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Archive for Writing

Life and Death and the Whole Damn Thing…

“The dead dwell in the conditional tense of the unreal.”

You’ve probably never heard of David Siegel or Scott McGehee, but you will. They are business partners, screenwriters, directors, and filmmakers who’ve made eight feature films over the last 30 years—titles that include The Montana Story, What Maisie Knew, The Deep End, and Bee Season. All well worth seeing.

They make the kind of films I love—small, , thought provoking, literary, and independent. But I might never have heard of them either but for the fact that my friend, Dave Northfield, is one of Siegel’s best friends and the two of them stayed at my apartment in Berlin after graduating from UC Berkeley in the early 80s.  read more

“Only the Best People…”

It will be interesting to see if anyone still visits Jack Bernard’s Travels. It’s effectively been on pause since the fall of 2023 when I went back to school for a low residency two year novel writing program at Stanford. No novel yet, but last week I finished the last required course which means I now have more time and flexibility to write here.

I’ve missed writing the JBT blog and commenting on things that matter to me—art, film, food, books, travel (and occasionally politics)—and I’ve missed hearing back from you about what you like or don’t like. I haven’t been totally absent–in 2023 I posted twelve essays and last year I wrote two restaurant reviews, a critique of Boeing’s engineering failures, and three essays on why I couldn’t support Biden (before he pulled the plug). Nevertheless, JBT has been off more than on. read more

What Goes Around…

On August 1, 1999 Robert Gottlieb, the esteemed editor-in-chief at Simon and Schuster, reviewed Speaking of Diaghilev in the New York Times Book Review. The book is John Drummond’s definitive biography of Serge Diaghilev, the famous/infamous ballet impresario. Gottlieb is best known as the editor for Toni Morrison, Joseph Heller, Nora Ephron, John LeCarre and Robert Caro–but he was also a lifelong balletomane and wrote frequently on the subject.

So, why am I telling you this?

Because last week when I was feeling overwhelmed and reflecting on both the good and bad news associated with moving a household, I noticed a yellowed corner of newsprint sticking out of a book in our new bookcase. The book was Speaking of Diaghilev and the clipping was Gottlieb’s review. read more

Do the Right Thing…

I haven’t been here – on the page – since early January. It’s the longest break I’ve taken in 15 years. There are several reasons. M and I sold our condo and moved from the edge of Lake Washington to an apartment overlooking Puget Sound. Moving is not for the lazy or the weak. 

The University of Washington has a life events scale that rates the impact and stress of certain changes—the death of a parent, sibling or spouse, a serious medical problem, etc. Moving, it turns out, is near the top of the scale. Now I know why.  read more

My Belief in Cycles…

With everything that’s happening on the planet these days I’m paying increased attention to all its cycles–cosmic, solar, historical, political, business, gestational and creative. Some, like cosmic, solar and gestational are immutable. The others are at the mercy of humans and human events.

In the fifth century B.C. the Greek historian and geographer Herodotus was the first to categorize and investigate ethnographical, geographical, and historical events and come up with a theory regarding their origins. It was the first systematic theory of history. Over the 2600 years since other theories have been propounded–Thomas Carlyle’s Great Forces or Great Man theory, Arnold Toynbee’s Challenge and Response theory, and Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The “random” theory,” currently in favor, holds the interaction of billions of humans and their choices along with all the other natural and unnatural factors in the world creates history with no discernible flow or path. read more