Old tiles.
Old signs.
Old man.
Things to cherish before they slip away. Or are torn away. Or pass away.
The Saturday Blog: Old
28 Saturday Sep 2013
Tag Archives: The Write Side of 50
Fall Spectacles
27 Friday Sep 2013
Posted in Concepts
Double vision.
BY LOIS DESOCIO AND JULIE SEYLER
We love eyeglasses. So it’s ta-ta to the summer shades, hello specs. We’re expecting to see less sun, but more fun.
Farewell, Julie! Keep Your Nose Down
26 Thursday Sep 2013
Tags
Yesterday, Julie and Steve took to the skies towards Bali for a few weeks vacation time. True to fashion, Julie’s head did not pause in its pondering – specifically, this time, about what can potentially go up her nose.
I know you’ll all join me in wishing her and Steve safe travels, fun, and adventure. I’ll reach into the vault for some Julie-posts while she’s away.
Below is her last live entry before hitting, no doubt, a potentially pungent JFK airport:
~Lois
Steve and I are en route to Bali, somewhere between Hong Kong and Jakarta. Luckily, we dodged Typhoon Usagi and our flight was not canceled. So while I am on my way of the country, it seems like a good time to discuss a pet peeve, a personal peccadillo, a piddling pimple of an insignificant annoyance.
I have a preternatural distaste for things that have been aromatized to make them theoretically “smell” better. Floor polish that conjures up a piney forest, detergents that are supposed to remind me of the ocean, and a city bus infused with a rose-scented room deodorizer wraps my nose in indignity. (And of course if the bus window is hermetically sealed so that I can’t even open it, I become outraged at the thought that I am a prisoner to a rose bomb!)
The greatest affront of all is being at a restaurant seated next to someone who has had the audacity to douse themselves in scent. I have waltzed in, anticipating a meal infused with roasted garlic and fresh herbs, and instead Brut is wafting up my nostrils. It is always a tad embarrassing for my dinner companion when I discreetly whisper to the waiter that we must change tables because I have a problem with the way the person sitting next to me smells.
I hope the plane I’m flying in isn’t a perfumed vehicle filled with perfumed people. It’s a pretty long flight.
Private Planes Bring Clearer Skies
25 Wednesday Sep 2013
We over-50s came of age just at the time when air travel was becoming dominant. We saw the decline and fall of the dominance of rail and steamship travel.
I can remember when I was a kid, we went to bon voyage parties aboard the cruise ships my grandparents were taking to Italy. I can remember my school friends taking the train to Miami. But by the end of the 1960s, it was all air travel.
Back in those pre-terrorism-mentality days, people who were meeting a flight could go right to the gate. Needless to say, there was no searching of passengers, and their carry-ons, although simple metal detectors were brought in after people began hijacking planes to Cuba.
Anyway, people our age grew up with air travel. It wasn’t special like it was for our parents. It was just transportation, faster than the train or steamship. And that speed meant that getting there quickly took a priority over enjoying the sights along the way. While trains had big, glass-enclosed touring cars so that you could see the countryside, airliners climbed to 40,000 feet, and showed you the tops of clouds.
But air travel doesn’t have to be this get-there-quick-with-the-shades-drawn-while-we-watch-a-movie-and-eat experience. It’s possible for air travel to be just as leisurely, and scenic, as train travel – you just have to know someone who has their own plane. 
Fortunately, I have a friend my age who learned how to fly his own plane after he reached the right side of 50. Brian lives in upstate New York, and flies his plane all over the East Coast. Sometimes he flies down to a small airport in New Jersey, and visits with me and my wife (we were all college classmates together). And sometimes we drive to where he is and he takes us up for a scenic view.
Recently, we drove to Cape Cod to meet Brian and his 92-year-old mom. Brian had his plane at the Provincetown Airport, and he took my wife and me up for a leisurely tour of the end of Cape Cod. We were high enough to get the Google Earth perspective of the Cape, but close enough to the ground to see the details of houses and shoreline below us. It was marvelous.
While we were out flying, there were some hot air balloons in the distance and it occurred to me that that is another way to get a leisurely air view. It’s travel where the trip is all the fun, and you get there when you get there. That type of travel is more and more appealing to me all the time. My wife and I will be taking a Mediterranean cruise next month, and I look forward to just sitting on my balcony and watching the world go by. I don’t know whether that means I’m getting old, or just that I have come to appreciate taking the time to stop and smell the roses. I like to think it’s the latter.
Farewell to Summer, and Its Tomatoes
24 Tuesday Sep 2013
In our garden, we have about a dozen grape and cherry tomato plants. It takes more work to pick them than with Big Boy or other large tomato varieties because you have to pluck fifteen or more of these little gems to equal one of the others. But we prefer them because the fruit is so much sweeter. We inadvertently planted them too close together, so they grew into an impenetrable tangle of interlaced green tendrils – a dozen plants became one, and happily have been giving us sweet, red beads of fruit since mid-July.
Now it’s September, and the season is dwindling. We’ve already seen a couple of nights with temperatures in the low 50s – threatening to go lower. So before fall officially arrived Sunday at 4:44 p.m., I went out to pick the last tomatoes of the season. The sky was pure blue, with the temperature around 70, and a light breeze – the kind of afternoon where you knew that if the sun wasn’t beating down on you, it would feel chilly. But when the breeze died down, and I turned my face to the sky, I could pretend for a moment it was still full summer.
From ten feet away, the green tangle was generously sprinkled with dots of red – meaning lots of tiny ripe tomatoes waited to be harvested. I grabbed a big bowl and set to work – working my way along the length of the garden, one arm’s width section at a time. I took the blood red ones, and even slightly yellow ones too, knowing those won’t ripen anyway in the last warm days and cooler nights ahead. And I left behind hundreds of hard green nuggets that will never see the table. But nothing’s wasted – in late October, after the first hard frosts, we’ll chop those up along with the spent vines, and throw them into the compost pile to make fertilizer for next year.
At each stop, I picked in a vertical column, top to bottom – first those nearest the top of the canopy that I could reach standing up. Before depositing each one in the bowl, I pinched off its top, littering the ground around the plants with green caps and stems. Then I kneeled and reached under the plants, ducking my head between them and reaching upward into the crowded green canopy, pushing aside, and untangling the ropy threads to find the pink pearls hiding beneath the leaves. I heard the high-pitched kamikaze-whine of mosquitoes, roused from their midday torpor, buzzing at my ears. My hands were full, and I couldn’t swat – I’d deal with the itching later.
After combing through the middle of the canopy looking upward, I turned to the lower branches and the ground, where tomatoes I had dropped or jostled from their stems lay waiting in the cool shade to be gathered up. By the time I stood up 45 minutes later with a slightly sore back and sandy knees, my bowl was full. To top things off, I moved to the fig tree, and plucked five figs – plump and brown – still warm from the sun.
Despite all their vibrant flavor and color, taking the last tomatoes of summer from the vine is bittersweet. In a few brief days there will be no more. For all plants and creatures and seasons, time runs its course.
But for now, we celebrate. I brought the bowl inside, discarded those that had hidden wormholes or other defects, and counted the take: three one-quart containers full, 300 or more succulent red berries in all.
Time to make tomato salad:
- 2 to 3 cups grape or cherry tomatoes (probably one of those quart containers full), sliced in half. This takes time, but it’s worth it, releasing all the sweet juices and tender seeds.
- 3/4 cup chopped scallions.
- 1 – 2 tablespoons chopped basil (or a few teaspoons of dried basil, if that’s
- all you have).
- 1 – 2 tablespoons dried rosemary, crushing the stems in your hands.
- 1/4 cup each of extra-virgin olive oil, white vinegar, and sherry.
Play with the proportions of the spices and liquid ingredients to suit your palate. Toss all ingredients and season to taste with kosher salt. Let it sit for an hour or more to let the flavors mingle. Serve with warm crusty Italian bread, sweet butter, and a glass of red wine. Repeat red wine as needed.
Ti saluto, another fine summer.
We Partied Like It’s 1973
23 Monday Sep 2013
Posted in Confessional
Tags
Asbury Park, confessional, High School Reunion, Julie Seyler, Lois DeSocio, OTHS, The Write Side of 50
It wouldn’t be us, without some Asbury. Photo by Mindy Kirchner Schwartz.
BY LOIS (ROTHFELD) DESOCIO and JULIE SEYLER
Good to know that middle age has not diminished the verve, and the spunk, that I see as still defining my high school graduating class. Forty years after getting our diplomas, our reunion this past weekend was like us – effusive, diversified, funky, and fun (with attention paid to booze and yummy food).
A one-night affair would not be enough for us. We want a spree. So the first hellos and hugs were exchanged at a night-before party at the Wonder Bar in Asbury. (A former stop on The Circuit – where many of us, and our first cars, drove in circles.)
We were more spruced-up the next day, but felt just at home with an afternoon-into-the-night fest on the grounds of our classmate’s on-the-Navesink River manse:
There were top-notch, elegant foodstuffs from fruit to nuts to chocolate:
And we ended the night true to our 18-year-old selves: scarfing down Windmill hot dogs:
Yes, we might be bending towards 60, but our feet didn’t fail us on the dance floor: 
And we embraced our commonality. And our diversity: 
A big-hearted thanks to everyone – the intrepid organizers, the magnanimous Manns, and the groovy, far-out, super-duper Spartans. (Who all “look exactly the same!”) Lois
******************
Memory Board.
And so it came to pass. After a year, perhaps even longer, of planning, organizing, and strategizing, the reunion committee made it happen. About 110 of the 400-plus graduating class of 1973 gathered at a petite chateau on the banks of the Navesink River on an iffy weather Saturday.
For about two weeks before, one classmate had taken on the duty of providing daily weather updates, the final forecast being there was definitely a chance that rain was going to come down on the festivities. It didn’t matter – we walked into a playlist of reel to reel hits from the 1970s, assiduously compiled by one guy who had asked each of us for a contribution of our favorite song. There were kisses, hugs, laughs and mutual choruses of “You look great!;” “What’s new?;” and (embarrassingly enough), “Who are you?”
We ate, drank and danced, but the absolute highlight was when we enmassed the dance floor to belt out American Pie screaming at the top of our lungs, “Drove the Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry.” The band segued into “We Are Family”, and there we were in choreographic unison, shouting, “I got all my sisters with me.” I couldn’t help but think that in some way we really were all still “family.”
I hadn’t seen most of these people in 20, 30, 40 years, and yet there we were back in high school. There is a level of comfort, familiarity and togetherness that is unique, and I think somewhat special, but perhaps not unusual. After all, we did spend almost every day together for four years, and for some of us even before that, starting out in elementary school and moving on to Dow Avenue where we were tormented into memorizing the words to “The Impossible Dream” for 8th grade graduation.
Then it was over. The band channeled Donna Summer, and played one last dance, and the goodbyes started. Wishes of health and happiness and, “Let’s get together,” and “See you soon.” Then more hugs and kisses. And off we tramped in the rain.
So hats off, and mega kudos to the man with the digs who so graciously opened his home and the reunion committee of the Class of ’73, who threw a party that made it so much fun to go home again! Here’s to seeing everybody in 2023. xoxox, Julie.
The Saturday Blog: Autumn
21 Saturday Sep 2013
Posted in Art
Autumn’s coming – show your true colors.
A Construct of Connections Help Gain Perspective
20 Friday Sep 2013
Everything’s connected. Mobile by Julie Seyler.
Does being generous in spirit lead to a better sex life?
Does being kind really beget kindness?
Is it true that if we give good karma to the universe, we will be showered with good karma back?
Do positive thoughts contribute to good health?
Does it matter if any of this is true, if the simple thought of it reduces stress to less?
Is it better to feel the pain as deep and hard as you can so you can thereafter embrace pure joy?
If you walk through a storm is there a rainbow at the end?
Can a good telepathic connection get you what you want when you need it most?
Who knows. But answering, “Yes!,” to all of those questions can’t hurt a thing.
My “Bird’s Eye,” and the View, Diminishing with Age
19 Thursday Sep 2013
Posted in Confessional
Birding Blind. Photo by Margo D. Beller.
Despite the best effort of advertisers to make those of us of a certain age think we can stay young forever, there are times when you know you aren’t.
Mine came after a Saturday eye exam.
I was a nearsighted child who became farsighted as an adult. Sometimes, I am a little too farsighted – worrying about things to come that I can’t control.
Like the other body parts, eyes age. The last time I saw the eye doctor, she decided to put drops in to dilate my pupils for a closer exam.
My eyes turned out to be fine, but coming into the sunshine, I was literally struck blind. My husband had to run to the car for my sunglasses. It was after this that we went birdwatching, as usual, on a sunny Saturday.
I can’t think of a more essential body part when birding than the eyes. I fear the day that I can’t see well when I want to do something I enjoy.
I have met older birders who sit in one place and wait for the birds to come to them because they can’t walk very well. There may be blind or deaf birders out there, but I’ve never seen one.
It is hard enough to find a small bird in a fully leafedout tree with binoculars and two good eyes. It is a major challenge to find them when everything you see is surrounded by a corona of fuzziness.
I’ve come to depend on my ears and knowledge of bird shape and habit more than my eyes, but on this day I discovered not being able to focus on details such as color and streaking put me at a severe disadvantage. At one point, MH and I were in a bird blind, a structure designed to allow you to look out without scaring anything. We were looking down from a small height to see if anything was skulking around in the brush.
Bird blind, I thought. I’m a birder blind. Great.
Going from sunny meadow (where I had to use my sunglasses) to shady woods, I could barely see at all. When something big flew from a tree at our approach, I had to depend on MH for a description. Based on that, and the vague shape I saw, I could only guess we had spooked a roosting owl – likely a barred owl. Barred owls can be active during the day. What I saw was too big to be a screech owl and not as white as a barn owl. It might also have been a great horned owl. I’ll never know.
Meanwhile, MH had managed to turn his foot the wrong way and had to walk slowly. So he was limping. And I was nearly blind. Not exactly what the commercials portray of the golden years.
The fuzziness is gone now, and I can identify the familiar birds in my backyard just fine. I am having a harder time ignoring my farsightedness.
I’ll Always Have a Love for a “We’ll-Always-Have” Story
18 Wednesday Sep 2013
Posted in Confessional, Men
Robert and Francesca.
Those who follow my writings on this blog may have picked up on a theme that runs through most of my favorite books, movies and even songs. I am a lover of stories about people who meet, enjoy a brief time together, and then are forced to move on. It’s been described as ships-passing-in-the-night fiction.
A famous example of this is, “Casablanca.” Rick and Ilsa enjoy a short time together in both Paris and Casablanca, but they part at the airport. And as Rick reminds Ilsa, “We’ll always have Paris.” And that’s the way I like to refer to these stories. To me they are the, “We’ll-always-have(fill in the blank)” stories.
Over the years there have been many, “We’ll-always-have” stories. One of my favorites is, “Two For The Seesaw,” a 1962 film starring Shirley MacLaine and Robert Mitchum that was made into the musical, “Seesaw” a decade later. Stories like this are naturals for musicalization because the emotional level is so high.
A more recent example of this is, “The Bridges of Madison County.” A few weeks ago I saw a performance of the pre-Broadway run of, “Bridges” up in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Most people known the story from the 1995 Clint Eastwood/Meryl Streep movie, but the original Robert James Waller novel is much more heartfelt. Anyway, the musical version of the story comes to Broadway early next year and I heartily recommend it for those who love a good, “We’ll-always-have” story.
For the uninitiated, “The Bridges of Madison County” revolves around Francesca Johnson, an Italian-born war bride who marries an American GI right after World War II, and accompanies him home to his farm in Winterset, Iowa. She raises a family and has a good life there. But then one day a photographer named Robert Kincaid arrives at her farmhouse. He’s lost and looking for directions to a nearby covered bridge. Francesca is home alone because her family is at the Illinois State Fair. What transpires over the next week is one of the great love stories of all time. But just as Rick knew that the right thing to do was to let Ilsa go off with her husband, Robert and Francesca painfully reach the same decision. Francesca must stay with her husband and children. And so, even though they would never see each other again, they’d always have that week in Winterset.
But perhaps you have experienced your own “We’ll-always-have” story in real life. It doesn’t have to have been the love of your life. Maybe you had a dear childhood friend, and the family had to move away. I can imagine a tearful farewell scene where you promised to write, and never forget one another.
I had that kind of tearful farewell 40 years ago at a train station in Baden-Oos, Germany (now known as Baden-Baden). My cousin Bob and I were in college, and backpacking through Europe. We met two sisters in Budapest, and hit it off so well that we couldn’t bear to say goodbye when our planned time there ended. So they invited us to visit them at their home on a Canadian military base in Germany. We had such a tremendous time in those few days that there were tears at the train station when we had to get back to Munich for our flight home. We promised to write, and I did diligently for several years. Eventually life moved on for all of us. But even though Bob and I are not likely to ever meet Rosemary or Linda again, we’ll always have Germany.
While there is something sad about two friends or lovers separated by life, what makes these stories bittersweet rather than tragedies is the fact that they did enjoy a brief time of true happiness. In fact their happiness is so strong that it’s enough to last a lifetime. So whether it’s Robert and Francesca, Rick and Ilsa or even you and that special someone you had to leave behind, there is much truth in the words of Tennyson: “‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
And we’ll always have our memories.
The Write Side of 59 