I have tried to write essays each morning every day for the last several years.  I know the practice of writing THINKING ALLOWED has gone one since Judd Galford visited me at the Jersey Shore. He was the one who suggested the title, THINKING ALLOWED and the irreverent use of “Published Now and Then” in the masthead. This was the time he heard of my complaint that I was lonely and fixed me up with Carol in an interesting get-together he and wife Leah arranged.  This was before Leah died and he finally passed away bedeviled by a cancer.  I don’t remember if I wrote about this traumatic experience in our lives and I have made such a botch of finding, copying and sending up to the web my output over the years. I have lost or misplaced so many essays.

Judd suddenly appeared at our house in Long Branch on his way north from a visit in South Jersey.  He was terribly lonely without Leah and had taken the job of tour leader on buses that suited him very well.  His friend and my cousin-in-law from my first marriage, Marvin Schlafmitz, was a tour director also and strangely enough had met Carol and Karenne before I did. Judd was my Department Chairman at Central High.

Judd had to keep busy.  He possessed a marvelously constructed mind with a fabulous memory and penchant for “Tom Swifties”.  He was truly a raconteur. This reminds me of the lines under my High School graduation picture that called me a raconteur.  That, unfortunately, is no longer the case.  I have transferred my talents from voice to pages of type.

I know that in this computer there is a button that I could click on that will reveal exactly how many THINKING ALLOWED pieces I wrote this year of 2002.  I am also sure there is a button I could click that will sort out all of my pieces and arrange them by date either in ascending or descending order.  I may yet find out how to do this and advance my knowledge of using the computer more efficiently.

Judd, Marvin and I were of the generation that had to use a typewriter with carbon paper and laboriously whiteout or erase our mistakes on creative cerebral work. I have tried to keep all the papers I was proud of and they are monuments to the pain of trying to avoid mistakes.  My efforts today are a result of the perfectionist tendency that comes with having to crumple up paper that is too smudged with corrections so you must start all over again.

I think I am in love with this computer. It is quite smart and sends me messages when I mess up.  I just wish it would understand me better.