Let Us Now Praise Famous Audiobooks

Earlier this week, I updated 10 entries to my page of book reviews.

I can't say I've "read" all these books. The truth is, I listened to 9 of them.

Because I freaking love audiobooks.

Also earlier this week, my wife shared a link to a fascinating Washington Post story about the symbiotic relationship between authors and audiobook narrators.

Features writer Karen Heller hit the nail on its head (insert cliche sound effect here) with some of her observations:

"Audiobooks were once clunky and overwhelming, a failed tech experiment, encumbered by multiple discs or cassettes... Smartphones changed everything. Once audiobooks slipped into a listener's pocket, they became ubiquitous, allowing fans to 'read' while cooking, hiking, gardening, cleaning."

My reading room

Or commuting along Route 287.

Heller's story notes that audiobook sales growth has been "seismic," with the Association of American Publishers reporting a 37% increase in audio sales during the first 11 months of 2018.

That's because there's something primal and comforting in having someone read you a story. Audiobooks let your imagination roam while adding a second, immersive sense to the reading experience.

It's sometimes better than movies -- which I also love with a passion -- because sometimes your inner vision is more meaningful than an actor's or a director's. Also, the sweep of a book's detail and narrative isn't edited by a third party.

Having recently watched the 1974 movie version of my favorite book, "The Great Gatsby," it astounded me how extraordinarily thoughtful and detailed the production was. Yet this noble cinematic effort has received more than its share of mediocre reviews over the years. Because "Gatsby" isn't a character you can present to someone fully whole; Gatsby is personal.

The added dimension of audiobooks, plus technology, has added to my "reading" experience in many odd ways:

• There's "Lincoln in the Bardo," a novel with about 50 voices. All the voices come to life in the audiobook.
• There's the "Bill Clinton" and "James Patterson" book I'm currently listening to: "The President Is Missing." (Air-quoting the authors because I bet it was written by a team of ghostwriters; a talented team, but...) It's storytelling fluff; just mind-candy. Still, there's a scene where a character thinks of a Bach concerto, and the actual concerto plays in the background to parallel her thoughts.
• There's music in Patti Smith's book too, and the intimacy of her actual voice. When I listened to Diane Keaton's measured, precise reading of "Slouching Towards Bethlehem," I sped it up so that Joan Didion's words came at me in a crazy, intellectual jumble of images that reminded me of my best friend in Minnesota.
• And then there's the one recent book I had to read the old-fashioned way. It isn't available in audio format because it was self-published by my friend and former co-worker. Although I found it interesting to re-discover the simple joy of words on a page, I couldn't help but hear the voice of my friend echoing in my mind while I read... which added a dimension of soulfulness.

So feed your soul with some epic listening. And don't even get me started on the great new serial podcasts available from audible.com or independently (here's a scary one my daughter and I attended a great live performance of: thenosleeppodcast.com).

Lastly, here's the Washington Post again, touting the "Best 5 Audiobooks of 2018." The accompanying photo...

...features the "book jacket" to "The Poems of T. S. Eliot read by freaking Jeremy Irons."

OK, I added the "freaking." The Post's review really says, "Irons' narration for this collection of poems, beginning with 'The Waste Land,' is forlorn, desperate, crabby and weary -- mirroring Eliot's understanding of a desiccated, exhausted culture bereft of meaning."

For God's sake, does the intersection of art and life get any better than that?

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For extra credit, check out Irons reading "Lolita." -- and, for fans of the Garden State who prefer their books in print: "The 18 Books Every New Jersey Resident Should Read Before They Die."

A Visit to Princeton... In Real Life

Yesterday, 41 members of the mighty Black Glass Gallery, a social-media-based photography community, gathered on the Princeton University campus on a cold afternoon... just to take photos and spend some time together in real life.

BGG's Princeton meetup; photo by Dawn Barry Pechinsky.

I'm the guy without a hat on, next to hooded Jimmy whose hands are on the light pole. Unlike many of the pros and artists in this photo (whose work you can view at www.blackglassgallery.com or by searching #BGGmeetup on Instagram), I'm not a photographer in real life.

Still, the virtual gallery's real owner, Suzanne, has always been kind and supportive -- and with the aid of an iPhone, a Canon Rebel and some advanced, yet simple-to-use editing software, I can be a virtual photographer too.

The photos below are mine, including two views from the Princeton Chapel choir loft, some natural greenery on St. Patrick's Day, and the iconic Holder Memorial Tower:

I had intended to post a writeup here as a sort of virtual campus tour.

But, here in 2018, I also realize there are whole-campus, 360-degree virtual reality tours online, with VR representations of real student guides. There's just such a guide to Princeton among the 600+ campuses (including more than a dozen other colleges in New Jersey) featured on YouVisit.

I can't compete with that in a blog post. This post is "analog digital," just a handful of images of a beautiful cold day in March 2018... like the bronze man in J. Seward Johnson's "Out To Lunch" statue in Palmer Square who's reading something that isn't a Kindle.

Happy 75th Birthday, George (My Fab 4)

George, in 1974

This is George Harrison’s 75th birthday weekend. I say “weekend” because even George himself long thought his birthday was February 25th – until one day he learned he was actually born a little before midnight on February 24th. (That’s true. You could look it up.)

George randomly popped into my thoughts two weeks ago after, of all things, I had re-read Willa Cather’s “My Antonia.” I was sad the book didn’t seem as relevant to me after so many years had passed, and I started thinking of creative works that, to me, were still as fresh as when I first encountered them.

Thank God for “The Great Gatsby,” I thought. And the poetry of Yeats. And anything by Poe.
Then I thought of the music of The Beatles.

Yes!

More than 50 years later, and their music still gives me chills. Despite the untimely deaths of George and John, The Beatles are, for me, forever young and new and bright. They were simply pop musicians, and yet they changed the world for the better.

In the early 2000s, before The Beatles catalog was opened up to streaming and available on Apple Music and the many retrospectives were released – and well before Sirius XM launched The Beatles Channel – it was somewhat rare and a bit unexpected to hear a Beatles song on a car radio. On family drives, with my young daughters in the back seat, they would get to know Beatles’ songs because daddy would suddenly turn up the volume and begin to tell stories about one song or another, sometimes with a sentimental tear in his eye.

Despite this, I’m proud to say that both my now-grown daughters are still Beatles’ fans today.

Now it’s 2018, and the music of The Beatles again seems to be here, there and everywhere. On car rides without my daughters now, I especially look forward to a Sirius XM segment called “My Fab 4,” where listeners, artists and celebrities share their favorite four Beatles’ songs and what makes them special.

Here’s my Fab 4:

1. “Here Comes the Sun”

Because, after all, it’s George’s 75th birthday weekend. Because George was just 26 years old when he wrote this song, even though, by then (1969) the Beatles had already conquered the world and were about to break apart.

Of all the Beatles songs, this one – already widely revered when it was first issued – seems to have gained the most in popularity in the intervening years. It’s recently been the most popularly streamed Beatles song, and it’s easy to understand why.

It’ joyful. It’s an end-of-winter song that lifts the soul. It soars, and it takes you with it.

Not only that, I pick this song first because George is my wife’s favorite Beatle. And because it leads into “Abbey Road”’s next song, “Because.”

2. The whole freaking second side of “Abbey Road”

Life goal: a Varettoni family photo in imitation of this

Vinyl had sides, and this was the best side of vinyl ever pressed.

I love, for example, John’s strong Liverpudlian “Scouse” accent on “Polythene Pam.” John is my favorite Beatle.

John’s accent on that song reminds me that – unlike the Rolling Stones, who were nice middle-class boys acting like street kids – the Beatles were street kids acting like nice middle-class boys.

In November 1963, in one of the first U.S. major news stories about The Beatles (several months before they appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show”), NBC’s Edwin Newman noted that all four had been born during The Blitz (the horrific German bombing offensive against Britain during World War II). They grew up in the Mersey section of Liverpool, which Newman called “the toughest section in one of the toughest cities in the world.”

John always maintained that edge and – to me – it was always this element that separated The Beatles from every other great pop music group at the time. I recall John’s shockingly frank interviews in Rolling Stone magazine, which for several weeks in my early teens led me to casually drop f-bombs into my conversation in imitation. I soon stopped that practice, realizing I could never even play-act being as cool as John Lennon.

The medley of songs on the second side of “Abbey Road” is pure 20th Century musical genius – from Paul’s rare bass guitar mistake on the aforementioned “Polythene Pam” all the way to Ringo’s one and only recorded-with-The-Beatles drum solo on “The End.”

3. “A Hard Day’s Night”

Trivia question: What’s the only song in the world recognizable by its opening note?

That’s right, it’s the opening chord of “A Hard Day’s Night,” played by George Harrison on his 12-string Rickenbacker guitar.

I list “A Hard Day’s Night” here as a meme for all the great early Beatles songs… beginning with that appearance on the Sullivan show (in 1964, when Paul McCartney was only 21 years old), where, safe in suburbia in front of a black-and-white TV, a very young me marveled at the crazed audience reaction… unaware of the raw emotion that rock and blues had already tapped into years earlier and in so many other, less-sheltered places.

For me, “A Hard Day’s Night” represents a time of watching Beatles’ cartoons on Saturday morning TV, and being amazed, through the years, how their music matured and grew over the years. I was just as transfixed, and awed, years later when I first saw the videos on TV for “All You Need Is Love” and “Hey, Jude.”

In fact, in my entire life, I’ve only been flummoxed by one celebrity sighting. I was at a Verizon-sponsored table in 2002 at an Amnesty International event at Chelsea Piers in New York, and at a table practically right next to us sat Paul McCartney and his then-wife Heather Mills.

I was a blithering idiot all evening, in full fan mode. “That’s Paul McCartney!” I repeated more than once, to no one, spilling my water and fumbling with my knife and fork. In fairness, as my boss pointed out, “if you’re acting like this just because you’re in the same room with someone, Paul McCartney is probably the one person in the world I can understand.”

At one point, when Paul was asked to take the stage, I had to stand and pull a chair out of his way.

“Thanks, mate!” he cheerily said to me, touching me on the shoulder as he passed.

Ever since, my wife and daughters have always, over the years, referred to Paul, as my “best friend.”

Sir Paul, if you ever read this, I’m sure you understand what I wrote about John. Someone had to carry on – and in the humble opinion of your friend, I think “Hey, Jude” truly is amazing and “Maybe I’m Amazed” is without doubt the best post-Beatles song ever.

4. “A Day in the Life”

The Beatles somehow recorded this song on four-track tape machines – the equivalent of sending someone to the moon and back with technology that’s less advanced than today’s cell phones.

The first time I heard this song, I was in a grade school class at St. James in Totowa, N.J.

It was near the end of the school year, and one of the coolest girls in the class (Maureen Dunne? Marianne Hydock? It’s all a blur to me now…) had bought one of the first copies of the album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”

She played this song on a phonograph for the entire class to hear.

It was this song. Despite all the music I had listened to until then, it was like nothing I had ever heard before.

How many times does that happen in your lifetime? When some item is so incredibly new, and surprising – and you recognize it right away.

It happened with I saw the first “Star Wars” movie, and years later when I first held an iPad… and it happened for the first time in my life when I listened to “A Day in the Life.”

This is magic. This is what The Beatles created. Happy birthday, George.

Thanks, mate.

A Day at the Museum, Photography Not Included

I'm a traitor to photography.

Don't get me wrong. I love to take photos, and I greatly admire amateur and professional photographers. I'm also happy to contribute to the nearly 100 million photos uploaded daily to Instagram.

It's just that I have zero interest in learning to control the technical aspects of cameras.

I take no joy in adjusting shutter speeds, apertures, ISOs or white balance. Which is strange because I seem to own every electronic gadget imaginable and have spent many a blissful hour fine-tuning computer and cellphone settings.

I own a camera that can do all that photography stuff, but I'd generally rather use whatever cell phone I have at hand. When I do use a digital camera, I trust the automatic mode to calculate all those settings on the fly.

While this doesn't make me a bad person, I can see where this makes me a traitor to many of the photographers I admire. Photographers who are steeped in the technical aspects of their craft are amazing. It's like watching magicians to see them at work -- and they actually know how to use all those accessories that came with the kit I received from my family when they gave me my camera.

I enjoy going to photography meetups (where, to conceal my dark secret, I carry my camera as a beard and take most photos with my phone) to explore and socialize (or "parallel play," as my wife likes to describe it) and hopefully come back with an image or two I can manipulate and enhance with Snapseed filters.

Recently, in a Facebook post, a fellow member of the great Black Glass Gallery photography group (whose moderator makes a point of being inclusive to people who take photos with their phones), made me feel a little better about things. She wrote:

"I am taking a master class online with Annie Leibovitz, and her words were so strong to me as I struggle with never having the perfect lens, camera, etc. 'It has nothing to do with technology,' she said. 'Well, it does and it doesn't. That is the last thing to worry about. You can have the best equipment, but it doesn't help if you can not see.' I just love this. I know I struggle with never having the right stuff and sometimes it gets in my way. I love to just get out and shoot and the feeling I get it something I can't quite describe. I just love the feeling I have when my camera is in my hands."

Similarly, the legendary British fashion photographer Nick Knight has also proclaimed that "photography is dead." He said:

"I think photography stopped years ago and we shouldn’t try and hold back a new medium by defining it with old terms. For 150 years (photographers) did the same thing. Then something else comes along at the end of the 1980s and you could do things you could never do before. And now we’re much further down the line than that. Now I can take an iPhone and form a sculpture. And some people are still calling it photography. …I call it image-making — please could someone get a better description of it — because that’s what I do. Because that can take in sound and movement and 3D, which I think are really part of this new art form. So it’s based on image. That gets away from the thing of truth. Photography has been saddled as the medium of truth for so many years."

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The world around us is so beautiful and evocative. There are so many stories to tell, so many wonders to see, so many people who care.

And yet, truth is illusive. The images we modify are just as valid as the images we capture; manipulated images are no different than manipulated words. Creation is self-expression, and self-expression is an invitation to connect, and even parallel connections are better than no connections.

I went to a photography class at the Museum of Natural History last weekend. The instructor was top-notch. He buried us all in our camera settings, and we all took the same images of the same exhibits.

Everyone else was happy, and the class was fine. But after a long half hour, and as inconspicuously as possible, I wandered off on my own.

It was Saturday, I was in New York, and I realized that I didn't have the desire to learn the technical knowledge of a dying technology. I simply wanted to go out and play.

Holy TMP! This Press Release May Save Your Phone

This iPhone is dead, right?

Its screen is cracked; its insides are showing. It's unresponsive.

Well, let me tell you the happy story of how it was brought back to life… because, in the immortal words of Arlo Guthrie, you may know somebody in a similar situation, or you may be in a similar situation.

Here’s how to protect yourself when your phone’s screen (be it iPhone or Android or Windows) is cracked and seemingly beyond repair: Get a mobile device protection plan.

I mean, pardon the commercial interruption, but there’s a great deal on something called Total Mobile Protection (TMP) that Verizon is offering until Nov. 17.

You should really check it out. NOW.

A few weeks ago, I told the story here of how I was tripped up by supernatural forces and landed on my iPhone to break my fall. Sadly, I could not revive the device, so I put it in a drawer and transferred my number to a trusty old Droid. (By the way, despite the fact that I work for Verizon, I'm not automatically given new phones... we make sure all the latest/greatest phones are made available to customers first.)

Then, by coincidence, I happened to see a draft of this press release... the press release...

Phone-saving press release

...by my Seattle-based colleague Scott Charlston. He told me he was arranging screen-repair demos in the New York area with Asurion, a company that provides insurance services for wireless devices, and that Andrew Testa, who works in the same office I do, would be happy to take my phone to see if it could be fixed.

If my phone could be fixed, anybody's phone could be fixed. I had nothing to lose. So I gave my baby to Andrew.

A few days later he tweeted these before and after photos of "Pete from Asurion," who Andrew was evidently holding captive in a suburban garage...

Unbelievably, he fixed it!

Pete from Asurion raised my iPhone from the dead!

I only hope that someday Andrew lets him out of that garage. Pete really deserves so much more than the current $29 TMP deductible.

Here's my iPhone; good as new...

...The home screen is a photo from the Grotto on the Notre Dame campus. There's a story behind that too, but that's for another blog post on another day. Some day after Notre Dame plays Miami later tonight.

Go Irish!

Build a Cathedral With the Sound of Your Own Voice

St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York City

In our video age, what’s the most underappreciated communications medium?

It’s the powerful magic inherent in the sound of our own voices.

This, according to Vivian Schiller, an accomplished and respected strategist who recently spoke at Verizon’s campus in Basking Ridge, NJ, about the intersection of journalism, media and technology.

She shared insights about fake news and other vital topics, but when asked about emerging trends, she had a surprising observation.

Vivian noted a resurgence in the form and popularity of “podcasts” (for want of a better word). That is, short-form audio that can be streamed or downloaded, as an effective tool of modern communications.

“After print, audio is the oldest form of media,” she said. “It’s the only form of media you can consume while you’re doing something else. You don’t need to look at it.”

Vivian Schiller

She continued, “There’s something magic about audio. It’s deeply personal.”

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Think about it. Is there anything more intimate than someone whispering in your ear?

This is primal. Images left to our imagination can be much more powerful than images presented to us, and filtered, for our appreciation or entertainment.

Words are symbols representing something based in reality. Strung together – adding a human voice, either in song or spoken word, with flow and melody and meaning – mere words become something more than reality. They become the bricks and mortar we can use to build our own cathedrals.

Think of the Bible story of Elijah, who went to look for God on top of Mount Horeb:

A strong wind ripped through the trees and sent large rocks crashing like pebbles against the side of the mountain. But God was not in the wind. When the wind stopped, an earthquake nearly toppled the mountain. But God was not in the earthquake. When the earth settled, a fire spread through the uprooted trees.

Elijah sighed wearily, unmoved by all the destruction. He returned to his cave, content to wait for the fire to burn itself out because he knew God was not in the fire.

The next morning, waking from a dream, he heard a close but barely perceptible sound. The prophet staggered to his feet then fell to his knees and hid his face in the sleeve of his coat. He was shaking with fear, because he knew God was in the whispering voice.

In my own life, I consider how I am spending more and more time these days listening to audio books, which has reignited my love of literature and sparked my curiosity about many topics outside the scope of my career.

I also think of my continued fascination with poetry.

Experimenting with audio a few months ago, I posted about how I had recorded an Elizabeth Barrett Browning sonnet my late Dad used to recite to my mother, so that Mom could listen to it today on her Amazon Echo.

Today, I'm trying another experiment, to share with a wider audience: In an 8-second-attention-span world, I’m inviting you to listen to a spoken-word, 8-minute excerpt from something I wrote a long time ago.

The scene is set is the grandeur of the very real St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. It’s about an ordinary man’s dreams and a lost love named Virginia. In all the thousands of words I’ve ever written, these 1,200 are perhaps my favorite.

So, inspired by Vivian and summoning the gods of underappreciated magic, I invite you to listen to my story. It begins, “After a fitful night...”

#weneedfewerkardashianwannabes

I posted this video on social because I thought it thought-provoking that when kids were asked, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” they said athlete, actor or model. Many see these as their only paths out of tough economic circumstances.

The #weneedmore program shines a light on the limited access to tech and educational resources available to too many students across the country. Millions of science and tech jobs could lead to a brighter future.

And then the first comment I saw was: "Yeah forget what makes you happy. Get that high paying job your parents and teachers want you to have and be miserable for the entirety of your f*ing life."

Am I missing the point?

It is, after all, a program sponsored by my employer. Perhaps Verizon should have named it #weneedfewerkardashianwannabes -- although, yes, the Kardashians are brilliant marketers. I wouldn't discourage any kid from seeking fame based on brilliance.

What do you think?

Poetry + Technology = Magic

Mom and I at the scenic overlook in Allamuchy in October 

Mom will turn 85 soon, one week earlier than Dad would have turned 85. The sad thing is, Dad died when he was 73.

I’m their only son. So for nearly a dozen years, I’ve taken the place of Dad in Mom’s life… but only in the smallest of ways.

For example, there’s the job of setting the timers: That is, trekking to Mom’s house every few weeks to make sure her living room lights automatically turn on at dusk. I used to resent knowing New Jersey’s sunset times better than the Farmer’s Almanac, but then it dawned on me (excuse the pun) that “setting the timers” used to be my father’s job.

I initially thought Mom was just being stubborn about not wanting to learn how to set her own timers. But it turns out she was just being sentimental. Having someone take care of that for her was a small, but meaningful, comfort… one less thing to remind her Dad was gone.

Over the years, I’ve tried to get Mom to text or Skype, use email, check her bank statements on an iPad, or at least use a cell phone – all to no avail. She plays Scrabble on a laptop for hours at a time, but only an old version that runs from a CD. I’ve turned off the computer’s Internet access because she’s otherwise rattled by update notifications and worried someone is spying on her.

Still, this Christmas, I gave technology another shot with Mom. I bought her two Echo Dots along with some smart outlets, and arranged things so that she could turn her lights on and off by voice from her bed or easy chair. And, failing that, so that I could do so remotely.

Behold, the Echo Dot

To my surprise, Mom warmed to the idea of asking “Alexa” to control her lights… and she thought it was black magic when I randomly asked Alexa to reach into Amazon’s music cloud to play “White Christmas” by Bing Crosby.

So earlier today, I was upset when I called to check on Mom and found that she was having problems with Alexa. How could that be, I wondered? Mom had no clue, and she was upset Alexa was no longer responding.

I checked the Alexa app on my smartphone and saw that even my remote access was not working. That couldn't be right, either. So I inspected the app a little further and found a history of my Mom’s actual voice commands over the past few days.

It turns out Mom has been talking to the Echo units as if there was a person on the other end, and not a bot. She had set an alarm to wake her in the mornings, and evidently complained, “I’m up! I’m up! I'm up!” to shut it off. She had also asked conversationally about the weather, and somehow Alexa had dutifully answered.

I was floored, however, when I read that Mom had also asked this:

“There’s a poem, and it’s called, ‘How Do I Love Thee, Let Me Count the Ways…’ Alexa, do you know that poem? Before my husband passed away, he used to recite it to me. Could you recite it to me now?”

I didn’t know this about Dad, and I felt as if I were spying on my parents’ relationship.

Alas, Echo’s Alexa does not recite famous public-domain poetry on demand. (There’s a feature idea for you, Amazon.) So Alexa’s response to Mom's request was simply, "Sorry, I didn't understand your question."

I asked my wife what to make of all this. I told her that soon after Mom had requested the poem, her day had been interrupted by someone who comes in to do her cleaning and vacuuming.

My wife knew immediately what must have happened. The most convenient outlet for a vacuum cleaner is also right where Mom’s router is plugged in. It was probably unplugged. That’s why I couldn't receive a remote signal, and why Mom couldn't receive a response from Alexa.

Troubleshooting this on the phone would have been painstaking since Mom neither knows nor cares what a router is, so I decided to test my wife's theory by surprising Mom with a visit. Before leaving home, I recorded myself reciting Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 43. I named the file “How Do I Love Thee” and uploaded an MP3 version to Amazon Music.

Arriving at Mom's house, I explained how I “fixed” everything by simply plugging in the cord attached to a mysterious black box she didn't even know she owned.

Then I said, “Alexa, play ‘How Do I Love Thee’.”

“Playing ‘How Do I Love Thee!’” Alexa cheerily answered, and from somewhere in the cloud my recorded voice filled the room.

This is how, on the eve of 2017, technology bridged the gap between generations. It unleashed the magic of a 170-year-old poem to summon my father… in my own voice… to make my overwhelmed and delighted mother start to cry on the eve of her 85th birthday.

Listen to my recording here.

Sleepless in New Milford

She Made Me Laugh: My Friend Nora Ephron by Richard Cohen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Sleepless in New Milford, NJ

In “She Made Me Laugh,” we learn that writer/director Nora Ephron is someone who would lead friends on a tour of Italy’s great restaurants, arrive late at one, and then stand and make an insulting gesture to the entire wait staff because they weren’t attentive enough.

This is what passes for loveable to Ephron’s friend, Richard Cohen, the Washington Post columnist and author of her bio.

Well, maybe not “loveable.” Even Cohen seemed to have mixed feelings about this anecdote. Perhaps (permitting me to put words in the head of a much-more-accomplished writer) he thought, “Nora has spunk!” -- in reference to a scene from the old Mary Tyler Moore Show in the type of 1970’s newsroom that Cohen and Ephron both obviously adored.

But, like Lou Grant, I hate spunk. So while Ephron may have made Cohen laugh, the sensibility on display in this book often made me cringe.

Cohen lovingly depicts an era when media and literary gatekeepers hobnobbed aboard David Geffen’s yacht or at a Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn dinner party. Once, after being slighted this crowd, Cohen proclaims, “That summer, the Hamptons did without me.”

I’m glad that world doesn’t exist anymore. These summers, the Hamptons are doing without all the best journalists and artists and writers. They live, create and “summer” in all corners of the world, enabled and connected by technology. There are no boundaries or gatekeepers. Everyone can be critic, or a star.

These days, the only sure way to tell a decent person from an asshole is if he or she is kind to the wait staff.

Two good things came out of reading this book, however.

First, I am now much more aware of Ephron’s entire career, and I eagerly look forward to reading more of her writing. Before now, I had thought of her as the writer/director of “Sleepless in Seattle” and thought she had written the famous scene in “When Harry Met Sally,” which, it turns out, was improvised by Meg Ryan, Billy Crystal, and Rob and Estelle Reiner.

Second, I can now channel my inner Nick Carraway, since there are several remarkable anecdotes in this book involving the actor Tom Hanks.

So now, as the sun sets on this review, I see a vision of Hanks from across an imaginary lawn. “They’re a rotten crowd,” I shout to him, thinking of all his rich friends summering in the Hamptons. “You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.”


View all my reviews

Why Isn't Real Life Good Enough?

From my Instagram feed today.

I was trying to show my wife how the camera works on my phone (it’s a mixed marriage… she’s #iPhone; I’m #Android). “You only have to tap the screen,” I explained. But that didn’t seem to work for her. “I must have dead fingers,” she teased, thus terrifying me for the rest of the evening. “Like so,” I replied, taking this photo of the flowers on our dining room table. “Oh, no, you’re probably going to Instagram that,” she sighed.

That was almost a dare, and I almost didn’t accept. It’s a casual photo, and I thought about how I’d need to adjust the focus and the lighting, and about all the other ways I could manipulate the image to leave my mark.

But then I took another look, and decided to post this after all because these #flowers are otherwise impermanent. They need #nofilter, and there’s magic in their casual beauty.

Auto-Tweeters: Delete Your Account

To everyone who was auto-tweeting on Sunday morning, June 12, 2016:

Delete your account.

I received hundreds of tweets that morning from brand-friendly bloggers, social media ninjas, communications experts, self-published authors, and brands trying to sell things or engage with me.

There’s nothing wrong with this, if we lived in a vacuum.

But these tweets seemed so tone deaf as the news was breaking that a gunman in Orlando had killed 50 people just hours earlier, in the worst mass shooting slaughter in American history.

Worse, some tweets seemed appallingly insensitive. Not intentionally so, but appallingly insensitive just the same.

Amazon sent a tweet advertising a “Cereal Killer” cereal bowl. An account tweeting funny lines from “The Simpsons” used a quote from Homer telling Bart, “People die all the time, just like that…”

Why weren’t these accounts silenced?

Instead of silence, the fallback for many on social media is to send a message of “thoughts and prayers” -- which at least expresses a human reaction to tragic events.

Consider the even better reaction of @TeenVogue, which tweeted a series of actions to take in response to Sunday’s violence – donating blood, researching gun legislation and voting records, volunteering at LGBTQ centers, or simply telling the people closest to you that you love them.

If the day has come that Teen Vogue is a leading media outlet in interpreting our news… just as Gawker has been a leading outlet in breaking many important stories… then marketing organizations and practitioners should realize by now that auto-tweeting isn’t enhancing your brand or engendering engagement… or contributing in any way.

Let’s put some thought and effort into this. If we can send a LinkedIn invitation that doesn’t read, “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn,” we can also be more authentic in our other social media feeds.

As a start, let's take two simple steps to make the Twitterverse a better place:

• Unfollow the three most egregious auto-tweeters in your feed.
• Follow three people who express compassion, who attempt to provide comfort or insight, or who simply stay silent when the occasion calls for it.

Originally posted on my LinkedIn account.

Chasing the Gingerbread Man (Why I Run)

New Jersey, for all its charms, is the most densely populated state in America.

So a favorite running route takes me far away from the crowds… to the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, which is just up a lonely country road near the campus where I work in Morris County.

The owl in the tree

Early yesterday, I found myself utterly alone there, staring up at a young, downy-feathered barn owl in the branches of a tree.

Investigating further, I saw a nest on a higher branch, so I guessed that the owl fell from there and didn’t yet know how to fly.

“I can’t fly either,” I explained lamely, making a mental note to report the sighting at the park’s education center in case something could or should be done to help.

Resuming my run, I thought of how much the scenery reminded me of the summers I spent in Morris County as a boy, at my grandparents’ house in what was then a similarly remote area.

My grandfather and me

The outside air still smells the same here, and I expect to turn and find my grandfather nearby. We spent many days walking together along back country roads just like this. He would talk to me about gardening or raising chickens, teach me the names of trees and flowers, or tell me corny jokes or improbable stories that I later learned were folk and fairy tales.

Still, he’d think it silly that a grown man would go running for exercise, when there was always real work to be done outdoors.

“Run, run, run as fast as you can!” I can imagine him taunting me now.

 ---------

My grandfather died long ago, and he would have no idea what my life is like today when I return to the office. All the traffic on Route 287 just to get here. All the technology. All the people.

When I can’t get outside to exercise, I use the company gym, which is equipped with internet-connected exercise bikes with full-color monitors that offer a virtual-reality display of my ride… as if I were on a real bike on a pleasant Sunday ride among rolling hills. The resistance of the pedals matches the terrain, and even the leaves on the virtual trees are programmed to be green in summer months, colorful in fall and bare in winter.

Working out on an exercise bike, I connect my Bluetooth headphones and listen to a book or music, and get lost in the computerized scenery and pretend I am alone.

Unfortunately, the bike’s computer always offers up images of other virtual riders along the way. I don’t even have to swerve around them, though. I can ride right through them to pass. The computer also offers up many other riding scenarios that are far from realistic: a snow-covered trail where the Abominable Snowman makes an appearance; a game that lets me chase dragons; and one scenario where I am miniaturized into the elaborate world of a model railroad in the basement of a giant human and his backyard ruled by a giant cat.

It’s all in fun, and I’m sure my grandfather would have appreciated the whimsy.

But there’s one feature hard-wired into these virtual reality exercise bikes that literally haunts me: The program always presents the image of a ghost rider… an exact replication of a previous ride I’ve made on the same course… representing my “personal best.”

In the virtual world, I can try just a little bit harder and ride right through my own ghost, putting my past behind me.

It occurs to me that in real life, when I run, my brain is hard-wired to always chase a ghost of my former self too.

But in real life, no matter how hard I try, with each passing day, my grandfather – and my past -- recedes even further into the distance on the road ahead of me.

Run, run, run as fast as I can, I can’t catch him. He’s the Gingerbread Man.

This was originally posted on The Good Men Project site.

A Beacon of Hope for Lesser People

Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble by Dan Lyons

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Looking for a scary read this Memorial Day weekend? Try “Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble” by Dan Lyons.

His memoir is far scarier than anything I’ve read recently by Stephen King – and it’s also funnier (thinking back to the author’s description of how a newsroom might react to Molly the teddy bear) than most anything I’ve read or seen recently, except for HBO’s “Silicon Valley.”

Wait. Lyons is a writer for “Silicon Valley,” and he was also one of my cultural folk heroes from the mid-1990s when he blogged as Fake Steve Jobs. So the “funny” part is understandable.

But why is this book scary?

Because good satire is always scary – and this is a tale of ageism, greed, abuse of power and double-talk. Because it raises important questions, yet again, about the stability and underpinnings of U.S. financial markets. And, finally, because there’s a scene with the author’s young son that chillingly portrays the impact of job loss on family life.

But what of all those young HubSpot workers – the real people (innocent bystanders?) seemingly caught in the middle of this tale?

I feel for them all. And I’m scared for them too.

In the end, Lyons is a solitary figure, fighting against time and seemingly always misunderstood. He winds up paranoid for his family’s safety and worried about his children’s future.

But the very fact that he’s fighting his battles with wit and insight gives me hope.

To steal a favorite closing line from “Mistress America,” a recent Greta Gerwig/Noah Baumbach movie: “Being a beacon of hope for lesser people is a lonely business.”

Namaste.


View all my Goodreads reviews

Tonight Seems More Real

Here's an image of street musicians performing earlier this evening in Albuquerque, NM...

Last night, I was in New York, and this was the scene as described the "NY Business Journal": "Live performances by Demi Lovato, Wiz Khalifa and Snoop Dogg — in front of a capacity crowd at the South Street Seaport on Tuesday night — certainly helped Verizon-owned AOL stand out among the herd of tech companies in town showcasing their tech. The Tim Armstrong-led company also peppered its audience with its latest high-tech offerings and product launches."

Tonight seems more real.


Originally posted on my Instagram feed.

It's Complicated (My Relationship With Social Media)

Blame my cat for this.

It's not even 7 on a Saturday morning, but the cat woke me up and I couldn't get back to sleep, so I checked my phone...


On Facebook -- where, by mutual agreement of family members, I neither took nor posted a photo of our dinner the previous evening (although, for some reason, I checked in at the place on what's left of Foursquare... because, like Kilroy, I want to leave a mark that I was there) -- I was directed to a post by a very talented, social media-savvy colleague.

It pointed to a story about why the new "Ghostbusters" trailer is the most disliked movie trailer in YouTube history. And, by "disliked," it apparently means, a license to post misogynist comments about the all-female leads.

Because I read this story, any subsequent website I visited (thanks, Google) featured suggestions to click on stories posted on "ZergNet," an aggregator of stories such as: "9 TV Shows That Should Have Been Cancelled By Now," "The Real Reason Meg Ryan's Career Was Ruined" and "Daniel Craig's Harsh Words About The Kardashians." This is just a random sampling from this morning. There's much worse on the site, which seems to cater to Baby Boomers who like a cesspool of snark disguised as "celebrity news." I was rescued by a popup alert from Medium...


On Medium -- where I reposted my prior post from here (the one about the abandoned asylum... more later) -- I was intrigued by the headline, "F*** You, I Quit — Hiring Is Broken" -- a long read about a programmer's interview experience in the tech industry. It was a fascinating look into how bizarre the tech business has become, including mentions of the hiring process at aforementioned Google and over-my-head inside-baseball programming references. The author posted his Twitter handle...


On Twitter, I was alerted to an even more bizarre long read: this piece about Yelp Girl. The title explains it best: "The Revelations of Lady Murderface -- Talia Jane wasn’t any naive Millennial when she outed Yelp for its low pay and triggered raises. If you’d had her bizarre life, you might overshare, too." This made me think to check in at work...


On email, my company is currently involved in a labor dispute. The issues involved are important, complex and clouded by so many people having so many agendas that workers wound up caught in the middle. I see today that the striking unions have hired a former White House spokesperson who has launched a parody site where there are photos of six executives aligned like the Brady Bunch. They have been labeled the Greedy Bunch, and you can roll over each photo to view anonymous, sophomoric personal insults.

Seeking refuge, I turned to a place where people can only post if they create something, and it's usually filled with stunning photography, often accompanied by heartfelt or funny commentary...


On Instagram, I had recently posted photos of the abandoned asylum in my old hometown -- mostly because it evoked a deeply learned boyhood lesson about compassion, which I tried to capture here.

You almost always get likes on Instagram or simple expressions of encouragement, but this morning I noticed that someone I don't know had made this comment about my Totowa photo collage:

"I can tell you care about the place, so you should know that posting stuff like this is bound to bring the site negative attention. Vandals, thieves, and even security & police have access to anything you post publicly. That's why most of us never discuss the real names or locations of these places."

Point taken. And, I don't know, maybe I shouldn't have posted it. Too late now. In the meantime, just let me say this:

I do care. Very deeply. And, ultimately -- despite everything I've read this morning -- I have faith in goodness. I have faith in vandals and thieves, in the strikers, in the executives, in millennials and job-seekers, in entertainers and artists, and in all the people laughing and taking selfies and raucously singing "Happy Birthday" in the crowded and noisy restaurant last night.

It's complicated, but I have faith.

It's the End of the World as We Know It

Today I read announcements that showed technology at its best... realtime translations on Skype.

And at its worst... the "Yelp for people" app.

Love Wins

Today's news was dominated by the Supreme Court’s decision authorizing gay marriage nationwide.

Brands were going crazy with rainbow-themed tweets (using the hashtag “LoveWins”), and corporate social media and marketing departments all over America were in a frenzy. A thoughtful post by Scott Meslow of “The Week” pretty much summed up my own thoughts, but better:

“Your own skepticism about these kinds of social media posts may vary. On the one hand, public support and advocacy isn't meaningless; when a cultural movement achieves enough open support, it can eventually lead to real, recognizable results. But there's also something a little unseemly about the self-congratulatory eagerness as these brands have jumped to associate themselves with an extremely popular social movement — and, of course, managed to shoehorn in pictures of their products while doing it. Corporations, remember: The next time something big and important and deeply meaningful to a bunch of people happens, you don't need to rush out a Photoshopped copy of your logo and slap on a hashtag. You can just, you know, say nothing.”

I had taken the day off and went to dinner tonight in Nyack, NY. From the porch of The River Club, my wife and I had a scenic view of the construction of the new Tappan Zee Bridge. Afterward, we walked around town, and even La Fontana Family Restaurant was proudly displaying a gay pride flag outside its doors.

On Facebook, all my social media friends have been praising the Supreme Court ruling. It’s amazing to me how quickly society-at-large has changed perspective on this issue. This change has surely been fueled by the power of technology, and social media, to expose all of us to a world bigger than ourselves. A high school friend posted, “Love first. Everything else later. In fact, everything else is meaningless without love.”

It turns out she was actually referring to another post from Fr. James Martin, editor of the Jesuit magazine America. I reprint it here, since it also pretty much sums up my own thoughts, but better:

No issue brings out so much hatred from so many Catholics as homosexuality. Even after over 25 years as a Jesuit, the level of hatred around homosexuality is nearly unbelievable to me, especially when I think of all of the wonderful LGBT friends I have.

The Catholic church must do a much better job of teaching what the Catechism says: that we should treat our LGBT brothers and sisters with "respect, sensitivity and compassion."

But God wants more. God wants us to love. And not a twisted, crabbed, narrow tolerance, which often comes in the guise of condemnations, instructions and admonitions that try to masquerade as love, but actual love.

Love means: getting to know LGBT men and women, spending time with them, listening to them, being challenged by them, hoping the best for them, and wanting them to be a part of your lives, every bit as much as straight friends are part of your lives.

Love first. Everything else later. In fact, everything else is meaningless without love.

Oh, For the Love of Instagram...

Of all the social media sites, my favorite -- by far -- has been Instagram. It's simple, it's immediate, it tends to be nurturing. The best part is that in order to play, you have to create something. Although it emphasizes visuals, I've come across captions that are clever and insightful -- and the mere fact of sizing up a scene and trying to think of a way to capture it has made me a better writer. I think.

Well, at least a better observer... and that's half the battle.

Sometimes -- from the unlikeliest of sources -- even art emerges from among the bright red hearts, playful emojis and hashtags, and the extraordinary variety of ordinary life.

Lessons From 7 Careers With 1 Company

Did you ever feel like Crash Davis, the fictional baseball player in “Bull Durham” who breaks the lifetime minor league home run record without anyone noticing?

Last week I set my own quiet milestone – 30 years working at Verizon and its predecessor companies – without any fanfare.

Why the secrecy? When you’ve been with “the same company” for so long these days, you are more likely to get condolences, or curious stares, than congratulations.

So I want to out myself here to dispel a huge myth.

The truth is, it’s NEVER the same company after so many years. You may not change companies, but the company changes around you.

I can count at least seven different career lessons with seven different companies over these past 30 years.

1. The Entrepreneurs. Cutting short a career in journalism, I excitedly joined a small company in 1985 that sold the first generation of personal computers to consumers. I’ve always loved technology – and this was a skunkworks project for NYNEX, a Baby Bell, that needed PR support. My colleagues there were tech evangelists and wonderful teammates. The business model failed, but not for lack of effort or creativity – or fun.

The lesson: You’re never truly failing when you’re doing something you love.

2. The Phone Company. The NYNEX mothership then offered me a job as a writer and editor for its phone company subsidiary, New York Telephone, which produced internal newsletters and magazines. I was again surrounded by great colleagues – talented writers and in-house graphic artists – but the company itself was mired in the past. In the elevators, middle-aged men wearing suits with white athletic socks would talk incessantly about their retirement plans. This drove me crazy. Even an attempt to streamline my magazine’s production by using a “modem” was denied because it would have meant attaching a “foreign device” to the public network.

Lesson: In the short-term, you can find work you love even in a company you don’t.

3. Media Relations. Long-term, the phone company wasn’t the place for me. Luckily, I was able to transfer to New York Telephone’s press office. It was led by a smart, funny, urbane, chain-smoking phone-company anomaly who was welcomed as family in the Daily News newsroom and in dozens of New York City bars and restaurants. He rescued me because he liked to collect writers on his staff and, as a former journalist, I admired and valued the work of current journalists.

Lesson: Everyone needs a mentor.

4. No Job Description. By the mid '90s, I had earned promotions and was raising a new family. My career was poised, I thought, for great things. Then my mentor retired, and the new department head was not a fan of the old ways of doing things. He developed a complicated, matrixed chart of his new organization. Without a box on the chart for me. When I questioned this, he shrugged and gave me a New Age explanation that boxes on an org chart weren’t what was important. When he realized it was important to me, he finally owned up and gave me the following advice:

Lesson: “People will judge you by the way you handle adversity.”

5. The Job I Created. To shake things up, the new VP had brought in two outsiders – a well-know political figure to run NY regulatory affairs and a successful Media Relations VP from a competitor. Neither knew much about NYNEX, however, and I had worked for the company more than 10 years by then, knew it inside and out by virtue of my previous jobs, and wasn’t on anyone else’s payroll. So I helped them both – and learned so much from both in return. One of the executives was female.

Lesson: After witnessing the double standard in the way women are treated in the workplace, I will never tolerate it and, for the sake of my daughters, I will do everything I can to eradicate it.

6. The Mergers. NYNEX merged with Bell Atlantic. Bell Atlantic merged with GTE. The company, and the respective PR organizations, underwent massive changes in the late 1990s. I was a corporate spokesperson, and I directed the staff functions for two PR VPs. Now when new org charts were being developed, I was creating the boxes. A big reason for the mergers was to gain scale and scope for our wireless business. The first merger was valued at $24 billion; the second at $52 billion. Bets don’t get any bigger than that, and our plan was to create a new market for any-time communication, on any device, in any place.

Lesson: The best job in the world is to work for a company that’s doing something to change the world for the better.

7. Financial Communications. Since 2001, I’ve been a spokesperson for a huge and growing corporation. I like the bird’s eye view I get from headquarters, and I specialize in financial communications. Even if I’m not Crash Davis, I can claim to be the Cal Ripken of Verizon’s earnings press releases. More importantly, I have the privilege of working with journalists who are at the top of their profession. I do my best work when I can bring the outside-in perspective of journalists – and the way their work reflects marketplace sentiment – to help continuously change my company for the better. At this time last year, I was working on a $130 billion deal related to our wireless business... so it seems the bets DO get bigger after all.

Lesson: It’s all a matter of perspective, and perspective changes over time.

Ha! That’s a pretty vacuous statement. I can illustrate this a little more concretely.

Early in the morning of my 30th service anniversary with “Verizon,” I shared an elevator from the parking lot with three other people. One man was on his cell phone, conducting business in Spanish. Meanwhile, a woman and another man were in animated discussion about a new Verizon Wireless pricing plan, and the need to make it simpler for customers to understand. It was as different as could be from any entitlement-laced chatter about retirement.

I was on my way to the company’s gym before going to the office, so I had thrown on my suit over my workout clothes. After I stepped aside to let the others off so they could begin their workdays, I looked down at my feet.

I was wearing white socks.

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To Tweet or Not to Tweet?

I won't be tweeting during the Golden Globes broadcast tonight.

If I could act so smart or look so good, I'd be at the Beverly Hilton Hotel instead of in my living room in New Jersey.

But I do understand the impulse. Everyone wants to be part of the conversation; everyone wants to feel special.

Look at me…

… I even take selfies whenever I see a step-and-repeat banner, as if I were a star.

But, really, is there anything I can say tonight that will add to the show? On Twitter, there's always someone who has posted my thoughts, with faster fingers and even more attitude. A deeper search reveals that even my quick-witted virtual friends have expressed something that has been expressed many times before, in many variants… proving that, really, we’re all more the same than different.

I asked my wife about this today. We were parked outside of a Starbucks, waiting for one of our daughters to emerge with a coffee. I kept doing double-takes while I waited for her, because I kept seeing other young women who looked or dressed exactly like one or the other of my daughters.

My wife, who — like Ron Swanson — is wary of social media, said this: "I know I'm not special. And it’s OK. It's not always bad to be like everyone else. We all want to feel as if we are part of something larger than ourselves."

She’s right. Tonight, I’m going to put my phone and computer down. I’ll just be a guy in New Jersey, trading comments with his wife, while we both enjoy the show.

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