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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

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

An Odd Couple of a Different Order…

They are very different but shared a common goal–fomenting the collapse of the modern social order. Both were noted for their intelligence. Both were Harvard educated. One became a hermit. The other sought the limelight. One was a mathematics genius. The other a presidential advisor.

Both were convicted of federal crimes. Both went to prison. One for murder. The other for money laundering, conspiracy and a scheme to defraud. One is dead. The other is still threatening.

Ted Kaczynski died in prison last week. A reported suicide (without details). Steve Bannon is alive and well on an estate in Oro Valley, AZ. read more

No Life is Inconsequential…

Eleven years ago when memoirs were becoming the literary flavor of the day, A New York Times editor named Neil Genzlinger wrote an essay in the Book Review lamenting the proliferation of the “absurdly bloated genre.” It was entitled The Problem with Memoirs. Yes, the moirs strikethrough was intentional to emphasize the Me in memoir. In his essay Genzlinger raged against the “age of oversharing” arguing that “unremarkable lives” should go “unremarked upon, the way God intended.” read more