I’ve always been a dreamer. Yes, the person who has (had) moonshot aspirations, but I’m talking about being a nighttime dreamer when my unconscious goes into rogue storytelling mode. Every. Single. Night. As a kid, I had recurring nightmares. As an adult, my dreams are invariably unsettling. There aren’t too many picnics and butterflies in my dreams. Since we all dream, you would think...
The other day I went for a run (some walking) at a trail network in town called Normanskill Ravine. True to its name, the single-track trail is steep. It doesn’t just go down into one ravine, but leads through a series of drops and climbs and switchbacks that lead you to the Normanskill, where you run flat along the creek for a while before looping back through long ascents and descents. Three...
“It was a pleasure to burn.” So thought Montag, the protagonist of Ray Bradbury’s dystopian novel “Fahrenheit 451,” as he hosed kerosene onto a burning pile of books. Montag has good company in contemporary America. Two members of a Virginia school board recently called for a book burning of “sexually explicit” books. A school board member in Florida demanded that someone must be...
I’ve been in a philosophical mood recently, at times contemplating the meaning of life, and therefore have supplemented my usual reading of fiction with two books atypical for me: David Benatar’s THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT and Victor E. Frankl’s MAN’S SEARCH FOR MEANING. Both books operate from the premise that life is inherently meaningless, that there is no cosmic purpose to our lives, and the...
We’re practicing in the park across from the Zoo in the big meadow next to the golf course. Our Coach, Duke Donovan, has us run tackling drills over mud puddles. He blows his whistle and says huddle up men. It’s either a dirty joke or three laps for the fumble on the last play. We circle around, 11- and 12-year-olds of the St. Mark’s Lions 90-pound football team. He’s probably 30, younger than...
How do you discover the next book to read? For me, I look at my to-be-read pile teetering on the edge of my desk or my written list and choose from there, but the pile and list have origin stories as well. I read the New York Times Book Review every Sunday and receive the NYT Book Briefing newsletter and newsletters from several bookstores. Fellow readers who I trust make recommendations...
You asked me how I decided to become a creative writer. The four of us were sitting outside finishing our lunch, the chill creeping in, and your question caught me by surprise. It shouldn’t have, since I’m sure you’re in the throes of deciding what to do next with your life and it makes sense to ask others how they decided about theirs. Although I’ve been asked this question often enough, I...
Just the kind of day you want for a run, in the woods, by the stream, past peak, sun doing its trick slanting through the trees. Fallen leaves conceal roots and ruts on the trail and other spots are muddy and slick, and I have to pay attention more than usual, focus where my foot will land and the trail will bend, that’s called being in the moment, said to be good for you, and I don’t fall, this...
The most controversial item on the election ballot in the Town of Bethlehem this past Tuesday was Proposition 6. If passed, a 1.3 mile stretch of busy four-lane road between Elsmere Ave. and the Albany city line would undergo a “Road Diet,” funded primarily by federal and state money. Four traffic lanes would be reduced to two—one in each direction—plus a center turn lane, dedicated bicycle lanes...
Another corporate giant has rebranded itself. Facebook the company is now Meta the company. I suppose it had to be done because of brand confusion. Facebook was the name of the company as well as the name of the app used by billions of people. It’s similar to when Google the company became Alphabet the company, and Google remained one of Alphabet’s platforms. So why now? Many observers...
Savvy guy that I am, I use Google Alerts to catch any mentions of my novels STASH and CLEAN BREAK out there in the Internet cosmos. Just in case someone, somewhere, read one of these two cool books and wanted to tell the world. I’d want to know about it. I might even get in contact with such a dear reader. So I was pleased to get this alert today for David Klein Stash. Sadly, the alert had...
When I hear the word artifact I picture a shard of pottery or a primitive tool that gets unearthed during an archeological dig. Collection of objects was found by divers in the Tollense River in Germany and is probably the contents of a personal pouch of a warrior who died 3,300 years ago on the battlefield. Credit: Volker Minkus But I knew this wasn’t the definition of artifact that began to...
She’s 22, he’s 21. Both are completing their last semester of college, set to graduate in December. In their level of intellect, emotional maturity, and self-awareness, they’re light years ahead of where I was at that age, exposed to so much more, in some ways forced to grow up a lot faster, yet better protected in others. He reads more than 50 books a year and approaches life with curiosity...
Las Vegas Raiders Coach Jon Gruden resigned yesterday. After a few middling years with Gruden at the helm, his team was pretty good this season, with a 3-2 record, but he was the victim of an obvious yet well-executed hit job. Brief background: The NFL has been investigating the Washington Football Team (nee Washington Redskins) for sexual harassment and verbal abuse of female employees, a...
Who knows where I run across these things (searching, scrolling, clicking–the usual way), but this test of your creative powers is quick and interesting. It’s called the Divergent Association Task and it doesn’t measure all types of creativity, but “one specific type of creativity: divergent thinking, which is the capacity to generate an array of diverse solutions to an...
