"What I Liked in 2009--My Year-End List"--A New Year's Eve Journal

Every January 31, we close the lid on the previous 365 days, as though that period of time was a box, a container of the same size and shape of all the others that passed before. So we play that amusing year-end game of filling the box with a set amount of objects that can easily be portioned into bundles of 10, or 100, or some other arbitrary number:  10 Best Films or Books, 100 Most Memorable Images, 5 Things We'd Like to Forget, and all the rest. 


It would be so much more interesting if each person filled his or her "container" of a year with just their own appropriate amount of artistic or cultural favorites, memorable events, or significant trends.  As few or as many items could be included, without having to stretch in order to fill a pre-ordained list...or worse yet, to squeeze out a true favorite because the pre-ordained list is limited.


And yet, it's a nice time to review the things that we gladly carry with us across the threshold into the new year.


An old year coming to an end is like moving away from home, or leaving school.  A new year feels like a blank slate, a second chance, trying a new restaurant or seeing a new film.  Of course, years don't finally end or suddenly begin.   The joys and anxieties of 2009 will follow us into 2010 like a New Year's Day hangover, that will remind us either that we had a great time, or that there were a lot of questionable things that occurred that we would just as soon forget, but that we're sure will come back to haunt us in some way.  I'll bet that for most of us, it will be some of both.


I wonder what I will want to remember about 2010, when I look back on it a year from now.

For now, here is what I'm filling my 2009 "box" with...(and to keep it festive, I won't mention the world events and personal headaches that will sneak in like unwanted insects, destined to annoy me well into the new year!)

What I Liked In 2009

Book: "Olive Kitteridge" by Elizabeth Strout.  13 linked stories featuring an unforgettable title character. A deceptively simple collection about love and regret, the naive wonder of youth and the terror of aging, and the unique stories hiding in the most ordinary places.

Book: "Physics of the Impossible" by Michio Kaku.  What is impossible? Time travel? Invisibility? Death Stars? Teleportation? Physicist Kaku's entertaining argument for long-term possibilities...gave one of my dormant brain muscles a good, invigorating stretch.


Book: "Alex and Me", by Irene Pepperberg.  The story of the bond between  scientist Pepperberg  and the parrot (Alex) she trained to speak.  Funny, amazing and heartbreaking...Alex' last words: "You be good..I love you."


Book: "The Lazarus Project" by Aleksandr Hemon. Bosnian expatriate and Chicago native Hemon penned this novel that parallels a photographer's visit to Europe with a history of his ancestor's mysterious death.  Politically astute and funny, with haunting photographs as might be imagined by the fictional protagonist.


Additional Favorite Books and Re-Reads to remember: "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" (Michael Chabon); "Land's End" (Michael Cunningham), "Hot, Flat and Crowded" (Thomas Friedman), "One Nation Under Dog" (Michael Schaffer), "Revolutionary Road" (Richard Yates), "Columbine" (Dave Cullen), "Independence Day", (Richard Ford), and "Middlesex" (Jeffrey Eugenides)


Movie: "Milk".  I saw it first last year, but re-visited it in 2009, still the most satisfying and moving work I have seen all year.  A faithful and worthy tribute to a singular human, Harvey Milk.

Movie: "Every Little Step" . A documentary look inside auditions for the Broadway revival of "A Chorus Line". Rare and wonderful study of the creative impulse.


Movie: "Capitalism: a Love Story"  Michael Moore continues to tackle timely issues with unbridled honesty and amazing footage. (Reviewed here October 11)


Movie: "Nine" (Reviewed here Dec. 29...I've said it all there).


Movie: "An Education", A young british student preparing for Oxford must choose between her intellectual future and a life of excitement with a seductive older man. 


Movie: "I Love New York".... An "anthology" of several short films whose link is the diversity of the people of the Big Apple. 


Additional Movies I will Want to Remember: "Away We Go", "Brothers", "Taking Woodstock", "Precious", "500 Days of Summer".

And I will never forget these: 

Talking to Elizabeth Strout (Olive Kitteridge, see above) at the Printers Row Book Fair


Starting this "Reinvention" Journal!!

New York in October

The Imagine Circle in Central Park, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Mark, Jillian and Max in theVillage


Stonewall

The Bethesda Angel

Fenway Park! (See Photo Above)

Harvard, The Book Co-Op, and the Huffington Post Book of Blogging

The Ferry from Boston to Provincetown

"Hair"--and dancing with the cast on-stage for the finale.

My shared birthday with Mark on the North End, where we were both Italian for a night

Provincetown, the theater, and "Take me Out"

The Breakwater on Cape Cod

A Night at the Opera---"Merry Widow"

President Obama's Inauguration

"39 Steps"

"Superior Donuts"

"Fiddler on the Roof" in Chicago, starring Topol

"Jersey Boys"

NPR and Fresh Air, especially Tom Ford's Interview, and so many others

Friends....old and new...from California, to Maine, to Phoenix, to Connecticut

Maggie, who will always be there....

All of you....


Best 2010 to everyone!!
~Tom~ 

Synchronicity--How The Huffington Post and Kiddieland Got Me Blogging

A charming bit of synchronicity occurred yesterday that encouraged me in my efforts to continue this journal which I began almost three months ago.


My very first post was on Labor Day, and it was about the closing of a Chicago suburban amusement park I had visited as a child:  Kiddieland.


Yesterday, on the Huffington Post feed which I keep on my blog page, there was a story about Kiddieland's wooden roller coaster, The Little Dipper, which was purchased by Six Flags.


The happy coincidence, the synchronicity between Huffington Post, my blog, and Kiddieland, is described here, in my comment to the HuffPost story:

This story resonates with me very personally! And Huffington Post plays a large role....Ho­w Kiddieland, a childhood activity, got me blogging.

Back in July, I made my very first trip to Boston and Cambridge. At the Book Co-Op in Cambridge, I bought one book: The Huffington Post Guide to Blogging.

After reading the Guide front to back, I decided to create a blog of my own. It's a personal journal whose underlying theme is the idea of reinventing one's self...tol­d in personal anecdotes, and a broad range of topics of interest to me and hopefully my visitors.

On Labor Day, I posted my very first entry... all about the closing of Kiddieland after 80-some years. I had just seen the story on the National News, and was subjected to a flood of nostalgia, and a sense that it would be the perfect time to begin the work of moving ahead with my own re-invention. I reasoned, "What better way to begin the work of self-change than by re-visiting a part of childhood that will be gone forever?"

If permitted, here's the link to that post:

http://tom-samp-journal.blogspot.com/2009/09/daily-journal-september-7-2009.html

And now this article came to me over the Huffington Full Feed---on my blog page....

I'm glad they found a home for The Little Dipper! And I am certainly going to post about this article in today's blog entry

Which, as you see, I did!

Summer Reflections on Boston and Cambridge: My Visit to Harvard

One of this summer's activities that influenced me the most, that had the greatest impact on my notion of re-inventing myself, was my visit to Harvard.  Since I have spent almost a third of my life working and studying on college campuses, and since Boston boasts a number of well-known colleges, it was a given that Harvard be on our itinerary.

That morning I tried to desctibe my ambivalent feelings.  Harvard is such a part of my cultural landscape, whether through books, movies, world-famous research, celebrities, or others of high profile, that our trip would have been diminished if we missed this opportunity.  On the other hand, I feared that I would feel like an outsider, forever looking in, as though being granted a privilege to set foot on the grounds but never belonging.  For the first time, I was feeling the effects of time running out, of a door being forever closed...

However, in the spirit of adventure more characteristic of college freshman than highbrow tourists, Mark and I chose to attend the "Hahvahd Tour", the unofficial student-run tour of campus and Cambridge.  According to the brochure, the tour is conducted by "seasoned guides who highlight Harvard hot-spots through a satisfying blend of in-depth knowledge, side-spliting jokes, historical accounts, and exclusive takes on student life at Harvard!"    We could not resist!!

It was pouring rain....No problem!  Our guides, Alex and Mathew, were boisterous, friendly, and surprisingly well-versed in Harvard history.  Our small group grew to about 40 people, and we started for Harvard yard in a deluge, armed with umbrellas.   

It was informal and called to mind Freshman Orientation at any college, the one you go to without your parents. As our guides began in full comic voice, I immediately relaxed.  Here were two college students, like students everywhere, who liked jokes, pranks, and made us their accomplices.  Nothing snobbish here, but flesh and blood kids with good minds, big hearts, and wicked senses of humor.

I learned:

--Harvard is the country's first college, and has the oldest classroom building

--One of the most beautiful buildings, used for lectures, was built to memorialize fallen Civil War Soldiers. Designed by a Freemason, it contained many kinds of Christian symbols and imagery. The building may have looked like a church, but had no religious intent. The building also housed the Freshman-only Dining hall.

--William James (brother of author Henry James), taught Philosophy, and one of his students was Gertrude Stein, who was having too much fun to study for the final exam.  To the only question on the exam, "What is the meaning of Life?", Stein replied that she had enjoyed herself too much to care, and asked to opt out of the test. Soon after that, having a change of heart, she asked Professor James for a re-test...but to her astonishment, her earlier non-answer was accepted and actually got her an A in the class.

--Timothy Leary taught at Harvard, and was thrown out for manufacturing and overusing LSD.

--Students don't have Majors...they are referred to as "Concentrators".  Alex was a Psychology Concentrator, Matt, a Political Science Concentrator.

--The huge Weidner Library was named for a man who died on the Titanic after staying on-board to save his books!  His mother endowed Harvard with millions of dollars to build the library, stipulating that it could never be altered, and that it must contain a room that no one could ever enter, except for a librarian, to place fresh flowers for the ghost of her son, who was also allowed to visit!

--The statue of John Harvard may have been a relative, not John Harvard himself.  The model was likely a Harvard president, most of whom had dorms and other buildings named after them.  But this particular president had the name "Hoar"...not a great name for a student residence!  So in consolation, they sculpted his likeness.  Students supposedly touch the statue for good luck before exams; but apparently, disgusting things are done to the statue all the time, and we were warned against touching it. ~~~

~~~Later, thinking on the day and the fun we had, it occurred to me that Harvard might in fact be forever closed to me.  It never bothered me before....but I always maintained the attitude that nothing was impossible.  Maybe, it remains a possibility for me some day....but before the trip was over, I realized that there are still ways to achieve dreams, and that the Idea of Me and Harvard was more about self-image than achievement.  I felt the sadness of one who had to face reality and end a clandestine love affair, even though I was still in love.  But time, and life, go on!

(Special thanks to Alex and Matthew...I hope you're doing well!)

Daily Journal, September 14: A Provincetown Journal

Mark and I took a trip top Boston and Provincetown this past July to celebrate our shared birthday (July 6) and to experience the East Coast, to which I had never before traveled.  On the trip, beginning with our plane ride between O'Hare and Logan Airports, I kept a hand-written journal each day (it's too cumbersome to carry a laptop for a week's trip).  In it I wanted to create as detailed a picture as possible of the geography, architecture, people, and attractions we experienced. 
My favorite entry described our crossing of a breakwater from the shore of Provincetown to almost the very tip of Cape Cod.  I was recovering from a minor leg sprain I suffered at home while playing basketball (how butch) and I am not always fond of water.  Plus, I had never tried to navigate jagged rocks with a sharp drop on either side.  I was lacking confidence, and several times wanted to turn back.....But then something clicked and I began to see the path, the water, and my relationship to it all as a great metaphor......and it put me on the road to a new direction.......and it still inspires me.....

"To reach the far end of the cape, and then to the beach, it is necessary to walk across a mile of large rocks with a sharp drop off to the sea on either side. Looking at the uneven path as it extends and converges almost to invisibility on the horizon, it seems a daunting task for one who is less adventurous and who is afraid of losing balance or getting hurt.........

The promise of the beach at the other end, with its openness, tranquility, expansiveness, and its exclusivity at an edge of the world that few are hearty enough to reach, except by boat, (which was an option)--that promise was seductive.......

This was a trip that Mark wanted to make. At first I was reluctant, even terrified. As I made the first tentative steps, and saw the unevenness of the rock surfaces, the large gaps between some of them, the pointedness and randomness of the path, I fretted.....what if I hurt my leg again, or sprained an ankle? or if I slipped and fell into the water below? And did I have enough energy to make the trip back?........

I ventured out, convinced I couldn't do it....hesitating at every rock that was turned at a funny angle....not enjoying the vista, but worrying about the distance yet ahead.... Not enjoying the water, nor the cool breeze all around me....thinking that I had a chore to do, one of great risk, one that might prove painful or too time-consuming.......

Mark was very patient. As much as he really wanted to get to the other side, he offered to stop and turn back whenever I got too anxious. People began to pass us in both directions. All of them were friendly and seemed not to notice or be bothered by our slow pace, my hesitation.......

Suddenly, at the very moment I was convinced I had to stop, I remembered that as a youngster I was discouraged, even forbidden, from taking risks, or testing danger. I had internalized this philosophy and I realized I had lived much of my life this way. It occurred to me that the path of rocks represented my life to this point. I saw that I had been driving myself to distraction by my fear, my inability to focus, to concentrate on the task, and achieve completion......

So I made up my mind to do two things: First, concentrate on each rock in front of me, master the difficulty of each one, and steady my pace, rock by rock. Second, I would stop occasionally, check in with Mark, look toward the horizon, and take in the scenery and feel the air around me, before moving on, step by step, rock by rock....

Soon, the rocks seemed to level, the pace steadied and increased, I ignored the treacherous spaces between the rocks and the steep dropoffs, and I began to enjoy the walk. I stopped checking the distance ahead of us, as I naturally knew that the goal was nearer....

The journey over the rocks explained a part of my life, and I wept, saying that if I finished this journey, I would finish the novel and the play I began to write but despaired of finishing. The image of taking each rock step by step will remain significant as I confront life's creative tasks and the rewards that will be waiting at journey's end....."