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The Magic Word

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Well, I’m glad I finally got that settled. Whenever I visited my Uncle Joe in Los Angeles, I could always count on him to use the word “Hijole!” several times during my stay. I got used to hearing this expression, but it never occurred to me to look it up or ask him what he was talking about. Now that he’s gone, I finally got around to find out what “Hijole!” actually means. Pronounced “ee-hoh-leh,” it is interjection used in several Latin American countries “to express surprise, exasperation, or to convey that someone is impressed.” Translations include the likes of “wow”, or “gosh.” Wikipedia tells me that hijole is an univerbation, which may sound dirty to all you degenerates out there—and shame on you, by the way—but it only describes a linguistic process that involves combining multiple words into a single word. For example, the word albeit comes from the Middle English expression al be it, in which “al” means although. Hijole is an ellipsis of “hijo de puta”, w...
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Last Call

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As soon as I woke up this morning, I reminded myself to call Uncle Joe. Sunday is the day I usually call my dad’s younger brother in Los Angeles to get the latest on the West Coast branch of the Lenihans. And then I remembered I couldn’t call Uncle Joe today—or any other day. Joe died on Wednesday and so the last member of my father’s family left this world on the first of the new year. Joe was in his nineties and in failing health, but it’s hard to believe that I won’t be talking with him on the phone anymore or seeing him when I go out there for a visit. My sister and I have been staying with Joe and his wife Sara for so many years now. They took us all over the place to see the sites and meet up with our cousins. If I recall—and don’t quote me--I first went out there in the late Eighties when I was living in Pennsylvania. Joe and I had trouble finding each other when I arrived in LAX, but we met up and I sat in the back seat of his car recovering from my post-flight trau...
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Glimmer Man

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“Don’t live the same year 75 times and call it a life.” -- Robin Sharma There’s a scene in Woody Allen’s 1971 comedy Bananas where the hero, Fielding Mellish, must defend himself in court. “This trial is a travesty,” he declares, jumping to his feet. “It's a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of two mockeries of a sham.” I haven’t thought about that film in years, but that scene came popping into my head just a few days ago. At first, I wasn’t sure why, but I’m starting to believe that since we’re about to begin a new year, my cynical subconscious mind was making a not-to-subtle assessment of my ability to stick to my resolutions. Yeah, I still make New Year’s resolutions. It’s corny, especially at my advanced age, and I usually fall far short of all the grand promises I make, but I still can’t walk into January without some kind of road map—or at least the illusion of one. I need the fantasy. I want to believe that this year will be different than all those ...
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Start the Magic

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In 34 years ago, Judith Donath rocked the greeting card world. Donath, a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center, came up with the concept of the e-card and created The Electric Postcard site at MIT Media Lab. Electric postcards, as they were first called, were pretty simple back then. While the early cards could be customized with text and imagery, there was no animation effects, personalized ecard games attachments, or personalized video content that you see today. The e-card caught on rapidly, with 1.7 million of them being sent instead of a traditional card in just one year after they debuted. Video e-cards were introduced in the early 2000s and today you can integrate digital gift cards with your e-greeting. Hallmark Cards, the world's largest greeting card manufacturer, debuted its first e-card on July 3, 2001. The card was created by artists Bob Holt and Mike Adair for the 4th of July and featured a pink cat named Hoops and a green bunny named Yoyo, who became t...
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Off the Rails

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“What you resist, persists.”—Carl Jung I was just one stop away from my destination when it hit me. This the last leg of my trip to Wallingford, PA and I should’ve been happy. I had made all my connections, my train was about to pull into the station, and I hadn’t gotten lost, mugged, abducted by aliens or impressed into the British Navy. No, everything had worked out for me and, apparently, that was the problem. My shadow self didn’t have anything to get upset about, so he set about creating misery out of nothing. I suddenly started thinking about how I had wasted so much time in my life, how I caused my parents such anguish by my inability—(refusal?)—to find a career path. It was the usual stuff that often runs through my mind, only this was magnified several thousand times. It seemed to come from absolutely nowhere, but, of course, that isn’t true. Anxiety is a constant companion, only it rarely gets this aggressive—unless I’m an airplane and then I’ve got Xanax. ...
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More than You Could Ever Know

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I emerged from the depths of Penn Station and the sounds of the city smacked me square in the mug. I was returning home from a night in the Philadelphia suburbs where I had gone to attend a friend and former co-worker’s birthday party. In addition to having a great time with fabulous people, I also achieved a personal milestone by breaking out of the Netflix comfort zone conundrum. In short, I got up off my ass and did something different. Now I was back in town, weary from the train ride and struck by the contrast with the environment I had left just hours earlier. I had rented a place through Airbnb in this beautiful woodsy area. The apartment was massive—I could move in there tomorrow—and the morning was so lovely and peaceful. So, obviously, the city with all its people, traffic and especially noise, gave me quite a jolt as I stepped out onto Seventh Avenue. But amid the honking horns, blaring music, and the voices of people roaring into the phones like they're co...
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Golden Repair

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“There is a crack, a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” ---Leonard Cohen, Anthem Kintsugi is a Japanese art for repairing damaged pottery where powdered gold, silver or platinum is applied to the broken areas. The 400-year-old technique, also known kintsukuroi, or “golden repair,” treats breakage and repair as part an object's history, rather than something to disguise. Psychologists have applied the concept of kintsugi as a way of viewing emotional injuries so we that accept and embrace our problems and imperfections rather than try to hide them. I’d heard about kintsugi years ago, but I googled it yesterday following a weird and ultimately wonderful dream I had that kicked off with me brawling with a total stranger and ended up with me meeting the love of my life. This mental midnight double feature occurred earlier in the week, and it started with a bang. For reasons that I don’t begin to understand, I’m in a small office somewhere kung-fu fightin...
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