Monthly Archives: April 2013

Same Awe at Magazine Centerfold, Just Different Limbs

30 Tuesday Apr 2013

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Bob tree

Quite the spread.

BY BOB SMITH

National Geographic magazine is famous for its often remarkable high-quality photos. I recently picked up an old issue that was lying around the house, and found a story on giant redwood trees. It featured a pullout photo that folds out, and keeps on folding out, until it’s at least 18 inches long.

And there, filling the entire surface of the page, was a phallic leviathan: a single full-length photo of the second largest giant sequoia tree on earth. At 247 feet high and 27 feet in diameter, it’s one of the most massive living things on the planet. It has two billion leaves. That number alone is mind-numbing – if you counted out one number every single second for twenty-four hours every day, you would be counting for the next 60 years before you reached 2 billion.

This tree is estimated to be 3,200 years old, which means when it was a sapling, humans were just discovering how to use iron to make cutting tools and weapons. Rome, much less the Roman Empire, wouldn’t emerge for another 500 years. But there was the President (its nickname from 90 years ago), quietly sprouting and growing taller and stronger in a snowy forest that, millennia later, would be called Northern California.

It’s so huge you can barely discern the intrepid scientists, and their climbing gear suspended among the upper branches. Wearing bright red and yellow parkas, they resemble apples and peaches nestled in the foliage.

As I stood there in my dining room admiring the centerfold, I felt a sense of displaced déjà vu. When I was a teenager (and beyond), centerfolds in magazines like Playboy and Penthouse featured oversized photos of oversexed women with their limbs splayed in provocative poses. Now I’m more impressed by a giant tree. How life has changed.

Shades of Summer

29 Monday Apr 2013

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Allenhurst Beach. Photo by Julie Seyler.

Allenhurst Beach, unobstructed. Photo by Julie Seyler.

BY LOIS DESOCIO

Have you heard about Project Glass? The Google(y)-eyed glasses that will bring computer-generated images, audio, and more, right into your eye through a mini projector that is embedded into the frame of the glasses. They will make your computer portable. And in your face.

While still in prototype phase, and expected to launch in 2014, Google is working to make these glasses look less geek, more sleek, and more like … glasses. So, here comes the sunglasses.

We, at The Write Side of 50, believe that sunglasses should not be messed with. They are less a shield, and more an ornament. A necessary accessory – right up there with big, dangly earrings, high-stepping shoes, and red lipstick and mascara.

So, we have donned our sunglasses (to add a little sparkle to our homepage) in anticipation of the long, sultry summer days when we will be sunning on our favorite beach. (All ogle, no Google.)

There’s a Method to My Mascara: Plump Up the Volume

26 Friday Apr 2013

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There are NEVER too many mascaras

There are NEVER too many mascaras.

BY JULIE SEYLER

Does anyone remember reading Cosmopolitan (Cosmo) magazine in the 1970s? Helen Gurley Brown’s creative inspiration for the single woman – the risqué diversion from Glamour and the now defunct Mademoiselle? Cosmo always ran a quiz. Maybe all the teen mags did. Maybe they still do. In any event, the purpose of the quiz was to give you, the reader, an insight into your personality. Pop psychology in 10 questions as to whether you were an innate extrovert, who embraced the idea of a party with 100 strangers, or a natural introvert, who could think of nothing more fun than a dinner for two by candlelight. Somehow, the choices given were always made to be mutually exclusive. You were this way, or that way, but never a combo of both. I loved taking those quizzes, and counting how many times I answered (a) or (b) or (c), and getting my nutshell diagnoses in a 100 word paragraph. Better yet, was picking the (a) or (b) or (c) based on my prediction of what the magazine had determined was my primary personality trait.

I don’t remember any of the quizzes today, but one question from one quiz has stuck in my mind over the past 40 years. And rather than it being a reflection of how I have changed, it is a reflection of how I have stayed exactly the same – at least with respect to this particular thing.

The question asked what make-up would I take with me to a desert island. I could choose between mascara, lipstick, or foundation. Hands down, I chose mascara, and today I would still choose mascara (albeit I love my red lipstick also).  Without mascara on, I always feel just a little bit naked, except at the beach – I draw the line at wearing makeup on the beach.

I am very methodical about how I apply mascara. I always have 6 to 8 wands of black mascara with a different type, size and style of brush. I keep a set at home; a set at the gym. And a travel set, because I hate the idea of leaving home without my mascara. People look at my line up and say, “Huh? Why do you have so many mascaras?”

Well, there is a technical method to my madness. The old ones help build the eyelash so it doesn’t clump. The medium old ones help lengthen the eyelash, and the newest mascara gives it shine. (As soon as I discard an old mascara, I buy a new one.)

I have shown my mascara application process to all my guy friends, and they are so appreciative. In fact, I think money can be made on this process.  I intend to ask one of my colleagues if my mascara system can be protected as a business method patent.

7 mascaras and one red lipstick

7 mascaras and one red lipstick.

The Cicadas are Coming (Again). The Cicadas are Coming (Again). And I’m Not Jiggy With It.

25 Thursday Apr 2013

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The cicadas are coming. drawing/photocollage by Julie Seyler.

The cicadas are coming. Drawing/photocollage by Julie Seyler.

BY BOB SMITH

It’s an entomological Paul Revere moment: the cicadas are coming. Every 17 years these giant, ugly bugs burrow out of their holes in the ground and crawl up every tree in sight en route to the upper branches to mate. On the way,
they make a cacophonous clacking racket as they molt, leaving empty husks of themselves clinging to crevices in the bark. Once the ground temperature reaches 64 degrees Fahrenheit or so, here they come.

The first time cicadas appeared in my lifetime I was seven years old, in second grade at Merritt Memorial School. I was in love with my teacher and a little girl named Charlotte with curly brown hair. I remember reading aloud in class and feeling frustrated when my friend Pete struggled with simple words.

When they emerged again in 1979 I was 24. I was working full-time as a garbage man because it paid roughly twice what I’d earned as a textbook editor, the only job for which I was qualified by my undergraduate degree in English. I had been married for less than a year and was just beginning to realize that it was a disastrous mistake.

I was 41 when the cicadas came again in 1996. I was divorced and fourteen years into my second (much happier) marriage. With three kids between 6 and 11, and an intense career as an attorney, I was too busy to notice the emergence of lumbering red-eyed bugs.

This year’s appearance of the cicadas finds me approaching 60. The kids are fully grown and pursuing their own lives. (Although my youngest son, for now, is doing so under our roof.) The prospect of retirement is a cold reality as opposed to a theoretical, far-off possibility. And for some reason this year’s appearance of the cicadas fills me with foreboding.

Their raucous chorus of mating calls, alien eyes and zombie demeanor, and eerie exoskeleton shadows clinging to tree trunks are bad enough. But what makes me uneasy, what really knaws at me now, is their periodicity.

I’m looking at the timeline: when they come again, I’ll be 75. What quantum changes will have happened in my life by then? What will I have gained and lost in those years while the cicadas lay deep in their burrows, sucking at the tree roots and slowly maturing, marking time until their time comes to dig out again?

And the next time they emerge – as insurance salespeople are so fond of saying, “God willing” – I’ll be 92. Will I be able to see and hear them at all? Will I care? In the words of T.S. Eliot, do I dare to eat a peach?

My chances of living to see a third cicada emergence beyond the one expected this spring are nil. Chances are I will have been deposited into my own hole in the ground long before they crawl out of theirs.

In ancient China cicadas were viewed as symbols of rebirth. Many cultures today see this periodic influx as a gastronomic opportunity. After all, these are billions of slow-moving vegetarians that don’t fly away and can’t bite humans. They’re bundles of readily available nourishment on the hoof (or the wing or weird sticky leg, whatever). Yes, for many people, cicadas are what’s for dinner. Periodically.

I’m not a cicada, so I can’t crawl into a hole and count on coming back in 17 years to climb a tree and get jiggy. But I am a bipedal, meat-eating, surface-dwelling top predator, so why not revel in my role? These fugly bugs may have a high gag factor but they’re incredibly low in cholesterol, and they’re packed with protein and nutrients.

I’ve already found a couple of good recipes. If you can’t join them, eat them.

Maybe I’ll live longer.

The Aches and (Ever-Growing) Pains of Aging Eased with a Walk and a Talk

24 Wednesday Apr 2013

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present and absent

Photo by Julie Seyler.

BY MARGO D. BELLER

Now that I am in my mid 50s, I am reminded daily, not only about the uncertainties and challenges of aging, but the consequences. There are aches and pains and sudden fatigue and weight that will not go away. And unexpected mental lapses. There is also the fear I’ll go to sleep and not wake up.

My mother died over 30 years ago when she was 60. When she was my age she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. This past March, her brother died of complications from dementia at the age of 91. He had more years, but he was never the same after his wife died eight years before of Alzheimer’s, which made the dementia seem like a cruel joke. Which one had the better of it – my mother or her brother?

I lost a friend to a heart attack, and another was recently diagnosed with a form of dementia. Friends are losing their parents. Popular
musicians and actors I grew up with are dying.

Where have you gone, Annette Funicello?

That’s no way to think, my husband constantly reminds me. Which is why those birdwatching walks I take in the woods provide better relief than any anxiety medication. So does keeping up with friends while they’re still around. I recently called one of these friends, who had turned 95. He not only has the distinction of being the oldest of my friends, but he’s my only friend that is also a former employer.

When he answered the phone, he knew who I was. He could hear me “fair,” and we easily talked about family, the news of the day, politics and how much he dislikes sports, as though we were still in the same office rather than 1,000 miles apart. He pens a weekly essay for the writers group at the senior residence where he lives, and reads The New York Times daily to keep up.

He doesn’t understand the Internet and social media, so telling him about blog posts isn’t worth the effort. He stopped looking at email when his inbox got stuffed with spam.

“I live in the past,” he said, preferring old-fashioned letters and phone calls. He doesn’t have a Facebook page or a Twitter feed, and wouldn’t want one, although he has a lot of interesting stories he could tell about his military career during World War II. I would like to age his way. His family is nearby, and people look in on him daily. He is content with his life, despite the sad things, which includes his wife’s passing.

“Anyone who says they’ve never gone through any bad things in his life hasn’t lived,” he told me.

As we were ending our conversation, my 95-year-old friend told me something astonishing. He has weekly conversations with his brother in Florida, who just turned 100! He seemed in awe of the fact his brother is still alive, well, and has all his faculties.

So am I – of both of them. I can only hope to have the same luck.

Boomers Rocked AM Radio in the ’60s

23 Tuesday Apr 2013

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Transistor Head. Collaged drawing by Julie Seyler

Transistor Head. Collaged drawing by Julie Seyler.

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

The Baby Boomer generation has some terrible PR. Most people see us as the selfish “Me Generation” – idealists who sold out. This is in stark contrast to our parents, whom I am convinced are called the “Greatest Generation” just to annoy us. Damn you, Tom Brokaw!

But whenever I get into a discussion about how little Baby Boomers have contributed to society, I always point to two things that our generation provided the world – rock music and personal computers. Interestingly, the brand name “Apple” covers both of those.

Now I don’t think that our music is better than the music of our parents or children. (Well, OK I do think it’s better than most of the music my children listened to when they were teenagers.) But obviously “better” is a function of taste, and our music appeals to our tastes just as big band music appealed to our parents, and rap appealed to our children.

Back in the ‘60s, most New York-area Baby Boomers got their music from AM radio. Our parents were listening to Dean Martin on the hi-fi, while we listened to our music on lo-fi (or no-fi) transistor radios. WABC was the perennial top dog in this market with talented people like Dan Ingram and Ron Lundy behind the microphone.

I was reminded of this recently because back on July 3, 1981, I ran my reel-to-reel tape recorder while Dan Ingram celebrated his 20th anniversary on WABC. I put the tape away and forgot about it. A few weeks ago this musical time capsule resurfaced at my house. I carefully threaded the take-up reel and hit the Play button. I was instantly transported back to my youth. The music was there, and that iconic voice, who referred to his audience as “Kemosabe,” and in beach weather told you when to “roll your bod,” presided over “the Ingram mess.”

For much of our youth in New York, WABC was our music. And then on May 10, 1982 the music died, as WABC changed to an all-news station. I think that for many Baby Boomers, that day marked the end of our youth. Our music was gone from the mainstream.

Well, of course it wasn’t gone altogether. It had just migrated to FM. But it wasn’t the same after WABC. I never listened to Top 40 radio again. And certainly the music post-1982 was less “our music” than the music that had dominated the airwaves for the 20 years before that. So Baby Boomer music became oldies, and some of the former WABC disk jockeys migrated to the oldies station -WCBS-FM.

But now I know that whenever I want to be transported back to the heyday of AM radio I have that WABC time capsule on my tape deck. And there is a website called http://www.musicradio77.com/ that is full of recordings and information about this New York radio institution from our youth.

Clearly WABC was not the only radio station in New York that played rock music. It was simply the most popular. It provided that community of common experience that is so hard to find today in our fragmented media world. It was the chief outlet for Baby Boomer music in the New York area, and I will put the music that Baby Boomers produced up against the best of any other generation.

Walking Like a Tourist in Manhattan

22 Monday Apr 2013

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Observing the city from on high. Bowery Savings Bank.

Observing the city from on high. Bowery Savings Bank. All photos by Julie Seyler.

BY JULIE SEYLER

Sometimes I pretend that I am a tourist in Manhattan. I go for a walk with my camera looking for things that I would notice if I were on vacation in an unknown city. I might wander down Second Avenue or take the bus up to the George Washington Bridge or, if in the mood for a boat trip, hop on the ferry to Staten Island. It’s always great to see the Statue of Liberty.

Liberty in the distance.

Liberty in the distance.

One day, I walked south on the Bowery. At the corner of Houston Street, like almost every block in the city, construction was going on. To protect against falling debris, a tarp overhang, bolted down by a mesh wire wall, had been erected, thereby creating a covered pedestrian walkway. I was about to cross the street when I noticed that the obliqueness of the early morning, eastern light created shadows on the sidewalk. When the wind blew against the wire mesh, it looked like ripples on a lake …

Sidewalk mesh. Photo by Julie Seyler

… and the steel bars holding everything down reminded me of a Franz Kline painting:

Shadow lines on a sidewalk. Photo by Julie Seyler

I kept walking south, and came upon a grand old building supported by columns in a Greek Corinthian style, and decorated all over with ornate floral fretwork, which seems to be a ubiquitous characteristic of 19th century architecture.

The Bowery Savings Bank

The Bowery Savings Bank.

It was the Bowery Savings Bank Building, completed in 1895 by the firm of McKim, Mead and White. It had been designated a New York City landmark back in 1966. The architects had even taken into account the ground one stood on before entering the imposing doors of the bank. Red and white mosaic tile had been laid down in a checkered pattern. It framed a red vine with sprouting leaves. Given the speckled concrete floors that support modern commercial buildings, it seemed so exotic despite its somewhat battered condition.

Mosaic tile. Bowery Savings Bank.

Mosaic tile. Bowery Savings Bank.

At Canal Street, I turned around and headed back uptown. The tenement buildings remained a testament to the city that once was. Slowly, they will be torn down, and replaced with glass boxes. That is the history of New York. Each generation makes its mark, and with it a little more architectural history is stripped away. I snapped this photo in memory of all the long lost fire escapes.

Fire escape confusion

Fire escape confusion.

Deep Affection, and a Pillow to Prove It

19 Friday Apr 2013

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"The Cycle of Love". Pillow art by Julie Seyler

“The Cycle of Love.” Pillow art by Julie Seyler.

Sometimes, we may think the cycle of love refers only to the cycle of our lovers and spouses. But, does it not also refer to the cycle that imbues the greatest friendships? The cycle of affection, happiness, joy and love we feel, over and over again, when we remember how lucky we are to have the people in our lives whom we call great friends?

So here’s to the five-month anniversary of the blog, and the cycle of love that underlies it. Thanks to everyone for following and reading.