so as not to make a sound. Your ears are open to sounds you haven’t heard before. If a body can be alert and at peace all at once, this is the time.

Meat prices have gotten so high that even at my age and physical condition I’ve been considering getting out there again. Neighbors said they would help with the butchering, so I’m thinking about it. Problem is nobody in our family loves venison. I don’t think they even like venison although, my guess is, given a hamburger or hot dog, they would not know the difference. We’ll see. Who knows if I’ll even be able to walk by then?

Did you grab a chuckle? Hope so. And, for good measure, a tidbit on the Creative Process:

1. This is awesome

2. This is tricky

3. This is shit

4. I am shit

5. This might be OK

6. This is awesome

   Sorry. Stumped. Nothing more today. Have a good one.

Trees have always been special for me. I love to plant them and have done so over the years to commemorate this and that. (I’m not sure the white oak I planted for my grandson,Dorian,made it through the winter - bummer - but we’ll see.) When we were tots my brother and I spent afternoons with a magic tree. Only we knew how to open it, and only we knew what was inside: a wooden horse. We’d spend hours pounding jewels into it before putting it away for another day. Nobody knew it was there but us. Just us. He doesn’t remember, so now it’s just me.

I keep the following on my bulletin board. I wish I’d written it. I didn’t. A guy named Rabindranath Tagore did.

Silence my soul,

these trees are prayers.

I asked the tree,

“Tell me about God,”

then it blossomed.

We spent the past few days in Florida, terrain as different from ours as any could be. Flat as a baking sheet, the aroma of gardenias. A visit with a dear man whose friendship reaches back seventy years. You don’t shirk something like that. J and I wheelchaired it through TSA, she in her Pink Ladies jacket, me in my USMC vet baseball cap. Since my diagnosis I’ve rarely been out of the valley (mostly for doctor’s appointments) and surely never this far, so I admit to feeling more queasy than I would have liked. But, we had a grand time, as my Irish wife would say, and were feted royally. One of the things I remember from the Nixon years was that his best friend was a guy named Bebe Rebozo. He was nobody of note, but he was the president’s best friend. One presser a reporter asked Nixon why Rebozo was his best friend? Nixon’s answer? He said because we can sit together and we don’t have to say anything. I’ve never agreed with Nixon on much, but I’m copacetic on that one. We, Laibel and I, can sit and say nothing, yet we’ve been talking for going on seventy-one years. Here’s to another one, Bub. L’chaim!