A carafe of spearmint herbal tea and a review of my script before walking to the theater.

I was fortunate enough to work recently with my friend, Chapel Hill playwright and director Karen Traut, on Kennedy’s Play, which she originally wrote in 1976 and revised for a 1984 NYC run.

Karyn pulled together a group of smart and talented actors to perform a staged reading of the play at the Drakeford Library Complex Theatre in Carrboro, NC, and I was flattered to be asked to join them. We only did two nights but they were both rich experiences of a rich play.

Karyn likes to have discussions after a performance so audience members can process what they’ve seen and share their insights. A lady in the front row shared that she was in one of the first Peace Corps missions under JFK, and was one of two Peace Corps representative selected to attend his funeral. That the Kennedy history was so close to us in the room, after 60 years, was electrifying.

The play contains several of Kennedy’s speeches and a frequent comment from the audience was how that literate and intelligent presentation was gone from the current political scene, and how innocent that time seemed before the assassination.

This has been one of the peak creative experiences of my life. So, so grateful to Karyn and my fellow castmates for this experience.

A friend tipped me to a social faux pas I knew nothing about: “nosing the brie.” Her cutting off and taking the tip of the brie slice for herself elicited gasps of horror from the other guests. How are the great unwashed (like myself) supposed to know these things until we transgress, I ask you?

It makes sense that that’s the tastiest part of the cheese, because it’s also tastiest part of a pizza slice. Q.E.D.

I always offer Liz the first bite of what I call “the succulent heart” of my pizza slice or pie slice or cake slice, which is always the “nose.” This not only gives her the tastiest and gooiest part, she usually lets me finish the rest of the slice without asking for another bite (I’m greedy, therefore cunning), so we both benefit.

Such an undistinguished year.

Even Wikipedia has to strain to find enough disambiguations for that four-digit monstrosity.

1961 is 2504 in the Thai solar calendar.

In 1961, JFK was sworn in, so there’s that.

The first issue of Fantastic Four was published in 1961.

The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961 went to Harper Lee for To Kill a Mockingbird. Even better.

“West Side Story” won the Oscar for Best Film and, winning Grammies, were Percy Faith for “Theme from A Summer Place” (Record of the Year), “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart” (Album of the Year), and “Theme of Exodus” (Song of the Year). All in 1961. Well. At least Bob Newhart’s album is still listenable.

Not a very interesting year, I’ll grant you. But I’m sentimental about it.

I tend to read first thing in the morning in my rocking chair, with my coffee, with the morning light coming in over my shoulder onto the page or Kindle.

A trick I picked up to keep my reading habit from flagging is from Andy Miller’s book The Year of Reading Dangerously. The way he got through his reading project was to read 50 pages in the morning before getting on with the business of the day.

I find that rate very compatible with my current life circumstances, as the morning is the only time I really control before the day’s obligations sink their claws into me. Depending on the book, a reading session can take 60-90 minutes, and I can get through a ~250 page book in about five days, more or less. By reading that much material in a session, I am less likely to lose track of the plot or characters and it keeps my interest in the book alive. If I’m facing time constraints or I miss the morning pages, then I’ll aim to read 25 or so pages later in the day.

It’s too easy to set a book down and say, “I’ll get to it later.” I’ve put off profligate reading for many, many years, and now is the time of my life to sit down with my coffee and enjoy all the pleasures I’ve been waiting to do “someday.” Someday is today.

A recording from my iPhone’s Voice app from an after-supper walk in June. Rosehill Avenue features a large, high canopy of trees and the sound of the cicadas, tree frogs, etc. This was an experience I wanted to remember. (1m 37s)

Transcript

I was bored one evening and applied the Adbreak mod to my Kindle Oasis (10th generation). I was helped along by Dammit Jeff’s video and step-by-step instructions on the Kindle Modding wiki.

Jailbreaking devices like the Kindle are a popular pastime for folks. Getting past Amazon’s defenses allows intrepid users to customize layouts, fonts, UI, load e-books of different formats, change almost every aspect of the device’s function, etc. and add extra programs like simple games or even disabling ads.

I performed a jailbreak on my Kindle Touch back in 2012 so I could load up custom screensavers that delighted me. After a while, Amazon issued an update that broke the jailbreak and I never bothered doing it again.

Dammit Jeff pointed out some interesting apps like KindleForge and KOReader that could be installed,

KOReader was more interesting, as it promised the ability to read many more ebook formats, flow PDF text to make those files more readable, adjust the fonts and sizes of almost every aspect of the UI to your liking. and that’s great – if you want to spend a lot of time fiddling instead of reading.

Also, very few of the many apps available for download via KindleForge seemed worth spending my time on. Do I really need a Tetris clone on my Kindle? No. No, I do not.

So I backed out of the jailbreak and reset my Kindle. I felt more comfortable almost immediately.

Lord knows the Kindle is not perfect. It is a deliberately dumbed-down device with few customizations available apart from loading fonts (Hyperlegible is a good one), a so-so attitude to leading and kerning, etc. As Jason Snell often observes in his Kindle reviews, Amazon could do so much better if it cared to.

But for me, for now, my lowly Kindle Oasis (now discontinued) is fine. It’s fine. It meets my low expectations, the battery still holds a charge, and I can carry 100+ books in my hand wherever I go.

Today’s lesson: Kindles come and go. It’s the books that delight.

Every Christmas, my mother gives me a subscription to Our State magazine, which, as the subtitle says, is dedicated to “celebrating North Carolina.” I like browsing each issue to find some new or unusual places to visit for a day trip or long weekend. Although I’m a native North Carolinian, there’s lots I don’t know about the state.

This year’s Christmas-themed issue delighted me more than usual. In addition to the recipes and events – Peanut Butter Cup Cookies! Christmas Flotillas! – are some really well-reported (if occasionally overwritten) articles on bits of hyperlocal history, culture, and the passing scene.

Brief excerpts from some of my favorite articles:

Christmas on Portsmouth Island - More than 50 years after the last residents of Portsmouth Island moved away, a descendant of the once-busy shipping village decks the halls in their honor.

His father — a carpenter and commercial fisherman who worshiped during homecomings in this same church — passed away about six months prior. In this moment, the loss deepens Gilgo’s connection to this place and the meaning of the Christmas season. Satisfied with the job, he turns to leave, his work now done. He may be one of only a few handfuls of people who ever see these decorations, and that is enough.

Resilience in the Ebersole Holly Garden - Once left to the weeds, a world-class holly collection in Pinehurst is thriving again, thanks to the determination of those who believe in a second season.

Most people think they can identify a holly. “You imagine that evergreen, Christmas-tree shaped bush at the corner of your house,” Bunch says.

To expand that notion, he takes visitors over to one of his favorite spots in the Ebersole Holly Garden, a section filled with massive trees, some boasting 40-foot-tall canopies. Bunch encourages them to look up. “These huge, beautiful hollies have white-and-gray bark, different from any other trees — a stark contrast to our native pines,” he says. “To get underneath them is a different experience than from looking straight on to the holly bush in your yard.”

Old Christmas in Rodanthe - For more than 200 years, villagers in the Outer Banks community have celebrated Christmas on their own terms.

As the story goes, during the [[Battle of Culloden]], a nonfatal arrow struck the 12-year-old Scottish drummer, Donald McDonald, in the left shoulder. After his recovery, he set sail to the New World, drum in tow. During the voyage, McDonald fell overboard during a storm and swam to shore using the drum as a life preserver. He arrived at the place where he’d spend the rest of his life: Rodanthe.

… The drum is folklore made material. A symbol of persistence and resistance, it bridges past and present. According to legend, decades had passed when news reached Hatteras Island that England had, in 1752, adopted the Gregorian calendar that changed Christmas from January 6 or 7 to December 25. Committed to their ways, the village of Rodanthe refused to go along with the change and continued celebrating Jesus’s birth when and how they always had.

North Carolina’s Santa School - Before the beard and belly laugh, becoming the Man in Red requires a little magic — and plenty of training — in Charlotte, where Santas go to earn their ho-ho-ho. A wonderful piece by Daniel Wallace.

On offer this weekend is a rare opportunity for Santas from all over the state and beyond to watch other Santas at work, to study their routines, and, not unlike a child at the mall getting their picture taken with the Man in Red, to ply the old pros with questions of their own, such as, well, “What do you say when they ask you where your reindeer are?” No two Santas have the exact same answer to this question, or to any question for that matter. But you need at least one.

Did my ankle and knee PT this morning, read another story in the latest First Line literary magazine, and started in on my inbox.

Since my semi-retirement in April and now full retirement, I’ve found that my much-vaunted and hard-fought-for productivity habits have totally unraveled. With no one imposing a deadline on me, I tend to get around to things when I want to do them. Which is, in its own way, very relaxing. I get to things, just not when other people want me to get to them.

I’m unsubscribing from some newsletters, or moving them to Readwise Reader app. I usually delete a lot of things that arrive daily, which are reminders from FollowUpThen or ads from local businesses I want to stay aware of.

On a day like today, where I have 50+ emails in the box, I like to sit and just plow through the inbox from top to bottom, put stuff in Google Tasks or Keep or Evernote, and then stop when the inbox is empty or I’m tired of doing it.

I did a three-card reading using the World Spirit Tarot deck (1st edition). Instead of the usual “Past Present Future” layout, as I shuffled the cards I asked them to tell me something I needed to know about this year and to tell it as a story.

Here are the cards I drew.

The World Spirit Tarot site, maintained by Madame Onca, the deck’s artist, has these handy capsule descriptions of each card:

• SEVEN of SWORDS – “Strategy, stealth and wit are required to meet your goals. From tactful communication to outright manipulation, utilize the spectrum of strategy to obtain your objectives. Be honest about your motives and methods, as dishonesty can beget its own problems. Can you accomplish your ends without compromising your integrity? (Craftiness)”
• SAGE of CUPS – “Emotional maturity and a progressive nature allow the Sage to adapt to the changing times. Capable of great finesse and calculated communication, they lead well, and gaslight brutally. This empathetic personality struggles to maintain a most challenging balance between the rigors of worldly responsibility and a deeply emotional, artistic nature.”
• V THE HIEROPHANT – “Are you ready to expand your knowledge? Bringing together the worlds of inner spirit and outer learning, this card represents the laws and culture of religious and academic tradition. Study the collected wisdom of the ancestors with all its gifts and shortcomings, then find the truly Sacred in your own way.”

The Hierophant, by the way, is my Spirit Card, the Major Arcana card that aligns to certain numerological data associated to my name and birth date. Seeing that card turned over at the end made my eyes pop.

The swords are an air sign, symbolizing intellect, communications, and boundaries. The cups are a water sign, signifying emotions, intuition, love, dreams. The Hierophant, as a Major Arcana symbol, dominates the reading. If these cards tell a story – starting from the intellectual and moving to the emotional – then the Hierophant is a hell of a note to end on.

One of the things I note about the card’s figures: the Swords figure is facing left and down, bending over, picking up the swords in a freezing cold sea, while a ship is heading toward her in the distance. She has to work fast. She is also facing to the left while the Sage is facing right in contemplation. Opposites-ville. But both figures are in cold, blue settings with clouds stabbing diagonally across the sky. They’re telling different sides of the story but they’re swimming in the same sea.

The Swords card pretty accurately summarizes my head at the moment. I want to clear up various health issues this year, and I have a life-changing project simmering in the background that will come to fruition, I hope, later this year. I want to set lots of plates spinning on the tips of many swords, and am wondering how to coordinate it all.

Once those plates are spinning, though, time to be the Sage and contemplate where I am, how I’m feeling, and how I will negotiate the life-change transition that is headed my way. The Swords card is, I think, about planning the physical aspects of my life. The Sage reminds me not to forget the emotional side, which needs equal care and attention. The honest Sword turns away from the calculating, gaslighting, manipulative Sage. But that last sentence of the card description shows the Sage trying his best to bridge the needs of the world with the needs of the soul.

And how will the story end? The Hierophant. The Rules-Maker and Rules-Follower, the Lawgiver, who joins in one role the emotional (religious, yearning, soulful) and the academic (intellect, boundaries, order from chaos). The dark side of the Hierophant is a slavish devotion to the rules rather than balanced and knowing wisdom. The rather haughty pose in the card, and the supplicants, show for me a disposition to avoid, a haughtiness I do not want to emulate. But I do want to honor the Sacred in the card, the light of the torch, and – the mysteries. What lies behind that black curtain? The Hierophant represents a codified religious system, but that system’s purpose is to guide one to the mysteries that lie within.

I took this to be a very hopeful and beneficial reading. I will be working hard at the start of the year (Swords), by mid-year I’ll be assessing where I am and how I’m feeling about where I’m going (Cups), and – I hope – by the end of the year, I’ll be the writer of my own story, the master of my moment, enjoying the pleasures of the emotions and the intellect. And since the Hierophant is my Soul Card, perhaps the reading indicates that I will come into my own, be fully myself.