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.”


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Alexa and Me: A Love Story

True confession: I love Alexa.

So when I saw Amazon's second-generation Echo Dot advertised, I pre-ordered it right away.

It arrived in the mail this week -- and I set it up last night as a replacement for my bedside clock/radio.

I set the alarm for 8 a.m., half-thinking I'd be well awake before then. However, it was a cold and rainy Saturday, and the alarm jarred me awake with a pulsing sound.

"Stop, Alexa, stop!" I cried, scaring my wife sleeping beside me, by calling out the name of the device's voice-activated trigger.

Alexa didn't respond right away, so I turned the light on to try to find the button to turn her off. "Stop, Alexa," I said again, and the alarm turned off.

My wife took things in stride:

"It's lucky the kids are grown. Imagine if they were in their bedrooms and heard you call out, 'Stop, Alexa, stop!'"

With that, the pulsing alarm sounded again, and I quickly pushed the button to turn it off.

"You know," my wife concluded. "You and Alexa really need to decide on a safe word."

Romantic sarcasm at short notice is my wife's specialty.

2 Wins 5 Losses, And Still In Love With Notre Dame

The Golden Dome, during a visit in October 2012

As an alumnus who proclaims #GoIrish in his Twitter profile, I’ve gotten my share of friendly abuse on social media lately, given Notre Dame’s poor won-loss record this football season.

2-5. Ha! It must be the end of the world. I must be despondent.

In truth – while Notre Dame is currently unranked in all college football polls and a respectable #25 in the Wall Street Journal’s recent inaugural ranking of U.S. colleges by academics – the Fighting Irish are still #1 in my heart.

Notre Dame football is polarizing: most people either LOVE the team (insert photo of players arm-in-arm singing the alma mater here) or DESPISE it (insert photo of Brian Kelly busting a blood vessel while screaming obscenities here). While I CRINGE at the thought of Coach Kelly’s contract extension – and realize that the university is far from perfect -- I simply ENJOY watching the games.

I’ve missed seeing two of the last three. I attended the Syracuse game in New Jersey three weeks ago. Two weeks ago, I thought, “They’ll never play the NC State game in the middle of a hurricane,” so my wife and I enjoyed a matinee staged by Philadelphia Young Playwrights instead. Last Saturday, I attended a memorial Mass for my friend Pete Sgro (front and center here). I spent the day in his picturesque hometown and arrived home to more friendly abuse after the Stanford game.

To me, Notre Dame’s 2-5 record is a matter of perspective: It’s not great, but it’s not tragic.

Meanwhile, Coach Kelly, like every other football coach (even those down by 10-0 at halftime), sees a team in need of “overcoming adversity.”

Precisely. Just like those trying to survive in Aleppo.

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Photo of the Grotto, kept at my desk

First World-er that I am, I once survived the “adversity” of driving to South Bend in a December snowstorm with my girlfriend at my side. I thought we’d be stranded on Route 80.

Instead, we overcame the odds to arrive at the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes in the heart of Notre Dame’s campus at midnight. I asked my girlfriend to marry me -- in the flickering candlelight, with the snow now falling gently around us -- and she said, “Yes!”

Two daughters later, I returned to the campus to attend the Mendoza business school’s Executive Integral Leadership program. What a gift it was to be able to spend an entire week at Notre Dame.

I have to be honest, though. I was a bit overwhelmed – and a little wary – when I saw how the campus had changed in the more than 20 years that had intervened.

When I arrived, I stood in the midst a grand concourse lined with stately buildings that didn’t exist when I had gone to school there. I visited the law building and found that it enveloped a full-sized courtroom. I visited the science building and found an entire planetarium there.

“What a cozy bastion of white privilege,” I thought.

Then I lived and studied there for a week, and discovered:

•          a diverse student body,
•          a strong commitment to social justice and community volunteerism,
•          thoughtful and provocative classroom discussions,
•          great music and art, and
•          kindness, decency and respect from students, faculty and support personnel.

Seemingly everyone I met there was in love with Notre Dame. And so, after all, am I.

The overriding theme of my executive leadership course was to appreciate the fact that to whom much is given, much is expected. It’s something I’ve thought about every day since. And it’s a spirit ever-present at my alma mater.

Something else I discovered? A crucifix in every single classroom at Notre Dame’s business school.

Imagine: An unapologetic religious symbol right there, every day, reminding future leaders about sacrifice and love… in the midst of adversity.

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Notre Dame is a place of high ideals. I don’t often live up to them, but I always aspire to them. Perhaps Coach Kelly, or even the university itself, would say the same.

Because of my own failings, however, I am convinced I will see the Fighting Irish win another national football championship in my lifetime.

The talent is there; so is the will to win. So I’ll be patient.

I’m convinced I have the time because I remember something the beloved Robert Vacca taught me in Classical Greek at Notre Dame. He attributed the concept to Herodotus, and it sadly applied to the professor’s own life, just as it did to my friend Pete Sgro.

Billy Joel put it this way:

Only the good die young.

Here's to Uncle Pat: All You Need Is Love

Thomas Patrick Cullinane – “Tom” to his school friends, “Pat” to most family members – would have been 56 years old today.

He was my brother-in-law, and he was always known around our house as “Uncle Pat.” After his sister Nancy and I bought a very old house, he spent so much time helping us fix up the place that our young daughters used to think he lived in our basement, sleeping on the tool bench.

He was, by far, the nicest guy I’ve ever known. I’m proud that he and his own wife, Joann, married in the backyard of our old house. When a bag-piper showed up that day, playing loud music with quiet dignity and adding something unexpectedly sweet to our ordinary suburban New Jersey lives, I thought, “How appropriate.” Because that was Uncle Pat in a nutshell.

On his every birthday since his death from cancer 17 years ago, my wife has served his favorite food since childhood for dinner – hot dogs and fudge marble cake.

She’s out buying the fixings now, so I thought I’d take a moment this dreary afternoon, when all is silent except for the beat of raindrops on the front porch roof that Uncle Pat built, just to say his name here.

A recent newspaper column about local pastor Dan O’Neill noted that at this year’s 9/11 event, he delivered the shortest speech: “We’re not really gone from this world until people stop saying our name,” Fr. O’Neill said, then recited the names of neighbors who had died at Ground Zero.

So Uncle Pat is not really gone. We’ll have hot dogs and fudge marble cake for dinner, and Nancy and Joann will organize another fund-raising golf outing in his name next year to benefit the American Cancer Society.

And, in the end, I think it’s no coincidence that Thomas Patrick Cullinane was born on the same day as John Lennon, who would have been 76 today. Kindred spirits, both have lived long in the hearts and memories of others.

How is that possible?

It’s easy. All you need is love.

Celebrating Three Decades of Love

Since much of Anne Buckley's career was in the pre-web days, much of this long-time Catholic editor's work can't be found online. So it is with the following newspaper column about a wedding in Nutley, N.J., in September 1986.

My wedding.

Nancy and I will celebrate our 30th anniversary next week, and this is an explanation of why we have an anniversary clock displayed in our dining room, between photos of us with my grandmother and Nancy's grandfather at St. Mary's Church.

Here's Anne's Editor's Report, as published in the Oct. 2, 1986, edition of "Catholic New York"...

Revolving Pendulum

The wedding gift ought to be special, since I am a friend of both the bride and the groom and they are both colleagues in the newspaper business, which is a little like fighting in the same platoon. Added to that, I was the one who introduced them to each other.

Nancy Cullinane, right out of college, joined the staff of Newark’s diocesan newspaper, The Advocate, where I was editor, and Bob Varettoni did the same thing at The Beacon, newspaper of the Paterson, N.J., Diocese, edited by Jerry Costello. We all moved on, Jerry and I to launch Catholic New York, five years ago last issue, Nancy to the Middletown Times Herald-Record, Bob to a Manhattan corporate publication.

When it came time to expand CNY’s staff of editors Bob turned up, ready for a change and with the required experience and awareness, from experience, of the professional standards that would be expected. He presided over the newsroom and production, and after nearly two years it became apparent that he was overloaded. As it happened, Nancy was now ready for a change back to the Catholic press, also aware of what she was getting into, professionally speaking. Some months later, when the romance surfaced, she accused Jerry and me of hatching a plot to replenish the supply of “little Catholic journalists.” We laughed, but I can’t say the thought did not cross my head that these two might hit it off.

Anyway, Bob had taken Nancy out to the campus of his alma mater, Notre Dame, and proposed at the grotto. He had also left CNY for the greener pastures of corporate communications, thinking of financial security for a family. Nancy had taken over Bob’s desk in the newsroom and remained calm throughout the preparations for the wedding because she said it was so much easier than getting the paper out each week.

And this day, I was in the gift section of a department store looking at a glass-domed “anniversary clock” with a revolving pendulum and thinking it might be an heirloom sort of memento of the whole association. Then I read the fine print on the tag: “Chimes the Ave Maria.”

Nancy and Bob are young urban professionals of the '80s, not the stereotypical designer-label, be-seen-in-the-right-places Yuppies. But the Ave Maria might not quite fit in with their ambiance. I envisioned them giggling every hour for the next 50 years about good old-fashioned pious Anne.

The wedding day came, and I still hadn’t found the right gift. Nancy seemed to be made of porcelain and lace, and Bob was in morning clothes, and the grubby business of editing copy and pasting up pages seemed never to have touched them. The decades of time that cause generation gaps didn’t seem to have touched them either.

Bob’s uncle, a pastor in Clifton, N.J., performed the liturgy. There was the lighting of the wedding candle, the roses presented to the mothers and Bob’s grandmother at the time of the greeting of peace, none other than “Panis Angelicus” at the Offertory, and near the end, the placing of a bouquet in front of the statue of Mary. As the couple knelt there, the soloist rendered the Ave Maria!

The next day I was back in the department story, purchasing the clock that I hoped would bring back memories of a special moment for them for the next 50 years. And thinking how symbolic it is that the pendulum does not swing back and forth, but revolves in a never-ending circle.

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My own editor's note: Anne was a legendary proofreader. In working for her, I often joked that she could find at least one typo in ANYTHING -- including, on a dare, an inscription on a statue in New York City. So imagine my surprise when, in retyping this column, I discovered a typo of her own in the last paragraph. I think this was an Easter egg she always meant for me to find. And I did... on September 8, 2016.

Hate Is Hate Is Hate... We Can Do Better Than That

Our lives are so filled with hate speech that tonight Comedy Central will offer up 90 minutes of entertainment based on a woman being called a c*** 19 times, a racist c*** just for added impact, and then being told that she really ought to just kill herself.

Lin-Manuel Miranda (LA Times photo)

The woman is Ann Coulter, and while I disagree with her politics, I find it amazing that people are shocked… SHOCKED… at the possibility that Donald Trump might actually be elected President in November.

Don’t Trump opponents realize that name-calling and bullying aren’t attractive alternatives to name-calling and bullying?

I can imagine the argument: “Relax, it’s a roast, anything goes; we’re all professionals here.” And I’m sure that the entertainers and comedians who participated in Comedy Central’s roast all understand this. But do the majority of voters?

Screen cap from "Annie Hall"

Saying the worst things possible about someone and then backing off because you’re “only joking” is schoolyard bullying of the worst kind. I do think that the majority of voters understand that.

What’s the end game here anyway?

Perhaps – just perhaps – Coulter is smart enough to make herself enough of a martyr to actually swing sympathy in her direction. And maybe – just maybe -- all the snickering professionals on stage are all too clever by half, doing more harm than good for their own righteous cause.

EW magazine ad

I’m in no position to judge. Besides, as St. Teresa of Calcutta once taught us: If you judge people, you have no time to love them.

In June, Hamilton’s Lin-Manuel Miranda recited a poem on stage while accepting a Tony Award in the wake of the Orlando shootings.

“We live through times when hate and fear seem stronger,” he said, then evocatively concluded that “love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love” and “cannot be killed or swept aside.”

Tonight, Comedy Central will only remind Americans that hate and fear do seem stronger, and that “hate is hate is hate is hate is hate is hate is hate is hate.”

I think we can do better than that. Do yourself a favor: don’t watch the program. Spend that time with your family instead. In doing so, you’ll be making the statement that hate speech masquerading as entertainment should indeed by swept aside.

My social-media friend Michael Kasdan reposted this on the Goodmen Project site, where he is an editor. It elicited a mix of supportive comments, along with a fair number of hate-filled comments and personal attacks.

The Magic of Madam Marie's

Show a little faith, there's magic in the night... (found in New Jersey).

Last night a palm reader divined my daughter’s profession, very specifically and seemingly by #magic, upon meeting her. Then she foretold an encouraging future. When I told my wife that we had been to #madammarie, she said that’s the name of a character from a favorite childhood TV movie based on “Madeline's Christmas” by Ludwig Bemelmans. I said, “No, this is Bruce Springsteen’s Madam Marie” — when he sang to Sandy, “Did you hear the cops finally busted Madam Marie for telling fortunes better than they do?” Madam Marie died in 2008 at age 93, and her family continues to give readings from the same booth on the #AsburyPark #boardwalk. On his website, #Springsteen once wrote,“Back in the day, I'd often stop and talk to Madam Marie as she sat on her folding chair outside the Temple of Knowledge. I watched as she led the day trippers into the small back room where she would unlock a few of the mysteries of their future. She always told me mine looked pretty good — she was right. The world has lost enough #mystery as it is — we need our #fortunetellers." Thank you to the spirit of Madam Marie. What great kindness you showed to my daughter. I can never repay you for unlocking a few mysteries of her bright future and for restoring some magic to our lives.

A photo posted by Bob Varettoni (@bvarnj) on Aug 28, 2016 at 10:37am PDT

For Dorothy

Another Thursday, another throwback reposted from another social media site.

This time it's a poem inspired by listening to a little-known Don McClean song in my Pangborn Hall dorm room. ("Magdalene Lane," with the lyric, "MGM Studios can't make the nut, they're auctioning Dorothy's shoes...")

It was, by far, the easiest poetry assignment I ever completed, taking all of 10 minutes to write and type out... fully formed, without any edits... a welcome change from all the other assignments I struggled with. Perhaps it was the perfectly formed outlet for a bout of homesickness.

Whatever. I even submitted it to The Juggler, Notre Dame's literary journal, but it was never published.

Until now.

77 years ago today The #WizardofOz was pre-released at the Cape Cinema in Dennis. About 40 years later I wrote this #poem for Sonia Genres' #Poetry #Writing class at Notre Dame. I found the original last week, For #Dorothy...

A photo posted by Bob Varettoni (@bvarnj) on Aug 11, 2016 at 10:52am PDT

Olympic Throwback