The day started grey; it looks like it will end grey but at lunchtime the world was flooded with sunlight and happiness, the way I was feeling.
Today is my birthday. I’m a year older and, I think, a year wiser. It has been an awfully contemplative year this past year. When I was in high school, I had my “gang” and we’d laugh and say: live quick, die young and have a good looking corpse.
Unfortunately, some did just that but most of have lived on, exiting middle age for the last act, working to shape this phase of our lives with as much care as we worked to shape other periods in our lives, whether we succeeded or not, we attempted.
At 6:00 AM my friend, Nick Stuart, texted me with what he wanted to be my first “Happy Birthday” of the day. It was. I went right back to sleep. Later, up and having my first coffee, another friend, Mary Dickey, called and we chatted, planning a time to see each other.
I’m here for the rest of the week, snuggling into my cottage. Right now, I’m listening to jazz and looking across the table, out to the creek. The trees have shed their leaves and the branches claw nakedly to the sky.
It is not the winter of my discontent. If anything, I am more content than I have been in my life while watching life unfold in its mysterious ways. Next January, I will be teaching a class, “Media and Society.” I’m excited.
My friends Jeffrey and Joyce sent me a message today: I hope today is a reminder of all good things that have and can happen.
And I am reminded of all the good things that have happened and may well still happen.
As I drove through the countryside, my friend Dairo phoned and we’re meeting for a martini in Hudson, a completely unexpected delight. Alana Hauptmann, proprietress of The Red Dot, phoned me while I was eating at Relish to sing me “Happy Birthday” and to tell me to stop on by as she had a present for me.
My inbox overflows with messages of good wishes on this day. Every other second it seems, a new Facebook birthday wish pops up. This is one of the wonderful things about Facebook. I’ve heard today by phone, text, email and Facebook from at least a 150 people wishing me well, not to mention the snail mail cards I have collected.
I have not paid much attention to the world beyond me today. I know there have been developments in Paris and I have not followed them.
It is my birthday and I am allowing myself to be joyful and whimsical and inattentive to the problem’s of the world. Time enough tomorrow.
Happy Birthday to me!
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Tags: Alana Hauptman, Claverack, Mat Tombers, social commentary, The Red Dot
This entry was posted on November 18, 2015 at 9:16 pm and is filed under Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From New York 11 18 15 Happy Birthday to me…
The day started grey; it looks like it will end grey but at lunchtime the world was flooded with sunlight and happiness, the way I was feeling.
Today is my birthday. I’m a year older and, I think, a year wiser. It has been an awfully contemplative year this past year. When I was in high school, I had my “gang” and we’d laugh and say: live quick, die young and have a good looking corpse.
Unfortunately, some did just that but most of have lived on, exiting middle age for the last act, working to shape this phase of our lives with as much care as we worked to shape other periods in our lives, whether we succeeded or not, we attempted.
At 6:00 AM my friend, Nick Stuart, texted me with what he wanted to be my first “Happy Birthday” of the day. It was. I went right back to sleep. Later, up and having my first coffee, another friend, Mary Dickey, called and we chatted, planning a time to see each other.
I’m here for the rest of the week, snuggling into my cottage. Right now, I’m listening to jazz and looking across the table, out to the creek. The trees have shed their leaves and the branches claw nakedly to the sky.
It is not the winter of my discontent. If anything, I am more content than I have been in my life while watching life unfold in its mysterious ways. Next January, I will be teaching a class, “Media and Society.” I’m excited.
My friends Jeffrey and Joyce sent me a message today: I hope today is a reminder of all good things that have and can happen.
And I am reminded of all the good things that have happened and may well still happen.
As I drove through the countryside, my friend Dairo phoned and we’re meeting for a martini in Hudson, a completely unexpected delight. Alana Hauptmann, proprietress of The Red Dot, phoned me while I was eating at Relish to sing me “Happy Birthday” and to tell me to stop on by as she had a present for me.
My inbox overflows with messages of good wishes on this day. Every other second it seems, a new Facebook birthday wish pops up. This is one of the wonderful things about Facebook. I’ve heard today by phone, text, email and Facebook from at least a 150 people wishing me well, not to mention the snail mail cards I have collected.
I have not paid much attention to the world beyond me today. I know there have been developments in Paris and I have not followed them.
It is my birthday and I am allowing myself to be joyful and whimsical and inattentive to the problem’s of the world. Time enough tomorrow.
Happy Birthday to me!
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Tags: Alana Hauptman, Claverack, Mat Tombers, social commentary, The Red Dot
This entry was posted on November 18, 2015 at 9:16 pm and is filed under Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.