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 - 

The Culture Cure

Met Museumgoer looking at Felix Vallotton's 'The White and the Black" (1913)

How do we keep it together during times of chaos? 

A friend recently posted on Facebook: 

"Happy to say I'm taking some time off to get my head/body together (right now they're in different time zones) but I had to cancel my plans for a walk-on-deserted-beaches sojourn because of family responsibilities...I wonder if I could run a few possibilities by you wonderful people?"

His ideas ran the gamut from Meditation and Psychedelics, to Electroshock and Gastric Bypass, to Public Service. (Already attempted: lying in bed all day with the shades down reading a long book about targeted killings by the Mossad.)

He asked if we had any other suggestions. 

It was half-kidding, but, in days like these, half-not. 

Many of my friends and I feel worried about the sky falling. (Indeed, tragically, just before Christmas a woman was killed by a piece of a building near Times Square.)


Reading my friend's post, I realized I hadn't written on this blog in more than a year - since before the midterms! The last one I felt compelled to register had been about the bomb scare at work. 

So what have I been doing since? Immersing myself in what I'm learning to think of as the Culture Cure. 

First and foremost, I continued writing (and rewriting) a play - my first - about George McGovern, Thomas Eagleton, and McGovern's daughter, around the issue of mental health, the Presidency, and the conflict between public and private lives. 

Director Adrienne Campbell-Holt's stellar cast: (Lucy Consagra, stage directions) 
Susannah Perkins, Juliana Canfield, Greg Hildreth, Zoe Winters, Greg Keller, CJ Wilson, Susie Pourfar, Peter Grosz, James Udom, Adam Harrington

Audible sponsored a developmental reading at the Minetta Lane Theater with an amazing director and cast that helped my next revise. And also continued my hard-won wisdom on the realities of the theater marketplace. 

Meanwhile,