To Kill A Mockingbird for the 21st Century

Posted on 10/16/2026 by paulefallon

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird

The Huntington

October 8 – November 8, 2026

By Aaron Sorkin

Directed by Loretta Greco

Karl Kenzler as Atticus and Karen Killeen as Scout. Photo by Liza Voll.

The Huntington’s production of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is superb. Beautifully executed. Everyone should see it. Full stop.

The production is so good it makes clear that, despite the play’s title, this is not Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. It is Aaron Sorkin’s. Sorkin’s sensibility. in all its liberal glory, permeates every word of his 2018 interpretation of a mid-century American Classic.

There are two ways to experience the play. You can see it as my audience neighbors did, apparently unfamiliar enough with the story that they exclaimed at every knife-twist of the plot. Or, if you’ve read the 1960 book and seen the 1962 movie and even Christopher Sergel’s 1970 stage adaptation (of which Umbrella Arts in Concord did a fine production last year), you’ll absorb The Huntington’s magic through the lens of…Sorkin changed this, and expanded that, and eliminated the other.

The bones of the story remain intact. But timeframes are shifted, and direct audience address replaces the dual characters of ‘adult Scout’ versus ‘child Scout.’ More importantly, the only two significant Black characters in the story—Calpurnia, the Finch family housekeeper; and Tom Robinson, accused of raping a white woman—are more fully fleshed. They possess voice and emotion and harbor grievance, though, since the story’s set in 1934 Alabama, they still lack agency.

The more illuminating (and controversial) tonal shift is Atticus. The self-deprecating small-town lawyer who actively defends a Negro accused of rape, is traditionally seen as virtue personified. Here, he has human flaws. Apparently, President Trump’s comment after the 2017 Charlottesville, VA riot that “there were good people on both sides,” led Sorkin to reconsider Atticus’ moral purity. Sorkin’s Atticus is milquetoast, unable to condemn anyone in the Jim Crow town of Maycomb. Not his racist neighbor, nor the twelve white men who convict an obviously innocent man, nor even the incestuous rapist who pins his crimes on a Black man with the smug surety that race will trump deed.

It’s a big leap, attaching clay feet to a favorite hero, but Sorkin does it fleetly, and The Huntington presents it compassionately. The cast is uniformly excellent. Jackie Scholl, as Mayella Ewell is amazing, all trembling fire and fear. While Boston’s own Ken Cheeseman, as Judge Taylor, is a delight. Sorkin’s Mockingbird serves up more humor than Lee’s version, and Cheeseman fully inhabits his comic potential.

Karl Kenzler as Atticus and Rafael Jordan as Tom Robinson. Photo by Liza Voll.

There are a few hiccups. The denouement warrants more efficiency; fully mature Benjamin Izaak is miscast as a 12-year-old boy; and the set is simultaneously too stark yet too complicated, as props pop up and down against bland walls. On this huge stage, one could envision a stately courtroom elevated above a foreground of domestic action anchored by the essential tree. That simple setup would streamline movement while also supporting Scout’s ideal that when the bailiff calls court in session and declares, “All rise,” we do so in every possible sense.

These are minor quibbles against the overwhelming power of this superb production. It’s a sin to kill a mockingbird. It would also be a shame to miss this show. Attend. Let the myriad messages of moral complexity simmer. Emerge energized and motivated to make the change in our world that Atticus envisions.

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James Baldwin’s Wisdom for Our Present Day

Posted on 10/07/2026 by paulefallon
Photo courtesy bi.org

I recently read a wonderful book, Our Fathers: Reflections by Sons, a collection of essays by prominent writers about their relationships with their fathers. Funny, tragic, bittersweet, each piece caused me to stop and consider the myriad ways my own father manifests in me.

The opening essay, “Notes of a Native Son,” is a famous one, written by James Baldwin on the occasion of his father’s death. Published the year I was born, it speaks powerfully to me today.

I love the way James Baldwin writes; I honor the way he lived. His analysis, his anger, the clarity with which he sees the world. A clarity reserved for an outsider. Baldwin’s astute damnation of our nation, our prejudices, and our behaviors is always right. Yet he consistently yields short of being righteous. He identifies our human horrors, and then finds some glimmer of potential, some opportunity for communion or understanding. He suggests that someday, in some meaningful way, we might bridge the abyss that separates us all.

Towards the end of “Notes of a Native Son,” in the close of a lengthy paragraph about the legacy of his father’s preaching, Baldwin writes this single line.

“Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.”

That line catapults me forward seventy-one years, to our dismal state of 2026, where hate has been normalized into government policy. Somehow, someday, our Hater-in-Chief will be destroyed by his own hate. If we can recognize Baldwin’s wisdom, and let it take root, we will learn from our folly that gave Trump such power. And we will expand, once again, in love.

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Why Do We Think AI is Going to Be the End of Us?

Posted on 10/01/2026 by paulefallon
AI Woman and a horse. Courtesy The Equinest

I don’t understand AI. How it works, why it’s a boon, why it’s a threat. I don’t use it, except when Google crams it in my face before any other search result. I had an earnest discussion about AI with my level-headed thirty-something daughter who assured me that, yes, Dad, AI is an existential threat, and then admitted that, as my generation has already screwed up enough things in this world, AI is her generation’s bogeyman.

Despite not being on the hook for this looming disaster, I strive to stay tuned to the world, and so I read pretty much every article about AI in The New Yorker, The Boston Globe, The Atlantic; the proto-liberal rags that shape my worldview. And, over time, I believe some concept of what AI is, and what it’s capable of, is sponging into my aging brain.

Then in this week’s New Yorker (September 28, 2026) Jill Lepore’s article, “Is AI Above the Law” offered some insights that inched me closer to comprehension. Lepore’s a terrific writer whose often able to make common sense of complicated matters. Once again, she wrote to the rescue. This time, with horse analogies.

Legally speaking, AI’s closest analogy is chattel slavery. Slaves had owners, and the owners had rights over them. Except—handily for the owners—when slaves went rogue and acted on their own volition, in which case slaves were punished directly. According to Lepore: the antecedents for slave laws came from horses. Legally, horses are considered property first, sentient beings second. Ditto slaves. Ditto, for the moment, AI.

Lepore does an admirable job explaining how our legal processes, cumbersome and reactive, snarled in precedent, don’t seem up to the speed of AI’s transcendence. Some legal minds believe that’s fine; others argue AI demands more pro-action. Regardless, at this moment, AI’s legal precedents are essentially rooted in horses. Lapore goes on to describe how horses exist today: completely under the thumb of their human domesticators. Yet, are they any worse off for that subservience? Do they feel oppressed? Are horses seeking liberation?

The article ends with a suggestion that humans could become to AI what horses are to humans; creatures fully under another higher being’s control. Then she iterated the usual alarms about how AI can annihilate us.

But I came away with a completely different take. If humans are to AI what horses are to mankind, why would AI want to annihilate us? We love horses. We care for them, we admire their fleetness. They used to do real work for us but now they pretty much just hang out in pasture. An overriding plurality of clever minds seem to agree that AI could spell our doom. But, perhaps, AI will simply turn us into pets.

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Hurling Chestnuts at the Current Moment

Posted on 09/23/2026 by paulefallon

All My Sons

By Arthur Miller

Directed by Scott Edmiston

Lyric Stage Boston

September 18-October 18, 2026

Josephine Moshiri Elwood and Mark Souza. Photo by Benjamin Rose

The present MAGA moment often harkens back to America after World War II, when our country has king of the heap, white men ran the show, their wives stayed home, and people of color were, well, pretty much never considered. But undercurrents of doubt and discontent existed, even then, which prompted some playwrights to raise uncomfortable questions. So it’s notable that today, many theater companies are dusting off chestnuts from that era and offering them as a contrapuntal perspective to our current moment.

ART’s production of Eugene Ionesco’s anti-Fascist masterpiece, Rhinoceros (alas, only through September 27, and completely sold out), is a solid production with a stellar cast. Seeing Paul Giametti transform from petty bureaucrat to rhinoceros is worth the price of a ticket. But the whole enterprise left me cold. Ionesco was a driving force in “Theater of the Absurd,” and an essential characteristic of the Absurd is that the actors don’t play real people. They’re types or symbols, widgets in the apocalypse of dread suspended between World War II and nuclear Armageddon. Surface frivolity (poorly) masks existential doom. I understand it, intellectually. But Ionesco lacks the warmth of humanity that I cherish on stage. And when we hear rhinoceros stampede across ART’s huge stage with such precision, Fascism’s march toward uniformity feels like something happening ‘over there.’ Which is the exact opposite of the urgency our present moment demands.

A more satisfying exploration of twisted values that thrive in post-War America just opened at Lyric Stage: Arthur Miller’s All My Sons. Lyric’s small stage and intimate seating; a plot centered on four households that actually only occupy three adjacent houses; the earnest Midwest setting; this p[production distills moral bankruptcy to its most elemental level.

Laura Marie Duncan and Bill Mootos. Photo by Benjamin Rose.

The set is terrific. A 1920’s era bungalow, distorted to cubist angles, provides the backdrop for all the action takes place in the front yard. Neighbors come and go. Everyone seems so wholesome. Eldest son Larry’s plane went down over the Pacific three and a half years ago, and Mother’s inability to accept the obvious appears to be the biggest problem on the table.

The first act starts a bit sluggish. Miller’s dialogue of anticipatory domestic events is clunky and the cast seems unsettled. Until the minutiae gains momentum. Then, the plot soars, the dialogue zings, and the actor’s raise their pitch. Bill Mootos, a longtime Boston actor, delivers likely the best performance of his career as father, Joe Keller. By the end of Act Three, everyone in the cast has you poised uncomfortable on your seat. This is not some intellectual exercise. These are real people. People we want to think of as good. Doing terrible things, and swallowing the necessary compromises to salve their consciences. The kind of compromise too many of us make every day, simply to get up and put one foot in front of the other.

Go see All My Sons. Care about these folks. Search your own soul to determine what reflection resides therein. Then look around see how far we haven’t come in the last eighty years.

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Eleanor at Central Square Theater is a Triumph!

Posted on 09/16/2026 by paulefallon

Eleanor

By Mark St. Germain

Directed by Bryn Boice

Central Square Theater

September 10-October 11, 2026

Image courtesy CST website

Any opportunity to see Paula Plum, the dame of Boston theater, is always good reason to get up and get out to a show. But you must run to see Ms. Plum’s star turn in Central Square Theater’s production of Eleanor. She is simply spectacular. And the play, a one woman show about the life of Eleanor Roosevelt, is rich in unexpected detail and dramatic tension. This perfect fusion of superb actor and engaging subject makes for a rewarding ninety minutes.

Central Square Theater (CST) is mission-driven, perhaps more than any theater company in the area. They thrive on plays about women, science, and progressive voices. Sometimes, so preachy as to be academic rather than dramatic. But fortunately, Eleanor plays to CST’s strengths without ever giving over to lecture. You learn a lot, but come away being both thought-provoked and entertained.

The set-up is simple, yet spot on. Present day, at Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D.C., where the spirit of Eleanor Roosevelt comes to visit. Why, you may ask, this cemetery, when Eleanor Roosevelt, who died in 1962, is buried beside her husband, Franklin, in Hyde Park, New York? Three reasons, I suspect. First, to illustrate the fraught complexity of Eleanor and Franklin’s marriage. Where their bodies lie bears little connection to where their spirits thrive. Second, because it’s historical fact that Eleanor Roosevelt often visited Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ haunting statue, The Mystery of the Hereafter and The Peace of God that Passeth Understanding (commonly known as Grief), when contemplating the heartache of her husband’s life-long affair with Lucy Mercer Rutherford. And third, by setting the play in the present, Eleanor gets to aim her sharp wit at present-day Washington, which she does sparingly, yet to great effect.

Image coutesy Wikipedia

“Who are any of us, but the choices we make?” Eleanor challenges early in the play, and then Paula Plum, decked out in an elegantly simple vintage dress with a double string of pearls, proceeds to entangle us in the multiple, complex choices that Eleanor made in life. Ms. Plum also plays more than a dozen side characters, all of whom she renders with alacrity and humor. The cemetery set is stark, yet the occasional projections elicit a range of moods and reinforce the sense of spanning time.

Eleanor hits all the high points we already know about the longest serving First Lady: her ungainly looks; her championship of the downtrodden; her relationship with Lorena Hicks. But it doesn’t dwell in gossip. Rather, the play introduces a bevy of attributes and characters of which I was unaware. Eleanor’s elegant French tutor who taught, “how to raise your place in society, not settle for where society puts you.” Eleanor’s unstinting devotion to her (no good) father. Her close relationship with a beefy Secret Service guard. The clarity—and blinders—that both she and Franklin brought to their marriage and their official roles. Eleanor was the emotional heart (and functional legs) of the duo; Franklin the savvy political animal.

I will not spoil the dramatic peak of this biography we all think we know, except to say there’s drama aplenty, which Paula Plum delivers magnificently.

Go see Eleanor. Because it’s a story infused with hope, which we need in these brutal days. But also, to feel comforted in what we know about this remarkable woman, challenged by what we don’t know, and delighted by the engaging theater experience. Thank you, Paula Plum. Thank you Central Square Theater.

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Happy Summer!

Posted on 07/29/2026 by paulefallon

A beautiful marsh mellow flower along the shore of the Charles.

Enjoy the summer.

Awkward Pose looks forward to return in the fall.

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Fairyland: in Print and on Screen

Posted on 07/22/2026 by paulefallon
Courtesy The Boston Globe

Somehow, I’ve never met Alysia Abbott. She’s lived around the corner from me for more than a decade, in an octagon house set back to allow a most remarkable tree claim space. She’s been to my house, at a party my housemate gave while I was off pedaling somewhere West. Her husband designed a poster that’s framed in my kitchen; one that I lifted from a boarded-up building on the outskirts of SoHo back in the 90’s

I’ve known of Alysia for years. Her memoir, Fairyland, about growing up in San Francisco with a gay dad in the 1980’s, got great press in the mid-2010’s, just before my memoir, Architecture by Moonlight, went straight to the dollar bin. I never read Fairyland. Ostensibly because, twenty years after coming out, I was over reading gay books about San Francisco and AIDS. But really, I was just envious of her success.

A few weeks ago, my housemate mentioned that Fairyland had been made into a movie, streaming on Amazon. Did I want to watch? Not really; envy having a long half-life in my Celtic psyche. But I agreed to watch because, well, at least I have the self-awareness to know when I’m being small.

Fairyland, the movie, is okay. Emilia Jones as Alysia is captivating. Geena Davis as her grandmother is horrid. Scoot McNairy, as Alysia’s father Steve, captures the gently narcissistic gestalt of pre-and post-AIDS San Francisco quite well. Which, as I watched the movie, bothered me more and more.

I have no tolerance for anyone who’s a lousy parent, especially when the parent turns out to be gay. The father in Fun Home, who leaves his children alone at night to go tricking, makes my skin crawl. He gives gay parents a bad rap. Watching Fairyland, I felt that same way about Steve Abbott. Throughout the movie, he drags his daughter to various adult events, leaves her alone too often, and exposes her to random sexual partners too freely. We see Alysia alone, vulnerable, preyed upon by perverts, and saved by strangers when her father ought to be there. By movie’s end, I was sick of Steve Abbott.

But I also realized that Alysia’s Abbott’s memoir was likely quite different from the movie, if for no other reason than the title alone conjures something more magic than miserable.

So I borrowed Fairyland, the book, from the library; and I’m so glad that I did. The book is lovely. Yes, the events portrayed in the movie are there. But they’re buffered by so many scenes of parental care and concern. In the book, Steve is less a narcissist than an innocent. His benign view of the world translates into a parental style that might be considered permissive, but certainly not uncaring.

Comparing the movie and the book offers a vivid illustration of how we contort reality to create drama. By leaving out the majority of positive parenting expressed in the book, while highlighting all of the shortcomings, Steve Abbott becomes a caricature of the nuanced, complex man he truly was. I gather that Alysia Abbott didn’t have a large voice in creating the movie, though her Boston Globe opinion piece indicates harmony with the result. But I, for one, wish the movie had found a better balance, offered us more joy. It’s something I’d like to discuss with Ms. Abbott. If we ever get the chance to meet.

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Heidi Blake on the Tate Brothers

Posted on 07/15/2026 by paulefallon

If her credentials connote weight, Heidi Blake is no pushover. The reporter for Britain’s Daily Telegraph, Sunday Times, and Buzzfeed has been a London-based investigative journalist for The New Yorker since 2022. Her article about Andrew and Tristan Tate, “A Web of Abuse,” in the June 15, 2026 issue, clocks in at 23 pages. It’s about as character-filled, as long, and as exhaustively reported as any New Yorker article I’ve read.

Yet it left such a peculiar taste in my mouth.

Andrew Tate / Heidi Blake. Image courtesy YouTube

I didn’t know about the Tate brothers before I read the article. I’d heard their names as a couple of guys in the alt-right soup, but had skirted their details to preserve my own sanity. Still, when The New Yorker invests in such a significant profile, I provide attention.

It’s impossible to rank choice all the ways I detest the Tate’s. That they’re misogynist, for sure. And human traffickers, almost certainly. That they’ve evaded all kinds of justice due to their money and privilege. That they are mostly absent fathers to an undetermined number of children by an undisclosed number of women, and yet abusive to those children when present. That their fixation on ostentatious wealth and possessions is such a shallow, insatiable, way to be; yet strutting that wealth before an online world of Tate wannabe’s is how they support that wealth. How that wealth and influence gives them access to power. How they represent everything most corrupt in a world whose only value measure is money.

Yet the one thread that struck me throughout the entire article is how no matter what they say, online and off, nothing sticks. They flood the world with conflicting perspectives until there’s no more solid ground, no moral base, no objective truth. The Tate brothers did not invent this, nor do they perfect it to the level of the world’s premier truth conflator, Donald Trump. Rather, they illustrate how guys with really no talent beyond brazen hutzpah acquire outsize influence in our world.

By the time we get to page 23, and despite Ms. Blake’s journalistic balance. I’ve decided these two are total scumbags. Then we arrive at her actual interview with Andrew and Tristan. Andrew states that his reputation as a misogynist is “completely unfair.” Having waded through 22 pages of how he’s built an empire of web porn by wooing vulnerable girls with enticements and love, cajoling them to perform, keeping them in a secluded harem when they’re not online, refusing to pay them fairly for their sex work, belittling them, forcing them to have sex, and physically choking them during the act, I find this statement indefensible. Yet, Ms. Blake does not challenge him on it. Instead, he continues, “What I am is a realist who has certain world views on how men should act, which is with honor and duty, and they shouldn’t be hurting women in any way. Of course, on the internet, you use hyperbole, and you exaggerate sometimes for comedic effect.”

The discrepancy between Andrew Tate’s quoted statement and his actions is so great, it would be laughable, if the effects of his actions were not so horrific. Yet again, Ms. Blake neither challenges nor corrects. Which makes me suspicious. These guys are clearly charming and persuasive, masters at casting a slim shadow over overwhelming evidence in order to cast doubt and live another day. Their serpentine ways can bait naïve women from dismal backgrounds. But surely, this seasoned investigative reporter will call them out. Apparently not.

In the final paragraph, Tristan Tate walks Ms. Blake to the elevator. He strides towards her. Opens his arms. “Come on, give me a hug.”

And she does.

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Tao of Lloyd

Posted on 07/08/2026 by paulefallon

A guy doing ninety minutes of PT every day gets into podcasts, and the brightest gem I’ve discovered is “The Tao of Lloyd.” I’ve listened to every episode to date (approaching fifty, with a new one each week) and recently started all over again.

“Tao of Lloyd” is a brilliant concoction; conceived, composed, and performed by Dennis Trainor, Jr. a Boston-area actor and teacher. Each episode is 12 to 15 minutes long, and typically includes three distinct, yet karmically related, components. First: kick off with an agonizing dose of the latest, greatest fascist moves undermining our beloved country. Second: transition into a meditation to sooth our agitated souls (though Lloyd’s monkey mind usually interrupts any sustained sense of calm). Third: a reading of a chapter of the Tao Te Ching, the fundamental text of Taoism. Lloyd then wraps up by making some piquant connection between the world we inhabit today and the one the Tao envisions in its 81 simple, ennobling chapters.

It’s an existential search for balance, fueled by triple espressos.

So, if this podcast is written, produced, and stars Dennis Trainor Jr., then who the heck is Lloyd? Upon first listen I had no idea, but now…let me explain. Dennis is a Gen X guy, raised on Reagan and The Wonder Years. One of his cultural touchpoints is Cameron Crowe’s 1989 rom-com. Say Anything, starring John Cusack in his first leading role. Since inhaling the “Tao of Lloyd,” I’ve watched the movie. It’s an okay flick; the best thing being John Cusack’s portrayal of the directionless high school senior Lloyd Dobbler, an all-too-easy going slouch of a hero. Lloyd navigates life with elan by releasing the least possible energy. Not everyone likes him, but the folks that matter most, appreciate and love him.

Lloyd exemplifies the satisfaction, and balance, of non-doing as he succeeds in achieving his main mission—capturing the heart of uber-achieving Diane Court. His biggest act of expressing love is actually standing still, albeit outside Diane’s window with his boom box hoisted high, blaring Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes.”

The film ends with Diane flying to London to embark on a major scholarship, with Lloyd beside her with no plan beyond being with her in this moment. According to Dennis Trainor Jr., as Lloyd all grown up, Lloyd and Diane do not work out. She’s now Senior Vice-President for Government Interface at Palantir; he’s an itinerant protestor, present at Standing Rock, Occupy Wall Street, and other places where folks have stood up to be counted, only to be discounted. Lloyd’s a man who never quite engages with the world as it is and yet slivers, psychically intact, through time and space.

The remarkable, wonderful, thing about “Tao of Lloyd,” is how it resonates with the challenge of being centered in a world dominated by extremes. I have such a difficult time sitting still, meditating. Within moments I’m ruminating. Then hyperventilating. “Tao of Lloyd” accepts that dissonance. Lloyd’s monkey mind, like my own, interferes with the meditation again and again. And yet, that interference keeps me engaged, and more of the meditation sinks in than when I try to squelch my mind’s anxious wanderings.

I’ve become more centered since I welcomed: “Tao of Lloyd” into my life.

Post Script: “Tao of Lloyd” is soon to be a one-person play. Dennis Trainor, Jr. will premier it at Edinburgh Fringe Festival this August. Check out a preview performance on Tuesday July 14 at Armory Arts Center in Somerville!

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The Day I Became an Old Person

Posted on 07/01/2026 by paulefallon
Looking west over Galway Bay, from which my ancestors emigrated to America five generations ago

July 1, 2025—one year ago today—I became an old person. For some, aging may be an incremental process, and I sometimes discern creaking facility over time. But last July 1st, a seemingly innocuous event triggered a cacophony of health issues, which I now measure as the divider between before I got old…and after.

I had a lab appointment to draw some blood. No biggie. The nurse mentioned I was due for my COVID booster. Sure thing. Since 2021, I’d had my initial COVID pair and four boosters. I was accustomed to feeling punk the next day, maybe register a low fever. But this time the fever persisted, and I spent the July 4th weekend in bed at 102 degrees. The fever dwindled, then spiked. My hands swelled. Then my belly. Every few days I seemed to develop some new symptom. I couldn’t raise my right arm. Then it became numb. I stopped sleeping. I was a mess.

A visit to urgent care. More bloodwork. A spinal x-ray revealed a curve that reflected a graceful vase, but a precarious backbone. Over the course of the next three months I was diagnosed with: a UTI; Lyme disease; a fully detached rotator cuff, a neural tangle in my right chest, polyuria, and sleep apnea. No one knew how this cavalcade of unaffiliated travesties befell me in such short order, and even the most ardent anti-vaxxer would be hard pressed to equate a COVID booster with a detached rotator cuff. However, my intuition suspects that the booster triggered my immune system, which then went rampant stirring up all kinds of previously sleeping dogs. I’ve always been very sensitive to medications (one Tylenol can vanquish the worst headache), while simultaneously warned that I’m insensitive to pain. Perhaps that helps explain how I’d never experienced any Lyme symptoms, or missed many gym reps as I tore my rotator cuff to shreds.

I’ve had more doctor’s appointments in the past year than all my previous decades combined, and the overlapping conditions make treatment plans a challenge. My right hand is perpetually numb, and the nerve damage in that arm precludes the shoulder replacement that could restore mobility. Good thing I’m left-handed. I’m too weak to effectively go to the gym, can’t raise my arms to do yoga, and am still building up bicycle endurance. Instead, I have a ninety-minute PT/exercise regimen I do at home four times a week. Thankfully, my legs are okay, so I can still walk four miles a day.

The reason I say I’m old is simple: what I once could do ain’t coming back. For over seventy years my physical health was excellent (mental health being another story). My body’s had a good run, so I can’t really complain. But there’s a wistfulness in remembering when I moved with grace and ease. Such fluidity will never return. I don’t really mind being old. There are blessings that come with diminished expectations, and I might easily enjoy my reduced capacities for twenty years or more. But youth and vigor? They’re delegated to pleasant memory.

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