Don't Throw In The Towel

Thank you all for your many birthday wishes on my journal, on face book, over the phone, from email and snail mail. I'm very pleased.

Contents
Don't throw in the towel
Winter Question
What happened to Jasper Fingerhut
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Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age.

Jeanne Moreau
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When a high school student asked what life was like in the theatre I went through a long list of things and I ended by saying "The one thing it absolutely never is is boring." If you're an actor you may be exhausted, frustrated, and angry, but you will never be bored.

I eschew boredom with vigor. It is the obverse side of claustrophobia for me. I admire people who can do the same job for their whole working lives. I could never do it.

But I have known actors who burned themselves out after only a handful of years because they got caught up on a roller coaster ride of fame and popularity and didn't love what they were doing. Eventually the roller coaster ride ended, sometimes disastrously.

Falling in love with someone can be a twisty, turning, ascending and plummeting thing also, but it can straighten out into a ride of gentle passion. Even if another person is not involved I believe it is vitally important for people to find something they love to do and do it, especially when they get older. I have heard people say, Some day when I'm older and have more time to myself I hope to do so and so. My answer is, Why wait?

If you find a passion for something and do it, even part time, it generates all sorts of positive qualities in your life and one of the most important is enthusiasm. I've known guys with many different hobbies they were crazy about: golf, fishing, barbershop quartet singing, scuba diving, disco dancing, fencing, learning to play a musical instrument, traveling, going back to school. The list is endless but everything on it is something that has brought love of doing and being into someone's life and thus prevented age from creeping into the ring and throwing in the towel.

I believe it is the love and enthusiasm for doing the things, associating with the people and being consciously present with what we enjoy that are the seeds of a continuing and interesting life.

DB - The Vagabond
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WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)

What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?

dbdacoba@aol.com

Will you people get your act together and answer this question, please?
Only 7 responses so far. Winter is almost over.
DB
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What happened to old Jasper Fingerhut?

A murder mystery in 7 sections.

Section 1

The police came soon after Brett Salazar called them. He had called to report seeing a man floating face down in a quiet part of the Borden River. A police wagon soon arrived and they fished the man out of the water He was dead.

The man was old, barefoot, wearing large brown corduroy trousers and a tattered and torn blue shirt. There was nothing in his pockets. He had a large metal cross around his neck and on his left middle finger a ring in the shape of a skull with a small green stone in the left eye socket, the other socket was empty. No one recognized him.

Doctor Skinner, the Bordentown Medial Examiner, received the corpse to begin his examination. He was to determine time and cause of death and any other important information he could find about the mysterious dead man.

While this was happening Boris Klipton, Professor of Art History at Bordentown State Teachers College, was way upstream. Sitting by the river, he was working on his latest book. It was an account of recent unsolved art thefts.

During his interview with Detective Rice Turner, Brett Salazar, testified of hearing four gunshots in the distance long before he saw the body. When Detective Turner asked him what he was doing at the river, Brett answered that he was planning to fish but had forgotten his fishing gear and was about to go home when he spotted the dead man floating in the water.
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Section 2

At around 3 p. m. Professor Klipton gathered up his papers, put them in his briefcase and got back in his car. He noticed some lint and bits of cloth on the seat, brushed them off on to the floor, put down his briefcase and drove to Sam's Place.

Sam Newitt opened his general store and gas station about 25 years ago. It was on the outskirts of town, away from all the bustle, which is the way he liked it. He would get business from folks leaving Bordentown on their way home and others who were passing through. He did a good business.

Sam was a good man, but he had one nasty habit. He liked to go down to the river with his rifle and shoot birds.

When Professor Klipton arrived he found Hank, Sam's part time help. When asked, Hank didn't know where Sam was but thought he was probably out shooting. Klipton filled up the gas tank, bought a few items for his dinner and drove home.

The dead man came to Doctor Skinner's office in a body bag. He and Ivan, his assistant, opened the bag and as they did Skinner immediately put a large towel over the dead man's face and upper body. Then he dismissed Ivan for the day and went to work.
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Section 3 tomorrow

DB

Life Is A Crazy Thing

Dare to the level of your capability then go beyond to a higher level.

Alexander Haig
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Yesterday afternoon I was talking with my neighbor Ken. He's 77, smokes cigars and drinks beer. He's been married twice, has three daughters here and there around the country and a bunch of grandchildren. He currently has a lady friend who lives nearby. He works around the neighborhood, tending to people's property, cleaning up the sidewalks, fixing things, taking out the trash, tending gardens, small paint jobs, things like that. He tells of an interesting life traveling all over the country, time in the Navy. When his car broke down in Texas he got a job with the mechanic to pay for fixing it. Then he sold it to the mechanic, bought a pickup and headed north.

As I listened to him I thought back on my own life. I am a crazy man. I've always been crazy. When I was a preschooler I amazed people by climbing up to the top of a diving tower and jumping into the lake feet first while the other kids were diving from the low diving board. It made sense to me. Not knowing what was at the bottom of the lake I wanted to find it with my feet instead of my face.

In Elementary school I loved climbing trees as most boys did. I would climb to the top of a pine tree, jump out on to a branch and ride the branches down one after the other until I reached the bottom as my buddies watched. I got a lot of pine needles in my underwear but it was worth it.

In Junior High School I climbed a brick wall because my buddies said it couldn't be done. When I finally sat up on the cement top they were amazed.

In High School I was elected editor of the year book and student council president on the same day. I gave the year book job to the second place winner who messed it up. Big lesson there.

Bored with college I took off and hitchhiked across the country, from Boston to Los Angeles even though everybody said I was crazy.

When I got back home I began a career as a performing artist in the entertainment industry. My family and others said it wouldn't work. I played a wide variety of characters, including a bear. I've done musicals even though I never learned to sing and dance. Even after I retired my family wanted to know what I had retired as.

I confess, with no sense of shame, that almost all of the things I did in life I did because I was bored.

Now I'm 71. I have trouble walking and I have to read with a magnifying glass. Whenever I'm tempted to feel sorry for myself I think of people like Stephen Hawking who can't speak and can't move but who is still a world class scientist, physicist and cosmologist. He won't quit. Ken won't quit. He enjoys his life too much. And I won't quit. I'm still bored. I've written two novels and am working on a third as well as a bunch of short stories. I hope to publish them some day, as crazy as that may sound to some people.

I have an apartment full of paintings and I'm working on a new one. Maybe they will find their way into a gallery some day.

I am an uneducated scholar, a writer who flunked English class and a desperately near sighted painter. What more could you ask for?

DB - The Vagabond
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SUMMER QUESTION
(This is not a contest.)

Who are the 2 (two) most important people alive today? Why?

Only 8 responses so far. Summer is about to close her gates. Get with it. Don’t be left out in the heat.

dbdacoba@aol.com

Thank you.
DB
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