2022 in the Rear-View

After realizing I had not blogged once in all of 2022, I planned over Christmas to write up a year-end piece on the year's events that should've motivated me to the keyboard. But then I got locked out of my apartment on Christmas Day night. 

Sorry for the delay. I may get around to telling that story, but first: 

Among the missing posts:  

- my frustration before the year even began - December 2021. After having carefully avoided Covid because I'm among the 3% of Americans considered immunocompromised, I risked seeing my now-remote CNN colleagues in-person for the first time in 21 months -- and tested positive the next day, rushing to the ER for Regeneron  - which turned out to be ineffective vs. Omicron.

- my misery in then having to spend my two-week Xmas break quarantining from my partner in our apartment, having to skip my uncle's funeral, and then, trying to make it to the family cemetery for the interment, having  the Uber driver get so lost on the way that we missed all but the last farewells. 

Finally arriving at Mount Hebron Cemetery

- my reflections on visiting the buildings at 2 Broadway and 14 Wall Street where my father had his law offices before moving them up to the burbs, memories of accompanying him to work on Saturdays to match the schedule of his workaholic father/boss - part of why my brothers and I never followed him into the family business.

14 Wall Street's pyramid roof/my brother Matt
 (who became a school superintendent)

- my disappointment at the ongoing suspension of the Central Park volunteer tour guide program, for which I had just been certified on a second tour, the Ramble, when the pandemic hit in mid March 2020. I attempted to stay informed by taking more tours from the staff guides...

The Block House, built for the war of 1812, North Woods

...being a "greeter" at Belvedere Castle, while also still...

...giving unofficial tours to friends. 

The Bow Bridge, Lake, & Dakota, 1890 & 2022
(photo: John Williams)

- my relief in finally getting an Evusheld shot in March, finally giving me measurable Covid antibodies because the vaccines hadn't worked on my immunosuppressed system (now moot because Evusheld doesn't work against the latest variants, and has been discontinued).

- my sneaky satisfaction in returning in February, masked, to nearly empty museums on weekdays before the city had fully gotten back to full throttle.

MoMA and the Met, February 2022

- the crazy coincidence discovery by my older daughter, while working for New Yorker writer John Seabrook, that my great-uncle (her great-great-uncle) had been involved in the reorganization of Seabrook's grandfather's company in 1925.

- the bittersweetness of finally getting to attend a memorial service for our friend, the legendary music genius Hal Willner, whose wife Sheila had been my pal since Rolling Stone days, and who tragically died in the first weeks of Covid - with tender tribute performances by many including Bono, Elvis Costello, and the normally reclusive Michael Stipe and Tom Waits. R.I.P. 

- my risible fury with the crazy Covid rental car/employee shortage - 

HOW "AWAY" IS SLEEPAWAY CAMP?

When my brothers and I were kids, we went off to a sleepaway camp in Maine [right] for eight weeks. And we were away.

Sure, I would write letters home  -- more often than many kids who only did so on nights they had to hand over a letter to gain entry to the dining hall.

And my mom wrote me back, envelopes stuffed with Times clippings and Mets gossip. My parents would drive up at the four-week mark  for visiting day to put faces to the names of  my counselors and bunkmates.

But I don't think I spoke to them on the phone more than once a summer, and they really had no idea what my day-to-day life was. (This was only somewhat less true during the school year when I lived with them.)

That isn't quite the case nowadays. Though my daughters are "away," I feel quite apprised of what's going on. And, in the age of helicopter parenting and TMI,  I don't know whether that's a good thing or not.

Swimming Hole Story

Maine, despite recent troubling encroachments by McDonald's and Dunkin Donuts, still looks and feels pretty much the way it did when I first landed there as an 11-year-old sleepaway camper, and its unspoiled waters and cheap lobsters have been drawing me back for more than half the summers of my life.

On the road to the rental cabin, we'd pass foxes, wild turkeys, deer, and a barn selling fresh eggs by the honor system (leave $3.50 in a can); on the lake we saw loons, cormorants, and a bald eagle. The local county fair, despite the increasingly generic greasy food stalls and carny rides, still has 4H quilt and produce displays, smash-up derby, and poultry and livestock barns filled with glorious ribbon-worthy specimens like this ostrichy rooster [right].

But this summer's quintessential Maine experience happened at the local swimming hole,