Loose things

“That’s one of Ellen’s coats,” said Cynnie. We were milling about in the lobby of Toronto’s Roy Thompson Hall during a concert interval. “Over there,” said Cynnie, discreetly indicating an elegant woman on the other side of the room wearing a green coat.

Ellen was a friend of ours who had died a couple of years before. She was always beautifully dressed. When she died, her husband invited her friends to take whatever of Ellen’s clothes they wanted. The clothes flew out of her closet, particularly the designer coats. From time-to-time afterwards we saw Ellen’s coats, here and there, at parties or public events. These sightings were a welcome reminder of a person we had loved.

What is left when you die? In a recent Endgame I mentioned a 2026 book by the historian Thomas Mullaney, How We Disappear. This complex and poignant book is about the effect of entropy on personal information. (Entropy is the natural tendency of systems and artefacts to disperse and disintegrate over time.) The effect “reaches across all space and time to erase or scatter any evidence of our existence.” Mullaney describes how loved ones, historians, archivists, biographers, etc., try to retain and organize the evidence of a dead person’s existence to make sense of it. These attempts fail, thwarted by entropy.

When Mullaney’s father dies, he goes into the dead man’s bedroom and his instincts as a historian immediately take over. “Don’t move a thing... Don’t throw anything away... Draw a map of the room the way it is now.” Mullaney tells us that archivists and historians call this the “original order.” Moving loose things around, he writes, “can do irreversible damage to the interpretability of the materials...”

When someone dies there are always loose things left behind susceptible to interpretation. This is true even if the deceased tried hard to clean things up before crossing the Styx. If they lived in the epistolary age, long since over, loose things might include letters. I’ve thrown most of my stuff out, but for no good reason I have kept just about every letter I ever received—there are hundreds, organized by date and stored in shoe boxes, waiting to be interpreted, but of no interest to anyone including me. I know a wise person, not trapped by silly sentimentality, who burnt her late husband’s early love letters soon after he died.

Clothes are loose things. Here’s a picture of my father taken in 1953 in the back garden of our house in North Finchley, London. Note the sports jacket.

And here is the same sports jacket worn by me in 2026, seventy-three years later.

I don’t have much that belonged to my father, but I have this jacket. Why did I keep it? I don’t know. Maybe it’s “a shining artefact of the past.” (From Leonard Cohen’s song “Everybody Knows,” although Cohen had something quite different in mind.) What story is the sports jacket telling?

After my friend Murray died more than two years ago, his widow asked if I wanted a white linen sports jacket he had bought in Nantucket. I was happy to have it, a keepsake of our deep friendship. Recently I wore the jacket for the first time, to a family wedding near Montreal. Doing so seemed to have some meaning, but what was it? Was I preserving the memory of Murray, or was I doing the opposite, scattering evidence of his existence by moving loose things around? And what was the alternative? Solemnly hanging the jacket in a closet and forgetting about it?

“Don’t move a thing... Don’t throw anything away... Draw a map of the room the way it is now.” This is not possible. But how do we preserve and cherish the memory of those we loved who have died?

*****

Some reader comments on Endgame #137 (“Old people hoarding money and power”)

From Bob Rae: “You’re paying for our next meal together. It’s only fair.”

David Wolinsky weighs in: “Actually I don’t believe we geezers are hoarding. Speaking for myself, by the time we reach my late stages, we are no longer capable of enjoying all the things we always coveted, travel, rich foods, crowded casinos or concerts, exciting events and fancy gadgets, so we enjoy passing on our assets to our children so we can at least enjoy these things vicariously. It’s life’s little joke.”

Some practical advice from Sher Singh: “A few thoughts in response to an interesting piece: (1) First and foremost, we should have spent, or should continue to spend, our resources on our children to ensure that they become self-sufficient and never need handouts later in life. The operative word here is ‘need.’ (2) We should indeed, as we are aging, hoard reasonably sufficient resources to cover our estimated needs in the years we reasonably expect to live. We should rely on our common sense, not on the investment industry for advice on this ... because in their own best interests, no number of millions is enough. (3) We should retain control of this hoard and not surrender that control until and unless we have to ... and then, and only then, hand over the strings to one we can truly depend on. In my Punjabi tradition, ‘one who is well fed’ is highly recommended. (4) If we’ve brought up our children well, they’ll rise to the occasion if we find ourselves in an unexpected emergency. (5) Keeping all of the above in mind, do get help for some good estate planning.”

An interesting personal account from Liz Thompson: “I’m 78, still mobile more or less, mentally alive, read a lot, and have NHS [National Health System] meds for arthritis (anticipated, both sides of family), and other minor problems (migraine mainly). Occasionally I think of how much time left, but not in terms of anxiety. My daughter lives with me, calls me to order when necessary, and conducts her own life as she wishes. I’m aware that this could be better, however, and so is she. But we don’t discuss it as it leads to stress on both sides, although she has not been inclined to live separately from me. Income has always been sufficient, but more recently the sale of our previous house brought a reasonable lump sum now in a Building Society account. Regular income covers the cost of current private house rent etc., and we have not drawn on the savings. Your comments on money kept untouched in case of need struck home, although it is not a great amount. We have had idle conversations over buying a small house, nearer the countryside, but not seriously. One thing I have always done is regular donations to charities and causes that deserve help, my parents having taken a similar approach when I was growing up. Both I and my daughter volunteer at community centres, assisting or taking part in group activities. My son and his family have similar involvements where they live, including help with disability matters. A lot of local people work in the centres helping, bringing food in, cooking, and giving advice. Trained nurses and advisors come, there are books given that people can borrow, writing and poetry groups, children’s activities, walking groups with leaders, and council workers who help with housing problems and questions. I know that I am a lot better off than many of my colleagues there, and we try to take surplus books, clothes, and household things there for both the centre and people who need them. One thing I did anticipate, I am paying for my funeral in advance! Seemed like a sensible move at least, and if I live to 90, I stop paying....... Thank you for your interesting article, I found it very true, having read a lot of accounts in my lifetime so far! I shall endeavour to make sure I do not keep more than I got in the first place from the house sale.”

The last word goes to John: “I’ve thought about this a lot since becoming older. It was originally provoked by John Sutherland’s book “The War on the Old” and the companion volume, “The War on the Young”. I think that fear of death may well be transformed into the belief that wealth will save us from the Grim Reaper—we have lived in a society which validates consumption and spending wholeheartedly and, understandably, equates wealth with power, so I wouldn’t be surprised if such matters play out in this fashion.”

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Old people hoarding money and power

What is financial justice between generations? Do affluent old people have a moral obligation to help the young and poor? Should wealthy elders feel free to spend their money on sybaritic pleasures, to be reckless and self-indulgent, support eccentric and hopeless causes, or just sit and contemplate their rapidly growing capital, while their children and grandchildren skimp and suffer, and the wider community diminishes and becomes impoverished? (See Thomas Piketty’s famous formula “r > g.” When the rate of return on capital (r) is greater than the rate of economic growth (g) over the long term, the result is concentration of wealth.)

A new book by Yale law professor Samuel Moyn, Gerontocracy in America, has prompted some robust debate about so-called “hoarding” by old people (see the estimable David Runciman’s review of this book in the London Review of Books). Moyn states the obvious: Old people have disproportionate political power and wealth. Their political power comes from greater propensity than the young to vote (generally electing old people in the process). Their wealth resides in assets accumulated over a lifetime—houses, pensions, retirement savings, etc. Power and wealth reinforce each other. Power protects wealth. Wealth enhances power.

To make matters worse, nowadays old people seem to live for ever. In a horrible irony, the more power and wealth you have the longer you live, giving you even more opportunity to hang on to influence and money. The elderly hoard. The young pay the price. This is particularly true for the young of today.

There’s a good explanation for elder hoarding. As Runciman writes in his review of Moyn’s book: “[T]he money – and power – that wealthy older people cling on to is often a product of their unfounded fears for their own futures. Many people who have significant assets die with those assets more or less untouched, even if they told themselves that the money was there for their old age. Financial advisers will often say that the hardest task they face is persuading their elderly clients to spend down their savings.” And so, when the children eventually inherit, they may be on their own last legs. Writes Runciman: “There are too many Prince Charleses left waiting for their inheritance and not enough Prince Harrys spending like there is no tomorrow.”

Last month Moyn was interviewed by Ross Douthat for the New York Times. Douthat suggested to Moyn that elder hoarding is just planning for the future: “[W] hat you call unjust hoarding — or holding on to houses that you should sell or stock portfolios that would benefit your kids — is, one, a rational preparation for a world where, whatever you do in your professional life, you’re going to live longer than anyone has in recorded history. And you need resources for that future. Two, in maintaining those resources, aren’t you actually, in the end, reducing certain burdens on your middle-aged kids? One of the stories of American life, before the 1930s, before Social Security: What happened to old people when they were injured and couldn’t work anymore? Well, they moved in with their kids.”

Moyn largely conceded Douthat’s point: “I will say that I believe very deeply that we’ve created a society in which it is rational to hoard because we will live indefinitely long. We know from the pandemic that the state of care to which we’re entitled at the end of our lives is horrendous. I mean, horrifying. And it is completely understandable that one would stash away everything one could to avoid that fate.”

The central problem is obvious. No-one knows when they will die or what their material needs will be as they approach this final event. We must prepare for the future in ignorance of these facts. If you are truly rich, you can dole out excess cash—and enjoy doing so—before you die. But most people are not truly rich and are well-advised to hang on to what they’ve got. They may need it.

It’s called hoarding.

*****

Readers comment

I’m back from summer holidays. While I was away, I republished two of The Endgame’s popular posts from the past. Here are a few reader comments on those re-postings.

“A Complete Life,” first published in May 2025, was about the decision of Daniel Kahneman, aged 90, to commit suicide on the grounds that his life was complete.

From Sher Singh: “I believe it’s the most intelligent thing to do ... that is, assessing from time to time, once you are in extremis, as to what is best for you (and, to a certain extent, your loved ones). Wallowing in misery is never the best option.”

From Sandra Martin, author of A Good Death: Making the Most of Our Final Choices: “Kahneman made the choice he thought was best for him and he had the means to pay for it by joining a death society in Switzerland which allows cognitively competent foreigners to have an assisted death ‘for non-selfish reasons.’ Should the same choice be available under our public health system? That is a troubling issue in my view.”

The visual artist Lynn Rotin writes: “My aunt, at 95 living alone and facing potential blindness, opted for MAID. She said she had had a good life and was not willing to give up her independence. She’s the last person l would have expected to make this choice. The day of she was calm and wore new pink pyjamas. Her three children were present. I hope to be as brave as she was and to recognize when my time comes.”

From my cousin Vivienne Jacobson: “I am 97 and very interested! I still enjoy life but would love the option of ending it when I choose.”

David Goldbloom comments: “I am an admirer of Kahneman’s writing but am less at ease with his final actions. In forty years of psychiatry, I saw many people who viewed their own deaths as logical decisions in the moment, only to change their minds if they survived their suicide attempts and had successful treatment of underlying depression. The vast majority of them could not afford the death tourism that Switzerland provides to visitors. I hope Canada would not expand MAID to a Track Three option: ‘I’ve had enough of life/J’en ai assez de la vie.’”

From Kate Grace: “I think that he (Kahneman) was within his rights to choose the end of Life that he sought. The problem, as usual, is the misuse of this and other processes of Life/Death once in the hands of the general public. Will there be abuse in the future and forced deaths (murders) in the name of free choice? Of course there will be. If only we could allow others to disagree without assuming that your differing POV means that I must kill you off to protect my own egoistic POV.”

Sarah Kontopoulos writes: “It’s not up to us to decide if he was wrong, as this is a deeply individual decision. The heart of this story is freedom of choice. He died as he had lived, choosing his own path. May his memory be eternal.”

And from Bernadette: “I had a friend in her 80’s, very interesting human being, she published a book, and days before its launch took her own life. She had been amassing pills for quite some time. I saw her in the library passing hello on the stairs, and learned the following week she had taken her own life. What I would have wanted for her would have been professional medical people to make sure she passed with the minimum of suffering. I often think what if she botched it, and since she wasn’t found until after the weekend, we’ll never know what she might have suffered in such a profoundly lonely time. So no, I’d have liked her to have a better death. The Switzerland end of life medics in attendance is what I would have wished for her.”

“Friendship” was first published in January 2024.

Bob Rae: “It was beautiful and perceptive when first written, and is so today, read at dawn’s early light.”

The final word goes to Karen Clarke: “This popped up in my feed just after I said thanks and see you soon to a friend who has spent the past four days helping my husband and I through two medical crises (he had one; I had one). We’ve been friends for 30 years, and we’re women, so we fit the profile. I asked for help. She responded immediately and without condition. I have spent more time in her company these past two days than in the past year. And in the midst of all the stress and anxiety, we enjoyed one another’s company. Our friends are the people who know all our faults and forgive us anyway.”

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I’m still on summer break. Here’s another post from the past, one of the most read Endgames, #51, published in January 2024. I expect to post something fresh next Sunday, August 16.

Friendship

Friendship, the dictionary tells us, “is a relationship of mutual affection between people.”

That’s not a very good definition. It covers too many kinds of relationships. It applies to Nelson and Emma, Tom and Huck, Oscar and Bosie, Dwight and Bob, you and your cat (if you think your cat is a person capable of feeling affection), etc., etc. The definition does not help us understand the deep nature of something which we know, instinctively, is vital to our well-being. It doesn’t do justice to “friendship,” a wonderful word and a vital idea.

There’s a kind of friendship that I call “essential friendship” (maybe not the best descriptor—it sounds a little clinical—but I can’t think of anything better). This kind of friendship is essential for two reasons. First, it is unfiltered, uncluttered by complicated cross-currents: It is the essence of friendship. Second, we cannot live happily without it: It is essential in that sense as well.

What are the characteristics of essential friendship? It is long-standing. It is constant, not intermittent. It is tolerant, not judgmental. It is supportive and affectionate. It is trusting, not defensive. It is not strategic or self-seeking. It is not competitive. It is honest and frank: Few subjects are off-limits (this does not preclude the use of judicious tact). It is a beautiful thing. Is such a demanding relationship possible? Yes. But it requires some giving over of self.

Older people are more likely to have essential friends than younger people. Essential friendship needs time to ripen and older people have had the time necessary. Over many years friends learn so much about each other that there is little room left for artifice or dissemblance: For essential friends, honesty is not just the best policy, it is the only policy. And older people (and this is truer the older you are) are not, reflexively, seeking worldly advantage (this is one of the complicated cross-currents I mentioned above—e.g., as the Constable of France says to Orleans in Henry V, “There is flattery in friendship.”) When you’re old, it’s too late to seek worldly advantage. When you’re old, there is no advantage in advantage. There’s no point to flattery.

Some people never enjoy the conditions in which essential friendship flourishes. Essential relationships flourish when there is stability and prosperity. They flourish over time. They benefit from an environment of calmness and security. To the burdens borne by the poor and the rootless and the oppressed, add the difficulty of forging essential friendships. This is yet another deprivation experienced by the dispossessed. (This is not to gainsay that intense relationships can be forged quickly in extreme circumstances.)

Essential friendship can cross gender divides. But generally essential friendship will not be romantic or sexual. It will be platonic, since romance and true friendship seldom go hand-in-hand. (Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing: “Friendship is constant in all other things/ Save in the office and affairs of love.”) I hear you cry, does this mean that my romantic partner cannot be my friend? Of course, it doesn’t, but friendship mixed with romance is a different kind of friendship. Romantic friendship, as wonderful as it is, does not have the same qualities as essential friendship.

Women seem to be better at friendship with other women than men are with other men. That’s my impression. Perhaps things have changed with the contemporary blurring of gender roles. I think woman find honesty and frankness with each other easier than men do. I’m not sure why this is so. And I might be mistaken: The psychological literature acknowledges the question but equivocates on the answer.

If you are lucky, essential friendships are part of the architecture of your life. “I count myself in nothing else so happy, as in a soul remembering my good friends.” (Henry Bolingbroke in Richard II)

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I’m on summer break, shunpiking in Nova Scotia rather than trying to write something new on Substack. Here’s a post from the past, one of the most read Endgames, #105, published in May 2025.

A complete life

Is there such a thing as a complete life? Daniel Kahneman thought so.

A cognitive psychologist and behavioral economist, Kahneman studied human judgment and decision-making. In 2002 he won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for this work. In 2011 he published a famous book, Thinking, Fast and Slow. In the book, Kahneman describes two modes of thought: System One is fast, instinctive and emotional: System Two is slower, more deliberative and more logical.

In March 2024, Kahneman flew to Paris with his partner. Spring had arrived and the cherry and magnolias trees were in bloom. They spent a couple of days walking around the city, visiting museums and dining in chic restaurants. Then they travelled to Switzerland. There, on March 27, Daniel Kahneman, age 90, died by assisted suicide.

Kahneman’s decision to die was, I think it fair to say, a System Two decision, made slowly and with deliberation, and was, in his eyes at least, logical.

A few days after he died, Kahneman’s friends received a letter of explanation. “I have believed since I was a teenager,” he wrote, “that the miseries and indignities of the last years of life are superfluous, and I am acting on that belief. I am still active, enjoying many things in life (except the daily news) and will die a happy man. But my kidneys are on their last legs, the frequency of mental lapses is increasing, and I am 90 years old. It is time to go.”

Shortly before he died, Kahneman was interviewed by philosophy professors Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer. He said, “I feel I’ve lived my life well... I’m just reasonably happy with what I’ve done. I would say if there is an objective point of view, then I’m totally irrelevant to it. If you look at the universe and the complexity of the universe, what I do with my day cannot be relevant.” Before the interview Kahneman told De Lazari-Radek and Singer that he was on the point of going to Switzerland to commit suicide.

More than a year later, De Lazari-Radek and Singer, in a New York Times article, commented on what had happened: “Professor Kahneman thought that he had completed his life...” The two ethicists cautiously supported what Kahneman had done: “[I]f, after careful reflection, you decide that your life is complete and remain firmly of that view for some time, you are the best judge of what is good for you. This is especially clear in the case of people who are at an age at which they cannot hope for improvement in their quality of life.”

Wanting to die because you have a terminal illness or grievous and irremediable medical condition is one thing. Wanting to die because you believe your life is complete is quite another. The arguments in favour of the former do not apply to the latter. In my experience, many seriously old people find the “complete life” idea attractive because it easily accommodates their desire to avoid the physical horrors and indignities of extreme old age. But there is one tricky problem. How do you know when the moment has come? Daniel Kahneman thought he knew.

On the day Kahneman died, Daniel Engber, a science journalist who knew him well, wrote in The Atlantic, “Daniel Kahneman was the world’s greatest scholar of how people get things wrong. And he was a great observer of his own mistakes. He declared his wrongness many times, on matters large and small, in public and in private.”

Was Daniel Kahneman wrong when he went to Switzerland to die?

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To the point of failure

“That’s it,” I told Kaitlin, my physiotherapist. “I can’t do any more. I’m through.” I was on my third set of ten beginner push-ups. I had done nine, got almost to the end of the set—only one more to go—but I couldn’t finish. My triceps and shoulders wouldn’t cooperate.

Since I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease more than a year ago, I have followed a rigorous physical fitness program. I don’t enjoy it, but it’s my way of fighting back. Part of my program is working with Kaitlin twice a week for an hour. She supervises a variety of exercises intended to build strength and improve balance. Kaitlin believes in “progression”—making it tougher and tougher as we go along. “You’re not here to relax,” she says. “You’re here to get to the point of failure.” The point of failure is when you reach the limit of what you can do.

I have a lot of respect for Kaitlin. She clearly knows what she’s doing. But the point of failure concept strikes me as odd, a paradox, something like “it’s only good for you if you can’t do it anymore.” It reminds me of the Peter Principle, named after the Canadian management theorist Laurence Peter. He wrote, “In a hierarchy, employees tend to be promoted based on their success in their current job until they reach a position in which they are no longer competent.” The Peter Principle is sometimes used to explain why everything is a mess. The world is run by people who don’t know what they’re doing. They’ve gone beyond the limit of what they can do.

Maybe the progress of civilization depends on pushing good things (leaving aside the definition of “good thing”) to the point of failure. Take a good thing as far as it can go—space exploration, medical research, technology, peace studies, exercise, you name it. Push it to the point of failure. But don’t try and take it further than that, not today, because if you try you will trip over the Peter Principle and stumble into a world of incompetence. Wait for tomorrow. Maybe you can take it further tomorrow. We call that progress.

For an old person like me, competing with yourself is one of the few kinds of competition left. Chances are you’re not struggling in the marketplace any more. You’re not trying to scramble up the career ladder. You’ve given up trying to get on the best-seller list. What’s left? Striving to improve yourself in whatever way you can, that’s what’s left. The last push-up, that’s what’s left.

Pushing to the point of failure, competing with yourself, is part of personal maintenance, the subject of my last Endgame. A new and excellent book, How We Disappear by Thomas Mullaney (best known for his book on the history of the Chinese typewriter), has something tangential to say about all this. Mullaney is interested in the effects of entropy, particularly on personal information. (Entropy: The natural tendency of systems to degrade or fall apart if no outside energy or active maintenance is put into them.) Mullaney writes: “No orderly thing... stays in order... Rot, rust, ruin, erosion, estrangement, alienation, extinction, language death, senescence, obsolescence, collapse, galaxy quenching. Kaleidoscopic are the avatars of entropy.” In my Endgame about maintenance, I mentioned Stuart Brand’s rant against the “chaos of rust.” Here we have Mullaney’s reference to rot as an avatar of entropy.

The human body, an orderly thing, is, like everything else, subject to entropy. It degrades or falls apart in the absence of energy or maintenance. Eventually, it will fall apart, regardless. It will rust and rot. In the meantime, push to the point of failure. Do one last push-up.

*****

Some reader comments on Endgame 135 (“M&A” – maintenance and administration)

From David Wolinsky: “I think it’s sweet that you still think you’re governed by M&A. Trust me, at this stage of the game M&A no longer applies. It’s SG, POP, and HFTGR—super glue to hold the disintegrating parts together, plethora of pills to ease the pain, and hiding from the grim reaper. But hey, I guess hope springs eternal, even if the springs are shot.”

Naomi Duguid comments: “Terrific summary of the invasion of M&A as we age. It gobbles our time, and tries to take over our thoughts too. And it’s not very interesting...”

John Gregory writes: “I asked the Sandra Schamas question of a colleague of mine who retired before I did. His answer: I get up in the morning with nothing to do, and when I go to bed at night, I’ve done about half of it. The classic comment on the Slayton version of M&A was ‘if I had known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.’ And the cynic’s take on the next generation: grandchildren are your reward for not having killed your children.”

My nephew Allan Kissack writes from Grantham, birthplace of Margaret Thatcher: “Ah, M&A… Although not at the all-day stage, we have certainly found our retirement maintenance takes up a big chunk of the morning if we are at home. Add to that the familiarity of ‘the routine’ and this means that doing anything else, or different, in the morning can be a bit of a burden; to make up for that we try to seek maximum enjoyment in life from lunchtime onwards and accept the mornings for what they are.”

I hear again from Julian Porter, my severest critic: “What a truly odd column! Not much sweeping fuzzy thoughts, although I’ve met Schamas who was dancing poetry and sly wit.

I prefer your usual lofty columns whispering intellectual scope, not Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy.”

From Akekho Umumto: “Having reached ‘old age,’ I do regular things to maintain. One is to sit still and shut up. Then notice. Another is to exercise. I do more exercise now than I did as a teen. Having survived open heart surgery, 3 cancer surgeries, 2 strokes to the eye, I know how the story ends. I always tell my friends, I don’t want to ruin the plot but no one makes it out alive. I told my cardiologist about the running that I’m doing and he said it was amazing. I told him the good thing is that I’m smart enough to realize that I can’t outrun aging, sickness, and death. Maintenance is essential. But so is acceptance. All things fall apart. Balance is key.”

The last word goes to Shady Maples: “I remember an Army base doctor giving a medical brief: ‘Men in their twenties want to get big, men in their thirties want to get strong, men in their forties want to stay strong, but men in their fifties just want to get out of bed without pain.’ His point was train smart and don’t over-do it for ego, because the bill comes later.”

*****

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M&A

To an investment banker or corporate lawyer, M&A means mergers and acquisitions, one deal after another. For other people, M&A means maintenance and administration, the boring, continuous, and intensely personal experience of trying to stay alive and upright for as long as possible.

When you’re old, personal M&A seems to take most of the available time. Somebody once asked Sandra Shamas, the Canadian actress and director who retired and went to live on a farm, what she did all day. “I don’t know,” she said, “but it takes me all day to do it and I’m filthy at the end.”

Stewart Brand, in his new book Maintenance of Everything, defines “maintenance” as “the whole grand process of keeping a thing going.” He writes about yachts competing in a non-stop solo round-the-world race (“a contest of maintenance styles”), the lessons of motorcycle maintenance (“some of history’s worst disasters came from mismanaged maintenance”), and the Model T Ford (a vehicle “so uncomplicated that anyone could learn to do the maintenance it required”). Brand is particularly concerned with the “chaos of rust.” He writes: “Defeating rust is an endless drudgery of oiling, greasing, brushing, scraping, cleansing, swabbing, painting, repainting, re-repainting, and finally discarding.”

Curiously, Brand ignores the biggest and most complicated maintenance job of all, maintenance of the human body. Many years ago, when I used to ask my aged father how he was doing, he would give a one word reply: “maintaining.” I found this response elusive and annoying. What did he mean? Only recently did I realize how appropriate and perceptive his reply was. My dad got it. When you’re old, if you’re smart, that’s what you’re doing, as best you can—maintaining.

Brand tells us that the universal advice from professional maintainers is “Read the fucking manual!” But there is no definitive and comprehensive manual for the human body. Brand describes the Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy (3,530 pages long) as “the authoritative text for every known ailment of the human body.” But the Merck Manual, intended for health professionals (although there is a consumer version), is not really about maintenance, and hasn’t got a single word in it about rust.

Where do we turn for human body maintenance information and advice? Who will inform us about the “endless drudgery of oiling, greasing, brushing, scraping, cleansing, swabbing, painting, repainting, re-repainting, and finally discarding?”

The medical profession is still the main source of reliable help in maintaining the body. But the role of doctors and other scientists continues to be eroded by Internet offerings. Chat GPT says, “YouTube likely contains hundreds of millions to over a billion videos related to medical issues...” Endless websites and AI applications offer general advice to the uninformed. Even the doctors themselves have been seduced by artificial intelligence. The New York Times reports that doctors in the U.S. are increasingly using an app called OpenEvidence to find answers to clinical questions for diagnosis and treatment: “Talk to a doctor and chances are he or she uses the app to ask specific medical questions or bounce ideas off it in a diagnostic dialogue.” The maintenance manual for the human body is now in the ether and is available to just about everybody (for the moment, access to OpenEvidence is restricted to doctors). Maintenance of the human body is becoming a DIY project.

Maintenance takes a lot of time (“it takes me all day to do it”). That’s where administration comes in. All those doctor appointments to schedule. All those prescriptions to fill. All that rehab to arrange. All those insurance claims to make. All that trolling the medical web. This, on top of paying the hydro bill every month. There’s no M without A.

And, as Sandra Schamas said, you’re filthy at the end.

*****

A few reader comments on Endgame #134 (“Do not drop it, or you are lost”)

David Wolinsky writes: “Because of a recently fractured tail bone, I’m incapable of sleeping more than an hour at a time so that by morning I’m what can only be described as loopy. On reading today’s Endgame my thoughts were that in giving my kids Goodnight Moon rather than The Enchanted Ship I was probably a lousy parent, if a Minotaur ate young men and women, what did a Bigotaur eat, and the dominant thread in my life was doing stupid things like fracturing my tail bone. I probably shouldn’t be operating power tools for the next while.”

From Naomi Duguid: “Theseus knew he was laying the thread, but in general we don’t think of it until the time comes, later in life, to reflect back, as you do here, so appreciatively.”

Sher Singh: “Grand-parenthood is the reward for a parenting well done... It is also the thread that brings you home.”

And an interesting comment on Endgame #132 (“A diagnosis”) from the artist Lynn Rotin: “I keep thinking about you and Parkinson’s. As you might know, I was misdiagnosed and lived with the condition for ten months. The mind/body connection is so strong and I had many good reasons for believing the diagnosis (chemicals in my careers as a graphic designer in the cut and paste days and as an oil painter; plus, my Dad had it). I became hyper-vigilant and every new twitch or ache and pain was attributed to PD... The symptoms were caused by a medication I had been taking for over 20 years and not by Parkinson’s... I am off the medication now and the symptoms have disappeared... PD is nasty but it’s a diagnosis and not the definition of who you are.”

*****

A plug (C’mon, people!)

Available from Amazon in most countries, and from some independent bookstores in Canada (coast-to-coast) including Ben McNally Books and Book City in Toronto, Munro’s Books in Victoria, B.C., and Salt-Water Ballad Books in Port Medway, N.S.

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Do not drop it, or you are lost

I still have a book of Greek legends given to me by my mother when I was seven years old (The Enchanted Ship by Jo Manton).

One legend in the book is the story of Theseus and the Minotaur. The Minotaur was a monster who lived in an underground labyrinth on the island of Crete and dined on the flesh of young men and women. Prince Theseus of Athens, urged on by the beautiful Princess Ariadne of Crete, set out to slay the beast. Before Theseus entered the labyrinth, Ariadne gave him a ball of crimson thread to guide him out once he had killed the Minotaur. “Hold this thread and unwind as you go,” she told Theseus. “Do not drop it, or you are lost.”

The metaphor of Ariadne’s Thread is found in many places. One is in logical problem-solving. Wikipedia tells us: “The key element to applying Ariadne’s thread to a problem is the creation and maintenance of a record... of the problem’s available and exhausted options at all times. This record is referred to as the “thread”...” Another is its use in understanding literature that presents continuity in the face of change. The poem “Little Gidding,” one of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, is an example: “We shall not cease from exploration/ And the end of all our exploring/ Will be to arrive where we started/ And know the place for the first time.../ And all shall be well and/ All manner of thing shall be well...”

Most of all, the idea of Ariadne’s Thread can apply to an individual life, allowing us to discern a coherent story beneath a cacophony of apparently chaotic events. Look for the thread in a life.

Here is an example of Ariadne’s thread in my own life. In the mid-1980s, when my daughter Gabrielle was about ten, she sang in a student choir at the Toronto Board of Education’s annual May Festival (May 7^th and 8^th), an event dating back many decades and held at Massey Hall. The program included songs from the May Festival of fifty years before. The idea was to connect contemporary students with the history of school music. I was impressed and amused to see children of immigrant parents from all over the world—many from former British colonies—enthusiastically singing Rule Britannia (“Britons never will be slaves”) and Land of Hope and Glory (“God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet!”) Toronto seemed a confused but wonderful place, and I was a proud father.

Last month, forty years on or so, I went to the 78^th Maytime Melodies at North Toronto Collegiate Institute (by coincidence, also held on May 7^th and 8^th). Gabrielle’s daughter Rosie, a Grade 9 student at North Toronto, was singing in the school choir at this annual and highly-regarded event. This time traditional patriotic British songs were not on the program. There was nothing at all about ruling the waves or becoming mightier yet. The highlight of the choir’s performance was a song called “The Seed” by Aurora Aksnes, an ethereal Norwegian known simply as Aurora. This song delivered a different message from the songs of four decades before and fifty years before that: “When the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught, the last river poisoned, only then will we realize we cannot eat money.”

The message may have changed, but, as at Gabrielle’s performance over forty years earlier, and that of her predecessors almost a century ago, students who loved music performed enthusiastically and professionally and used song to tell the old what’s important in their time. That has not changed. The thread had not been dropped. I was a proud grandfather.

I thank my mother—Gabrielle’s grandmother and Rosie’s great-grandmother—for the book of Greek legends.

*****

A few reader comments on Endgame #133

From Rick Salutin: “i had a shakespeare prof at brandeis in the 60s, who doubled as a mystery writer under a pseudonym, who told us he had no idea why anyone would agree that iago was motiveless. he said iago tells us exactly why he wants to destroy othello: he is jealous. of the military glory, the stature, cassio’s advancement, desdemona. also maybe because he thinks othello has slept with his own wife. if anything his behaviour is overdetermined, a la sartre’s category, not unexplained. i haven’t bothered looking any of this up. i think AI should get a rest on sunday.” And in a supplementary note: “the prof i mentioned... also told us, if you think jealousy isn’t a strong enough motive for murder and other evil, you haven’t spent enough time around an english lit faculty.”

From Alexandra Raphael: “When I first started to practice law, a senior partner told me that, in a client’s eyes, the only thing which distinguishes one lawyer from another is reputation. ...the importance of reputation in the legal profession confirms the stereotype of the pompous lawyer.”

David (a retired film director) writes: “On reputations … Coincidentally, yesterday on YouTube I watched the troubled actor Kevin Spacey speak independently and also be interviewed at the Oxford Union. Next, the algorithm immediately took me to Piers Morgan’s controversial UK interview show where he talked skillfully with Spacey. The brilliant actor’s professional and personal lives changed suddenly and irremediably seven years ago when he was “outed.” And disappeared by hypocritical Hollywood. I am left deeply affected. And eager for the reappearance he is orchestrating by working with many leveraged friends. I miss his work. I am surely not alone.”

From Janet Price: “What a powerful topic, especially as we age. I think we sometimes assume that if we work hard to build the reputation we seek for ourselves it will become our legacy and we can reach the end of our life content, and even proud, of it. But, as you write, that legacy that can take a lifetime to build can be destroyed, or in the least greatly weakened, in what feels like a moment. I had a dear family friend who built a powerful legacy of accomplishment and fame as a religious leader dedicated to caring for others and making the world a more loving place by building community, both near and far. That person’s legacy was not only tarnished very late in his life but erased for the most part by the accusation of sexual impropriety. I had never imagined that to be this person’s endgame, someone I personally respected greatly. And though I will never know the veracity of the claims, I did watch a person’s reputation and legacy that took a lifetime to build, destroyed in what felt like an instant. The take-away? Well, possibly one might be able to move towards one’s endgame with an inner peace about how one has lived their life, protected from the ebbs and flows around us. Maybe?”

The last word goes to Lynn Farrell: “My reputation recedes me.”

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*****o

P.S. My friend Sara Street took these extraordinary pictures of owls in her Etobicoke backyard. The owls showed up, stayed for two days, and then left for who-knows-where. Merlin BirdID says that they are Eastern Screech-Owls.

Reputation

“Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial.” Thus speaks Iago in Act 3, Scene 3 of Shakespeare’s Othello. Most people don’t regard their reputation as immortal and what remains as bestial, but they do care what people think about them. Should they? And what is “reputation?” It’s a slippery concept. (By the way, don’t trust Iago. Samuel Taylor Coleridge said he exhibited “motiveless malignity.”)

Acquiring a good reputation is tedious and can take a lifetime. The best way to do it is with long stretches of non-controversial behaviour regarded favourably by those who matter. Don’t rub important people up the wrong way. If you have acquired a good reputation and want to hang on to it, be careful. Don’t offer strong opinions on tricky topics. Don’t sully the record with personal behaviour out of tune with censorious times.

Some people follow a different path. They want a reputation as a troublemaker. They do not seek to please. Others repudiate the reputation game altogether. Those people refuse to let others define them: They will not try to become what others believe them to be. Some accept the need to be trusted and respected—otherwise how can you be effective in society—but do not care whether they are liked or admired.

Can we trust what we see and what we are told? Tawdry truth may lurk behind shiny appearance. The Guardian newspaper recently reported that Jonathan Carley, 65, was fined by a magistrate’s court for wearing a fake uniform meant to resemble that of a Royal Navy admiral. Carley wore it to a Remembrance Sunday event held in Wales. The judge told him, “You were there not as a genuine person, but as someone who came to deceive.” Reported the newspaper: “Carley had attended the event in a uniform he later told police had been legitimately issued to him as a cadet years ago, but that he had customised it with medals bought online and rear admiral rings he had paid a tailor to add.” Carley’s lawyer told the court that his client “wanted to be a part of the proceedings.” Most people want to be part of the proceedings. Like a fake Admiral’s uniform, a good reputation, legitimate or not, may help you join up.

Good reputations have a momentum of their own, an internal logic that may not correspond to reality. Once, in England, I was invited to a reception where everyone attending wore formal dress. I chatted with a military man in an army dress uniform which included a row of miniature medals strung across his chest. Having had one sherry too many, I enquired, “How did you get all those medals?” He pointed to the first one, and said indulgently, “I got the first one by mistake, and I got all of the rest because I got the first.” Was apparent heroism just an illusion?

No matter how acquired, a good reputation can disappear in a puff of smoke. Warren Buffet, the Sage of Omaha and a man of impeccable repute, said, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.” He failed to mention that you might not be responsible for ruining your reputation. Someone else, Iago-like, might do it for you. They may act out of malice or motiveless malignity, possibly for tactical advantage, maybe just for fun. You might be the victim of gossip, an unfounded rumour or a false allegation. A social media campaign may be the agent of your destruction. The history books and newspapers are full of examples.

Reputations are ruined all the time, sometimes with justice and reason, sometimes not. It happens everywhere, every day. The victim must crawl away and lick his wounds, whether ruination was deserved or not.

*****

A few reader comments on Endgame #132 (“A diagnosis”)

(A number of readers wrote offering support and encouragement following my diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease, and I am grateful for that. There was broad agreement that you should not keep it a secret when you are diagnosed with a serious illness.)

Wise words from the psychiatrist David Goldbloom: “Illness and identity is a huge issue, not only for patients but also for docs. Medical trainees were admonished by their staff physicians for referring on rounds to ‘the lung cancer in room 12’ or ‘the congestive heart failure in ER,’ as opposed to the person with those problems. And medical sociologists in the last century wrote about ‘the sick role’ where, for some patients, illness becomes identity. Finding the sweet spot between the extremes of denial and defeat is the challenge, but generally it’s harder to keep a secret than to share the truth. And other people, noticing symptoms, may be left to their own fantasies about what is actually going on. I watched one of my Cape Breton uncles cope with Parkinsonism over 25 years. He claimed it improved his golf game by slowing down his backswing—true to his character. We bring our unique trajectories and temperaments to the templates of disease, leading to the variety of illness experience.”

From Faye Jones: “We debated sharing [my husband] Dereck’s diagnosis for all the reasons you describe. But we decided that we could trust those that love us and that they would want/expect to know so they could support us. Yes it changed how a few friends treated us but that price was worth having the love and support and understanding of the many.”

Janet Price has a question: “I have thought about how I would/will handle receiving a major diagnosis such as Parkinson’s. Will I tell people? How to have this knowledge and not have that become my identity?”

Liz Thompson sends good wishes: “I hope your friends, colleagues, and relatives continue to support and encourage you, and your post describing what has happened is not only entirely frank and honest, but a wonderful example of telling people you have never met exactly what you have and are experiencing now.”

The final word goes to Virginia Brown writing from Istanbul: “Sorry about your diagnosis. That’s why I don’t go to the doctor—the label thing. Plus, if they look, they will find... I’m sure I am a walking bucket of disease.”

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A diagnosis

About this time last year, I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. Parkinson’s (known familiarly as “PD”) is a progressive movement disorder of the central nervous system. The American writer and humourist Calvin Trillin has described “central nervous system” as the most frightening phrase in the English language.

The full list of debilitating Parkinson’s symptoms is overwhelming. There’s no cure and little treatment. The good news is that my neurologist (I have one now) says my case is mild and progressing slowly. For the moment at least, the diagnosis seems worse than the reality.

What do you do when you are told you have a serious illness? Your concept of self needs to accommodate a new and important fact. But how, and by how much?

My first reaction to the PD diagnosis was not to take it too seriously. The symptoms were mild, I felt well, and—hey—I’m in my eighties, what do you expect? If you’re driving a 1944 Ford, don’t be surprised if a wheel comes off. If your left leg trembles occasionally, it’s not PD, it’s because you’re old. The day after I was diagnosed I cheerfully went off to Copenhagen on holiday.

1944 Ford European Eight DeLuxe Saloon

But my insouciance was unsustainable. The Parkinson’s diagnosis slowly took hold, as I tried to figure out its portent. Now, it is with me always. “Who is the third who walks always beside you? /When I count, there are only you and I together/ But when I look ahead up the white road/ There is always another one walking beside you…” (T.S. Eliot, “The Waste Land”) Now, Parkinson’s is always walking with me.

The distinguished British neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan, in her 2025 book The Age of Diagnosis: How Our Obsession with Medical Labels Is Making Us Sicker, writes: “I have seen the harm that medical labels do, how they can create a sick role, how they can limit people’s dreams... People enact the features of a disease just through anxiety about that disease, through searching their bodies for symptoms and through expectations...” O’Sullivan describes what is known as the classification effect: “When a person is given a label or diagnosis it inadvertently instructs them on which new signs and symptoms to look out for, and, in searching their body for other typical signs of the disorder, the attention paid to the body and the expectation of symptoms leads them to register bodily changes that they [sic] might previously have been dismissed.”

I find it hard to fight the classification effect. It’s difficult not to interpret every ache, twinge and malfunction of your body as an expression of your disease. But to create a “sick role” is a bad thing. Your illness, even if the symptoms start to overwhelm, is only one part of a complex and rich identity you have constructed over a long time. A sick role must not be allowed to undermine that identity.

What about how others see you? Should you make it generally known when you are diagnosed with a serious disease? There are reasons to stay quiet. Medical circumstances are private. There is no obligation to tell anyone anything. And you don’t want to compromise your public identity by allowing others to see you principally through the lens of a medical label. You don’t want to be “the guy with Parkinson’s.” Or cancer. Or whatever.

But hiding important facts from family and friends suggests a lack of trust. (The most common reaction from old friends when I tell them my diagnosis is to express gratitude for being told.) More generally, it’s hard work to keep a secret from the world, particularly if the symptoms of disease start becoming evident. Information is notoriously impossible to control.

I learnt a lot from my friend Murray, who died almost exactly two years ago after suffering from blood cancer for a long time. He was open and matter-of-fact about his illness. He even joked about it sometimes. Murray’s candour and good humour were a gift from him to those he loved and who loved him back.

*****

Some reader comments on Endgame #131 (“My sporting life”)

My nephew Vic writes from Grantham, U.K.: “When I was a child the evening news always ended with a funny or happy story, that ended a long time ago. My local news channel in the UK has brought it back, well done !!, however it hasn’t encouraged me to watch the news. I spend my time helping family and others, that gives me the feeling I need to stay sane.”

Wise words from Jim Turk: “I find I’m coping with the terrible state of the world at my advancing age in a way almost opposite to you and your friend Bill. I am even more of a news junky than ever... I have reflected on why I do that on top of working so many hours each day at my job directing the Centre for Free Expression at TMU. I think it is how I cope with the realization that, contrary to my youthful embrace of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assertion that ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,’ I now realize that it bends in whichever direction humanity makes it bend, and right now the bad guys are winning. That is so depressing but the only way I can avoid having my old age consumed by hopelessness is to try, in whatever little time I have left, to do more than ever to try to help bend the arc in a good direction. It is hard to be optimistic but the alternative is despair and I can’t live with that at my age.”

A pithy comment from Bob Rae: “It is actually possible to walk and chew gum at the same time, to follow sports, gossip, law and politics.”

From David Wolinsky: “At 85, I’d love to replace politics with sports but I’m not sure I’ll still be around when the next Canadian team or golfer wins a major championship. From an entertainment point of view, I’m not sure that any sport or quasi-sport other than World Wide Wrestling matches the entertainment value of the President, Vice President, Kash Patel, Pete Hegseth, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and unlike these characters WWW isn’t likely to kill me before my age does so I’ll hang with politics.”

Michael Mendelson says: “I stopped watching sports when Henderson won the winning goal in the 1972 Soviet-Canada series. How could it ever get better?”

Randy Hahn makes some astute comments: “As for the most recent Endgame—while I understand your inclination to avoid the noise of the news which generates fear and anger, I’m not at all certain that professional sports with its supposed parameters and recognized rules will end up proving to be more salutary. Your growing interest in the NBA will lead to the realization that the league’s referees are known to make calls that favour the stars of the league or the team that is thought to be deserving, often because of a recent missed call. In hockey the referees are known to often put away their whistles in close playoff games. In baseball strike zones can expand and contract depending on the whims of whoever is the umpire of the day. Which brings to mind the perspective of John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, that judges simply call balls and strikes. The legal system in many places is thought by many to provide a structure of arrangements where rules and their application can lead to predictability and coherence. I expect that your long-time experience as a lawyer might prompt you to recognize that notwithstanding such a high-minded goal there is still lots of anger, recrimination, and gnashing of teeth along the way.”

Janet Price puts in a plug for All Remaining Passengers: “I’m not much interested in sports—for me, walking outside in nature, reading a good book (like All Remaining Passengers!!), meditating.”

Harry Katz gives the book a favourable review in his interesting blog “Unsolicited Feedback.”

And John Gregory gives a tip on how to get it: “My bet is that any independent bookstore in the country could order in All Remaining Passengers in a matter of days. My local TYPE store in Toronto has never failed to find any book—Canadian or American—I have asked about and have it to me in a few days. No need to enrich Jeff Bezos further for the purpose if we’re not in the catchment areas of the good stores mentioned.”

*****

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My sporting life

My friend Bill was once a prominent corporate lawyer and business executive. I know him to be an engaged and astute observer of geopolitics. He’s in his late eighties now. We had lunch recently and I asked him what he thought about the state of the world. “I’ve given up following the news,” Bill said. “It’s chaotic and depressing. To hell with it. I’m not going to dwell on bad stuff out of my control and ruin the time I have left.”

I knew exactly what he meant. When you’re old, it’s hard to maintain your equilibrium in the face of bedlam. You no longer have the necessary emotional and intellectual resilience. You don’t have time to bounce back from confusion and disgust. And, anyway, what does any of it mean for someone of an advanced age?

“So,” I asked Bill, “Now you’ve tuned out of current events, how do you spend your time?”

“Professional sports,” he said. “I watch hours of it every day on television—baseball, basketball, hockey, soccer, tennis. You know what I love about sports? It’s well-defined. Games have a beginning and end. There’s a winner and a loser. And sports, unlike the rest of the world, are rules-based. There are referees who call the shots. If you break the rules, you are penalized. Compared to everything else, it’s fair, and the rules are reassuring.”

My own interest in professional sports has been tepid and sporadic. The biggest moment in my sporting life was in December 1953 when my father took me to an Arsenal vs. Blackpool football game at Highbury in London (Arsenal won 2-1). He somehow got us into the Blackpool locker room afterwards and members of the team, including the famous Stanley Matthews, signed my Eagle Diary.

Later on, I often went to Blue Jays games with my daughter Gabrielle, mostly as a way spending time with her. I also got interested in tennis, wrote a book about it, and in 2023, on a lark, went to the French Open at Roland Garros in Paris with my friend Philippe. Meanwhile, life was good and the world was relatively calm and I didn’t feel the need for intensive sports therapy.

Now it’s different. The world is a mess and the future is gloomy. For an old person, it doesn’t bear thinking about. I only glance at newspapers and have given up watching the PBS Newshour. Op-eds are anathema. I don’t pour over the political opinions of pundits and professors the way I once did. I’ve cancelled my subscription to The Economist. I’ve bought Raptors and Blue Jays tickets instead.

I don’t want to hear any more about OPEC, CUSMA, ECHR, or the JPOA. I want to talk about RBIs, ERAs, FGMs, FTMs and OREBs. In my left anterior temporal lobe, the part of the brain where proper names are stored, Pete Hegseth, J.D. Vance, Nigel Farage, Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko have been pushed out by Kazuma Okamoto, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Scottie Barnes, R.J. Barrett and Sandro Mamukelashvili.

In the past ten days I have been to one Blue Jays and two Raptors games (including the fantastic Game 6 against the Cleveland Cavaliers). There’s a madness to it, particularly basketball, a contained and meaningful madness. But nowadays geopolitics has found its way even into sports stadiums. The Blue Jays and the Raptors play only American teams. At home games, the Canadian anthem is sung by the crowd with great enthusiasm, while the American anthem is met with stony silence. At the Raptors games I attended, the announcer repeatedly emphasized that the Raptors were “Canada’s Team.” The audience cheered. So did I.

But here’s something hopeful. At a Buffalo Sabres vs. Boston Bruins hockey game in Buffalo on April 28, the anthem singer’s microphone malfunctioned when she began to sing “O Canada.” The overwhelmingly American crowd picked up the anthem and sang in loudly and perfectly.

*****

A few reader comments on Endgame #130 (“Breaking up with booze”)

From my former comrade-in-arms, Al Hudec, who writes from Vancouver: “Gone to the dry side, Philip? Say it isn’t so. Some of the most memorable moments of our friendship have involved a shared bottle. A Chablis with a Chinook we caught ourselves in the Salish Sea. A Macallan 12 in the lobby lounge of the Plaza after a tough day of negotiations. Offering a friend a glass of Balvenie is one of life’s most important social rituals. It is an invitation to stay awhile — to linger, to reminisce, to tell some stories and reveal a few secrets; and to build a deeper more honest friendship. That, I think, is worth preserving.”

Alexandra Raphael has similar thoughts: “I don’t really like alcohol but I love all of the ritual associated with drinking. Bars are generally dark, warm and welcoming. And it’s very relaxing to nurse a drink in a bar, seated in a comfortable chair at a table with friends. I think it’s equally nice to serve friends a glass of whiskey or scotch, in my house, seated around my living room.But if there was a way to have this kind of experience which didn’t involve alcohol, I would probably opt for it!”

Pam Purves writes from Nova Scotia: “I like a good sleep and a day marked with energy. Not drinking pretty much guarantees both. However, the occasional dip into a fine single malt reduces anxiety and encourages helpless laughter. Both excellent for health.”

From Penny Kerr: “My days of drinking Famous Grouse have come and gone. I just liked it too much!”

Heather Chisvin writes from Port Hope: “I was never much of a drinker, but just like that, for all the reasons you stated, I stopped. And you know what? It’s not a big deal. In fact it’s not a deal at all. Quite unlike stopping smoking when I was 30, after 16 years of two packs a day. I remember opening my clothes closet one day and being revolted by the smell of cigarettes. It was hard. I started jogging to get that big rush of air as far down as it would go. Helped, but it took months to stop craving cigarettes. I still have alcohol free beer—Heineken is good. Simply for the taste. Wine without alcohol is revolting.”

From Peter Frood: “Two trips to emergency with AF following wine infused dinner gatherings and the wait for shock therapy puts me on the same path. I am now firmly embraced by the Heart Institute.”

And the last word goes to David Wolinsky, as it often does: “I shall also abandon booze. As a motivator, every Friday I shall reward myself with a thick chocolate milkshake. The fact that I never cared for or drank booze, perhaps a Bloody Caesar once or twice a year and most years never, is irrelevant. It’s the thought that counts. Already I feel better.”

*****

A plug

Available from Amazon in most countries, and from some independent bookstores in Canada (coast-to-coast) including Ben McNally Books and Book City in Toronto, Munro’s Books in Victoria, B.C., and Salt-Water Ballad Books in Port Medway, N.S

*****

A bird

Spring robin seen on Euclid Avenue

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Breaking up with booze

Booze and I broke up two months ago. We’d been together for sixty years. It was a close and affectionate relationship, but it’s over now.

These things happen.

We didn’t plan to split. Alcohol and I were still getting along well. The cashiers at the liquor store across the street treated me like an old friend and called me by my first name. The servers at our favourite restaurant automatically brought me a gin martini when I arrived.

How did it happen? Close readers of The Endgame will know that earlier this year Cynnie and I were in Morocco, an Islamic country. We were there during Ramadan, the holiest month in the Islamic calendar, marked by fasting and prayer. During Ramadan it’s harder than ever to get a drink. For several days after we arrived in Fez I didn’t even try. Then I realized: I had hardly thought about alcohol for a few days and hadn’t missed it one bit. On impulse, without a carefully-considered intention or plan, I decided the time had come. No more drink for me.

You lose agency as you age, particularly over health. There are less and less decisions you can make and implement. Those that remain are to be treasured. Breaking up with booze is one of them. I’m not self-righteous about it, although I have recently mentioned to some of my bibulous friends that they will burn in the fires of Hell.

My favourite uncle introduced me to booze when I was in my early twenties and a skint graduate student in England living in a tiny, damp, cold room. My uncle and aunt lived not far away from my university in a country house that was large, dry, and warm. They were kind and generous and often invited me to come and stay. My uncle liked whiskey and we would drink together at night and talk politics. “The other half?” he’d ask me, after the first pre-dinner glass of Famous Grouse. “A night cap?” he’d suggest after dinner, as he railed against the government (“diabolical” was his favourite description of those in power). He poured whiskey from a decanter into crystal glasses. The ritual symbolized hospitality, luxury, and success. It was a different world, one I wanted to be part of.

After a long stop teaching at university, I became a practising lawyer. For decades, I lived in a drinking culture. Professors and lawyers are traditionally big boozers. Academics have time on their hands and some money: they drink to muffle boredom. Lawyers have less time to spare but more money: they drink to mute stress. I was a corporate lawyer on Toronto’s Bay Street in the last days of the two-martini lunch. For me, boozing was a habit, not a passion.

I’m told that nowadays professors and lawyers drink less. Maybe people are more concerned than they used to be about accusations of malpractice, or sexual impropriety, or drunk driving, or making a fool of yourself. And there’s the increasingly publicized health risks of alcohol. These risks are irrefutable and well-documented. Only a few wishful thinkers still believe that moderate drinking is good for you. A 2023 comment in The Lancet: Public Health described alcohol as “a toxic, psychoactive, and dependence-producing substance and a Group 1 carcinogen [the same classification as tobacco and asbestos]” and concluded that “no safe amount of alcohol consumption for cancers and health can be established.”

So far, abstinence has been surprisingly easy. And I’m reaping the rewards. I’m sleeping better and I’ve lost weight. Cynnie is reaping the rewards too. She says I’m less quarrelsome than I used to be. We’ll see about that.

*****

Some reader comments on Endgame #129 (“Risk”)

Philippe Poussier writes from Bordeaux: “The story about your sailing friend reminded me what happened three days ago when Jean-Michel, a dear friend of mine who is a cardiologist (we have been friends since our medical residency hence for more than 50 years!) came from Paris to visit us and to play tennis with me. At some point during our game, while we were changing sides, he pointed to the defibrillator hung on one of the walls of the court. I thought he was going to congratulate the club for having this potentially life-saving instrument available. Was I wrong? Jean-Michel told me: ‘If I go into cardiac arrest during our game, please don’t do anything, leave this defibrillator where it is...’”

Samantha de Vaux writes from Marrakech: “Love your octogenarian friend’s style and ‘disturb the universe’ will stay with me now, I’ll search for the poem. My mother would have said ‘plenty of time to worry after I die’ and ‘don’t borrow trouble, it may all work out okay’ but knit a water bottle cover just in case? The cats! They’ve passed an edict here in Marrakech ‘don’t feed the stray cats.’ We need to employ them: my internet has been sketchy for days again, disrupting my WFH life. I pay 5000dhs a month and the official Maroc Telecom reason: mice are eating the new underground fibre optic cables. When they say mice, they mean rats. Let’s save the birds and scare the rats out of town. I missed my calling, I really should be in local government, right?”

We hear again from the irrepressible David Wolinsky in British Columbia: “Your column this morning on risk and reward truly inspired me. I turn 85 next week and am often constrained from enjoying life by concerns about risk, but you gave me pause for thought. William Shatner went to space in his nineties and Paul Simon is embarking on a world singing tour at 84. So tomorrow I intend to drive 30 miles into Vancouver to have lunch with my friend Marty despite the risks of highway driving and distance from my doctor in the event of some incident. And if I’m asked to embark on a world singing tour or to go into space, I will consider it, unless they conflict with my numerous medical and dental appointments or something I’m looking forward to on TV. No reason to abandon well laid plans or sensible caution. And Marty is 6 years younger than me so why shouldn’t he drive 30 miles to have lunch with me rather than the other way around, am I right? Good chatting with you.”

From Alan Gratias: “If you are a ‘formula guy,’ divide your age by your own estimation of your life span. The larger the number, the more risk adventuresome you need to be. Make the booking, take the journey, get out of bed. Just don’t tell your actuary, accountant, or partner.” (Alan, I don’t understand the formula.)

Allan Kissack (my nephew) writes from Grantham in England: “I am not a big reader (except sometimes on holiday), but I find myself with this book on my study desk and picking it up often. Small chapters mean you can dip in for a couple of minutes any time. I regularly find myself smiling as I read of Philip’s experiences and thoughts.... because they mirror mine very closely. If you are in the latter half of life I’d recommend you get a copy, it’ll brighten your day and help you realise that others are travelling a similar (bumpy) road. - thanks Philip.” (The book Allan mentions is, of course, All Remaining Passengers.)

The last word goes to Murray Kirkpatrick of Halifax, Nova Scotia: “You were inside my head with this one. However, I draw the line at soloing across the Atlantic.”

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Risk

Two things we know about old age and health. First, when you are old bad things are more likely to happen to your already compromised body. Second, the older you are, the worse the consequences of bad health may be. Nonetheless, needs must, we run risks, whatever we do, wherever we are. Even being in bed can be dangerous. I once burnt my leg on a hot water bottle.

Today, I’m not running the risks of staying in bed. I’m getting up, getting dressed, and going for a brisk walk. But wait... Winter has only just gone, and the sidewalks may still be icy. It would be easy to slip and fall, and that’s dangerous for old people—we all know what can happen, you break a hip, go to hospital, get pneumonia... And there’s those food delivery guys whizzing about on their fast and silent e-bikes, often on the sidewalk. If a food delivery guy on an e-bike hits you, it’s sayonara (さようなら). But, I really do want to go for a walk, stretch my legs, and along the way I could pick up some custard tarts at the Portugese bakery. Custard tarts are worth the risk.

Should I go to that family wedding? Host-seeking pathogens will be everywhere. There’s bound to be viral-shedding people at the reception, boozing it up, behaving intemperately, laughing, shouting and coughing. Maybe I should go but wear a mask, which will no doubt prompt guffaws of contempt by inebriated machatunim. At a family party we gave not long ago, I insisted that one of our children who arrived sneezing and coughing go home immediately. This prompted a subsequent querulous call to Cynnie from the errant child, asking about my health (mental, presumably): “Is he alright?”

Old people often say, I’m retired now and the kids are grown up, so I’m free to travel. Is travel a good idea? It seems risky at an advanced age to run off to Central America or Africa. You might get caught up in some crazy war, or be mugged in the medina, that could happen to anybody at any age, but what happens if you’re old and get sick in a foreign country?

One of the world’s best teaching hospitals is right around the corner from where we live in Toronto, its emergency room ready to help those in distress (see Endgame #56). As well, I have assorted doctors, dentists, pharmacists, etc., with whom I have long-established relationships, standing by in case of need. Wouldn’t it be best to stay close to home? Before a recent trip to Costa Rica, covertly and sheepishly, I checked up on hospitals near where we were going to stay. Just in case.

Oh, and by the way, if you have a life-threatening heart attack on a plane mid-Atlantic, and the pilot diverts, it could be three hours to landing.

The same old-person concept of risk applies to other things, e.g., to financial matters (did you just buy crypto?) and relationships (hey, I couldn’t help notice that there’s a big age difference between you and your delightful new friend). In these cases, the risk is compounded by lack of recovery time. There’s not much time to bounce back from a bad decision.

A life-affirming approach when you are old is to discount risk heavily. What do you have to lose? A friend in his eighties told me he planned to sail solo in a small boat across the Atlantic. Sounds pretty risky, I told him, particularly for a creaky old duffer like you, you could be lost at sea. Yes, he said, I couldn’t have contemplated doing this twenty or thirty years ago, I had too much to lose then, a future full of possibilities and responsibilities, but now, why not? My friend’s risk calculus had changed as the years passed. The probability of bad outcomes had increased, but, as he saw it, the existential consequences were less.

My sailor friend had it right. In old age, the risks may be great, but the benefits from taking risks can be huge. The poet asks: “Do I dare/ Disturb the universe?” (T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”) The answer is: Disturb the universe, live your life, take the tide at the flood. Sometimes the flood comes late.

*****

Some comments on Endgame #128 (“The feral cats of Essaouira”)

Michael Mendelson pours a bucket of cold water on my celebration of the feral cats of Essaouira. He writes: “So, thought I, what is the effect of feral cat populations on the ecosystem of a city? Wow. Not what I expected. Here’s what AI had to say: ‘A large population of feral cats has a significant negative impact on urban ecosystems, primarily by acting as an invasive predator that disrupts local food chains, reduces biodiversity, and spreads diseases to both wildlife and humans. They are considered one of the most damaging invasive species on Earth, contributing to the deaths of billions of birds and small mammals annually in the United States alone.’ Now I feel like Scrooge at the Christmas party.” Thanks, Scrooge.

Rosemarie Terry writes from Sechelt, British Columbia: “My father had a cat, named felicitously, Cynthia. He often told the story of her sleeping on his arm and how he contemplated cutting off his sleeve to avoid disturbing her. I marvel that the son of an Anglican clergyman may have been versed in the feline philosophy of Islam.”

Sher Singh comments: “Two other cat-haven cities come to mind: London, England and Venice. In London, they thrive by the hundreds in and around roundabouts, hidden from public view unless you are a pedestrian walking by and not in a hurry. In Venetian residential neighbourhoods, entire colonies of cat townhouses have been built by their human neighbours who also take it upon themselves to feed then promptly every morning and evening. The only people who outdid modern cat-lovers were, of course, the ancient Egyptians ... by somewhat worshipping them.”

From the always perceptive Bob Rae: “Philip Slayton is a dear friend. I encourage you to read him. As he does in conversation, he makes you think, feel, laugh, and cry. This one made me miaow, which is unusual since I am allergic to cats, feral or otherwise.”

Michael Ondaatje sends a picture of his now-departed cat Jack:

Read Ondaatje’s beautiful poem “November,” about Jack.

The final word goes to my severest critic, Julian Porter: “As usual an erudite piece, but your padding it with sappy cat pictures is a bit much.”

*****

Bird notes

A few days ago, I met with my accountant in her 10^th floor downtown Toronto office to talk about income taxes. I noticed a bird outside her window, looking in. Surveillance by the Canada Revenue Agency?

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The feral cats of Essaouira

Cynnie and I recently spent time in Morocco, a country we love. One place we went to was Essaouira, a small city on the Atlantic coast. Essaouira comes with a bonus. It is full of happy-looking feral cats.

There must be thousands of these cats. They roam the old walled part of the city with its riads, shops and cafés. They sleep in corners of cobbled alleyways, rub against the legs of strangers, bask in the sun, walk about contently. They are calm, friendly and inquisitive. They jump on your lap if you give them the chance. Many loiter down by the city’s working port. When the fishing boats come in, fishermen feed them sardines and eels from the daily catch. The people of Essaouira say that the city belongs as much to cats as it does to humans.

In Toronto, and many North American cities, the majority of feral cats are the offspring of lost or abandoned domestic cats. For the most part, they hide from humans. They are good at hiding. They are not seen as a community to be protected and cherished, though there are always acts of individual kindness and compassion. They are regarded as a problem to be solved. The city does not belong to them.

Toronto has a Trap, Neuter, Return Program which seeks to eliminate feral cat colonies (there are similar programs in many other places). The TNR Program snatches feral cats off the street, neuters or spays them, and then returns them to where they were found. The Program instructs humans who live in Toronto not to handle feral cats. It warns that these animals are fearful of humans and will bite and scratch. Often the cats are fearful because they have been abused. They have learnt to be afraid.

Why is it different in Essaouira? Perhaps it is because Islam explicitly teaches respect for cats. There is a famous story about the Prophet Muhammad and his cat, Muʿizza. Once Muʿizza was sleeping on the sleeve of the Prophet’s robe when it was time for prayer. Rather than disturb his cat, the Prophet cut off the sleeve of the garment so he could rise without waking her. There seems to be nothing about cats in the religious literature of the other two Abrahamic religions, Judaism and Christianity.

Or is this suggestion too weighty? Perhaps the difference is just a matter of climate and place. In the winter, Toronto, a huge and gritty city, is bleak and bitter. Any living thing can be excused for wanting to hide. In Essaouira, most of the time, it is warm and comforting (although the city is famously windy). Who wouldn’t want to loiter at a café or by the port, in the sun, next to a blue door, waiting for a piece of fish?

Some people, many of them kind and wanting the best for animals, offer a utilitarian-style argument that compassion towards individual feral cats increases the sum total of suffering of the present and future cat colony. They argue that feral cats should be sterilized or euthanized. Peter Singer, the controversial and sometimes slippery Australian animal rights philosopher, supports sterilization of feral cats because, he says, it is an effective way to reduce preventable suffering without killing animals. He opposes euthanasia because it is contrary to the strong interest animals have in continuing to live.

For me, as I sit in Toronto, my mind drifts back to Essaouira, to the ginger and white cat sunning itself one afternoon on a plant pot by a blue door, full of contentment, its eyes shut in bliss, looking forward, I think, to the rest of its life. I learn from this cat.

*****

Notes for readers

(1) Dedicated followers of The Endgame will know about my interest in Fiona the sheep—see, in particular, Newsletters #45 and #46. Last month my old college friend John Lenton sent the following update on Fiona from London, England (quoting The Week): “A sheep once dubbed ‘Britain’s loneliest’ has given birth to twin lambs. The ewe, who has been named Fiona, was spotted at the bottom of a steep coastal cliff in the Highlands in 2023 by a kayaker; it is thought she’d been there for at least two years. The kayaker raised the alarm, and, following an international outcry, Fiona was rescued, trimmed of much of her matted fleece, and rehomed at a farm near Dumfries. Ben Best, her farmer, admitted last year that Fiona’s long isolation had taken its toll – ‘She has kind of forgotten how to be a sheep,’ he said – but Fiona seems finally to be doing well; her lambs have been named Fergus and Felicia.” The notion that Fiona had forgotten how to be a sheep is intriguing.

(2) The next Endgame will be on Sunday, April 5.

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Toronto, May 19, 2024

The naming of generations

Okay, boomer!

What does this mean? What does it imply when directed at a martini-swilling almost-octogenarian by a young guy wearing a baseball cap backwards?

A 2019 New York Times article said widespread use of “okay, boomer” marks the end of friendly generational relations. Francine Prose wrote in The Guardian that the phrase reflects general cultural acceptance of discrimination against older generations. Wikipedia says “okay, boomer” is used “to dismiss or mock attitudes typically associated with... people born in the two decades following World War II.”

Wait a minute. Born following World War II? I’m in the clear! I was born in 1944. Hitler was still alive. I’m not a boomer. So don’t dismiss or mock myattitudes.

Every generation has been given a label. Boomers, Generation X, Millenials, Generation Z, Generation Alpha. Why is this labelling thought to be a good idea? I complained about it at a recent lunch with my children and grandchildren. Maybe I came across as a bit cranky. My daughter Gabrielle rolled her eyes and said—guess what—“okay, boomer.” “I’m not a boomer,” I said. “When I was born, World War II was still on. German V-1 flying bombs were dropping on London. One day my pregnant mother, your grandmother, out shopping for baby clothes for me, had to shelter in a ditch on her way home.”

Gabrielle did a bit of quick Googling on her smart phone between sips of Pinot Grigio. “You’re right,” she said. “You’re not a boomer. You’re a member of the Silent Generation. You’re a Silent. It says here, ‘This cohort grew up during a period of war and economic depression, so their personality could be seen as being silenced or muted by these events.’” Personality silenced or muted? I know people who wouldn’t agree with that.

Gabrielle is Gen X (those born between 1965 and 1980). Gen X is described by Perplexity, still my favourite chatbot, as having lived “through rapid social, economic, and technological changes, making them highly adaptable and comfortable with change.” Her son and daughter, my grandkids, are Gen Z (1997-2012). Perplexity says of Gen Z, “They have grown up amid diverse family structures and are comfortable with differences in race, sexual orientation, and religion.”

This kind of sociological typecasting strikes me as sloppy, indeed, ludicrous. It tries to define what is beyond definition. It draws lines that don’t exist. False thinking this way provokes harmful disdain based on age and presumed attitude. Guess what, some members of the Silent Generation are completely comfortable with differences in race, sexual orientation, and religion; some members of Gen X have trouble with change; etcetera, etcetera.

Generational labels are just another expression of destructive identity politics. I’ve written elsewhere (in my 2023 book on antisemitism) that identity politics “rejects universalism in favour of particularism, liberalism in favour of tribalism. It emphasizes individual cultural issues and ignores the complex nature of major problems, such as climate change, which cut across particular identities. It turns its back upon traditional ideals that transcend group divides... It repudiates universalist philosophical movements, including the concept of universal human rights.” This applies in spades to the naming of generations.

Let’s talk instead about common interests and ambitions and problems, the things holding us all together. Although, admittedly, as Cixin Lu, a boomer born in 1963, writes in the postscript to his astonishing science-fiction novel The Three-Body Problem, “Every era puts invisible shackles on those who have lived through it, and I can only dance in my chains...”

Okay, boomer!

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Absence

Once, Misty the cat was independent and aloof. She slept most of the time alone in a cubbyhole, emerging only occasionally to show disdain for her human keepers. But Misty is old now and behaves differently. She doesn’t like to be left by herself. She follows us around, from room to room. If we’re out of an evening she comes to the door when we get home, crying in rebuke. Now, Misty the cat is needy. Sometimes she seems sad, and our hearts hurt.

When we go away on a trip, a friend comes in every day for a few hours to feed Misty and caress her. But Misty’s nights are lonely, or so we imagine. When she jumps on our bed and finds it empty, is she distressed and confused? Does she understand that we will return? Does she know that, although we are not there, we still love her? Or, is Misty like a newborn child who has not yet developed the idea of object permanence and does not understand that someone may exist even though they’re out of sight?

Perhaps our worry that Misty misses us when we are away is just human hubris. Perhaps Misty doesn’t give us a second thought. Perhaps, fed and caressed by our friend, she hardly notices that we’re gone. “I shall forget you presently, my dear,/ So make the most of this, your little day;/ Your little month, your little half a year,/ Ere I forget, or die, or move away…” (Edna St. Vincent Millay)

It’s anthropomorphic to attribute human acuity to an animal. In Departure(s), his new novel, Julian Barnes writes about a dog called Jimmy: “[M]y thoughts wandered to what it was like to be Jimmy. Specifically, to what memory must be like for a dog. Does it understand the concept of time in any way? Or is its mental life a series of repetitive presents with no hinterland?” Later, Barnes suggests Jimmy doesn’t even know he’s a dog. (The main character in Departure(s), written by Julian Barnes, is called Julian Barnes. Does Julian Barnes even know he’s Julian Barnes?)

I touched on all this three years ago in Endgame #45. The British press reported that a sheep had been marooned at the foot of a Scottish cliff for two years and described it as Britain’s loneliest sheep. I asked, “Can a sheep experience loneliness the way humans understand it?” In a famous 1974 article on the problem of consciousness, the American philosopher Thomas Nagel asked “What is it like to be a bat?” Nagel concluded that only a bat knows what it is like to be a bat. His analysis applies equally to a sheep. Only a sheep knows what it’s like to be a sheep. And only Misty knows what it is like to be Misty.

Cats may not love and miss humans, but what is certain is that humans can love and miss cats. In his beautiful poem “November,” Michael Ondaatje writes about the death of his cat Jack. “Oh Jack I miss your presence everywhere/ in the corners of rooms, in every chair,/ or nesting in a cardboard box/ Take me back where the past can again enter/ those early remembered rooms, our snowbound street,/ lift me upside down in your arms, I cannot stand it...”

Misty has a history with our family. My mother adopted her as a rescue cat. When my mother died twelve years ago, Cynnie and I took Misty in, and she has been a joy. She is old now. One day she will leave us. Towards the end of Ondaatje’s poem is a line that will make weep anyone who has lost an animal they loved: “You no longer wait for us.”

*****

Some comments on Endgame #126 (“Facile?”)

Naomi Duguid writes: “Loved this... because of course it sent me to listen to different recordings of the sonata. I can’t imagine my fingers being dextrous and light!”

From David Wolinsky: “After reading today’s Endgame I was inspired to buy a piano, and learn to play ‘Rhapsody In Blue.’ Then I remembered that I had taken piano lessons for two years starting at age six until my piano teacher told my parents that she couldn’t take their money any longer, that there was no hope. Thirty years later when I was acting for numerous famous musicians who were always being chased by beautiful women, I asked a client who owned a music studio to teach me to play the guitar, but after six months he also proclaimed there was no hope and he could no longer take my money. Ten years after that, when I decided to surprise my wife by secretly taking dance lessons, this time the teacher’s abnegation took less than three months. Hope may spring eternal, but complete absence of talent can be a bitch.”

Randy Hahn writes: Decades ago, I decided to teach myself guitar. I have never taken a lesson... I know some basic guitar chords and enjoy the surprising breadth of the possible repertoire given such limitation. Many years ago, my flatmate who was a quite capable guitar player was playing the lovely piece Cavatina, popularly known as part of the soundtrack for the movie, The Deer Hunter. “That sounds wonderful I said—maybe I could borrow the music so I could learn it?” He politely offered that it was much beyond my abilities. That was sufficient for me to take up the challenge. I methodically and repeatedly worked through each bar again and again and again, and after a very long time managed sufficient competency such that I could convince those who would listen to me that I am a capable guitar player.”

David Wolinsky again: “Last Sunday at the conclusion of his always brilliant Endgame column Philip Slayton attached a few comments on his previous column and referred to mine as ‘a charming note from David Wolinsky.’ I’ve been walking around with a smile on my face since then as I’m much more accustomed to hearing the adjective ‘chubby.’”

*****

Bulletin from the Department of Self-Promotion

(1) Tomorrow morning, Monday February 23, at 9:49 am Eastern Time, I’ll be on Citytv Breakfast Television (briefly), discussing my book All Remaining Passengers. Watch on Citytv across Canada, or stream live at: https://citytvplus.ca/

(2) The veteran film and television producer David Lint writes: “I rarely read fiction, preferring at this stage of my life mostly memoirs and biographies. But I recently decided to have a look at your Bay Street. So glad I did. You have a real narrative gift. Your portraits of the law firm characters are so well drawn. And the details of their professional and personal lives resonate.”

Bay Street: A Novel was published in 2013. Jack Batten described it in the Toronto Star as “…expert and engaging… exciting and hilarious… a first rate crime novel.” Jeff Gray wrote in The Globe and Mail: “A Bay Street law firm may be the perfect murder-mystery setting: A place rife with races for power and money, and more recently, a growing sense of unease about what the future holds.”

*****

Note to readers. Soon we will be on the road again. My next new column will be on Sunday, March 22. I hope Misty will be okay while we’re away.

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Facile?

In my March 2023 Endgame (#16), I wrote about piano lessons with Ruben, my beloved music teacher (I gave him the alias “Luis”): “For fifteen years I’ve toiled away at the piano with the help of Luis. The results are unimpressive, despite his best efforts. I’ll play something I’ve been working on for a while and ask Luis, ‘How was that?’ ‘Not terrible,’ he’ll say gently.”

Three years later, after sinking further into music mediocrity and struggling with arthritis in my hands (the music I play should be marked “con mani artritiche”), I haven’t given up the piano. Quite the contrary. I recently vowed that on my 82^nd birthday, this July 19^th, I will play, from memory, Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 16 in C major K545.

Sonata No.16 has three movements and typically takes about 11 minutes to perform. Mozart said he wrote it for beginners. It’s commonly called “Sonata Facile.” Facile for the likes of, say, Lang Lang, but not for the likes of me. (“It’s not easy at all,” says Ruben: I suspect he thinks my ambition is quixotic.) Here is Lang Lang playing the Sonata’s famous first movement:

Sonata Facile is formally marked as being in C major, my favourite key, the one with no flats or sharps, just white notes. C major is sometimes described as “child-like.” When I came across Sonata No. 16, I said to Ruben, oh good, look, it’s in C major, let’s give it a try, should be easy enough, it’s called “facile.”

But the naming of keys is like the naming of cats, which “is a difficult matter/ It isn’t just one of your holiday games...” (T.S. Eliot) To describe No. 16 as “in C major” is bait-and-switch. Within a few bars, the Sonata starts modulating, moving often to G major (the entire second movement is marked as being in this key), with stops along the way at F major, D major, G minor, D minor, E minor, B flat major, and A minor. And, as if that’s not enough, the sonata is jammed full of scales, arpeggios, chord progressions, etc.

Alan Rusbridger has been the editor-in-chief of The Guardian newspaper and head of an Oxford college. He took up the piano in his fifties. Rusbridger is a man of great talent, ambition, and energy, with ego and hubris to match. At the age of 57, he gave himself a year to learn Frédéric Chopin’s Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23, one of the most difficult pieces in the repertoire (and about the same length as the incomparably easier Sonata Facile).

It took Rusbridger sixteen months to learn the Ballade (he was busy editing The Guardian at the time). He then played it at a gathering of his friends who applauded wildly. Afterwards, like any good journalist, name-dropper, and exhibitionist, he wrote a book about the experience, Play It Again: An Amateur Against the Impossible. Here’s Rusbridger talking about himself:

Rusbridger says he wanted to prove something. He says he wanted to prove that at age 57 he still had the ability to learn a very difficult piece of music.

Everyone, I guess, has something to prove, but it can come at a cost. When I sit at the piano to practice Sonata Facile, I am anxious and sometimes my legs tremble. I ask myself, why am I doing this? Meanwhile, the Sonata has seized my imagination. I toss and turn in bed, dreaming of the score, obsessed by its arpeggios, musing over its modulations, trying to work out the harmony...

I mentioned the Chopin Ballade to Ruben, and he promptly sat at the piano and played it effortlessly. It is very beautiful, and I was moved. “You only have to let the soft animal of your body/love what it loves.” (Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese.) If only that were possible.

*****

A couple of comments on Endgame #125 (“The old-fashioned way”)

A charming note from David Wolinsky: “Being somewhat eidetic, aged, and probably a little disturbed, I’m confident this morning’s wonderful Endgame stirred a melange of thoughts in my head unrelated to those in the minds of any of your readers, such as: of your beloved Cynnie, my dear childhood friend Cynthia whom I am unable to recall other than her smiling, laughing, or cheering everybody up; of your Air Canada flight, my Air Canada flight to New York 47 years ago when we hit an air pocket, dropped 1000 feet, after which the pilot calmly announced as packages and people flew through the air ‘We may be encountering some turbulence so we’d ask that you buckle your seat belts;’ of your cane vanity, some 3 years ago after I tripped and broke my shoulder which affected my balance, I was too vain to use a cane so I purchased a shillelagh which I continue to carry and when questioned attribute it to my Irish heritage (in grade 10 a substitute English teacher in criticizing an essay I had written confused my signature D. Wolinsky and called me Mr. O’Wolinsky), and finally, the last picture of Rosie which brought to mind my favourite movie, The Ballad of Cable Hogue from more than 55 ago in which a performing troupe sings ‘Rosie.’ In the words of Bob Hope which I’m sure we both recall, thanks for the memories.”

My dear friend of more than 50 years, Virginia Brown, asks: “Why do you make life so difficult for yourself?”

And finally, Julian Barnes (not commenting on The Endgame) writes this in his new novel, Departures: “I am now in my mid-seventies, and like most older people am sometimes bored by myself—by which I mean my repetitious remembering of thoughts and deeds and, especially, opinions. (And those who never bore themselves, who continue to be publicly entertained by their own lives and their repeated anecdotes, are usually the worst bores on the planet.)”

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The old-fashioned way

Earlier this month we went on a family holiday to Costa Rica.

Before the Air Canada plane left for San José, a flight attendant made an unusual announcement. “This is an old aircraft,” she said. She paused, and then added, portentously: “Because this aircraft has old technology, we cannot show a safety video on your seatback screens, so watch us at the front of the cabin while we do a live safety demonstration the old-fashioned way.” (The plane was an Airbus 330—tail number C-FDHU—that entered into service in 2010 and was leased by Air Canada from Singapore Airlines. I checked on Flighty, a smartphone app that tells you stuff like this.)

The aircraft rattled and wheezed its way to San José. I thought: My loved ones are in this old-technology tin can, thirty thousand feet up in the air. God help us all! My wife Cynnie saw my discomfort. “You need to calm down,” she said. “Listen,” I told her, “This is an old plane. It has old technology. The flight attendant said so. Why would she tell us that? I think she’s worried. Look at her, she doesn’t seem happy.”

In Costa Rica we stayed at a place we’d been to before, Vista Celestial in Uvita de Osa, Puntarenas Province. The resort is a collection of villas on a mountain side. It’s 1700 feet up a steep and rocky road, four miles from a small town and beach below. To get anywhere at Vista Celestial requires something akin to climbing up or rappelling down a sheer rock face. For my granddaughter Rosie, aged 14, that was as nothing. “Behold, she is as a gazelle, fair and swift;/ her eyes sparkle as the morning dew,/ and her steps glide upon the hills.” (Song of Songs) It was a different story for Rosie’s grandparents, and even for Gabrielle, her mother. “To climb the mountain now/ needs other strength than that/ which once sustained me.” (Dante Alighieri — Purgatorio, Canto I)

The steps leading up from our villa to the resort dining room were steep. Cynnie and went up and down them slowly and carefully. I used old technology—a cane. I dislike using a cane, a visible symbol of age and decrepitude, marking me as an old codger, but needs must: Non timor, sed prudentia (“Not fear, but prudence”). Getting to the top of the steps was an achievement, but worth it for the view and the food. Getting down, back safely to our villa, was a relief.

This year, as last, we went birdwatching with the knowledgeable and gentle Alex. I added 27 birds to my life list, including the Mealy Amazon, the Laughing Falcon, the Black-hooded Antshrike, and the Tropical Parula. Once again the intricate and interdependent beauty of the rain forest and its inhabitants was overwhelming. How could this resplendence and complexity be an accident? “And I have felt/ A presence that disturbs me with the joy/ Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime/ Of something far more deeply interfused...” (Wordsworth, “Tintern Abbey”). In Endgame #55 I wrote about the fine-tuning theory, “the claim that the existence of life depends on the constants found in the standard model of particle physics. Almost any change in those constants, however small, would preclude life. How can numbers that essential and precise be an accident?” This is an argument for a cosmic designer, e.g., God (God is only one of many designer possibilities).

When the time came to leave Costa Rica, the time to replace good times with good memories, we returned sorrowfully to San José airport, got back on old-technology C-FDHU, and flew home to a cold and snowy Toronto.

*****

Some reader comments on Endgame #124 (“Emotion recollected in tranquility”)

From Naomi Duguid: “I love the way your memories are of specific sensations. Mine tend mostly to be visual and olfactory. For example, it takes effort to retrieve the feeling of the shoe brush in my hand as I sat on the floor helping my father polish several pairs of shoes, but the smell of the polish is intensely present as soon as the situation comes to mind.” (Naomi Duguid writes the always interesting and eloquent Substack, “Home & Elsewhere”.)

Brent Willock: “Took me back in time to my origins in Montreal, and to similarly detailed recollections of my first home... I think of the line from Blueberry Hill: ‘You’re part of me still.’”

Heather Chisvin: “Emotion recollected in tranquility is universal, so true for all of us at this stage in our lives. [I] long for those sweet, safe moments of my childhood.”

From the writer and broadcaster Karin Wells: “Sarah Binks, ergo Paul Heibert, are not entirely forgotten. Walter Unger, producer of Arts National, the daily CBC radio arts show I hosted into the early 80s, was very fond of Sarah Binks. There wasn’t a great deal of prairie satire, if you recall. When Eric Donkin brought his one man show to Ottawa ‘The Wonderful World of Sara Binks,’ we were only beginning to put one-man Canadiana on stage as well, we were much pleased. As I recall it was Donkin in drag which added another layer to things—not Rue Paul sequins and brocade, rather tweeds and stout shoes. Good actor, good material.” (Karin Wells’ latest book is “Women Who Woke Up the Law: Inside the Cases that Changed Womens Rights in Canada.”)

Wayne Nylin writes: “I recall one summer school at University of Manitoba, very early 60’s before he retired, and some of us were in the dining hall eating and along came Prof. Hiebert, who entertained us with other topics but I always enjoy cracking open my ancient copy of Sarah Binks for a good chuckle more than 6 decades after that. I wished sometimes I had been taking chemistry from him.”

And, as usual, the last word goes to Bob Rae: “Very good indeed. No smart-ass comments from me. Just good.”

*****

A well-known American author once told me “the only thing that sells books is word-of-mouth.” All Remaining Passengers continues to have modest but consistent word-of-mouth sales, mostly online, but also in some independent bookstores, notably Munro’s Books in Victoria, B.C., Ben McNally Books in Toronto, and Salt-Water Ballad Books in Port Medway, Nova Scotia. My thanks to past and future purchasers and readers.

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The night

I’ve been thinking about the night, the time when we sleep and dream, when we seek obliviousness but frequently fail to find it, the time we often think of as something that merely punctuates days but in fact is as important as the day itself. The night has its own richness and poetry.

We’re tired. The idea of slipping between the sheets and drifting off to sleep is delicious. Shakespeare: “Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care, /The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath, /Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, /Chief nourisher in life’s feast.” (Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 2)

But we are trepidatious as well. We approach bed with apprehension, particularly as we age. We have not been sleeping well lately—in fact, come to think of it, we have not been sleeping well for quite some time. We thrash around. We wake up a lot. We drift in and out of sleep. We have fantastical dreams. As the night moves along, we hear the clock striking in the other room—two o’clock, three, four... Gerard Manley Hopkins: “I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day./ What hours, O what black hours we have spent/ This night!”

Garbage trucks rumble down the street. The bed is a battlefield. We toss and turn. When dawn breaks we are thankful. This night’s struggle is over. As we age, the struggle gets worse.

But tonight, we are sleeping in a house by the sea. The only sounds are the sound of the waves breaking on the beach, the loon crying in the darkness, the coyote howling in the distance across the bay. Perhaps, in this peace, we will sleep the sleep of the innocent and untroubled. But no, it is not like that, even here. “The fall of rivers, winds and seas, Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky; I have thought of all by turns, and yet do lie Sleepless!” (William Wordsworth, To Sleep)

In this age of little romance, the poetry of the night is replaced by electronic monitoring. If you are kitted out with a sleep tracker, in the morning you can review the statistics of the night that has just passed. My smartwatch tells me that last night my time asleep was 5 hours and 5 minutes. It tells me all sorts of other things, including the percentage of my sleep that was REM, Core, and Deep (look it up), and my heart, respiratory rates and blood oxygen level while I was sleeping. Occasionally in the morning my watch sends me a congratulatory message telling me that I’ve “met my sleep goals.” I am pathetically pleased by this message. Something has been achieved.

But how do you attach numbers with meaning to the “soft embalmer of the still midnight” (John Keats, To Sleep)?

In his poem Night Rhapsody Robert Nichols, one of the great poets of the First World War, writes about the power of darkness: “How beautiful to wake at night,/ Within the room grown strange, and still, and sweet,/ And live a century while in the dark/ The dripping wheel of silence slowly turns...”

The night is an entrancing time, whether you are awake and living a century in the dark, or asleep dreaming. Dreaming takes you to a separate world. I wonder if the dream world is the real world, with the price of admission being consciousness during the inconsequential world of day. The dream world is full of colour and action and people from the past. “In my dreams, /I lasso a wild steer on the first try./ I chauffeur Picasso/ To meet up with Dali.../ I discover my childhood cat in the neighbor’s tree—/ So that’s where you’ve been, you little rascal.” (Gary Soto, In Praise of Dreams)

And then, beyond the poetry of the night, there is the Music of the Night, music that runs through your mind as you try to sleep, and then invades your dreams.

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oo

Emotion recollected in tranquility

“And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,/ With many recognitions dim and faint,/ And somewhat of a sad perplexity,/ The picture of the mind revives again...” (William Wordsworth, “Tintern Abbey”) Later Wordsworth wrote: “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.”(Preface to Lyrical Ballads)

When I was very young, in the late 1940s, my family lived in a modest semi-detached house in north London. Hot water came from a coal fired boiler in the cellar which had to be stoked frequently. I recollect little about that house in north London, but I remember clearly the sound of my mother stoking the cellar boiler in the early morning so that my father would have hot water to shave. I hear that sound even now, although it is dim and faint, as I lie tranquil in bed in the early morning, more than 70 years later, an ocean away, with my mother dead for more than a decade. The sound is the sound of security and of my mother’s love, and its recollection comforts me.

Years afterwards, I spent many happy times at the Buckinghamshire country house, long since demolished, of my affectionate and generous aunt and uncle. I remember the shape, feel, and sound of the brass doorhandle in the bedroom where I slept. As I dream in a half-sleep today, or traverse the past in my mind as I idly walk down a winter street, I recall the feel of that handle, the twist I gave it to open the door, the satisfying click of the bolt as the door latched when I shut it. This particular memory triggers other recollections of treasured times in the Buckinghamshire house, as the taste of a madeleine opened the door to memories for the narrator in Marcel Proust’s novel À la recherche de temps perdu.

When I was a university student in Winnipeg, one year I had a summer job that I hated. I would wake in the morning dreading the prospect of another day spent in an awful place. Before I took the bus to work, to collect my thoughts and calm down, I would go to the backyard of our house for a brief while and sit on the box by the laundry line where my mother hung the clothes to dry. It was cool in the early morning, and there was birdsong, and it was peaceful. After a while I felt able to deal with the day to come. The memory of that precious morning interlude in the backyard—the cool air, the birds, the peace—stays with me, and I often summon it when I need help dealing with awfulness.

The house in Winnipeg (also now demolished) was built in the 1920s by Paul Hiebert, a chemistry professor at the University of Manitoba and author of the largely-forgotten literary satire Sarah Binks: The Sweet Songstress of Saskatchewan (“Oh calf, that gambolled by my door,/ Who made me rich who now am poor,/ That licked my hand with milk bespread,/ Oh calf, calf! Art dead, art dead?”). When Hiebert retired from the university he moved to Carman, a small town south of Winnipeg. In 1965 I wrote to him, said I was an admirer of Sarah Binks, and asked if I might visit: He quickly sent back a letter of welcome. I went to Carman with my charismatic friend Hal Kroeker, who was always up for an adventure. We had a fine afternoon with Hiebert. Hal Kroeker died in 1984, only 41 years old.

Sound, touch, a quiet time in the cool morning air, visiting Paul Heibert in Carman with my friend Hal. “That time is past,/ And all its aching joys are now no more,/ And all its dizzy raptures.” (“Tintern Abbey”)

*****

Some reader comments on Endgame #123 (“We The North”)

Randy Hahn writes: “I have been a fan of watching basketball for many years. When I do have the opportunity to go to a live NBA game, I find it is an opportunity to appreciate the intensity, speed, athleticism, and skill that television does not capture as well. But I do not share your enthusiasm for what is happening off the court... Rodney Dangerfield once observed that ‘I went to a fight the other night and a hockey game broke out.’ Following which one might say ‘I went to the carnival and a basketball game broke out.’”

From David Wolinsky: “I share your love of basketball for a more selfish reason. Unlike football, baseball, soccer, golf, hamburgers, French fries, Diet Coke, and cake, basketball was invented by a Canadian, James Naismith, so even though I was vertically, weight, and athletic ability challenged so I could never play the game, as a proud Canadian I always vicariously considered it my game. We The North indeed.”

John Gregory is not in a good mood: “When I attended a Raptors game a few years ago, my reaction to all the spectator involvement, t-shirt specials, noises here and there and flashing lights, was to think that the organizers didn’t have much confidence in the game itself to hold our interest. And frankly, when one or both teams will likely be scoring 100 points a game, how can one attach much importance to any basket, however elegantly netted? So the game was for me a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

Bob Collison: “Perhaps this is the high school Touchdown Quiz three-time laureate in me but I was always under the impression that Isaac Newton, who died in 1727, or was it John Locke, who met his maker in 1704, were the last humans ‘to know everything.’ But both ‘circa’ the same time as Liebniz, so guess the last time one could be a true ‘know it all’ was in the early 18th century. But my odds are on Newton or Locke, but maybe that’s just the anglophile in me. But totally agree about basketball. Like you, Philip, came to appreciate its athletic artistry very late in life.”

From Gerry Posner: “I loved your piece on basketball Philip. But you would have to pay me to go watch basketball. This comment comes from someone who has followed sports closely all my life. Not just followed but played several sports. I have had 45 years of Racquetball, 10 years of Pickleball, some tennis, and years of playing baseball, and football. I was for years a regular at Blue Bomber games as well as at the Winnipeg Jets. Even to this day, I remain involved in following sports. With all of that, I say to you that basketball is a sport which does not attract me in the least. It is one sport that rewards height. My family lacks height and indeed hair. I cannot identify with a sport that makes it impossible for a short guy to play. While it is true to say height helps, there is still room for smaller competitors to play at a high level. Not basketball. Volleyball has the same problem for me. I might add that I played basketball as a kid but then, the height disparity was not so great. So no hoopla for me about basketball. As in none.”

“Neural Foundry” comments: “The insight Charlie shared about ‘We The North’ being more about the new, multicultural Canada than just geography is spot-on. What I find really interesting is how sports become entry points into communities we might otherwise never join. I had a similar moment at a cricket match years back, totally out of my element but suddenly part of something bigger. The accessibility angle (cheap, play anywhere) versus hockey’s barriers is such a subtle but powerful detail about who gets to belong.”

The final word goes to Naomi Duguid: “Loved this. The way you leapt joyfully. I’ve never been to a Raptors game... Now I’m tempted.”

*****

Note to readers: I’m heading to Costa Rica in a few days on a family trip. We went there this past January and had a wonderful time (see Newsletter #94 - “Three generations and a bunch of birds”), so we’re going back. There won’t be a fresh Newsletter until January 24. Happy New Year!

******

Meanwhile, I haven’t stopped flogging the book, although—calm down—I’m going to stop soon.

All Remaining Passengers is available from Amazon and other online book sellers in most countries, and from some independent bookstores in Canada (coast-to-coast) including Ben McNally Books and Book City (Yonge & St. Clair branch) in Toronto, Munro’s Books in Victoria, B.C. (where, for some reason, it’s selling like warm cakes), Russell Books in Victoria, and Salt-Water Ballad Books in Port Medway, Nova Scotia.

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We The North

I’d never watched live professional basketball and had no idea what to expect, when a generous neighbour gave us tickets to a Toronto Raptors game.

As Cynnie and I set off for the arena on a cold and dark December night, for a moment I wished we were staying home instead, sitting quietly by the fire, watching a BBC police procedural on television, dozing off as the hour advanced.

Hamlet told Horatio, “There are more things in heaven and earth... Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” (Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5) No matter how old you are, and how full a life you’ve had, there will be worlds you know nothing about. There will be countries you’ve never visited, languages you’ve never learnt, books you’ve never read, dreams you’ve never dreamt, skills you’ve never mastered, bodies of knowledge that are a mystery to you. (They say that Universal Knowledge has not been possible since the Renaissance, and that the last person to know everything was Gottfried Leibniz who died in 1716.)

Professional basketball was not in the dreams of my philosophy. I half-expected to find the Raptors game uninteresting and forgettable. But it was thrilling. The intensity and speed of play was overwhelming. The athleticism, style and skill of the players was extraordinary. The complexity of the game—spatial, temporal, strategic, tactical, physical, psychological—was supremely evident. Cynnie and I were stunned by the spectacle.

As with all games, there is more to the game than the game. What’s happening off the basketball court—on the sidewalks as crowds flood into the arena, in the halls, in the stands at time-outs and half-time—is as important as what’s happening on the court during the 48 minutes of play. The dancing girls, the chanting and cheering of joyful and exuberant fans, mothers shaking their howling babies in the air in an attempt to catch the attention of the TV cameras, random high-fiving, T-shirts being shot into the stands from cannons, fireworks, the overwhelming and unrelenting noise, people wandering about wearing odd costumes—a full-body T-Rex inflatable suit, a black and red tunic and cape, full medieval knight armor, a giant chicken suit...

And then there’s the community behind it all. My daughter Gabrielle has been a big baseball fan for a long time. I’ve gone to a lot of Blue Jays games with her. We’ve even been on the road together, following the team—Boston, New York, Cleveland. It’s a father/daughter thing. Her devotion to the game, and to the Blue Jays in particular, has always been a bit of a surprise to me. When I ask her about it, she says, “Dad, I’m a member of the Blue Jays community. It’s about community.”

What about the Raptors Community? Who are those joyful and exuberant fans cheering the team on? I asked my friend Charlie about this. Charlie, something of a subterranean sociologist, is a wise man who knows many things. He wrote to me about the idea that’s been behind the Raptors since the team’s beginning in 1995: “My favorite part about ‘We The North’ campaign of the era? It was more often We The (non-white) North. We The brown, black, Asian, African, North. We The North who don’t know real cold and snow, and the real ‘far’ North, but love the place and space called Canada, which has been so welcoming. And love hoops, a sport that—unlike the ‘white’ northern sport of hockey—can be played for cheap, and everywhere, by ‘us’ –the ‘new’ Northern people. Here to play. Here to stay.”

I decided it’s not too late for me to add a dream or two to my philosophy. There’s room for the Raptors. I’m in.

We The North!

*****

Some reader comments on Endgame #122 (“Even Homer Nods”)

From the writer Mark Abley: “A beautiful essay, full of wisdom—although I have to say that your image of Homer decorating his mudbrick Aegean home is even more unlikely that you seem to think. It would be more accurate to speak of Homers decorating their mudbrick homes, because the idea of Homer as a blind genius dreaming up his epics near the wine-dark sea has been largely discredited. The Iliad and the Odyssey were almost certainly built up over time, with different bards and story-tellers adding their own metaphors, anecdotes and images to the developing oral tradition. One or two of them may indeed have nodded off.”

Gabrielle Domingues writes: “I am a recovering perfectionist, and being a new student of Tai Chi has been particularly humbling. When I got frustrated with a new form, my sensei zen-ly said to me: ‘The best way to learn is by muddling through.’ Instead, I think I’m going to embrace what they teach in clown school: When you make a mistake, just proudly proclaim ‘Ta-dah!’”

An intriguing literary reference from Julius Grey: “Speaking of Voltaire: ‘Si vous voulez que j’aime encore, rendez-moi l’âge de mes amours.’” (“If you wish me to love again, give me back the age of my loves.”)

Karin Turkington writes: “Just what I needed to read as I procrastinate endlessly to finish a writing project I started in 2016. It means too much to me to set it aside permanently, but the voices in my head don’t cease to criticize my efforts.”

From excellent food writer Naomi Duguid: “I visualise this relationship between perfection and anxiety as a thing to avoid. My efforts go to working at things and finding pleasure in that process. The product is less interesting and less important than the process. And anxiety—about being late, or about that mark on my skin, or about some irritating tech mess—is a dreadful waste of energy. I read murder mysteries etc. to distract myself from anxious thinking.” (Follow Naomi’s Substack, “Home and Elsewhere.”)

A sad note from the writer Sher Singh: “I knew an extraordinarily gifted novelist three decades ago in Toronto, H. S. Bhabra. I was impressed by his two published novels which had also received good reviews. He wowed us weekly with his column in The Globe & Mail and his show on TVOntario. He strove fiercely to write his perfect magnum opus and, disappointed in his own failure to achieve his goal, became a grump and a pain to everyone around him. Ultimately, he couldn’t forgive himself for his inability to achieve perfection and jumped off the Danforth bridge ... and unwittingly contributed to the towering anti-suicide barrier that blemishes it today.”

The last word goes to the enigmatic Martin Levin: “A rosy-fingered column, indeed, Philip, though much more evening than dawn.”

*****

Looking for a cheery last-minute holiday gift for someone you love? What about this?

All Remaining Passengers is available from Amazon and other online book sellers in most countries, and from some independent bookstores in Canada (coast-to-coast) including Ben McNally Books and Book City (Yonge & St. Clair branch) in Toronto, Munro’s Books in Victoria, B.C. (where, for some reason, it’s selling like warm cakes), Russell Books in Victoria, and Salt-Water Ballad Books in Port Medway, Nova Scotia.

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