Two Gut Punches

Two gut punches this week: the passing of two cultural icons, Dolly Parton and Tim Curry. Both died at the age of 80, and that's about all they had in common on paper.

Dolly was the daughter of a sharecropper, born in a small cabin in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, the fourth child of twelve.

Tim was born in Grappenhall, Cheshire, UK, the second child of a naval chaplain and a school secretary. He was boarding-school educated.

I wasn't going to post about Dolly. I mean, everybody—literally everybody—is mourning her passing publicly. I didn't think I had much to add until the news of Tim Curry's passing came the same week.

What's the connection? The trans community loved them both.

And so did most everybody else. The phrase I've been hearing about Dolly this week is that she was beloved from NASCAR to drag queens.

Of course, Tim Curry rocketed to stardom in the mid-1970s playing the "Sweet Transvestite," Dr. Frank-N-Furter, in the cult-classic film The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

When I was growing up, Dolly confounded me. The big dumb blonde hair, the big curves, the enormous chest, and the outlandish costumes, which always accentuated her chest. And that was contrasted by a sweet singing voice and an "aw shucks" innocence. She was sort of country music's version of Marilyn Monroe (or Jayne Mansfield), but with a glam-rock taste for fashion, minus the drugs and pretension. I didn't know what to make of it.

She always seemed like a bit of a joke during an era when pretty much every performer took themselves way too seriously. She was the butt of untold numbers of comedy routines. But here's the thing that made her different: she seemed to be in on the joke. She didn't seem to take herself seriously at all.

And yet she was very serious about her craft, her career and her business acumen. Look up Dollywood—one of the most profitable and high-yielding regional theme park resorts in the United States—if you want to get a sense of what I mean. It turned out the joke was actually on us.

She successfully made the transition from country star to the mainstream with her appearance in the comedy film 9 to 5, for which she also wrote and sang the smash-hit theme song. Now everyone was taking Dolly seriously.

Dolly was always a tireless worker. She cemented her status as a cultural icon with her philanthropic work. She's donated and raised hundreds of millions of dollars for various causes, from literacy programs to disaster relief to medical research.

And what everyone saw in Dolly—beyond the crazy appearance, the makeup, the glitter and rhinestones, the plastic surgery—was a huge heart. Dolly clearly loved people. All people. Republican and Democrat. Urban and rural. Gay, trans and straight. She made no distinctions. That was no performance. And they all knew it and loved her back.

Admittedly, Dolly was not my cup of tea growing up. But The Rocky Horror Picture Show was a cultural touchstone in my upbringing. I might argue that Dolly's appeal across gender, socioeconomic and cultural boundaries was made possible, at least in part, by Tim Curry playing a bustier-wearing, sex-obsessed alien.

Rocky Horror is a lot of things. It's a spoof of the science-fiction and schlocky B horror movies of the 1950s, the gothic novels of the 19th century, and it also draws on Broadway musicals, rock-and-roll youth culture, and even the theatrical revues of the Ziegfeld Follies and the so-called aqua-musicals of Esther Williams.

And people from all walks of life responded to it. So much so that they came back over and over again, and didn't just want to sit in the movie theatre passively watching. They wanted to be it. They learned all the lines and lyrics, dressed up as the characters, brought props, and interacted with what was happening onscreen.

They took literally the title of the final musical number: "Don't Dream It, Be It."

Rocky Horror is a wonderful cultural hodge-podge of outlandishness and joy. But at its core, the message is one of love and acceptance.

Exactly like Dolly.

The Sea Glass Collectors

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Sea Glass 

The sea glass collectors of Inverness,

Pace the sandy shoreline of Cape Breton,

Like musing philosophers hoping to express,

A sentiment in words they chance upon.

Their aim is to glean some shining moment,

From the detritus coughed up by the Atlantic tide,

The mounds of smooth pebbles and seashell fragments,

Washed-up seaweed and kelp, slimy or dry.

To find a sun-caught shard, clear or creamy white,

Lantern green, cola brown, or rare azure blue,

They scrutinize the beach with granular sight,

And bend as if gathering drops of crystallized dew.

They are women absorbed in walking meditation—

A practice known to Buddhists for centuries;

Measured breath, measured step and contemplation,

Unacknowledged members of an ancient sorority.

They walk to leave behind, for a time, chores,

Their men, children, the world; and return to themselves,

The treasure they comb from the ocean shore,

Lies beyond jars of colour displayed on kitchen shelves.

Sea glass is as much imagined as it is real,

A product of the spirit and nature’s artful way,

To beautify used bottles from the town’s old landfill,

Polished and palmed like beads for praying.

An Online Reputational Lynching

As we increasingly substitute virtual lives for real lives, we have to reassess and reevaluate how we are being changed—not just our sense of what is real and what isn’t, but also the way it exploits the dark recesses of our hearts.

As we know by now, online activity tends to bring out the worst in us. Algorithms are designed to encourage outrageous behaviour and pander to all our biases and prejudices. We can respond unthinkingly to our worst impulses, with minimal consequences.

And sometimes we find out how others pay the price for that.

I think that’s something we can learn from the tragic death of Jason Arday.

If you don’t know who he is by now, I’d be surprised. I didn’t until two days ago. Now it seems everyone wants to have a go at him, at Cambridge University, at diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), and to promote their own political agenda and demonstrate their own moral superiority.

What I see is a tragic story of an online reputational lynching, in which the media and a million random commentators are only too willing to join in. Villagers with torches and pitchforks, banging on Dr. Frankenstein’s door.

If you don’t know the story, Jason Arday was a professor at Cambridge University, the youngest ever appointed in the prestigious university’s history. He was also Black. He was also severely neurodivergent and apparently didn’t speak until he was 11 years old and didn’t read or write until he was 18. His story is pretty incredible.

And it has come to light that quite a bit of it was untrue, or at least exaggerated. Not the neurodivergent stuff. But, starting a couple of years ago, the work that earned him his academic position and reputation came under scrutiny for plagiarism.

I don’t want to get into the details. You can look it up for yourself, because there’s plenty about it online. What there isn’t plenty of is compassion.

The accusations and online kerfuffle resulted in Arday resigning his Cambridge position and, a week later, apparently taking his own life.

First I felt deeply sad. Then I took some time to process the sadness. It is not the time to react, especially not to prove a point.

Upon some reflection, I came to realize that I couldn’t care less that Cambridge hired him, for whatever reason. That’s their business. If they screwed up, that’s their problem to deal with. If they fail, too bad for them. They will lose out. Let’s not exaggerate the ramifications for the rest of us.

Let’s presume Cambridge hired him because they wanted to virtue signal. They wanted to make him the poster boy for their enlightened policies.

How is the irony lost on people that the online piling-on is motivated by precisely the same virtue signalling they are accusing Cambridge of engaging in? Diminish Arday and Cambridge to elevate themselves.

I don’t want to say anything more about Arday at this juncture. Probably not ever, actually. I can imagine how devastated his wife and loved ones are and how brutalized they must feel by all the exploitation of their tragedy and vitriol.

It feels appropriate simply to say that this is a moment for reflection on how social media has scrambled our collective moral compass. 

I Went Looking For An Audience

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I went looking for an audience for my poems,

Found one nearby at the old folks home.

The bars bustled with games on large screens, and the cafés 

Were packed with patrons glued to laptops sipping lattés.

But at the old folks home they appreciate true entertainment,

Especially the kind that doesn't ask for payment.

They put me on the events calendar, top of the bill,

Reserved me a mic, a pitcher of water, and a room to fill.

I appeared the day after a guitarist who sang Yiddish tunes,

Slotted-in before bingo, and a man who made animal balloons.

And on the appointed day, at the appointed hour,

My audience shuffled in, mostly under their own power.

Some were wheeled in chairs, a few still in their beds,

Most with sleepy eyes and others with foggy heads.

They parked their metal walkers next to Filipina attendants,

It was as quiet as a courtroom and I was the Defendant.

I'd guess they ranged in age from eighty to one-o-five,

They all seemed more or less happy to still be alive -

Alive they were, they’d seen the Great Depression,

And had made to life's demands every possible concession.

Some I could tell had even known Auschwitz One and Two,

The evidence marked indelibly on a forearm tattoo. 

This was my audience, experts of the most tragic kind,

Forgetful and forgotten, mostly deaf and semi-blind.

Now fixed to this place, they waited obediently,

For a pisher like me to recite his precious poetry.

And there I stood before them offering my paltry rhymes, 

Lacking in perspective but possessing abundant time.

What came over me was an indescribable shame,

As if my mere presence had insulted the Holy Name.

Still, I read, as they sat there, cold as rows of stone, 

Utterly unmoved, and utterly alone. 

When done, I gathered my scraps and thanked them profusely,  

Knowing that not one of them would have changed their place with me.

Have The Philistines Won

I've been on a bit of an Irving Layton kick lately—reading his poetry, watching films and interviews. Whenever that happens, a mood and a hankering overtake me, and I find myself reflecting on it. Why Layton, and why now?

He died on January 4, 2006 at the age of 93. The last years of his life were spent at the Maimonides Geriatric Center in the Montreal suburb of Côte Saint-Luc, where the pugnacious, sharp-witted, rapier-tongued, self-described genius slowly succumbed to Alzheimer's disease.

Layton was undeniably a genius. He was also, in my opinion, the greatest poet Canada has ever produced. 

It took a while. He only published his first important poem, The Swimmer, in 1945 when he was 33 years old. After that he was off to the races.

During the postwar period, Layton dragged Canadian poetry kicking and screaming into the 20th century. His greatest poems belong in anthologies of the English language's most important poetry, alongside Yeats, Wordsworth, Eliot, Frost and e.e. cummings.

He said he had two missions with his life's work as a poet and educator: to fight Puritanism and to fight Philistinism.

The sexual revolution of the 1960s largely took care of Puritanism. It seems to be making something of a comeback in the United States these days, with the conservative push to reinstate patriarchy, restrict abortion and return women to traditional roles. My guess is that it won't last. That horse has left the barn and isn't coming back.

Philistinism, on the other hand, is positively flourishing, aided by new technologies that are designed to make us less knowledgeable and less curious about the world. We appear to be outsourcing wisdom and experience.

I suspect Layton knew he was already riding an anti-Puritan wave in the 1960s as his popularity grew nationally and internationally. He was also a savvy and charismatic self-promoter who understood how to use the media to amplify his persona.

I also suspect Layton knew he was fighting an uphill battle against Philistinism. In Donald Winkler's wonderful 2003 film, A Red Carpet For The Sun, poet and teacher Seymour Mayne—who is also my friend and co-editor—recalls having Layton as his high-school teacher in the mid-'50s. On the first day of class, Layton wrote a series of enormous numbers across the blackboard: 99.999999. He asked the class if they knew what it meant. He then explained that it was the percentage of people who were ignorant Philistines. He was determined that his students would not be part of that number.

By the mid-1980s, Layton already saw the writing on the wall, even though he could never have imagined the impact technology would eventually have on the debasement of culture. He understood that poetry was on its way out.

In a TVO interview to promote a volume of published letters, Layton said: "I believe that poetry no longer has a future. There will be poems written, but there will be no poets... Because the language has been debased, commercialized and so on. And the whole sensibility that once produced these outrageous and wonderful mad men has gone smash. It's dead."

By "there will be no poets," Layton meant in the sense of figures possessing stature and cultural authority. He was really talking about the audience for poetry—the culture that once made such figures possible.

Layton was always concerned with cultivating his public persona, in the mold of the Jewish biblical prophets. Audiences were hungry for his fresh, iconoclastic, irreverent opinions. That hunger reached its peak in the early 1960s. A decade later, it was waning.

When I first went to hear Layton give a reading at McGill University Hillel in the mid-'80s, he could still draw a crowd. Layton's presence was an event, and the affection and esteem of young, interested audiences were still there. His poems were on the syllabus of virtually every Canadian literature survey course at major universities across the country.

But the culture was moving on, and Layton was no longer the mainstream figure he had once been.

In 2026, what Layton said 40 years earlier about poems continuing to be written while language was being debased and commercialized sounds prophetic to my ears. There is no doubt that more poems are being written now than ever before. And 99.999999 percent of it is self-centered, whiny dreck.

When you read Layton's poetry, you are struck not only by the precision of his craft but by the universality of his concerns: the dignity and magnificence of the human being; the daily injustices and inhumanities of politics; the beauty and truth of art; the physical ecstasy of experience; the necessity of freedom to exalt the human spirit.

Philistines, who are concerned with life's banalities, appearances, wealth, social status and conformity, have no appreciation for any of it. 

Maybe that's why Layton is hardly mentioned anymore, except of course, in university classrooms. And even then with some trepidation. The 5-times married Layton was also known as a womanizer, which these days makes him a target for cancel culture. 

Have the Philistines won?

Notably Layton himself didn't think so. He thought the poets would be replaced, by filmmakers or another type of artist. 

But then Layton didn't know about social media and AI.

Compliments

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I trusted only my mother

to offer them:

Not the screen-shot

responses ordained

by my preferences

to make me feel good

about what I think

and feel.

I hate feeling suspicious

about feeling good,

hate wanting

to feel bad,

but these days

it’s the only answer.

Housefly

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Insignificance buzzes 

Like housefly wings;

Beating its body

Against the tempered pane

As if another world beckons.

Meeting Across the River

I started playing bass guitar when I was a teenager, like so many kids with dreams of rock stardom. I played in a few bar bands, doing covers. It didn't take long for me to realize that the rock 'n' roll lifestyle wasn't for me.

I continued to play on and off. The last band I played in was short-lived. I was thirty, married, and had a real job.

Then I had children, and I stopped playing music. I also stopped listening to it.

It wasn't a conscious decision. It's not as if I woke up one morning and decided I didn't like music anymore. It happened gradually, almost naturally, as my priorities shifted toward responsibility and putting my family ahead of personal concerns and distractions.

There was a part of me that seemed to believe I had to grow up, and music was something that belonged to being a teenager.

That stage lasted about twenty years. It ended around the time my eldest child was starting university. I had two others in university and my youngest was about to enter high school.

And then, one day, as if a switch had been flipped, I wanted to listen to music again. More than that, I wanted to play it.

Call it a midlife crisis if you want. There is a familiar phenomenon among men in their forties and fifties: the sudden need to get reacquainted with the irresponsible youthful part of themselves that had been abandoned somewhere along the way in the name of adult responsibilities.

That's probably part of what was happening to me.

But it felt like something more important, too. I was allowing myself an emotional reconnection with a part of myself I had left behind.

I dug out my old bass guitar and amplifier, which had been stored under the stairs, along with my old stereo and record collection. I also found the cheap Yamaha acoustic guitar I'd bought from my brother's girlfriend when I was in high school.

Music became my favourite hobby again. And what a great time for that to happen.

When I started playing bass around 1979 or 1980, the options for a self-taught amateur like me were pretty limited. You could buy instructional books or take lessons.

I did both.

My bass teacher was a guy named Paul Harwood, the bass player from Mahogany Rush, a fairly well-known Montreal band. The emphasis was mostly on technique and the basics. I only took a few lessons with Paul. Each time I went to see him I remember thinking that I should introduce myself again because he probably doesn't remember me. I learned enough with Paul to get by in a cover band. 

As for the songs, I learned them by ear from the recordings. Most of what I played was not exact, but it was a passable approximation.

These days, YouTube is an absolute bonanza for learning music. Music theory, instrument technique, songwriting, production, how to play virtually any song you can think of—you can find it all, usually for free.

For the past ten years or so I've been relearning guitar, not so much bass, although it's astounding how popular bass guitar has become on YouTube. One bass player, Davie504, has nearly fourteen million subscribers and billions of views.

Another music YouTuber I follow is Rick Beato. Beato has been a musician and professional music producer, and was previously a college-level music teacher. I started watching his channel when he had a series called What Makes This Song Great, in which he dissected and demystified some of the best and most beloved songs of our generation.

He's a few years older than me, so there is a strong element of nostalgia there.

But his channel is more than nostalgia. It's music education—music theory, practice, production—and above all, it's an expression of his love for music.

Since re-embracing music, I've concentrated mostly on acoustic guitar. I've learned songs I've dreamed of knowing since childhood and explored different techniques and styles, from fingerpicking and alternate picking to folk, country, bluegrass and old-time Delta blues.

These days I'm particularly interested in the pre- and post-war American blues masters.

I've even treated myself to two new guitars: a classic Gibson J-45 and a Gold Tone resonator, which I use for open tunings and slide.

I got a great deal on the resonator that I couldn't pass up, which is exactly the sort of rationalization a person makes when he has rediscovered a teenage hobby in middle age.

For some people, YouTube is a way of monetizing their skills and expertise. For others, it's a way of seeking attention. For others still, it's a way of sharing their enthusiasms with like-minded people.

More than twenty million videos are uploaded to YouTube every day. More than five hundred hours every minute.

I've been thinking about what this says about the state of our culture, and particularly about our sense of community.

Rick Beato made an interesting observation recently. He was in a park on a warm, sunny day in Salzburg, Austria, and noticed that he didn't see a single person with a musical instrument.

When he was growing up in upstate New York, he said, on a day like that you were likely to see several groups of friends sitting around with one or two acoustic guitars.

Think Saturday in the Park by Chicago.

It can't be that people aren't playing acoustic guitars anymore. Guitar sales have been growing for years and boomed during the pandemic.

So where did the guitar players go?

Beato thinks it has something to do with the individualization of musical taste brought about by digital music services.

Put simply, we're all listening to different music now.

We each have our own algorithmically generated playlists, tailored precisely to our individual tastes. Music used to be something we shared because, to a large extent, we were all listening to the same music.

Now there may be a hundred people sitting in the same park, each listening to a different soundtrack through a pair of earbuds.

No one is sitting around playing the songs we all know anymore because we don't all know the same songs.

This might be a phenomenon that even predates digital playlists.

Last weekend I went fishing with my wife's first cousin. He's fifty years old, only a decade younger than me. We were chit-chatting, as men in a boat waiting interminably for a bite will do, when the subject of music arose. He's a big music fan like me. He claims to love music from the '60s and early '70s.

I mentioned Glen Campbell. He said he thought he knew who I was talking about but couldn't name one of his songs. So I said, "What about Wichita Lineman?"

Never heard of it.

I said, "It's only the greatest contemporary song ever written, according to both Bob Dylan and Billy Joel."

Still hadn't heard it.

[Aside: Wichita Lineman was the first song I learned to play from a YouTube video after I picked up the guitar again. I was so proud of myself I even posted a video of my rendition to YouTube, my very first YouTube post. I should probably take it down.] 

Back to Beato's point. There may be another reason no one is playing guitar in the park anymore: The general decline of songcraft.

Think of the great era of the singer-songwriter—the Beatles, Dylan, Paul Simon, James Taylor, Carole King, Cat Stevens.

People sat around singing their songs because the songs themselves mattered. The lyrics were savoured, memorized and passed around. They spoke to something inside us. I'm not sure contemporary popular music does that to the same degree.

That's one of the less encouraging things about music on the internet.

Another is that the medium rewards spectacle. YouTube favours the astonishing guitar solo, the impossibly fast fingerwork, the trick, the gimmick, the person doing something you can't imagine being able to do yourself. Technique is impressive, but it isn't the same thing as great music.

And yet there is another side to all of this. YouTube is also a community of enthusiasts.

There is something undeniably intoxicating about having access to a potentially enormous community of people who are interested in the same things you are. Especially when, like me, you spend a lot of your time sitting alone in your basement engaged in what is essentially a group activity.

Music cries out to be shared. Not necessarily in a look-at-me sort of way. More in a sing-along sort of way.

That's why, about a year ago, I uploaded my first guitar tutorial to YouTube. It isn't really a lesson. I'm not a guitar teacher. It's a tutorial on how to play a particular song.

Initially, I wondered whether there was any point in adding yet another video to the hundreds of hours being uploaded to YouTube every minute. One more contribution to the endless stream of content being processed by the world's energy-hungry data centres.

But I convinced myself there was a point, because I'd wanted to learn a particular song and, amazingly, I couldn't find a decent lesson for it on YouTube. The song was Meeting Across the River by Bruce Springsteen, from his classic Born to Run album.

It's not one of Springsteen's best-known songs, which is presumably part of the reason there wasn't a good guitar lesson for it. Also, the song is played on the piano. So I figured it out myself, at least a reasonable facsimile of the album version, and arranged it for guitar, which offers something a little different.

And then I decided that if I had spent the time figuring it out, there might be other guitarists out there who loved the song as much as I do and would like to know how to play it on guitar. So I uploaded it. 

I've since uploaded a couple of other songs, for similar reasons. Either an arrangement I haven't seen online, or a different way of playing a song. I'm not trying to add to the noise, just trying to fill a gap.

I spent twenty years thinking that music was an indulgence I couldn't afford.

Then, when I finally allowed myself to have it back, I discovered that the thing I had missed wasn't simply listening to music or playing an instrument. It was sharing it.

When I was a teenager, that meant figuring out a song by ear, getting the band together in my basement to jam and practice, and then performing it in a club.

Now it means figuring out a song in my basement, and then uploading it to the internet for other players. Kind of like meeting across a digital river.

I'm still not sure how I feel about that.

Except that it leaves me with a residue of sadness.

The Cantaloupe

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I always imagined that someday

My life would be perfect.

And by perfect I mean exactly 

As I want it, outside matching inside.

I was going to the barber at the mall

When my wife asks me

To pick up a few items

From the grocery store next door. 

She’s meticulous, my wife,

Pulls out the colourful flyer,

Expertly scrutinizes the weekly specials

Making a detailed list.

Twenty items in total. Added at the end 

‘Also get whatever else you want’.

She knows how lost I am in the aisle,

Like a robot I need precise instructions.

 

We review the list together,

Prices, sizes, brands, and don’t forget

To check the expiry dates she insists.

From my infrequent experience I know 

How tricky grocery shopping can be.

You think you’re saving fifty cents 

But get hoodwinked into purchasing

A $10 loaf of bread (with raisins).

I wander like a nomad between stocked shelves,

Reading the list, over and over, nervously 

Checking and double checking, planning my escape

Through the check-out line, like it’s a prison break.

At home, my wife unloads the bags.

Palpates the cantaloupe. It’s soft.

Extracts two zucchinis and waves them at me.

They had mysteriously morphed into cucumbers.

Why’d you buy the Diet Dr Pepper

Ten for $11.99, Diet Coke is on sale 

Twenty cans for the same price?

She repeats it three times like I’m hard of hearing.

Lifts the cantaloupe again. Looks perfect to me.

Puts it to her ear like it’s talking,

Pronouncing judgment. I have violated some law, 

My shopping cart license is being revoked. 

I plead my innocence in the most esoteric

Way I can think of: This is just to say

The plums in the icebox were delicious,

Sweet and cold. Forgive me.  

She and the cantaloupe are speechless.

Shadows On A Cave Wall

Another Friday, another visit from the Lubavitch kids.

This week it was a dynamic duo: the slightly embarrassed, retiring Moishe, who’s been flying solo for the last few weeks, testing out his missionary wings with me like a bird fresh out of the nest. 

On this day he’s accompanied by Shalom, acting as his handler or invigilator. Shalom is tall, skinny, pale, and sure of himself. He’s forceful in a passive way, not shy about closing the deal on getting me to put on tefillin, while insisting that I’m doing the mitzvah for myself, even when I tell him that I’m doing it only to make him happy. Shalom has the chutzpah to slip in, at the end, an insistence that I say a prayer beseeching the quick arrival of the Moshiach, which he knows I think is total BS.

The three of us warm up by chit-chatting about their fedoras. It’s a frequent opener since I’m such a fan of Lubavitch hat wear. And they engage enthusiastically.

Finally, I say to Moishe, “So, did you prepare something about the parsha?”

He smiles broadly, like he thought I’d never ask. Launches into his shpiel.

Parashat Ekev. Another chapter of Moses recapitulating the journey of previous Israelite generations who have been travelling through the desert toward the Promised Land.

It’s been forty years, so the generation that will finally enter the Promised Land are the grandchildren of the people who stood at Sinai to receive the Tablets of the Law.

Moishe says, “The Rebbe teaches that when Moses speaks of the journey through the desert, he is telling us Jews something important as well. Jews who will be exiled and live in lands that are not theirs. He is warning them of the vastness of the difficulties and challenges that lie ahead.”

I nod skeptically, as I usually do, but don’t interrupt. I know how hard Moishe works at preparing his weekly shpiel. He is naturally an introvert, speaks softly, swallows hard, and stumbles with his delivery.

Shalom is doing the same, silently encouraging Moishe along.

“And the Rebbe says there are snakes and scorpions in the desert. Which is a warning to the Jews. The desert conditions, like the conditions of life in the diaspora, will have hidden dangers. One danger is like the poison of the snake. The other is like the poison of the scorpion.”

I think I see where this is going. He’s going to somehow compare the serpent’s poison to the toxic influences of assimilation. It’s usually pretty predictable. 

Moishe says, “The snake’s poison is warm and the scorpion’s poison is cold.”

What? I interrupt.

He repeats, “The snake’s poison is warm and the scorpion’s poison is cold.”

I say, “Who told you that? A snake’s poison isn’t warm. It can’t be. A snake is a cold-blooded animal.”

He doesn’t answer. Just looks at me. 

“I understand you want to make a point about the meaning of the poison, to compare it to a toxin that infects Jews who live in the desert of the diaspora. But you have to get the facts straight. A snake’s venom isn’t warm.”

Shalom comes to Moishe’s rescue.

“I think what he means by the snake’s poison being ‘warm’ is that it excites the body, while the scorpion’s poison is ‘cold’ because it shuts the body down. He’s talking about the excitement we feel with all the pleasures of living in the golus, and the spiritual numbing that takes place once assimilation sets in.”

“I doubt it,” I say. “I mean, I doubt that you’ve got your facts straight. I’ll tell you what. Let’s ask AI.”

And we do.

AI says exactly what I suspect: that a snake is cold-blooded and that its venom is similarly cold.

AI also tells us about how the toxins of snakes versus scorpions work in the bloodstream. Exactly the opposite of Moishe’s shpiel.

Snake venom acts on the nervous system to shut it down, not excite it. And scorpion venom actually stimulates the nervous system, overwhelming it to produce lethality.

I tell the boys, “Look, if you want to maintain credibility with your messaging, you have to at least get your facts straight.”

The boys don’t even crack a smile of acknowledgement.

Then Shalom says, “But the way we are explaining it is what the Rebbe says in one of his books.”

I say, “Well, either you don’t understand what the Rebbe meant by what he said, or he is literally incorrect.”

Shalom says, “But the Rebbe can’t be incorrect.”

“So the Rebbe knows more about snakes than herpetologists who study reptiles their whole lives?”

I can tell they have no idea what a herpetologist is. I don’t hold that against them, because I doubt most seculars know.

Shalom is steadfast. He repeats that the Rebbe can’t be wrong.

I say, “Look, you guys are very smart and studious. I respect that. Learning means asking questions. Just because the Rebbe says something doesn’t mean you can’t question it.”

Then I add, “No one is more certain that he understands something than a person who doesn’t actually fully understand.”

“The Rebbe understands,” says Shalom, looking at me with pity. He uses the present tense, as if the Rebbe were sitting in the chair next to him.

“Only Hashem fully understands,” I say, reaching for some common ground. “The rest of us are in a dark cave trying to discern shadows on a wall. Ever hear of Plato?”

Shalom smiles to humour me. Asks if I’m ready now to wrap tefillin. “For you, not for us,” he adds.

I do it, to lighten the mood.

The Hitchhiker

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after Ida Lupino

“I know what you’re thinkin,

so forget about it,

you’re gonna die is all.

It’s just a question of when.”

Two buddies gone fishing.

Picked up the hitchhiker 

by the side of the road,

come out of hiding.

Said he’d run out of gas,

thanked us 

for showing up,

slid into the back seat 

and pulled out a pistol.

“Keep your hands on the steering wheel.

Ten to midnight

where I can see 'em.”

The hitchhiker had one good eye

and one bum eye,

could never tell 

where he was looking

or if he slept.

Turn here.

Turn there.

Pull over and get out.

We followed his instructions,

never sure when 

the gun would go off.

Camped in the sagebrush.

Headed south to Baja

to get the ferry at Santa Rosalia.

One night the hitchhiker

took the watch my wife gave me.

Said he never got 

a timepiece from anyone.

Owes no one.

We’ll be there soon.

Where is there? I asked.

You’ll know when we get there.

I thought about my little one 

back home,

“Ve con Dios, pequeña.”

Digesting Ideas

You know those foods you enjoy so much while you're eating them, only to regret them later when your digestive system starts protesting?

As I get older, that list seems to grow longer. But I'm not writing about my current dietary challenges.

I'm writing because ideas can work the same way. Some go down so easily when you first hear them that they feel undeniably true. Then, given a little time to digest them, you realize they don't make nearly as much sense as they first appeared to.

Often, it's all in the delivery.

Yuval Noah Harari is a master communicator. He expresses himself clearly, concisely and compellingly. He has a remarkable gift for making something fairly obvious—for example, that human beings are storytelling animals—feel profound and revelatory. I suspect that's a large part of why his books have been so successful and why he's become such a fixture on the podcast circuit.

Lately, though, I've found myself growing skeptical of some of his most appealing ideas—the ones that go down easiest at first. I've started taking more time to reflect on what he's actually saying.

That happened recently while listening to his interview with Ezra Klein on The New York Times podcast.

The moment that stuck with me was Harari's comparison between religion and liberalism. Paraphrasing, he argued that religion promises redemption, whether in this life or the next, whereas liberalism does not. Liberalism, he said, accepts that human beings are inherently flawed and that conflict, tension and mistakes are permanent features of society. Rather than seeking redemption, liberalism invests in mechanisms that allow societies to correct themselves. Elections, he suggested, are one of the clearest examples of a 'self-correcting' mechanism.

It's an attractive argument. Liberalism sounds humble, realistic and practical. It doesn't promise perfection; it simply promises a way of correcting mistakes.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the argument was built on a series of false or mischaracterized understandings.

The first problem is that it compares two fundamentally different kinds of things.

Liberalism is primarily a political philosophy. It concerns itself with how societies should organize power, rights and institutions. Religion, by contrast, is principally concerned with questions of meaning, morality and humanity's relationship to the divine. Certainly, religions contain laws governing communal life—Judaism, for example, has extensive legal traditions covering everything from commerce to civil disputes—but even those laws are ultimately understood as serving the spiritual development of individuals and communities.

In Judaism, tradition identifies 613 commandments in the Torah, yet more than a third relate specifically to Temple worship in Jerusalem. Since the destruction of the Second Temple, only around half remain practically applicable. That alone illustrates that religion has never simply been a political system.

Liberalism and religious identity are not mutually exclusive, quite the opposite.

Someone can quite comfortably describe themselves as both a liberal and a Jew, or a liberal and a Christian. I certainly describe myself as a liberal Jew, and I suspect Harari would as well. Liberalism, properly understood, accommodates people of many different religious convictions precisely because it operates in a different sphere.

Second, Harari's understanding of redemption, at least the way he is using it here, is incorrect.

He seems to treat redemption as if it means arriving at perfection. But that's not how most religious traditions understand it. For practicing believers, redemption is not a final state of flawless existence. It is the ongoing work of self-examination, repentance, learning and moral growth. In other words, redemption is itself a self-correcting process.

My third objection is to describe elections as "self-correcting."

Elections don't inherently correct anything. They simply measure the preferences of a population at a particular moment in time. Sometimes those preferences lead to better outcomes; sometimes they don't. Elections provide peaceful accountability and adaptability, which are enormous strengths, but calling them "self-correcting" gives them more credit than they deserve. They are mechanisms for expressing collective will, certainly not guarantees of progress.

Harari, like every public intellectual, approaches the world with his own assumptions and preferences. As someone who has often criticized traditional religious authority, it's hardly surprising that he's drawn to philosophies that maximize individual freedom and remain skeptical of inherited dogma.

The rest of us have our own biases too. I certainly have mine.

What concerns me is how easily we can be seduced by attractive rhetoric at the expense of logic and coherence. There's something larger at stake than whether one agrees with Harari about liberalism or religion. It's the habit of intellectual honesty—the willingness to examine arguments carefully, even when they flatter our instincts or confirm our existing beliefs.

In an age of information silos and algorithmically curated worldviews, we all have reason to cultivate a healthy skepticism—not cynicism, but the discipline of questioning ideas before embracing them.

The ideas we consume deserve the same scrutiny as the food we eat. Some are nourishing. Some simply taste good in the moment.

It's worth taking the time to digest them before deciding whether they're actually good for us.

Time Travelling

I've written before about how I'm not much of a fan of travelling these days. Well, that's not entirely true. I'm not a fan of travelling in space, but I'm a great fan of travelling in time. I do it almost every weekend.

Here's what I mean.

I spend my summer weekends at our small cottage on the shore of Lake Champlain, on the Quebec side of the border. We're only about ten kilometres from Vermont, and much as I love that state, I can't bring myself to cross the border while Canada remains under continuous attack from trump.

Incidentally, my wife doesn't hold trump against Vermont the way I do. She rarely lets a weekend pass without driving over to hunt for collectibles and vintage treasures for her hobby business. This past weekend, when she returned to Canada, the customs officer asked, "So how have we contributed to trump's economy today?"

Gotta love border agents.

Back to time travel.

The bay—which is what my wife's family has called it since her grandfather bought the property in the early 1940s—has always felt to me as though it exists in another era.

Her grandparents discovered the area on their honeymoon. Back then it was known as Kirkland Beach, now part of the town of Venise-en-Québec. They were so enchanted by the place that they bought several acres along Missisquoi Bay, with three hundred feet of lakefront. The property itself is actually in the neighbouring municipality of Saint-Georges-de-Clarenceville.

Over the years, the family built five cottages on the land, starting with one for her grandparents and one for each of her two great-uncles and their families. Each family enjoyed about a hundred feet of shoreline.

The area also became a favourite summer destination for my wife's grandparents' circle of friends from the city. So many of them bought neighbouring properties that their little corner of the bay became known as "La Palestine." It's still identified by that name on Google Maps.

My wife's father spent the summers of his youth there, fishing and boating. Later, my wife and her siblings spent their childhood summers there as well. When I married into the family and we had children of our own, we continued the tradition. About a decade ago, I bought the cottage that had been built for my wife's family from my father-in-law.

I'm not entirely sure why, but I've always associated going to the bay with travelling back in time. Perhaps it's because the cottage itself has changed very little since it was built in the early 1970s. Even the kitchen stove we still use dates from that era.

The surrounding area, however, has changed dramatically. Property values have soared, and sprawling waterfront homes have replaced many of the modest cottages. The town of Venise-en-Québec has exploded with condominium and spa developments over the past decade.

Yet in my mind, the bay still belongs to another era, when life moved more slowly. Somehow the memories of my wife's childhood, her father's childhood, and her grandparents' generation remain alive there. The stories are still told: fishing derbies on the lake; trophy-sized largemouth bass, bowfin (they call beaverfish), pike and walleye; bonfires and scavenger hunts for the children; fathers teaching them to water-ski; grandparents playing gin rummy on the lawn, drinking whisky and smoking cigars.

My wife remembers arriving in June, putting on a bathing suit, and not taking it off until the end of August.

For her, the bay is about family memory and history.

For me, it's about finding refuge in myself.

Only an hour's drive from Montreal, the cottage became a sanctuary during the most stressful years of my life. Whenever I needed to escape, I'd steal away for a weekend alone. Somehow that simple retreat helped me recover myself and put life back into perspective.

When we got Sirius Satellite Radio in the car about a decade ago, the journey itself became part of the ritual. I'd tune into the 40s station and be transported even before I arrived. Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Woody Herman, Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Sinatra and Dick Haymes, Anita O'Day, Helen Forrest, and the Andrews Sisters—they became the soundtrack of my escape from the city and, for a little while, from my own life.

Crossing the Champlain Bridge, I felt myself slipping back into the postwar years—a time when the world could finally exhale after holding its breath for five long years. Somehow that music reflected how I was feeling as I struggled to keep our young family afloat while searching for moments of peace.

The music of the 40s was, ironically, swinging and joyful, filled with love songs and hopeful melodies. It wasn't an escape from hardship so much as an antidote to it. After years of pain and destruction, it celebrated the simple possibility of happiness again.

I'd arrive at the cottage after dark and leave the lights off, letting my eyes adjust to the lakeside landscape. The moonlight, reflected off the lake, filled the cottage through the gallery windows with a soft, ethereal glow. The tiny lights of distant cottages around the bay blended almost seamlessly with the stars scattered across the black sky.

In those early years, there was no television and no internet. All we had was a radio.

On Saturday nights I'd listen to Vermont Public Radio: the old-time music programs, American Routes with Nick Spitzer, My Place with Joel Najman, and, approaching the witching hour, Hearts of Space, Stephen Hill's hour of ambient music. It was the closest thing I knew to meditation—a quiet reunion with something timeless inside me, and with the universe as a whole.

A few years ago we finally got internet access, thanks to the cousins next door. I'm not unhappy about it, although it does mean I don't read books the way I used to. Over the years we've amassed a pretty extensive library at the cottage, and I regret that it's somewhat neglected now.

The internet, however, has enabled a different kind of time travel. This summer I've been binging film noir from the 1940s and 50s. This past weekend I watched Kiss of Death (1947), Road House (1948), The Hitch-Hiker (1953), and The Scarlet Hour (1956).

I love the pace of the storytelling and the dramatic lighting of those old black-and-white films. I love the way people dressed, the elegance and beauty of the actresses, and the dialogue—the more period slang, the better. I even enjoy all the smoking, despite knowing that it shortened the lives of so many of the actors.

Back then Hollywood released a new movie almost every week. I find myself looking up the prolific careers of the actors, directors, and screenwriters, wanting to know their stories.

Today's movies are relentlessly fast-paced. Every frame is filled with action; every scene cuts to the next before it has a chance to breathe. While the old films were built on performance and character development, the real star of many modern films seems to be the technology used to make them.

Sometimes I wonder if it's nostalgia that I crave. Can I really be nostalgic for a time that predates my birth?

The postwar films were ultimately human stories about love, jealousy, greed, loyalty, and betrayal. They were dark, but almost always redemptive. Many portrayed men struggling to fit in after returning from the service, trying to rebuild their lives and find their place in a changed society. What they found when they got home were women who had developed a new sense of their own power and independence. The femme fatale emerged from that cultural shift.

Many of those films revolve around gender conflict. The parallels with today's changing gender roles—and with men's continuing struggle to redefine themselves—are hard to miss.

I don't think what draws me to those movies is nostalgia. It's authenticity.

The films of that period feel authentic and human-centred in a way that many of today's films simply don't. They reflect the fears, uncertainties, hopes, and aspirations of ordinary people. They were made by artists who had lived through depression and war, many of them immigrants remaking themselves. Their stories are grounded in life's enduring struggles: rebuilding, falling in love, raising families, and carrying on.

It's sort of what the cottage at the bay represents to me too.

Turning Pro

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Twelve

and best friends, 

we both saved 

our weekly allowance

to buy magic tricks.

You'd bring a catalogue

from the local magic shop to school,

and at lunch hour 

we'd peruse the pages together;

the sleight-of-hand effects,

coin routines and gimmicked decks,

jugs that never stopped pouring,

boxes with false bottoms,

Houdini escapes.

Those days,

my parents were always fighting 

behind locked doors.

Yours had split years before.

The week you got your license

your father bought you a Tercel—

an orange tin can.

We drove around the city late at night,

stuffed ourselves with steamies and fries

at the local greasy spoon

and talked.

You loved a girl from school, 

didn't reveal the secret.

She wanted you as a friend.

You hoped

for someday.

I slept with her

when you were away at college.

Told myself 

she wasn't yours to lose.

We tried to hide it—

used misdirection.

When you came home

you didn't leave your bed for months

or answer the phone.

A vanishing act

behind closed curtains.

Then one day

you appeared

in your shit-box car.

We went driving.

I thought we'd talk about our futures

like old times.

"I'm going to turn pro," you said.

"Turn pro at what?"

"Tennis. I'm going to be a tennis pro."

"But you don't play tennis,"

I said.

"I've seen Borg,

I can beat him."

“That’d be quite a trick,”

is all I said.

Titleist

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We must be doing something right

when we can stretch out like this;

spend hours and hours

traipsing through estate grounds, 

around man-made ponds,

across escarpments,

batting a smooth dimpled sphere

about the size of a stone

with awkward bent rods

to deliver it into a tiny hole

marked by a small flag

cut into a patch of shaved grass.

It's called Titleist.

A fox hunt without much left to chance;

We dress for the occasion, wear special footwear,

and soft leather gloves. 

Instead of horses we ride vehicles

with rubber wheels and humming electric motors.

Instead of aiming rifles

we swing metal sticks around our heads.

The swings are counted—

the point is to reach par

which means average.

Below par means you're very good.

For the privilege 

we join expensive clubs—

moms with their neighbourhood friends,

dads with business associates,

after rounds, 

over finger food and cocktails

they compare handicaps.

Mom was club champion.

One time when we were kids

dad handed my older brother

his heavy oblong putter, 

told us to practice on the front lawn.

He used it to whack me in the head.

I’ve hated the game ever since.

The Rope-a-Dope War (aka How Iran Won)

For anyone who cared to listen to my opinions since the debacle and tragedy of October 7, 2023, I had one overarching message about where I thought Israel would ultimately find itself down the line. I said Israel would emerge stronger, safer, and regionally more powerful.

And for a few years, at least, I believe I was correct in that assessment.

Those were the days when Joe Biden was in the White House, Antony Blinken was Secretary of State, and Lloyd Austin was Secretary of Defense. Whatever you may think of that group—and they certainly made some mistakes—their competence and decades of experience cannot reasonably be questioned (not even Biden's mental competence, despite what his critics claimed).

Compare them to Trump, Rubio, and Hegseth.

After a devastating security humiliation—the worst in the country's history—Israel's operations against Hamas militants and Iranian proxies were successful beyond expectations. The Hamas attack failed to draw the other members of the so-called Axis of Resistance into the fight. Instead, Israel seized the initiative through a series of surprisingly effective operations: the devastating pager attacks, the killing of Hezbollah's leadership, including Hassan Nasrallah, and the eventual elimination of Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif, the principal architects of the October 7 attacks.

Iran was decidedly on its back foot. Domestically, it was facing unrest brought about by years of crippling international sanctions, while citizen protests were steadily growing in both size and frequency.

Its regional proxies also appeared to be on the verge of serious defeat.

The high point, arguably from a strategic standpoint, was Israel's successful campaign to systematically dismantle Tehran's air defense system. That, in turn, opened the door for the U.S.'s limited strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities during the June 2025 "Twelve-Day War."

Trump proclaimed victory, repeatedly declaring that Iran's nuclear program had been "obliterated," which was patently untrue. Nevertheless, Iran was at a low point, as demonstrated by the widespread street protests at the end of December 2025, which the regime was forced to suppress brutally.

A series of tit-for-tat strikes between Iran and Israel followed over the next several months. Iran was against the ropes and needed to demonstrate both its resilience and its capacity to inflict damage.

This led Netanyahu to press Trump for further, more decisive action against Iran. He calculated that the Iranian regime was teetering and argued that the moment had arrived to act decisively to bring it down.

This was the gross miscalculation that marked the beginning of the conflict turning in Iran's favor.

That miscalculation was operationalized on February 28, 2026, when the United States and Israel coordinated a military strike aimed at decapitating Iran's leadership. The theory was that removing the regime's senior leadership would either collapse the government or render it impotent, inspiring a widespread popular revolt.

Although militarily successful in eliminating a large portion of Iran's senior leadership—including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and many members of his family—the operation proved to be a major strategic blunder.

Subsequent attacks by Israeli and U.S. forces, including those that killed Defense Minister Amir Nasirzadeh, Revolutionary Guards Commander Mohammed Pakpour, and Ali Larijani, the senior security official acting as Iran's de facto leader after Khamenei's death, along with internal security chief Gen. Gholam Reza Soleimani, only served to demonstrate the depth and resilience of the regime.

We had now entered what I call a "Rope-a-Dope War," borrowing the term from Muhammad Ali's famous boxing strategy during the 1974 "Rumble in the Jungle" against George Foreman.

Iran did not need to go toe-to-toe with adversaries that possessed overwhelmingly superior military capabilities. It merely had to absorb the blows, outlast its opponents, and occasionally lash out at carefully chosen strategic targets to demonstrate that it retained the capacity to inflict meaningful damage. Then, when the time was right and its adversaries had been weakened politically and economically, it could strike decisively.

That is exactly how it played out.

Iran retaliated with drone and missile strikes against U.S. military bases, attacked neighboring Gulf states, and finally closed the Strait of Hormuz.

Closing the Strait of Hormuz—which every military strategist and defense analyst had anticipated as a likely Iranian response since the 1979 Revolution—gave Iran the upper hand permanently. It fundamentally changed the stakes of the war and convinced the Iranian leadership that the longer it could sustain the conflict, the greater its chances of achieving objectives that extended far beyond merely surviving.

Those ambitions included lifting economic sanctions, stabilizing the economy through renewed sources of revenue, consolidating and legitimizing its control over the Strait of Hormuz, driving the U.S. military presence out of the Gulf, reshaping the regional balance of power, and extending Iranian influence throughout the Middle East.

That is where we are now.

Almost three years after October 7, Israel finds itself in a quagmire of its own making in both Gaza and Lebanon. It is despised throughout much of the world, and its relationships with the United States and key regional partners are at their lowest point in decades. The strategic opportunities it once possessed have been squandered.

This is what bad strategic planning and overreach look like when combined with hubris, corruption, ignorance, and incompetent political leadership.

The Abraham Accords are effectively dead. The Gulf states now understand—as much of the rest of the world has for some time—that the United States is an unreliable partner. Iran, meanwhile, is well on its way to becoming the region's dominant power.

Oh yes—I almost forgot the supposed reason for all of this in the first place: Iran's nuclear program.

There is now nothing to stop it from moving forward, and Iran has more motivation than ever to pursue a nuclear deterrent. Trump himself appears to have conceded as much with the recent Saudi agreement to assist the kingdom in developing civilian nuclear energy.

Apprentice

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Body I have trusted

you my whole life

I was never more

than an apprentice

of pleasure and pain

of fight and flight

I took you

for granted

as you grew strong

without asking

as you translated

the world for me;

you will

betray me body

and I can't

blame you.

The Blessing of Inconvenience

Some of you might remember the book The Blessing of a Skinned Knee. We still have a copy on our bookshelf. My wife bought it when our children were young and we were struggling with that bewildering new experience called parenthood. Like most new parents, we were hungry for advice.

Back then, a new phrase was entering the cultural vocabulary: helicopter parenting. It described parents who hovered constantly over their children, overprotecting them, overindulging them, and over-managing every aspect of their lives. Childhood became a carefully curated schedule of lessons, sports, and supervised activities. Children were rarely allowed to be bored, rarely given the freedom to explore their own curiosity, solve their own problems, make mistakes, or develop resilience.

The book argued that this well-intentioned approach was producing emotionally fragile children—kids who had never learned how to cope with disappointment, adversity, or failure. It warned against raising a generation of snowflakes.

At the time, that seemed like a cautionary tale. Looking back, though, helicopter parenting wasn't simply a response to irrational fear. It was a remarkably logical adaptation to the world that was already taking shape.

Parents weren't just preparing their children for life. They were preparing them for a culture increasingly built around comfort, convenience, and the elimination of friction. Every inconvenience was becoming a problem to be solved. Every discomfort, something to be avoided.

And isn't that, after all, what parents are supposed to do? Prepare their children to fit into the world they will inherit?

The playgrounds themselves reflected the change. Hard-packed earth and sand gave way to thick rubber safety mats. Risk was engineered out wherever possible.

Today, even that seems quaint.

Forget the playground altogether. Many children are more likely to be "playing" Roblox or Minecraft on a smartphone than hanging upside down from monkey bars. A skinned knee has become the least of their parents' concerns.

When The Blessing of a Skinned Knee was published in 2001, smartphones didn't exist. The danger parents worried about was that children, left to their own devices—in the original sense of the phrase—might wander the neighbourhood, get into mischief with friends, or come home late for dinner.

Compared with today's digital world, those fears seem almost nostalgic.

Now parents must contend with online predators, algorithmic manipulation, pornography, gambling, cyberbullying, endless social comparison, and a torrent of violent and disturbing content delivered directly into their children's pockets. These are dangers no amount of hovering can fully prevent.

But even those are only the visible threats.

The smartphone's most profound influence is subtler. It trains us to expect that every desire should be satisfied instantly. Need an answer? Google it. Hungry? Tap a screen. Lonely? Scroll. Bored? Swipe. We no longer simply enjoy convenience; we come to depend on it.

Convenience may be the most addictive drug our civilization has ever invented. And the more complex and technologically confounding the world becomes, the more we seek escape—ironically, through technology itself.

Unlike other addictions, it doesn't intoxicate us. It quietly rewires our expectations. It lowers our tolerance for waiting, struggling, persisting, or doing without. It makes friction feel like failure.

In hindsight, perhaps helicopter parenting wasn't creating children who were too delicate for the world. It was creating children perfectly adapted to a world that was becoming addicted to convenience.

The tragedy is that while the world has become more convenient than ever, life itself has not. It's more complex than ever, precisely because of all the effort at greater convenience. 

Relationships still require patience. Character is still forged through hardship. Wisdom still grows through failure. Kindness and generosity still demands effort.

The Homebody Trait

Are you an adventurous type, or a homebody? And is that simply a matter of personality, or could it also be a matter of genetics?

I've always been a homebody. I never cared much for travelling.

The only time I ever lived away from home was for a year in Geneva, Switzerland, while completing my graduate studies. I could have stayed another year to write my thesis, but I couldn't wait to get home.

I attended university in my hometown. The only period of extensive travel in my youth was the obligatory post-high school backpacking trip through Europe. In thirteen weeks I visited twelve countries, from Scandinavia to Yugoslavia.

There were a handful of shorter sojourns after that. The most memorable came while I was studying Russian at university. Our department organized a ten-day trip to the Soviet Union over Christmas break, and I found myself standing in Red Square on New Year's Eve, welcoming 1986.

I've travelled to Israel three times, including a month-long family trip during which we rented a car and explored the country from the Lebanese border in the north to the Negev Desert in the south.

When our children were young, we escaped winter with a few all-inclusive vacations in Cuba, though those hardly count as travelling in my books. Our last real family trip was about ten years ago, to Vienna and Budapest.

I've only taken two trips alone with my wife: one to Israel before we were married, and another to Utah for a hiking vacation.

That's about it.

I'm not counting the trips of my childhood. My grandparents spent every winter in Florida, so we flew down twice a year. In those days, flying still felt like an occasion. We dressed up to board the plane, and there were smoking sections.

We also took several road trips into the United States. Over the years I've probably visited thirty states, every Canadian province except Newfoundland and Labrador, and none of the territories.

Ironically, my children have already travelled more extensively than I ever have. They've been to Europe, Asia, South America, and throughout the Middle East.

Perhaps that's simply because travel is more accessible today than it was for my generation. Airfare is relatively cheaper, flights are more frequent, and crossing continents has become almost routine.

For most of human history, however, the opposite was true. Most people spent their entire lives within twenty miles of where they were born. Today, crossing an ocean can feel almost as ordinary as running an errand.

Since our children left home, home is exactly where I want to be.

My wife, on the other hand, has discovered a new freedom. In the past year alone she's travelled to Mexico, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Austria, and Italy. This fall she's planning a trip to Portugal.

She goes without me. Usually she travels with one or two of our adult children.

When her friends learn she's travelling without her husband, they inevitably ask whether I'm depressed or whether there's trouble in paradise.

There isn't.

I simply don't enjoy travelling very much.

Part of that is age. My body no longer adapts easily to unfamiliar beds, unfamiliar food, or changing time zones. I've also become a nervous flyer ever since a harrowing approach into Toronto a few years ago. We were literally seconds from touching down when the aircraft suddenly pitched sharply upward and aborted the landing. The pilot later explained we'd encountered severe wind shear.

Flying itself has also become an increasingly unpleasant experience. I'm taller than average, and I'm convinced airline seats have become smaller over the years. Everything about flying seems worse than it once was: the delays, the uncertainty, the endless fees. Passengers used to be treated like customers. Now we're treated more like cargo.

By the time I arrive somewhere overseas, it takes me two days just to recover from getting there.

Yet I often feel as though I have to justify not wanting to travel.

Somehow we've come to equate travel with living life to the fullest. If you aren't posting selfies from exotic destinations, people wonder whether you've somehow given up on life itself.

Recently, though, I've begun to wonder whether there's something deeper going on.

As my mother grew older, she became a homebody too.

So did her parents.

My grandfather retired relatively young after building a successful business. He could easily have spent his retirement travelling the world in five-star luxury.

He had absolutely no interest.

Instead, he rode his bicycle every day for exercise and spent countless happy hours painting in his studio.

His daughter—my mother—was much the same. She had every opportunity to travel but rarely did. She wasn't a recluse. She was active in her neighbourhood, but seldom ventured beyond it. When she sold her house, she moved into a condominium down the street. When she decided condo living wasn't for her, she bought another house around the corner.

That got me thinking.

We know that genetics influence everything from eye colour and body type to the risk of diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, and depression. Personality traits themselves are partly inherited.

Why not this?

Perhaps some people are simply wired to seek novelty while others are wired to find deep satisfaction in familiar surroundings.

Perhaps being a homebody is every bit as much a part of one's nature as being an introvert or an extrovert.

I think we're fortunate to live in an age when travel is largely a matter of choice. In many ways, the ability to move freely around the world has become a symbol of prosperity. Owning a private jet has become the ultimate status symbol.

Not very long ago, however, crossing continents usually meant something entirely different. It meant you were fleeing war, persecution, famine, or poverty in the hope of giving your children a better future.

Seen from that perspective, perhaps staying home is the greater luxury. Maybe the greatest privilege isn't having the freedom to leave.

It's having the freedom to stay home.

5786

I watched a five-hour YouTube video this weekend.

I didn't think that was possible. My attention span usually taps out after about 45 minutes. But once I started, I couldn't stop. Thank goodness I had nothing important planned. Vacuuming the carpets and cleaning the bathrooms will have to wait another week.

The marathon video was by an Australian named Stevie Baskin. It's essentially a five-hour debunking of American mentalist Oz Pearlman.

If you don't know who Pearlman is, look him up. His popularity has skyrocketed over the last few years through television appearances and social media, where he performs astonishing feats of apparent mind reading and divination.

Pearlman is an entertainer—a magician in the tradition of David Copperfield or David Blaine. The difference is that he doesn't describe what he does as magic or illusion.

You may ask, if he's a magician, why would he need to be debunked?

Because Pearlman says that what he does involves skills he has spent decades learning. He reads subliminal cues—tiny, unconscious signals that people unknowingly reveal—and it is these highly developed observational abilities that allow him to "read people" and make astonishingly accurate deductions. He has even written a book claiming to teach others how to develop these abilities.

What bothers Baskin is that these abilities, at least in the form Pearlman presents them, simply do not exist.

Certainly, people communicate non-verbally, and psychology has much to say about body language and unconscious behaviour. But those phenomena bear little resemblance to what Pearlman actually does on stage or on television. 

Baskin spends five hours painstakingly dissecting Pearlman's performances, replaying footage from his best-known television and podcast appearances frame by frame, exposing the sleight of hand, gimmicks, audience management, backstage shenanigans (he calls it 'meta-deception') and classic methods that magicians have relied on for generations.

His argument is not that Pearlman lacks talent. Quite the opposite, Pearlman is extraordinarily skilled. The problem, Baskin says, is that Pearlman attributes those skills to something they are not, which matters.

Baskin suggests Pearlman's marketing may even stray into deceptive advertising by using claims about psychological abilities to sell books. But his deeper concern is philosophical rather than legal.

It's one thing to watch an entertainer knowing you're being fooled. Quite another to be persuaded that the impossible is actually possible.

Baskin says he chose to focus on Pearlman because of the comments he kept reading online. Many viewers genuinely believed Pearlman possessed superhuman perceptual abilities. They weren't enjoying the illusion; they had mistaken it for reality.

We live in an age saturated with deception. The music we hear is digitally perfected. Our online appearances are filtered. Our social media lives are carefully curated performances. Conspiracy theories circulate more quickly than facts. Political leaders lie with astonishing frequency, and millions willingly accept those lies.

Increasingly, we lose track of where the performance ends and reality begins. It often seems like we  prefer the performance over the reality. I suspect that's what really troubles Baskin.

I appreciate a good magician as much as anyone. In fact, I practised the art of prestidigitation myself as a kid. I spent my weekly allowance buying magic tricks, took sleight-of-hand lessons, and even performed at a few children's birthday parties. My parents hired the local magician Henry Gordon to perform at my bar mitzvah.

Magic, when honestly presented as an artform, is wonderful.

On one hand, perhaps Baskin goes a little overboard. Pearlman is undeniably an exceptional performer and entertainer.

On the other hand, there is no denying that he walks a fine ethical line by presenting his performances as demonstrations of psychological mastery rather than theatrical illusion. It becomes uncomfortable listening to interview after interview in which he distances himself from traditional magicians, implying that what he does belongs to a different category.

He does this because he wants to leverage his skills to appeal to other lucrative markets, namely self-improvement. In that sense, he resembles countless online influencers, selling mental fitness the way others sell physical fitness and personal optimization.

Here is where I make a left turn.

Listening to Baskin reminded me of a conversation I had two weeks ago with my regular Friday Lubavitch visitors, whose weekly mission is to persuade me to wrap tefillin.

I asked one of them how old the universe was.

Without hesitation, Menachem answered, "Five thousand seven hundred and eighty-six years."

"According to cosmologists," I replied, "it's closer to 14 billion years."

They simply stared at me as though I had lost my mind.

I didn't pursue the discussion. There was nowhere for it to go. We weren't disagreeing over a fact. We were inhabiting different conceptions of reality. For them, the universe cannot exist outside the boundaries established by Torah. Anything beyond those boundaries simply isn't part of the world they understand.

What does this have to do with Oz Pearlman? In my mind, quite a bit.

The question isn't whether magic is real. It's about the limits of reality itself.

If you understand the Bible as a profound collection of stories conveying moral insight and human wisdom, it can be appreciated in much the same way we appreciate a magician's performance. We know we're experiencing something symbolic, imaginative, and meaningful. We may even glean lessons about psychology, perception and the human condition.

But once symbolism becomes literal history, something changes. Evidence begins yielding to belief. And once we become comfortable placing doctrine above evidence, there is no obvious principle limiting what else we might come to accept. In a way, if you believe the universe is 5768 years old you are susceptible to believing almost anything. 

That, I think, is the self-deception Baskin fears.

Not merely believing that someone can read minds from subliminal cues, but gradually losing the habit of distinguishing between performance and reality. He isn't attacking magic. He's actually defending it.

If you're going to deceive your audience, then be honest about the deception. Let people marvel at the craft without misleading them about the nature of the world. Because dishonesty has a way of justifying itself.

Pearlman's most famous routine involved correctly revealing people's bank PIN numbers on television. He famously performed it with Joe Rogan and later with a co-host of The View.

Later, that co-host disclosed that Pearlman had privately "prepped" her before filming. During that conversation he persuaded her to enter her real PIN into her phone's calculator, assuring her that the televised performance would use a fake number. Instead, during the broadcast, he revealed her actual PIN. She was stunned and later said she felt violated.

Baskin demonstrates how Pearlman almost certainly obtained the number. The effect was brilliant, but the method was deeply unethical. It isn't all that different from a scammer tricking someone into revealing confidential information through social engineering.

Near the end of his video, Baskin quotes magicians Penn & Teller: "The best lie is one that the audience tells itself."  

I've been thinking about that line ever since. Perhaps that's what Pearlman is really selling. Not mind reading, but permission to suspend your critical faculties. And perhaps that's what every successful deception ultimately sells. Not the lie itself. The desire to believe it.

Maybe 5786 is just another PIN code. Four digits that unlock a particular picture of reality.

Once entered, everything on the other side begins to make sense—not because it is true, but because you've accepted the assumptions that make it true.

That's what worries Baskin. And perhaps it should worry the rest of us as well.