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.

Down the Shore Everything's All Right...

"The Shore" is the No. 1 reason people love New Jersey, according to NJ Monthly magazine's latest poll.

I happened to be on the Point Pleasant boardwalk today... at dusk in late December.

I agree with the poll.

#Boardwalk in late #December at the #Jersey #Shore. #njspots #njshooterz #njisbeautiful #njphotographer #njcollective #wildnewjersey #dusk at #pointpleasant

A photo posted by Bob Varettoni (@bvarnj) on Dec 27, 2016 at 5:27pm PST

To Read or Not to Read

Don't Read This...

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark by A.J. Hartley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In this book, a Shakespeare scholar (Hartley) and former journalist (Hewson) have novelized the story of Hamlet for modern audiences. 'Tis a noble effort, I suppose… reminding me of an iPad app for cats, with lots of sudden, random movement.

Kang

Before the play-within-a-play begins, in the space of seconds, Hamlet punches a stone wall, sings and dances maniacally. Seemingly, the young prince is always moving forward, not backward; upward, not forward; and always twirling, twirling towards freedom. (Apologies to the Kang character in “The Simpsons”). The action is so compressed here that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern arrive from half the known world away to appear in the king’s court within hours of being summoned. This takes two months in the actual play.

The avuncular Polonius becomes a scheming political operative. Think Kevin Spacey in “House of Cards.” In this book, Ophelia carries Hamlet’s love child and is subsequently murdered by the traditionally minor character Voltimand, upon whom the authors have bestowed Sicilian mob ties. Hamlet – think Tom Hanks in “Captain Phillips” -- battles menacing pirates. And then there’s the plot twist of “A Beautiful Mind,” where a main character Russell Crowe thought existed in real life turns out to be only the figment of Hamlet’s imagination.

The famous soliloquies are only hinted at here. So, in the end, it’s easy to smugly dismiss this as “Shakespeare without the poetry”… a tale of sound and fury, signifying nothing. But it has enough elements of Entertainment Weekly magazine in the plot to ensure the failure of any student using this text as a replacement for actually reading or seeing “Hamlet.”

So I give it three stars for that.

Read This Instead...

Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“Hamlet” wasn’t the first Hartley/Hewson book I tried to read. Months ago, I started reading their take on “Macbeth,” but couldn’t finish it.

“This is a bloody disaster,” I thought at the time – but then, in fairness, decided to give the authors another shot since, existentially, that’s precisely what “Macbeth” is.

So I read “Hamlet” while waiting for the Audible version of Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography, “Born to Run,” to become available earlier this month.

Now that I’ve finished listening to Bruce narrate his life story in a little over 18 hours (or about “five concerts,” in Springsteen time), I have to say his life has more relevance to me than Hamlet’s, and Mr. Springsteen is a better writer than Hartley, Hewson and me combined.

Worthy reads, all

I’ve found this to be the case with lots of successful performers – Amy Schumer, Steve Martin, Carly Simon, even, god help me, Rob Lowe. These are all wonderful writers and storytellers, and they all became “famous overnight” by working for many years at honing their craft, performing without a net and cultivating a keen self-awareness along the way.

Springsteen’s story is full of bombast, just like all his best songs. He isn’t Shakespeare, and he doesn’t try to be. His performance here is unnervingly honest and more than occasionally poetic. Struggling young musician, ego-centric band leader, loving father and friend, sympathetic wrestler of demons of hereditary depression… he describes what it’s like to rehearse “Tumbling Dice” with the Rolling Stones in close quarters, or perform for hundreds of millions of people at the Super Bowl, or struggle to find solace and meaning in his turbulent relationship with his dad.

He also describes the late-in-life phenomenon of spontaneously bursting into tears at odd moments.

I know what that’s like. It happened to me once while commuting home on Route 287 when the radio unexpectedly started to play a song that reminded me, full-throttle, to show a little faith… there’s magic in the night.


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In Praise of FDU Florham

Fairleigh Dickinson, New Jersey's largest private university, has two sites in the state: the Metropolitan campus, along the Hackensack River (near my home), and the Florham campus in Madison, which is on the former estate of Florence Vanderbilt and Hamilton Twombly (near my workplace).

I'm a big fan of the latter -- which, it turns out, was the setting for several scenes in a favorite movie, "A Beautiful Mind."

It's also where a professional group I'm involved in -- IABC-NJ -- holds monthly meetings, and where I've been lucky to be invited to speak to classes on occasion about corporate communications.

I know I'm a big fan because I wear my heart on my sleeve on my Instagram account. See here:

#Sunset at #FDU in Florham Park #NewJersey tonight. #SpringBreak = deserted #campus.

A photo posted by Bob Varettoni (@bvarnj) on Mar 18, 2015 at 6:26pm PDT

Thank you #Google Assistant for the #blackandwhite #filter of the #ominous #sky over the #FDU #campus this evening. #NewJersey

A photo posted by Bob Varettoni (@bvarnj) on Jul 15, 2015 at 6:14pm PDT

The #FDU #campus is #wet and lonely tonight, awaiting #students in #Madison #NewJersey.

A photo posted by Bob Varettoni (@bvarnj) on Aug 19, 2015 at 3:07pm PDT

It's not a #sculpture in a #museum, it's the Orangerie Room in the #FDU #Library in #Madison #NJ. This space originally provided Florence Vanderbilt and Hamilton Twombly's estate with a room to store fresh citrus fruit year-round. Looking forward to an #IABC #NewJersey Chapter blogging event here tonight. #njspots

A photo posted by Bob Varettoni (@bvarnj) on Apr 7, 2016 at 2:44pm PDT

Another beautiful night on the #FDU #campus. #Flowers in front of The #Mansion. #NJ #IABC board meeting. #newjersey #njspots #njisbeautiful

A photo posted by Bob Varettoni (@bvarnj) on Jul 20, 2016 at 4:05pm PDT

Board meeting tonight for the #IABC #NewJersey chapter. This is a great spot on the #FDU #campus. Here's info from the #fduflorham website: Hennessy Hall (The #Mansion) is the centerpiece of the campus. This 100-room #Georgian-style masterpiece was designed in the 1890s by Stanford White, and replicates a wing in Henry VIII's Hampton Court. Most of its interior decorations (such as staircases and fireplaces) are in Italian marble, worked by Italian craftsmen. Hennessy also holds the chestnut-panelled Hartman Lounge (the former billiard room) and Lenfell Hall, then a ballroom and drawing room, now used for meetings and special events. #architecture

A photo posted by Bob Varettoni (@bvarnj) on Nov 16, 2016 at 4:14pm PST

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.

---

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.