JACK BERNARD'S TRAVELS

Posted by jdbernard743

· June 21, 2016

The Travel Bug

On September 30, 1965 I walked up the rear-boarding ramp of a C-130, grabbed a seat on a drop down bench, and within minutes we were wheels up on our way to Italy. I had leveraged my time as a Marine pilot to hitch a ride with a Navy Seal team on its way to NATO exercises in Italy. I had no plan, no itinerary, no return ticket, but it felt like the time was right for my first trip to Europe. The week before, I had taken the California Bar exam and the results wouldn’t be published until December. I was 26 years old and single. I had worked my way through law school and squirreled away enough money to travel for a few months. I was as free and unburdened as I would ever be. I was embracing the dictum of Harvard’s Let’s Go travel guide: “Travel light. Live close to the ground. See all you can. Stay until the money runs out.”

The C-130 landed near Verona the next morning, and for the next month I was on the move making new friends, sleeping on floors, riding trains, hitchhiking, seeing great art up close, and walking the length and width of every city I stopped at. From Verona I went to Milan, from Milan to Florence, and from Florence to Rome. In Rome I ran into a Greek-American classmate, named Pete, on his way to visit relatives in Athens.

“Hey, Jack, if you don’t have a plan why don’t you tag along to Greece. You’ll like it. “

I hadn’t thought about visiting Greece but my wanderlust kicked in, and the next day I was on my way to Athens.

After a train ride, boat ride, bus ride and taxi we arrived in the Greek capitol. Pete went off with his family and I was on my own again. My opinion of Athens has changed over the years, but on that first visit I found the noise and pollution paralyzing. The cars were all 1940’s vintage, because, like Cuba, taxes on imported vehicles were exorbitant so the old ones had to make do. The only thing that seemed to work were their horns so after a quick visit to the Acropolis I was ready to leave. I didn’t care where it was going, but I decided to take the first boat leaving Piraeus for an island. Any island would do. That night I was on my way to Crete.

The ferry was a tub, a big rusty tub, and traveling deck class meant I didn’t have a bunk or cabin. It was overnight passage at deck level inside a big bare room. There was a long table in the center where the men were seated. On the table were bottles of retsina, the resin-flavored Greek wine, hunks of cheese and various kinds of salami. The women, all in black, sat around the edges of the room. There were a couple of goats tethered to the ship’s hardware and passenger luggage consisted mostly of cardboard boxes held together with twine.

I found a chair in a corner and stashed my fold-over suitcase and guitar against the wall. The departure was after dark with an ETA at Heraklion sometime after sunrise. It looked like a long night on a hard wooden chair. I read for a while and then got out my guitar to help pass the time.

Soon, a small wiry man with a deeply creased leathery face and blazing smile approached me. I felt uncharacteristically awkward. I knew he didn’t speak English but I asked anyway. He kept smiling but shook his head, no. We both shrugged. He pantomimed playing the guitar and pointed at me. It made me feel even more uncomfortable. I had no confidence in my own playing, but wondered if he was telling me he played. I handed him the instrument, and he sat down next to me. It was obvious the guitar wasn’t his instrument, but within minutes he was improvising a bouzouki tune. The bouzouki is the mandolin-like instrument featured characteristically in Greek dance music.

My new friend motioned me to come out to the center table with him, and I did. Someone poured retsina into a dirty glass and cut me a hunk of sausage. I looked around the room. I felt like I had been dropped into a scene from Zorba the Greek. No one at the table spoke English but they kept smiling and refilling my glass.

At the end of the table my new friend was fiddling with the guitar and starting to make real music with it. I’ve always admired musicians who can improvise. Soon, I noticed a couple of the men in animated conversation with the guitar/bouzouki player. They stood up. I didn’t know if it was the start of a fight or something else. The room got quiet and the men moved to an open area in front of the table. The guitar was now a bouzouki and its sound filled the room. The two men stood back to back and began to dance. Others joined in, stomped their feet and clapped.

The sun came up before we got to the port in Heraklion. I stood at the rail with a little hangover. None of us had slept at all. The men had danced and the women clapped time until just before sunrise. One of the men who had been at the table approached me at the ship’s rail with a piece of paper. He explained as best he could, in sign language, that the bouzouki player, Leftiri, owned a taverna in a village called Rethymnon on the north coast and wanted me to visit. His address was written on the paper. Two days later after checking out the Minoan ruins at Knossos and looking over the town of Heraklion I took a bus to Rethymnon.

The old town showed the wear of centuries – tilted whitewashed houses on narrow stone streets, an ancient fort on a hill, a picturesque small harbor where Leftiri’s taverna was located across the water from a breakwater wall and lighthouse. Though it started out as a side trip the town looked like the kind of place I might be able to slow down and catch up with myself. Within hours I decided to stay until it felt like time to go – a week or a month, maybe longer. I was unscripted.

What was it about Rethymnon that so captivated me? Was it the sight of three old men seated outside the taverna dragging on water pipes or the women dressed entirely in black scurrying through the narrow streets? Venetian traders established the town in the 13^th Century when they built a fortress on the high ground to protect their secluded maritime harbor. Though the Ottoman Turks later conquered them the town remained relatively unchanged until recently.

As late as 1965 it relied for its sustenance on olive groves above the town and a small fishing fleet moored below. But it wasn’t the architecture or economy that gave this Greek village on a rocky barren coastline its appeal. It was its differences. Life on the island of Crete was so different from the one I knew. It was jarring and moved me to look more carefully at my own way of life and the advantages I had always taken for granted. It became clear that this solo journey was about more than landscapes, fortresses, or picturesque harbors. It was an internal journey as well.

For three years I had been in the law school pressure cooker, and for four years before that I was flying supersonic fighters on aircraft carriers. During those years I hadn’t stopped to ask myself basic questions about family, friendship, career, and other life goals. I had been living an adventure, but now I was in an unfamiliar setting only a short distance from the spot where Socrates proclaimed, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” It seemed fateful; the village, and it was a village then, was offering itself to me as a setting where I could examine my life and thoughtfully consider my future.

Others might see it differently, but I saw my process as aided by my foreignness. Because we spoke only smatterings of each other’s languages I couldn’t have deep conversations with my new friends, but we were able to communicate in other ways and our mutual like for each other transcended the language barrier. I’m friendly but not gregarious, and once the townspeople determined I was not German – the people of Crete have never gotten over the German occupation of their island in WWII – they accepted me as their American friend and left me alone. They smiled, nodded, and greeted me with “Kalimera” or “Kalispera” (good morning/good evening) depending on the time of day and I responded with “Efharisto” (thank you) or Parakalo (your welcome) as appropriate.

My “hotel” in the center of town had four small rooms. My room had a bed, sink and a bathroom down the hall. In addition to Lefteri, the bouzouki player, I made two other friends; Costas, a stocky local businessman who served as the town’s tourist connection and Marko, the slight, balding, town librarian who fought alongside the Americans in Korea and once spent five days in “San Fronseesko.” Marko managed a small library with a shelf full of English books donated by USIA. It was a quiet place I visited daily to read, write and think without distraction. Life in Rethymnon was simple.

When I asked about places to swim, Costas pointed to the west and waved his hand indicating there were many such places out that way. The next day I walked until I couldn’t see the town behind me and climbed down a cliff to the water. For the next six weeks I went there every day, lay on a flat rock a few feet above the clear green water, and baked until I couldn’t stand it any longer and had to dive in.

My routine didn’t vary much over the six weeks I was there; coffee (Nescafe) at a small café in the morning, two or three hours reading and writing in the town library, sunning and swimming in the afternoon, dinner with Costas or Marko at one of the two restaurants in town, and every few nights ouzo and dancing at Lefteri’s taverna in the port. It was a unique experience and launched me as a lifetime traveler.

Six weeks after arriving on the island I rode the same bus back to Heraklion and boarded a small ferry to the island of Rhodes. Reading my journal from those days, it seems oddly out of time – or timeless. The writing is clumsy and inarticulate but the wonder and intensity of the experience are there. Rethymnon was like first love. It can’t be recreated but remains a vivid memory.

After a lifetime of travel I can say with some authority that the best travel experiences are usually the unplanned ones. They bring an element of surprise and discovery. They leave indelible memories. They encourage us to try new things. Some youthful adventures seem reckless or irresponsible in retrospect and maturity is likely to temper our urge to “go for it,” but flexibility and intuition are still key elements in allowing space for a transformational travel experience – at any age.

The urge to travel is in my DNA and that first solo trip to Europe allowed me to express it in a new way. I couldn’t be more grateful. Efharisto!!

NOTE: The town of Rethymnon is now a city. The boundaries are not clear but the population of the regional unit called Rethymnon ranged from somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 in 1965 to almost 50,000 in 2010. Large tourist hotels now dot the coastline where I swam alone. Tourism has replaced fishing and agriculture as the main source of revenue.

I’m happy for the people of Rethymnon. I’m sure life is easier now than it was then. Jobs are more plentiful and the town is more prosperous, but it saddens me a little to think about the changes. I know the old town remains much the same, but I feel privileged to have seen and experienced it when and as I did.

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Categories : Aviation, Fashion/Lifestyle, Food/Restaurants, Personal/Family, Travel, Uncategorized, Weather

Posted by jdbernard743

· June 17, 2016

· No Comments

Berlin: Artists and Spies

An article about Berlin caught my attention last week and, like Proust’s madeleine, it transported me back to a different time and place.

My friend, Bernd Hummel, is a successful German businessman with a fondness for America and Americans. As a child in Germany at the end of World War II he remembers American soldiers handing out candy and gum to the kids in his small town, and he hasn’t forgotten their generosity nor lost his gratitude for how America helped rebuild Germany. He shared that part of his story with me in 2014 and showed me two sections of the Berlin Wall he purchased and installed in the courtyard of his office complex two hours south of Frankfurt. He knew that I had lived in the shadow of The Wall for almost 10 years and that I would be curious to know their back story.

As he explained it, these sections of The Wall have their own tale. The Wall was actually two walls separated by a No Man’s Land of barbed wire and landmines. These two panels, from the eastern wall, were painted by an East German high school art teacher in the days after the Iron Curtain fell as the two Germanys were struggling toward reunification. Until then, the graffiti covered wall on the west side was a widely discussed art enterprise and tourist attraction, but the eastern barrier was unadorned concrete. For years the East Berlin art teacher had wanted to decorate his side of The Wall but was forbidden from following up until November 9, 1989 when the DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik) collapsed and its citizens allowed to cross the “grenze” to West Berlin safely.

No longer handcuffed by the DDR’s security apparatchiks, the art teacher began furiously decorating 20 sections of the east wall, but within a year, as reunification approached, the government began tearing the whole thing down. In the chaos, an enterprising former East German army officer, out of a job, saw an opportunity to profit and quickly dismantled the artist’s painted sections and hid them temporarily in a marshy wetland nearby. A year later when it was clear that there was collector interest, he offered them for sale through a Berlin auction house. Bernd got wind of the sale and purchased two of them. The artist is lost to history and was not included as a beneficiary of the sale – one last victory for the East German army over an East German artist.

This picture of The Wall from the west shows its famous graffiti art (and the “death zone” between the east and west walls, where barbed wire, landmines, guard towers and roving police dogs prevented East Germans from crossing over to West Berlin.

My own first visit to Berlin was a one week stay in January of 1966. Perhaps no city in the world, certainly none in Europe, has undergone anywhere near the magnitude and number of transformations in the last 75 years, and I feel fortunate to have witnessed and experienced several of them.

On that 1966 stay, the Wall was only four years old and the Cold War was at its frostiest. I had arrived alone by train at the Bahnhof Zoo and found a small, inexpensive pension nearby. The city was cold, gray, and lonely in mid-winter, but over the next week I explored it on foot from Dahlem to the bomb damaged shell of Kaiser Wilhelm Kirche – but, my most memorable experience was a solo excursion to East Berlin. I remember it all in black and white. Except for the blazing, neon, Mercedes logo atop the new Europa Center the city was colorless that winter.

It should be remembered that at the end of WWII Berlin was divided into four sectors – British, French, American, and Soviet – with free passage between sectors. It wasn’t until The Wall was erected in 1961 that traffic between them was restricted. Until then, the two underground rail systems – U-Bahn and S-Bahn – provided easy access to all parts of the city. Service between West Berlin i.e. the British, French, and American sectors, and the Soviet sector was disrupted by construction of The Wall and free passage was interdicted. Only one stop remained open for passengers wishing to cross the border in either direction. The station at Friedrichstrasse on the S-Bahn line was the intersecting junction and the underground version of Checkpoint Charlie.

My own transit to East Berlin began with a morning ride on the S-Bahn and arrival at the dimly lit Friedrichstrasse S-Bahn stop. Just inside the hall adjoining the underground platform was the customs checkpoint with its yellowing tile walls, officious uniformed agents, and sour-faced, young Volkspolizei (VoPo’s for short) with their shoulder slung AK-47’s. While my papers were being checked and re-checked I observed the scene and wondered if it was really a good idea to be wandering around East Berlin alone. Eventually, I cleared Passcontrolle, purchased the required number of East German Marks, had my temporary visa stamped, and climbed the stairs to enter the dystopian paradise of the DDR.

It was mid-winter cold with a soot-gray overcast and dirty snow banked in the shadows of the monotonous, ugly, Eastern-block, apartment houses that lined the empty streets. Well, almost empty… As I started to walk in the direction of the Pergamon Museum, the only site I could think of to visit, I picked up a fellow-traveler, a young guy who followed for a couple of blocks and then sped up to walk beside me.

Like most solo American visitors, I assumed he was a “tail,” assigned to follow and figure out the purpose of my visit. He was obviously young and inexperienced, and his spy-craft was rudimentary. When he did approach me he was overly friendly and awkwardly asked a series of mundane questions (in English). “What is your name. Where are you from? Where are you going? Do you want to buy East German Marks? Would you like me to guide you?”

Apparently my answers satisfied the “guide” that I was not a spy. He said “goodbye,” and I proceeded on to the Pergamon Museum. Today the Pergamon stands on “Museum Island,” an important stop in any exploration of the city, but in 1966 it was more a dimly lit, bullet-riddled ruin than a museum. Later that afternoon I returned to my West Berlin pension and concluded the East Berlin excursion without incident. I was relieved to be back on “my” side of The Wall. Today, when I read Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, I picture Smiley standing near Checkpoint Charlie with a dirty gray sky and bullet marked buildings as he awaits Karla or some other double dealing Russian agent.

In another Berlin thriller, the most riveting scene and the one most applicable to this story of The Wall is the conclusion of The Spy Who Came in From The Cold. LeCarre’s dark, byzantine, spy novel ends with Leamas, his protagonist, and Liz, his girlfriend, attempting an escape to the West. As Leamas reaches the top of The Wall he extends a hand to Liz just as the spotlight from a nearby guard tower catches them in its beam. Liz is shot, and the story ends with Leamas’ capture and certain execution.

Today, when I look at Bernd’s two sections of the Wall I am reminded not only of these dark spy novels but more importantly of the many true stories of attempted escapes with real bullets. I’m also reminded of how many Berlin stories I have to tell, including my East German friend’s scuba escape under the Danube River from Budapest, Hungary to “somewhere” in Austria. But I’ll save that one for another time.

Categories : Art, Books, Personal/Family, Politics, Travel, Uncategorized, Weather

Posted by jdbernard743

· June 8, 2016

· 1 Comment

Dignity and Principle

He was “pretty,” as he often said, but his last years were not pretty. On Saturday night Muhammed Ali died, ending his thirty year battle with Parkinson’s Disease. Early on, Ali’s life was about his superiority in the ring and the arrogant, provocative, rhyming couplets he conjured to celebrate it. After he stopped fighting, his life was about character, integrity, and a different kind of courage. In the prime of life he suffered for his principles but stood by them. He was stripped of his title and barred from boxing. He lost three professional years for his opposition to the Vietnam war. He later dedicated himself to making the world a better place for all people.

But, before there was a Muhammed Ali there were other inspirational athletes who shared their courage and truth with us – Jesse Owens, Paul Robeson, Jackie Robinson, Althea Gibson, and Arthur Ashe were all exceptional, inspirational athletes who happened to be people of color. A recent film about Jesse Owens and the 1936 Olympics reminds us of an earlier time when courage and conviction were tested in a bona fide battle between good and evil. Race celebrates Owens’ 4 gold medals at the Berlin Games and shows how his performances undercut Hitler’s plan to use the Games to validate his theory of a white master race.

It’s sometimes difficult for us to accept America’s history of slavery and racism while we celebrate triumphs like Jesse Owens’ remarkable performance at the ’36 Games. Race does a credible job of showing the discrimination and indignities Owens suffered as he prepared for the Olympics and following his triumphant return to New York. In one touching scene he and his wife are prevented from entering the Plaza Hotel through the front door and directed to the service entrance in spite of the fact that the event they were attending was being held to honor him and celebrate his victories.

Racism is a snake pit for white people to write or talk about. If we criticize “people of color” (an interesting euphemism) we are dismissed as racists or told we can’t possibly understand due to our white privilege. We can’t use the language, dialect and epithets that black people use to describe their peers, and if we charge a black person with racism the charge is likely to be characterized as racist.

As an ardent tennis player and fan, my feelings about Serena Williams are especially complicated by this double standard. I’m amazed at her overwhelming superiority and competitiveness on the tennis court but disgusted by her petulant, angry, unapologetic, poor loser sulks and her insincere graciousness in victory. She pouts, slams racquets, insults officials, threatens linesmen, and accuses stadium crowds and the media of racism. I wish she would just take her trophies and fade into the background. Maybe with time my feelings will change or she will. Throughout her career she has been her father Richard’s child. His racist remarks are often worse than her bad court behavior. The provenance of her disturbing behavior is not important. It’s enough that she continues to behave badly, and it pisses me off when comments like mine are characterized as racist. I said the same things about John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors. Bad manners and ugly behavior are the same regardless of skin color.

In this exchange with a lineswoman Serena shakes her racquet threateningly and says, “I swear to God I’ll take this fucking ball and stuff it down your fucking throat.”

I always hope that Serena will turn the corner and become an ambassador for the sport much as McEnroe and Connors have done. Maybe once those roiling competitive juices stop fueling the drive for Grand Slam victory #22, she will chill out. She has been a remarkably successful champion. I’d be happy to eat my words and see her transformed into a statesmanlike ex-champion like Arthur Ashe.

In our pursuit of excellence we often look to successful athletes for role models, but we are really talking about leadership, integrity and courage whether it’s on the field, in the boardroom, or in the White House. In the current Presidential election cycle it is worth remembering that for every Donald Trump there is a Barack Obama just as there is a Ray Rice for every Muhammad Ali. It’s incumbent on us to choose our role models wisely. I want Serena to come down on the side of Ali, Owens, and Arthur Ashe. Maybe Arthur’s formula can provide the guidance she needs while, at the same time, it inspires all of us to be the best we can be:

Categories : Fashion/Lifestyle, Personal/Family, Politics, Sports, Uncategorized, Work and Adventure

Posted by jdbernard743

· June 1, 2016

· 1 Comment

Hiroshima Reminds Us…

On August 6, 1945 the United States dropped an atomic bomb over the city of Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later a second one destroyed Nagasaki. The Radiation Effects Research Foundation (a joint US/Japanese organization) estimates that between 90,000 and 166,000 people died in Hiroshima and another 60,000 to 80,000 in Nagasaki. Included in these figures are those who died due to the force and heat of the explosions as well as those caused by acute radiation exposure. Thousands more suffered lifelong damage from cancer and other associated radiation effects.

Until last week, in the 70 years since those horrific events, no American president had ever visited Hiroshima. Last Friday President Obama and Japan’s Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, traveled together to the memorial site to pay their respects to the victims and remind the world of the horror of nuclear destruction. Their visit also reminded us that the bombing is still a minefield of conflicting opinions and triggered a predictable mixture of responses. It was the right thing to do but a no-win situation.

Critics on the left and right, American and Japanese, weighed in with their opinions and biases on the purpose and appropriateness of Obama’s remarks. There were calls for an American apology and anger that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Japanese cruelty throughout Asia were not mentioned. Mr. Obama navigated those shoals cautiously and comported himself with a dignity and humility befitting the occasion but not without criticism. Supporters recognized him for his courage and doing what no other president had done. Opponents characterized his remarks as capitulation and an “apology” though none was given.

I was 7 years old when those bombs fell. I remember the excitement in the streets ten days later, on August 15, 1945, when Japan announced its unconditional surrender. I remember my parents taking me to downtown to be part of Seattle’s spontaneous V-J Day celebration. I remember that the streets were jammed with people celebrating and that confetti was streaming from office building windows. The “yellow peril” had been defeated. The war in Europe had ended in May, and, with the defeat of Japan, America and its allies could look forward to bringing the troops home and rebuilding the US economy.

I didn’t understand what all that meant when I was 7, but I had no trouble grasping the significance of the occasion. There are not many of us left who were around for those celebrations in 1945. Universally, America was relieved that the war was over and our enemies defeated. We thought America was justified in dropping the atomic bombs. We believed that they had hastened the end of the war. We ignored or played down the fact that most of the Japanese dead were civilians. Early reports of the devastation were focused almost entirely on the physical destruction of the two cities.

A year later, in August of 1946, The New Yorker devoted an entire issue of the magazine to John Hersey’s 31,000-word article on six survivors of the Hiroshima attack. Hiroshima was a groundbreaking work and a forerunner to the New Journalism – similar to Truman Capote’s 1965 bestseller In Cold Blood in its blend of a fictional storytelling-style combined with factual reporting. Three months after The New Yorker article, Alfred A. Knopf published the book. It has been continuously in print and a touchstone for anti-war and nuclear holocaust debates ever since.

Hersey’s six interviews are credited with humanizing the disaster and moving the nuclear debate from a science-based cost/benefit analysis to a moral/ethical one, but 20 years later Hersey himself conceded that the collective memory fades with time. In the 1986 Summer/Fall issue of the Paris Review he acknowledged as much in an author interview:

“The demonstrations at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were so powerful that we have been able, so far, to extrapolate from them what it would be like to have a much bigger bomb dropped on a center of population. But if memory had been fully active, fully functional, we would long since have had some agreement on the use—or rather the nonuse—of these weapons, some curbs on their manufacture and deployment. For some, the memory is certainly still there; but it seems to me very spotty in the centers of power. A Caspar Weinberger or a Richard Perle, it seems to me, must never have grasped the meaning of the Hiroshima bomb, the way they go on about a future with bigger and better nuclear weapons. In the Soviet Union, there’s probably very little memory of it. The control of information there is such that I wonder how many really know what happened in Hiroshima. Then, you have to remember that two generations have come along since the bombs were dropped. A very large number of citizens of this country, of every country, have no memory at all of what happened. The memory isn’t even there.” (It seems prescient that in 1986 Hersey named Richard Perle, an architect of the 2003 Iraq invasion, as one who failed “to grasp the meaning” of the Hiroshima bombing.)

Hersey died in 1993, but he would not be surprised to learn that Donald Trump is posturing about the use of nuclear weapons in the heat of the current election campaign or officials at Homeland Security are reminding us that it is possible to construct a suitcase-sized bomb with the same potential as the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. Our nuclear memory is gone. We remember the pictures of 9/11 but the newsreels of Bikini Atoll and Hiroshima are decaying in the archives and those of us who saw them are a dwindling minority.

I admire Mr. Obama’s courage. He didn’t put the Hiroshima debate to bed, but he showed up there to remind us of our past and to advocate for a nuclear-free future. Sadly, though he tried to walk a tightrope and address the concerns of his audience, closed minds, divergent opinions, and political agendas made that impossible. What his visit did do was remind us of the horrors of nuclear war, and tacitly acknowledge our responsibility in bringing the war in the Pacific to an end that way. The tactical, strategic, and moral arguments surrounding those bombings will never be settled, but they are on the table in case such terrible circumstances and questions are ever considered again.

I’ve always believed that art can be a bridge to understanding complex material. Today I watched Alain Resnais’ 1986 film Hiroshima mon Amour about a French actress and a Japanese architect who use Hiroshima and their relationship as the backdrop for a long discussion about forgetfulness and memory. Originally, Resnais planned a documentary about the bombing and aftermath of Hiroshima, but Marguerite Duras (The Lover) convinced him he could tell the story more effectively as a love story. Her script, like the six characters in Hersey’s book, uses a human relationship to personalize the larger questions.

I applaud President Obama’s courage and diplomacy as illustrated by his visit to Hiroshima. After all, he was not the president who made that awful decision but he recognizes that America has a collective responsibility to address it in the larger context. It is unquestionable that Truman’s decision to use the bombs was more difficult and arguably more courageous, but in the interest of healing an old wound I don’t hesitate to use the word courageous in this instance.

Categories : Art, Aviation, Books, Film/Television, Politics, Travel, Uncategorized

Posted by jdbernard743

· May 24, 2016

· No Comments

Cognition vs. Longevity: Is It A Zero Sum Game?

Michael Kinsley has always had a way with words. His resume’ affirms it; editor of The New Republic and Harper’s, managing editor of the The Washington Monthly, American editor of The Economist, founder of Slate, contributor to The New Yorker and a monthly columnist for Vanity Fair. It shouldn’t surprise us that he’s found a catchy, minimalist title for his new book – Old Age: A Beginner’s Guide.

I think of old age as something we come by naturally? Do we really need a “guide?” Maybe I’m in denial? Last week I reviewed Mastery: A Mission Plan for Reclaiming a Life of Purpose, Fitness, and Achievement, my friend Bob Gandt’s prescription for a meaningful, fulfilling, later in life experience. Both Gandt and Kinsley deal with the same stage of life but give us different ways to look at and think about those years. I see them as bookends, complimentary ways to shake up our thinking as we close in on the finish line.

Kinsley has earned his opinions and speaks with authority on the subject of age and its options (as does Gandt). At age 43 he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. He kept it quiet for 8 years, but now at 65 he is full frontal and outspoken about the condition, which is, as he might say, everybody’s condition – that of being mortal. What sets him apart is that he has been considering his mortality and its consequences for the past 22 years while the rest of us were getting ready for retirement, planning to learn a new language, train for an Ironman, or start the Great American Novel. How do we handle the coming years? Is there a prescription? Who’s right?

I’m going with both. We need to find meaning and purpose in our remaining years, but life is finite (although Kinsley has some fun with Larry Ellison’s half-billion dollar investment in the “quest for eternal life”). There’s no doubt that we need to give serious thought to what’s coming. Kinsley does it with good humor and his usual sagacity. His slim little “guide” is full of facts – some startlingly depressing – like, 35% of baby-boomers (28 of the 79 million in that category) are expected to develop Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia. On the other hand, he is quick to point out that science is making extraordinary progress in dealing with the two chronic diseases that have historically been the primary killers of the elderly – heart disease and cancer.

This is not the first book to discuss end of life issues and as the author points out not likely to be the last. Twenty years ago Sherwin Nuland’s How We Die disabused a generation of optimists by pointing out that death is less likely to be dignified than messy. Last year Atul Gawande published Being Mortal, a meditation on how we might live better with age-related frailty and end of life issues. In his review of Being Mortal, Oliver Sachs said, “We have come to medicalize aging, frailty, and death, treating them as if they were just one more clinical problem to overcome. However, it is not only medicine that is needed in one’s declining years but life—a life with meaning, a life as rich and full as possible under the circumstances.” Insert here – Bob Gandt’s Mastery.

These books and Old Age: A Beginner’s Guide should be on every Boomer’s reading list – along with some Dave Barry, Bill Bryson, and Nora Ephron (she, speaking with authority and good humor from the grave), and so should Bob Gandt’s.

Unlike Nuland, Gawande, and Sacks, Kinsley is not a physician. He’s a writer dealing with a medical condition that moved him to confront his own mortality. But, Kinsley, the writer, is cagey and couches his mortality discussion in terms of competition. He sees “two forms of competition in the boomer death-style Olympics. There’s dying last and dying lucid. And in a really nice touch by whoever designed these games, the better you do in one, the worse you’re likely to do in the other.” Who will win the longevity sweepstakes and who will win the cognitive ones? “Unless you are extremely lucky, you won’t win both games.”

There is a lot to think about in Old Age: A Beginner’s Guide. It’s not a planning guide; there’s no invocation to prepare a will, prepay cremation services, or write your own obituary, and there are no pithy suggestions about how to disinherit greedy relatives or shun reverse mortgage salesmen. The book is a brief overview of information for the generation that used to believe “He who dies with the most toys, wins,” and an admonition, perhaps, to reconsider that wisdom.

In the early 1990’s Ridley Pearson, the mystery writer and a friend of mine, brought Michael Kinsley to my restaurant in Ketchum, Idaho, for lunch. I like writers. I’m a literary groupie at heart, and I was pleased to meet him that day. It must have been about the time he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, and coincidentally at that time I was wearing an eye patch to cope with double vision caused by my own neuro-muscular disease, myasthenia gravis.

Last week David Brewster interviewed Michael at Town Hall in Seattle about the new book. Time and his disease have taken their toll on him physically. I’m sure he would say the same about me, but cognitively he is as incisive as ever. When we were younger I didn’t always agree with him but his writing challenged me to think differently. Today I read his column in Vanity Fair and continue to feel challenged by his perspective on issues. For example, he argues that the Supreme Court correctly decided the Citizens United campaign finance case which I find abhorrent and pernicious to the ideals of a citizen-centered democracy. Nevertheless, he does a credible job of defending the Court’s decision.

Today, as we enter the home stretch in the “death-style Olympics,” I hope Mr. Kinsley is one of those “extremely lucky” folks who wins both the longevity and cognitive sweepstakes. He deserves that kind of good luck. I hope the same for myself, my family, and all of my friends, but as he might say, all the planning and good habits in the world don’t make much difference if you get hit by a truck while you’re training for that triathlon.

So, stay alert and look both ways when you cross the road.

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