In an extraordinary hour-long interview with the New York Times (and available on YouTube) Scott Pelley recounts in detail the story behind Bari Weiss’”Murder” of CBS News’ 60 Minutes.
(YouTube cover photo of the New York Times interview with Scott Pelley. Please click on the link BELOW these two introductory paragraphs to get direct access to the Interview.)
I struggled for days to write something that mattered about the Bari Weiss-driven “murder” of 60 Minutes, the flagrant $16 million bribe the old ownership of CBS paid Donald Trump to get the Paramount merger approved, and the importance of high-integrity journalists, like Scott Pelley, to the truth, to honest and fair jounalism, and to the very essence of dermocracy itself.
Then Pelley gave this video interview to the New York Times, answering all those questions, and making anything any of the rest of us have to say on the subject not relevant. So, I am making this full and remarkable interview available to all of my readers/viewers, right here. I urge you to spend the time viewing this incredibly important event in our country’s history, and consider it the final hour-long episode of a full, truthful, and no-holds barred episode of 60 Minutes with Scott Pelley:
A new documentary film entitled “Mario” premieres at the Tribeca Film Festival next week. I had a front-row seat observing Mario Cuomo for 8 years, and my unedited film still runs in my mind.
(Mario Matthew Cuomo, r., speaks with my son, Matt Villano, following an exhibition basketball game in 1990; the inscription on the photo says “Matt, You make the shirt look good!” (photo by Ted Kaplan).
The brilliant Kunhardt Film Family—father Peter W, and son’s Teddy & George—have produced the first, first-rate documentary about former New York State Governor Mario Cuomo debuting at the NYC’s Tribeca’s Film Festival on June 4, 2026, at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in Manhattan.
The multiple Emmy Award winning family film team—which has made many HBO Original documentaries— has a long and superb track record of making movies that matter about individuals who have had a positive impact on improving our lives. Their filmography includes docs about transformational leaders like Barack Obama, John McCain, Gloria Steinem, and the Founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, Bryan Stevenson. This new film, entitled “Mario” fits squarely into that genre.
“We are trying to make moral leadership the core of many of the films we do,” said Peter W. Kunhardt, now 73, who founded the Kunhardt Production Company in 1987 (now Kunhardt Films) with his father, Philip Kunhardt, Jr., and his brother, Philip Kunhardt, III.
The Kunhardt family, which dates back to Peter’s great-great-grandfather who was a Major in the Union Army in the Civil War; his great grandfather Historian Frederick Hill Meserve; and his grandmother Dorothy Meserve Kunhardt, who wrote the classic children’s book, Pat the Bunny, merits an HBO documentary about their own unique place in U.S. history. Peter Kunhardt himself—not to be confused with his son Peter, Jr., who has run the Gordon Parks Foundation for the past 15 years—worked on ABC News “20/20” for a decade before founding the family film company in 1987.
“What we are really after is the kernal of character who is universal, whom people can identify with, which is the driving force within someone,” Peter Kunhardt told Westchester Magazine (November 18, 2018, “Reel to Reel,” by Gale Ritterhoff’).
The Kunhardt’s could not have found a more fitting person to apply their storytelling knack to for “moral leadership,” than Mario M. Cuomo, whose unshakeable sense of values, integrity, morality and personal purpose was the focus of my book “Tightrope: Balancing a Life Between Mario Cuomo & My Brother (Heliotrope Books, NY, 2017) I have since published a number of articles profiling Mario Cuomo as the “Anti-Trump.” One such story appeared in the Albany Times Union at the time of Trump’s first Inauguration in January, 2017. Link here: http://socialvisionproductions.com/2017/mario-cuomo-the-anti-trump/
I wrote the book (and many subsequent articles) because I became increasingly infuriated when I was asked at weddings, Bar Mitzvahs and every event where people knew I worked with Mario Cuomo, if it was true that Cuomo opted out of running for President because he had “mob connections.” Time after time, that thoughtless comment triggered me, and I transformed into the skunk at many “garden parties” by pugnaciously retorting “you wouldn’t ask that question if his name didn’t end in a vowel.”
I decided it was time for me to tell the story as only I could: that I knew from first hand experience that Cuomo had NO mob connections, because I did, and that my brother’s mob associates, considered Mario Cuomo “untouchable,” because of his impeccable integrity. Then, when people asked again, I could simply say, “Read my book,” and walk away from them, with my temper a bit more in check.
In Tightrope, (pages 118-120) I detailed my first-hand observations of the moment, in my judgement, that I knew Mario Cuomo would never run for President:
“ In early September, 1986, the Governor was already in a testy mood. His re-election, vb was never in doubt, but he was no longer having fun. The press, led by the New York Post,was pummeling (his son) Andrew’s law firm for allegedly doing business with State agencies, and for accepting clients who were seeking to curry favor with the Governor by hiring a law firm in which his son was a partner.
Halfway to the speaking event we were headed for (I sat in the unmarked State Trooper’s car directly behind the driver) the car phone rang. It was Andrew. I watched Mario Cuomo pick up the phone and listen quietly to his son for several minutes, deeply massaging his forehead with the large hand that wasn’t cradling the phone to his ear. Suddenly, the Governor staeted shouting into the receiver.
“What do you mean you’re a liability to me? What kind of talk is that? You’re tired, you’re working too hard on this campaign and you need some rest. Don’t let me hear you talking like that,” Mario Cuomo said to his oldest son, slamming down the car phone into it’s cradle.
There was complete silence in the car for a few moments. Finally, the Governor spoke, seething with anger.
“Imagine that. My own son, thinking he’s a liability to me. This is some god-damned business,” Mario Cuomo said. “You go into government because you try to do some good, and what do they do? They attack your kids. They spread rumors that somehow you must ne connected to the Mafia because your name ends in a vowel. And for what? All because you want to serve? At what price? And when did my kids ever agree to pay the price.”
I watched him look out of the passenger-side window of the black, unmarked State Police car, his anger barely contained and knew at that precise moment that Mario Cuomo would not run for President of the United States; he would never subject his children to the brutality of a Presidential campaign.
“Ah, the whole thing stinks,” Mario Cuomo said, waiving his right hand as if chasing away a fly, swatting his frustration into the air; brushing away the stench of stories which hurt his son and his family, and gagged him. With one wave of his large hand, he pushed aside any of the tightly reasoned arguments being advanced in favor of a “Cuomo for President” campaign in th next (1988) Presidential election.
“Mario Cuomo understood how news, rumor & innuendo worked better than any American politician of his time. He knew that a story, no matter how far-fetched, took on a life of its’ own, once reported and repeated. . .The damage was often subliminal, a mere suggestion to a jury quickly withdrawn, and it became impossible to erase from public consciousness despite detailed rebuttals or outright denials. All that was necessary for the phony charge to pass for fact, was for it to be repeated over and over again, until it became one with the Cuomo name, indivisible.
“Above all, he would not allow his children to be maligned by anyone or used as props in the no-holds barred media reality show which political campaigns were quickly becoming. His family had not asked for a life in public service; he had, and he would stand as a bulwark against their being bullied. I loved him for leaping to Andrew’s defense, and admired his certainity in being an unflinchingly protective father.”
In the Tribeca Film Festival synopsis that accompanies the information about the Kunhardt’s documentary “Mario,” one line jumps out and underscores the truth I observed first-hand over eight years:
“As he finally ends his political life and turns more deeply to family, Cuomo’s story is more than just one of leadership, but one of love, empathy and commitment to service that goes beyond a chronicle of political life.”
Only a multi-generational film-making family like Peter Kunhardt’s, with deep roots in American history, a passion for moral clarity, a track-record of uncovering universal “kernals of character” and with a fierce loyalty to those they love, could do justice to telling the story of the humanity of Mario Cuomo.
Israel has changed dramatically since 1980, lurching toward a Far Right, Fundamentalist, Ultra-Nationalism. Does the Judaism to which I converted 46 years ago still exist?
I converted to Judaism 46 years ago today, drawn to a set of beliefs not threatened, but strengthened, by rational questioning and debate; that found beauty in acts of faith and generosity, small and large; that understood, from centuries of experience, the insanity and inhumanity of exclusion and demonization; and was built on the bedrock of fundamental human decency, dignity, love and the preciousness of life.
Which is why, despite the current collapse of democracy in Israel and the careening of Israeli leadership into a fundamentalist, nationalist chasm not unlike those in history responsible for the slaughter of millions of Jews, I was shocked by the depth of hatred aimed at me for criticizing the Netanyahu government’s abandonment of the fundamental principles of Judaism and human rights.
Early last month, I wrote on an Instagram posting by Chris Cuomo of News Nation, that:
“I am a Jew. Netanyahu’s extreme Right Wing government is an attack on all of us. A fundamental tenet of Judaism is advancing humanity; the present Israeli government is setting humanity back. On Holocaust Memorial Day when we Jews say “Never Again,” we meannever against usagain, nor against any other people—including non-combatant Palestinians. We are not attacking Israel; we are attacking inhumanity…”
While more than 250 readers/viewers agreed with my statement (including a reminder that the IDF’s own Code of Ethics, prohibits a disproportionate response to an attack) respondents from Israel and the United States alike (some of whom may have been Bots) piled on. A sampling of some comments:
1. “Whose side are you really on?”
2. “You’re calling for the death of your own people.”
3. “Thanks for showing us what the ‘Judenrat,” did. Jew.”
4. “Sad to see a fellow Jew who is product of Hamas propaganda.”
5. “Here we go with the “as a Jew” comment.”
6. “So, you’re one of those ‘Self-Hating Jews? You’re a fraud.”
7. “Palestinians must be slaughtered. We are dealing with psychopaths.”
8. “You’re not a Jew. Villano is anything but a Jewish name. Putz.”
9. “You probably love US garbage pails like Biden & Schumer.”
10. “Why don’t you just Convert—OUT of Judaism?”
The Judaism I converted to 46 years ago, was a far different Judaism than the false faith being practiced by some Extreme Right Wing and Ultra Nationalist Jews in Israel and the United States today. It was the Judaism articulated by Israeli writer and activist Fania Oz Salzberger, daughter of the great Israeli writer Amos Oz, who writes that:
“God does not belong as a political entity telling us what to do; what to teach; where to invade.”
Menachem Begin was Israeli Prime Minister at the time I converted, and while he was more conservative than Israel’s Labour Party leaders of the previous 30 years whom I revered, he had just, 2 years earlier, been a signatory to the Camp David Accords, along with US President Jimmy Carter and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat—an historic peace agreement which earned all three leaders the Nobel Peace Prize.
There was a flicker of hope in the air, that a nearly 30-year constant state of War between Israel and Arab nations could be taking a pause, and could, perhaps, lead to a more permanent peace in the region. Centuries old and seemingly irreconcilable differences over geography, demography, faith, ancestry and ancient rights of land ownership could be navigated if there was a willingness on each side to reach some livable accommodations with the other—and if the humanity of each side was respected.
If Menachem Begin, a leader of Israel’s armed revolutionary group for Independence the Irgun, who was labeled a “terrorist” by the British forces he fought for freedom, could shake hands with a sworn enemy of the State of Israel like Sadat, who led Egypt in the 1973 Yom Kippur War to retake the Sinai Peninsula which Israel had occupied since 1967—anything was possible.
There was great hope in the air for peace between Israel and some of its Arab neighbors, in the Spring, of 1980. And, there was great hope in my life, that, after years of searching, I had found in Judaism, a set of ethical, humane, spiritual teachings and practices, in which I could believe, and rationally act upon.
I was a father of a five-year old son at the time when I chose Judaism as my new faith, the faith of his mother. The hierarchy of my previous faith, Catholicism, had long since turned away from me by blindly supporting the American War in Vietnam, opposing equality for women, insisting that the promise of life was more important than life itself, discriminating against individuals because of their sexuality, and refusing to accept AIDS patients into their hospitals, and hearts, because of an outdated, and inhumane, concept of “sin.”
I spent years studying other faiths, and gravitated toward Judaism because of its grounding in reality, as well as spirituality; its’ fundamental commitment to repair the world (Tikkun Olam), and its’ insistence on refusing to wallow in darkness, and always, always work toward hope and the better side of human nature.
Converting to Judaism is not done on a whim; Jews have certain requirements for those they choose to let in.
After reading an article in the late 1970’s by the great Reform Jewish leader, Rabbi Alexander Schindler (the founder of ARZA, the American Reform Zionist Association) welcoming non-Jewish spouses in interfaith marriages to become Jews, I decided it was time to accept his invitation, and begin my journey toward Judaism.
It was a decision which did not make my mother, a devout Catholichappy. In fact, when I informed my mother I was converting to Judaism, she wrote me a letter in which she expressed how “heartbroken” she was; and that the announcement of “your becoming a Jew is not something I am proud of.”
“I will never accept your decision to change your religion,” my mother wrote to me six months before my Conversion to Judaism took place, on May 20, 1980. In reality, it took years for her to become “comfortable” with my becoming a Jew.
We joined a large Reform Jewish Congregation in Albany, N.Y., and I came under the tutelage of a leading Reform Rabbi, Rabbi Martin Silverman, a disciple of Schindler’s, who guided me in my readings on Jewish history and Judaism.
Rabbi Silverman, whose wife, Phyllis, taught with mine in the Albany Public Schools, was already a remarkably courageous figure within the American Reform Jewish Community. In the late 60’s and early 70’s before the Roe v.Wade US Supreme Court decision which declared abortion to be a fundamental privacy and healthcare right of women, Rabbi Silverman had a secret compartment behind the sacred Torah Scrolls in the Chicago-area congregation he headed. In it, he kept files of illegal abortions he’d helped women obtain, as well as a list of doctors willing to perform them.
Along with many other rabbis, ministers and priests across the nation, Silverman was a member of the Clergy Consultation Services, an underground network of fearless clergy, dedicated to protecting the life of the woman, first and foremost. That was, after all, an essential teaching of Judaism—that the woman’s life was of paramount importance, and even if an abortion was necessary to protect the life of the woman, up to the moment of birth, abortion was a required medical procedure under Jewish Law, as well as in the Old Testament.
Rabbi Silverman’s daughter, Amy Cohen, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Adoption Agency Adoptions with Love, and an advocate for women’s reproductive rights,told the Jewish Journal of Greater Boston:
“If someone was pregnant and couldn’t have or didn’t want the baby, he counseled women of all faiths and ethnic backgrounds about their predicament, explained what an abortion entailed, and then he’d refer them to where they could get a safe abortion.”
Cohen described her father as a “liberal, forward-thinking person, always involved in people’s rights.”
After my guided, independent study with Rabbi Silverman, I was considered to be ready to participate in a “Conversion class” sponsored by the Capital District Board of Rabbis, with Rabbis of all denominations of Judiasm—Orthodox, Conservative, Reform—participating.
Teaching the Conversion course, was the diminutive Susie Isser, no more than five feet tall–who was trained in the law and had escaped from Austria just before the Nazis made it impossible to leave. An immigrant to the United States in the late 1930’s, Isser—a Jewish, female attorney– found the door to the American legal profession slammed shut to her, a similar story to the one recounted decades later by Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
So, for 20 years, to help support her family, the brilliant Susie Isser scrubbed floors, and taught Hebrew Sunday School, one day per week. Her son, Dr. Raymond Isser, went on to become Chair of the Judaic Studies Department at SUNY Albany, my undergraduate alma mater, where my wife and I met.
Word of Susie Isser’s passion for teaching and her commitment to a humanitarian Judaism—and to the State of Israel—spread throughout New York State’s Capital District. In her class, the Jewish spouse was required to take the six-month long conversion class along with the spouse converting to Judaism. Among our fellow students, was an Iranian Jew, and his non-Jewish spouse—both of whom had just escaped from Iran before the Ayatollah and a cabal of fundamentalists had taken over that country.
In her lessons on Jewish history, Susie Isser cried when she spoke of growing up with a Tzedakah Box, found in Jewish homes throughout Europe, being filled with pennies each day, year after year, to support the development of a homeland for Jews—with the promise of no discrimination against any faith, and legal protections and respect for all human rights. In fact, those human rights protections, became key elements of the UN Charter which created Israel in 1948.
That was the Judaism I converted to in 1980, and it’s mission to advance humanity and repair the world, while not perfect, was carried out in spirit and substance by a succession of Israeli governments, from Begin’s to Yitzak Shamir’s, to Shimon Peres’, to Yitzhak Rabin’s.
That Judaism was violently attacked with the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, by an Ultra Right Wing Nationalist disciple of convicted Jewish terrorist Meir Kahane, who was himself killed by an assassin’s bullet.
That Judaism began its slow slide toward assisted suicide, with the election of Benjamin Netanyahu, for the first time in 1996, and his repeated pandering to and enabling of the poisonous growth of Ultra Nationalist & Extremist groups throughout Israel by placing them in key Israeli government positions of extraordinary power—including power over religious matters, such as questions of “Who Is A Jew?”
Many of Kahane’s ultra nationalist adherents are now, nearly 30 years later, in key Israeli government positions, including Bezalel Smotrich, the Israeli Finance Minister with oversight responsibility for the West Bank, arrested on terrorist charges in 2005 by Israel’s Shin Bet for plotting to block Israeli withdrawal from Gaza; and, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s National Security Minister, convicted multiple times for supporting terrorist organizations, and according to The New York Times investigation on Israeli extremists, published on Sunday, May 19, 2024, threatening the life of Yitzhak Rabin “ in front of TV cameras in 1995,” two weeks before Rabin was murdered.
Rabin was murdered at a Peace rally, where he was speaking on behalf of the Oslo Accords—the US brokered peace agreement in 1993 between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization—which advanced the long held US foreign policy objective of a two-state Israeli/Palestinian peace settlement.
My Judaism, like Rabin’s, is one that believes in diversity, equality, inclusion, humanity and love, and a sacred obligation to repair the world. My Zionism, like David Ben Gurion’s, Theodore Herzl’s, Amos Oz’, Susie Isser’s, and Yitzak Rabin’s is a Humanist Zionism, in which a State of Jews could only be a liberal democracy, NOT an exclusionary Nationalist Zionism.
As Fania Oz Salberger has so eloquently said:
“Ben Gurion, the child of Socialist Zionists and of old Labour, and Theodore Herzl, a liberal, BOTH believed that Arabs AND Jews had to be part of Civil Society.”
That was the fundamental premise upon which Israel was founded; that was the basis of the international agreement which created the State of Israel 78 years ago; and that was the pluralistic, humane, loving, generous and intellectually honest faith to which I converted 46 years ago this week.
“Dying’s part of the wheel, right next to being born. You can’t pick out the pieces you like and leave the rest. Being part of the whole thing, that’s the blessing.”–Angus Tuck, Tuck Everlasting.
(The Vitruvian Wheel of Life; based upon Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, dated to c. 1490, and inspired by the Roman architect, Vitruvius.)
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It’s not even August yet, but I feel like we’ve been enduring the dog days for a very long time.
The bright promise of it not being 2025 faded early this year, with the news of the death of one of our closest friends from college, whose daily decline from dementia dragged on over seven years. Like a slow-growing cancer, the disease diminished her physical abilities—except for still going on her long, beloved walks; it robbed her brilliant mind and sharp wit from engaging in intellectual or cultural talks; and, soon, it would take away her capacity to talk at all, or even feed herself. Risa was the human we most enjoyed laughing through life with, from when we were 19 years old. Gone now; no longer ours.
To witness the gradual hollowing out of this friend so full of life and love, and easy laughter, whose mental quickness I first enjoyed in Professor Warren Roberts Advanced World History Class at SUNY Albany nearly 60 years ago, was to experience our own demi-death, in small cuts, each time we exchanged Zoom calls with her and her wonderful partner.
Toward the end, I could still make her laugh by loudly repeating the booming message which emerged from this petite five foot friend, when she needed to command the attention of students acting rowdy on her watch as a dorm Resident Assistant.
“Get Off the Quad,” she’d bellow, causing obnoxious, college boys a full-foot taller than her to quiet down and clear out. They didn’t mess with Risa.
“Get Off the Quad,” I’d shout to her, toward the end of all of our conversations, bringing a twinkle to her sometimes blank eyes, and eliciting laughter which carried us back to our college days for a split second. There was that spark of momentary connection once again, compounding the cruelty of watching her disappear into someplace none of us knew, nor could find her.
I understood the constant pain Mae & Angus Tuck felt in Natalie Babbitt’s eternal masterpiece, Tuck Everlasting, (Farrar Strauss, New York, 1975), who, blessed/cursed with unending life, outlive all the people they loved, including their contemporaries:
“We Tucks are stuck; so we can’t move on. We ain’t part of the wheel anymore. Left behind everything around us…Dying’s part of the wheel, right next to being born. You can’t pick out the pieces you like and leave the rest. Being part of the whole thing, that’s the blessing.”
Like the Tucks, I did not feel blessed to be part of the “changeless sweep of change,” especially when it recently swept away a sweet and good and decent man, our friend, Ed, who graced our lives for decades, casually crushing him over time by stealing his life, breath by breath, and pushing him off the wheel, before he wanted to go.
Now Ed, was dead, my calming model for how well a man could act under all circumstances, steady and kind at all times. His passing pulled the rug out from under me, careening me out balance, and making me useless to comfort his grieving partner, who was to us, like another sister. Ed’s death, and his characteristic acceptance of its’ arrival, knocked out my breath, and left me gasping for the clean, quiet air, that was, in the end, denied to this good friend.
Like Job, I lamented to God, whether she existed and was paying attention, why all the wrong people, the good people, were dying, while the evil were left behind to destroy the world, not repair it. My argument with any “higher power” who would listen went like this:
“When needed most, God, why aren’t you near?
All the wrong people are dying.
If there’s a God, she must be hiding—
Averting her eyes & ears to wailing and crying.
Taking Risa & Ed, Pretti & Good,
And Caroline Kennedy’s daughter.
Withholding food, medicine & water,
From babies within our own borders,
And Lebanese & Gazan children, tagged for slaughter.
Are you there, God?
Those innocents are NOT your target;
Unless you are gathering the best around you,
Creating Hell’s Tenth Circle of evil here, on earth,
Governed by ghouls, pedophiles and thieves,
Teaching the rest of us who want to believe,
That justice only comes to those of us who grieve
The good already gone from us.”
The actor Martin Short, now 76 years old—who has endured the Job-like tragedies of the death of a brother when he was 12; of his mother from cancer, when he was 17; of his father from a stroke three years later,; of his wife, Nancy, dying from ovarian cancer 15 years ago; and his daughter Katherine, dying from suicide, just this February—told the New York Times last week (“Martin Short and the Secret to Finding Joy While Surviving Tragedy”, May 15, 2026, by Jason Zindman); https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/15/movies/martin-short-marty-life-is-short.html?unlocked_article_code=1.jFA.pGsD.HIMhk6S-VF29&smid=url-share), that he believed “grieving gives you muscles to survive.”
In Short’s Job-like consideration of the role of a “higher power” in the death of loved ones, he quotes the legendary Director Mike Nichols: “I see no reason why you just can’t keep the conversation going.”
To those of us, like Martin Short, who’ve made it past 75 with our physical and mental abilities pretty much in tact—a rare gift, as noted by Dr. Zeke Emanuel in his controversial piece published in the Atlantic Monthly, October, 2014 Issue, entitled “Why I Hope to Die at 75,” in which he does not argue for a Kevorkian-like conclusion to our lives—Emanuel discusses the unrealistic arrogance of “American immortality,” in our obsessive belief that each of us is an exception to the norm, and like fame, will somehow “live forever:”
“American immortals operate on the assumption that they will be precisely such outliers. But the fact is that by 75, creativity, originality, and productivity are pretty much gone for the vast, vast majority of us. Einstein famously said, “A person who has not made his great contribution to science before the age of 30 will never do so.” He was extreme in his assessment. And wrong…There are some, but not huge, variations among disciplines. Currently, the average age at which Nobel Prize–winning physicists make their discovery—not get the prize—is 48.
Embracing our own mortality, instead of trying ot erase it, is Emanuel argues, essential to getting the most out of however much more time we have left, and simultaneously, recognizing our obligation to our children and grandchildren to redirecting scarce resources for improving life’s quality—not only for us, but for them, now and forever, Amen. Such courageous, selfless decisions are at the very heart of accepting that we are part of a “wheel,” as my father tried to tell me on his death bed by pointing at my watch, and mouthing the words, “time to go.” The wheel works because we are all part of it.
Emanuel goes on to explain how we are not like the Tucks, who have sipped from the waters of immortality, nor should we aspire to be:
“And I am not advocating 75 as the official statistic of a complete, good life in order to save resources, ration health care, or address public-policy issues arising from the increases in life expectancy. What I am trying to do is delineate my views for a good life and make my friends and others think about how they want to live as they grow older. I want them to think of an alternative to succumbing to that slow constriction of activities and aspirations imperceptibly imposed by aging. Are we to embrace the “American immortal” or my “75 and no more” view? (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/10/why-i-hope-to-die-at-75/379329/?gift=CMu1iNc-Sy6nzR8uCo5sAk7f3NMnGDlhxRnBJCPm7M0&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share).
At 77, I know that each day is a gift, especially as I near the 33rd Anniversary of my father’s death at 78. Mortality, mine and that of people I love, is ever present, in every waking moment. Bearing witness to too much desperation, suffering, disease and the deaths of children, friends and siblings; cradling my parents in my arms as they took their last gasp of life; and collapsing in shock when a bright, young 40-year old colleague was ravaged by an inhuman infection ripping him from his babies, is, I am aware, the high price of still being alive, after they have left us.
Like Natalie Babbitt’s Tucks, it is the passage of time that worries me most. For those of us neither “cursed,” nor “blessed,” with immortality, as Mae Tuck tells 10-year old Winnie Foster, who discovered their secret, we can no longer pretend we won’t die, when people who comprise important parts of our lives do, and take parts of our existence with them. The question for those of us surviving and trying to make sense out of why we are still here, is what do we do with what time we’ve got left? How do we give our lives more meaning? How do we live out our days well? How do repair a world that has been ripped apart? Love more? Or, as Martin Short, suggests, how do we, “head for the light?”
Noah Kahan, the extraordinarily talented singer/songwriter, who has struggled with mental health challenges for all of his nearly 30 years, and founded “The Busyhead Project” (named after his first Album to raise money for local mental health care groups), has just released his newest Album, at the same time Netflix is airing a revealing documentary about him entitled, “Noah Kahan: Out of Body.”
The album, The Great Divide (Mercury Records, 2026), opens with a beautiful, haunting song entitled “End of August,” where the sound of contemplative piano keys pull you immediately into Kahan’s musical explanation of belonging and loss, seamlessly coupling one with the other, of death with life:
“Ending of August,
The bugs are just starting to die;
All the neighbors are votin’ for someone
Who wins every time;
I thought getting older
Meant knowin’ it’s too late to try…
Kahan’s chorus celebrates how two things, life & death, attachment & loss, are true at the same time, underscoring the wisdom of Angus Tuck about “everything being part of the wheel,” and the need to “make a difference in the world:”
“Oh everything you see out here will die—
Oh, it’s a matter of time
‘Til its fields of ice and reflected lights,
‘Til it’s our time, ‘til it’s our time, ‘til it’s our time;
